The Poet William J. Blackshaw in Action

Reflections on life in the China, Burma, India Theatre 1944-46...by Bill Blackshaw

(For more information on Bill's war experiences click here or watch the following video interview.)

Today quiet stillness reigns on that Assam Plain
Shadowed by that snow capped-mountain range
Where melt of snow tumbles and   falls miles below
To the great Brahmaputra and its meandering flow.

Thoughts of those years drift back quite clear.
Remembering faces of friends still held most dear
In the war that snatched us from lives barely started
Uniformed us in Khaki and from loved ones departed

The young of a nation shipped to far distant lands
Where fate was held hostage to the luck of a hand
Dealing some to scorching heat and tropical stenches
And others dealt to perish in zero cold trenches

War 's heralded glory, never matched our teenage fantasies
Imported from Hollywood each afternoon on Saturdays
No war ace Cagney's downing enemies in flames
We had just our gutsy pilots flying beat-up cargo planes

Struggling through Burma our engineers got their orders
“Follow the trail carved out by Merrill's Marauders
Suffer the mosquito,   jungle and ankle deep muck
Just build that Ledo road for our six-by -six trucks.”

Brave airmen topped earth's highest snowcapped lumps
A high risk route to China our flyers named the “Hump.”
To Kunming and back and be counted with the brave
Yet many brother crewmen found rest in mountain graves.

Through driving monsoon rains, our pilots searched the night
For a nearby runway with working landing lights
Almost beardless pilots barely past their teens
In droning coughing airplanes starved of gasoline.

It was a life of “basha” huts and bamboo latrines
Buffalo meat, sacred cows and pills of Atabrine
Towns called Du Dum,, Dinjan and   Lamianr Hat
Mohanbari, Chabua, and Hindu Burning Ghats..

Chowringee Road shows where “Mongoose Kills Snake”
Near Dhoti clad women begging for a stake
Mothers nursing infants, faces wet with sobs
Calcutta's poorest people pleading, Baksheesh sahib

There was a joy at seeing, many of us confessed
Young naïve maidens displaying naked breasts
Infants bound on mother's backs at their work stations
In flooded fields of rice or verdant tea plantations

We did no romancing like the GI's in France
Had no Piccadilly ladies to ask out to dance
No war brides over here to take back home
In mosquito netted charpoys we slept all alone

Learned that Khassi Hill beebes were the choice of some
But most of us took our pleasure from beer and rum
Others spent their leisure time just rolling the dice
Had to exist on Lister Bag water without any ice

China, Burma, India made little front page news
Forgotten were we was the accepted GI view
Our role was political according to Pentagon Logistics
So the headlines came out of Europe and the South Pacific

When the “Bomb” brought down the curtain on “Our” war
Some twenty million dead could be accounted for.
Perhaps now no sons will have to leave their homes again?
As Hope filled prayers for peace was our thinking then.

Korea then came to prove peace comes no easy way
Soon sons of ours were dying at Can Rahn Bay
The killing fields of Cambodia claimed so many more
So much for boastful promises to end all bloody wars

Clods of broken runway 'neath Chabua's wild weeds
Time and nature's cover-up of man's past deeds
Control towers and windsocks nowhere to be found
That guided weary flyers safely to the ground

No memorials of bronze rest on marble stands
To mark our long stay in that exotic land
No sights of British tents, home for all our days
Only  sacred  cows meandering as they daily graze

Today only quiet stillness reigns on that Assam Plain
Shadowed by that snow capped-mountain range
Where melt of snow tumbles and   falls miles below
To the great Brahmaputra and its meandering flow.