TOUGH FIGHTERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 7, 9 January 1943, Page 6

TOUGH FIGHTERS

TRIBUTE TO GURKHAS

TALE OF BURMA RETREAT

(0.C.) DUNEDIN, this day/ "The Gurkha is a grand fellow, tough as an old boot—and he always has a smile on' his face," writes Lieutenant H. D. Ramsay, a former pupil of McGlashan College and a New Zealand champion hurdler, who is now serving with a Gurkha regiment in India, in a letter to a Dunedin friend.

"The Gurkhas are marvellous soldiers, too," he added, "and they can fight like cats. I shall never forget my first 'scrap' on the Bilin River, where a Japanese went 'haywire' and charged our defences. The Gurkhas held their fire and let him through. Then a Gurkha officer sprang to life and beheaded him with one stroke of his kukri."

Lieutenant Ramsay, who spent five months in Burma, said that the Japanese were good fighters, but it had to be remembered that they outnumbered the- British troops by at least five to one. He is firmly convinced that when they are met with equal numbers and equipment they will retreat.

"Coming out of Burma we marched tremendous distances," he said. "The refugees, coming out ahead fouled every drinking pool there was. They drank from the pools and then washed in them. As was only to be expected, dysentery became prevalent/ Men died like flies all along the route, and at one stage I did a ten days' stretch without food and kept going only on cups of tea and an ocacsional lift by M.T."

It was sheer dogged determination that brought most of the men out of Burma, he said. At Kinwu, in Burma, he saw a Gurkha who was still doubled up as the result of a recent wound. Later he saw the same man walking about in Dimapur, still doubled up, but going strong. He had walked over 200 miles in that condition.

Some idea of the arduous conditions may be gained from the fact that Lieutenant Ramsay went to Burma weighing 12st, and when he came out his weight was Sst 121b.