Only A Barnsley Miner

Only a Barnsley Miner

This is a story of a man, one of millions who were not made famous by war, but who fought in the longest campaign of World War 2 and survived.
He was only a Barnsley miner before he went to war, and only a Barnsley miner on his return.

The man himself is not famous, but the Chindits he served with are.

The Battalion he served in was created by war, and destroyed by war.
It only existed for a brief few years , but became part of the history of the British Army and the British Empire. The 7th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment

A Battalion of forgotten heroes, in a forgotten war, waged by forgotten men. Men who today, still warrant admiration, for their courage , fortitude, and endurance. A special breed of men that war created, the first Special Force, the original, and still the best.
Their feats will always be marvelled at, and will never again be undertaken.

Today war is clinical, waged with computers, and equipment, that the soldiers of World War 2 could only dream about.
This mans war was not sanitary, it was knee deep in blood and guts, the last feudal war, where men resorted to basic survival instincts, and lost all aspects of their humanity. War endured in the most appalling conditions possible, a true hell on Earth.
A war, that afterwards expected them to come home, and just return to their everyday lives. To forget the horrors they saw, and the conditions they endured. Many returned home and carried on, but in every man, was a memory that would remain for life. A memory from which the only release was death.
This is one mans war, Only a Barnsley Miner, a man among many millions who lived through hard times, and did what they had to do, to allow their country, and the world to be “free”

Many millions more gave the ultimate sacrifice and did not come back.

This book is for them. The people who didn’t return to tell their story, and who died with their horrors, unable to tell their loved ones, and families, of what they endured.
It is also for the ordinary man, the man in the street, the next door neighbour, the dad, the uncle, the granddad, the miner, the steelworker, the workers, the ordinary men, who without which, this country would not be.

7th Battalion Royal Leicestershire Regiment CHINDITS 1940-1944

“I’ve been abroad, and I’m never going again”

Chapter 1 The Beginning

Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Commander of Southeast Asia Command, decided Burma had to be re conquered by a land operation from India, as the forces for an amphibious invasion from the south of Burma were not available due to the allied landing preparation for D Day in Europe taking priority over men and machines.

In August 1943 Churchill, Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs of Staff met in Quebec at the Quadrant Conference to discuss future Allied strategy. Accompanying Churchill was General Orde Wingate.
At the conference Wingate presented his plans on how a second campaign of Long Range Penetration brigades would march into Burma to disrupt enemy communications behind their front lines, and prepare the way for the main forces to recapture North Burma.
In the event Wingate's proposals unexpectedly won American support and the conference agreed to a second Chindit operation.
To show their support for the operation the Americans offered to form an American Long Range Penetration Group to be trained and commanded by Wingate
This group trained by the British, later became known as Merrill's Marauders.

When the British requested a supply of American light aircraft, for evacuating the wounded, the Americans, offered to provide an air task force consisting of Light Bombers, Fighters, Dakotas, Light Aircraft and Gliders. Something the original 1943 expedition did not have.

Is this easy, or what?, just to sit in a room and discuss, what shape, and how the war would progress .
As always, the men who were not on the ground in theatre, formulated their battle plans, and then it was left to the ordinary soldier to implement the plans. Discussions on tactics, where, when, and how, to deploy the armies.
What logistics, and supplies to use, and when they would stop. It was as always, the ordinary soldier who would make those plans work. They were the ones in the front line, they took what the Jungle, and the Japanese would throw at them. Many were maimed, many more died. All who lived had to live with their battle memories, memories that lasted a lifetime.

Chapter 2 Ninety Days - NID
Through bitter experience gained in the 1943 campaign, Wingate maintained the Chindits would have to overcome three obstacles in fighting the Japanese:

1. Nature - the jungles, mountains, monsoons, flooded rivers, and mud.

2. Insects and parasites - including leeches, black flies, red ants, scorpions.

3. Diseases, such as malaria, typhus, and dysentery.

"If we can overcome 'NID,' then fighting the Japanese will be our least worry,"

Shortly before his untimely death, Gen. Wingate had mandated that no combat unit should be expected to maintain itself in the jungle beyond 90 days. After that he said, fatigue and sickness would weaken its men to the point the entire unit would become ineffective in battle.
But the Chindits were doomed to be behind Japanese lines, marching, running, climbing, crawling, digging, hiding and fighting for more than double the allotted days. Always with the dreaded 60 lb. packs on their backs, they walked an average of 500 miles over some of the most rugged and inhospitable terrain on Earth.
The monsoon season added more miseries to their daily operations, the jungle became more of an enemy than the Japanese, they broke the moral of the Japanese but they couldn’t break the jungle. Eventually it broke them, turning them into emaciated skeletons of their former selves. Or it devoured them.
Yet they had boldly assaulted the Japanese, achieving all of the second expedition's assigned objectives but at tremendous cost. A cost not just in death, but in battle fatigue and illness, most of which could have been avoided, had the Chindits been used for the task they were created for, guerrilla warfare, not assault troops.

D-Day in Europe was close, and that was to have a marked difference, as to how the original plans were altered, and Wingate’s untimely death meant months more agony for the Chindits, as changes of battle plans, and the change to Assault Brigades to assist Stillwell took its toll
I think if Wingate had lived, Stillwell would not have been able to use the Chindits as he did. Wingate would not have allowed that to happen.
Its easy to look at areas on a map, to formulate Battle Plans, to move men and machines by the stroke of a pen.
The stroke of a pen ,can mean life or death, for thousands, and thousands of men. This is the story of what one stroke of a pen meant for one ordinary man.
A Barnsley Miner.

Chapter 3 The Campaign

Burma is larger than France or Germany, and tropical rain forest covers most of its northern half.
Over 200 inches of rain fall during an average monsoon season, this makes dry riverbeds turn to raging torrents within hours. Whole areas turn into a sea of knee deep mud as the intense rain saturates the land and every living creature on it.
The terrain of high mountains, dense jungles, and large rivers serve as natural barriers. Barriers that are hard enough to traverse in the dry but near impossible in the wet season.

In 1944 large parts of the Japanese lines of communication, railroads, bridges, paved roads, and supply depots were unprotected or only lightly defended.
They had positioned only six divisions and five garrison brigades in Northern Burma.
The Japanese were confident the British lacked the skills, and will, needed to infiltrate and engage in jungle warfare against battle-seasoned troops.
But Wingate believed he could beat the Japanese at their own game.
He reasoned his Long-Range Penetration Force, could, with the use of radios and aerial re supply, combined with close support air artillery, move freely through the jungle and destroy the enemy's vital lines of communication, thereby isolating the Japanese in Northern Burma helping to facilitate the reoccupation of the country by the Allies.

The Chindits engagement would facilitate the advance of Joseph Stilwell and his two Chinese divisions training in Ramgarh, India - their goal being the capture of the strategic town and airfield of Myiktyina.
A goal that was eventually achieved, but at enormous cost to both the Americans and the British.
The re occupation of Burma would end the threat of the Japanese invading India, the jewel in the Imperial crown. A threat that was ever closer with the build up of Japanese forces at Kohima and Imphal .
Stillwell hated the “Limeys” and would not enter into the re dominance of the Empire in India and Burma, the effect of which was to be felt by all Chindit Brigades as they were transferred to Stillwell’s command.

The subsequent results of the creation, and training of the Chindits turned the tide, they proved the Japanese could be beaten in their own territory by well trained Air Commando Long Range Penetration Groups. After the Chindit campaign British morale went from strength to strength and the whole 14th army was said to be “Chindit minded”.
They no longer believed that the Japanese were superior in Jungle warfare. The Japanese moral disintegrated, and they learned that the British soldier with the right training could compete with them in every aspect of Jungle warfare and win.
The Man
Albert Gibbons 4867399
7th Battalion Royal Leicestershire Regiment.
Only a Barnsley Miner

The Royal title given to the Regiment in 1946 by King George VI in recognition of the deeds and losses of the Regiment in WW2.

The seventh Battalion created in 1940 was disbanded after their losses in the Chindit campaign and amalgamated with the second Battalion.
The Leicestershire Regiment being the only Regiment to provide 2 Battalions to the Chindit campaign.

Their losses were so great that two became one.

Chapter 4 The Chindits War

CHINDITS OPERATION THURSDAY.

14TH BRIGADE, JAVLIN, 74 COLOMN.

The story of a Barnsley miner at war: The forgotten war, and the forgotten men. Dedicated to all allied personnel who fought in the Burma Campaign. The longest campaign in world war 2.
The Burma Campaign was the longest continuous operation involving British and Commonwealth forces in the second world war. The troops called themselves the forgotten army, ( they were) and they were given little credit for their deeds, and often they received the poorest supplies and equipment. Yet they fought one of the bloodiest, and cruellest campaigns of the entire war. 29 Victoria crosses were won in Burma, and we were eventually victorious, but the cost was high.

Expanding their Empire westward Japanese forces swept across British territories like a tornado. The British underestimated the strength and capability of Japanese’s armed forces. In 1941 Malaya fell, Singapore, ( with the largest capitulation in British military history) Hong Kong, and then Burma itself was taken, the advance was tentatively halted at the border with India and stalemate ensued while the British assessed their enemy and their losses and tactics.
The Chindits took the war behind enemy lines with brilliantly planned and executed raids. They began the fight back , which resulted in the 14th Army becoming “Chindit minded” and eventually victorious.
In the end 3 out of every 5 Japanese soldiers died in the Jungle Campaign, Chindit losses were high, but their kill ratio was higher.
The men who survived, and those who did not survive, fought the greatest jungle war the world has ever known. Fighting in the most atrocious conditions that men have ever been tasked to fight in. High temperature and high humidity, animals, insects, diseases. They had not only to wage war against the enemy, but the jungle as well.
Each equally as hard, each wanting them to pay the ultimate price, for the defence of Empire and Country.
Death ! Sometimes quick. Sometimes agonisingly slow.
The Chindits were the ultimate Jungle Special Force. The original and still the best.
Men who submitted to the greatest feat of human endurance in the history of warfare. A feat that will never be surpassed.
And the reward for their services? To be disbanded and forgotten, to receive no medal for their sacrifice in the Burma Campaign, save the blue Chindit badge.

A badge of courage, fortitude, endurance, tenacity, and strength.

Men of their calibre will never be found again.

The Lions of the Jungle.

CHINDITS
The boldest measures are the safest
Wingate chose as the divisional sign the effigy of a Chinthé.
This was a mythical beast, half Lion, half Griffin, that stood as a guardian outside Burmese Temples.
A pagoda is depicted on the badge, identifying the country of Burma and the first of the symbolic steps under the Chinthé have been fashioned into the Morse code of dot, dot, dot, dash which symbolises V for victory, although in theatre made badges sometimes the three dots are missing or made as three points to the Chinthé tail.

This is the true story of just one man , “Only a Barnsley miner“, who through volunteering to join the army, was sent to the most god forsaken hell hole in the world.
A place where total war was raged totally, a no holds barred war, between the Allies, and the Japanese for the control of Asia and India.

When once asked, why he never went abroad on holiday, Albert’s reply was:

“ I have been abroad, and I’m never going again”

Such was the profound effect the time in Burma had on him , and indeed, all the comrades he was with. His wartime history is inextricably linked with the history of the 7th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment , a Battalion raised in 1940 and disbanded in 1944
A short 4 year period where, in the 6 month Chindit Campaign 400 men were decimated into half their number, and had to be amalgamated with the 2nd Battalion Leicestershire who also were Chindits. A history of 400 heroes of whom only half survived, the others died whilst engaged in the Chindit campaign.

And so, to war -

The Chindits were the first troops to fight back after the defeat in Burma, and the routing of the British army by the Japanese, as they confidently strode across the sub continent, subjugating and abusing all in their way.

The fall of Singapore, and the largest capitulation in British military history, made the Japanese army seem invincible. Over 100,000 men surrendered in Singapore, and yet 20,000 Chindits including their support groups, stopped the rising sun in its tracks.
The Chindit operation showed that well trained and disciplined British troops, being air supplied behind enemy lines, could take them on and win. The Japanese myth of invincibility was broken.

The Chindits were formed from ordinary units, and received the best training in Jungle warfare and guerrilla tactics available.
Even though they signed on as ordinary soldiers, through the extremely rigorous training, and selection, they became elite soldiers.
The best Special Force the world had ever seen.
The Japanese had been thought to be invincible jungle fighters, the Chindits proved that this was not so. Chindits never gave in, no surrender!

The legend of the Japanese superman was dealt a savage blow, and Japanese moral was broken and from this they never recovered. Their feudal tactics and lack of imagination became their downfall, although they were at the time the best soldiers in the world, well trained and well disciplined.

The Chindits became “The Lions of the Jungle” they were the ones that turned out to be invincible.
This had a tremendous effect on the morale of troops in Burma.
Indeed after the success of the Chindit campaign, the whole 14th Army in Burma, was said to be Chindit minded by Mountbatten, as he reluctantly disbanded what was left of the Chindit Special Force that had turned the tide in favour of the allies, through their feats of human endurance, that have never, and will never, be surpassed.

There were major problems with the sick and wounded, many of whom had to be abandoned in the jungle or left with friendly Burmese villages, to fend for themselves.
It was on every Chindits mind not to be wounded, or succumb to Jungle illness, for if so they could be left behind to their own fate. A fate no one wanted to have to endure. Perhaps this knowledge intensified their fighting capacity and their tenacity. When captured they were usually tortured, and used for bayonet practice, some were tied to trees and had their arm and legs hacked off. The Japanese belief was that a defeated soldier was no longer a human being, this led to great atrocities, some of which may never be known.

The Japanese high command freely admitted after the war that the Chindits had been difficult to deal with, and had disrupted their plans to rest their troops, and the preparation, and training of them for the next phase of the war, t