White Butterflies

by Colin Mcphedran

  The pastor nodded. He could see she was tormented at the thought of leaving her beloved people and country, but the well-being of her daughter was uppermost in her mind.

  ‘I can well understand your concern,’ he said. ‘But remember, we are here if you change your mind.’

  We arrived at the airfield late in the afternoon. The landing strip was in a shallow valley bed and ran from north to south. We perched on high ground on the perimeter and looked down on the hundreds of people, mostly Indians, crowded around the edge of the landing strip.

  Robert said, ‘I don’t think we will ever have a chance of beating that crowd in boarding a flight!’

  We camped in a clearing near a well, 100 yards or so from the landing strip. The rains were still some weeks away so we were quite happy to sleep beneath the stars. It was an uneventful night and, as darkness closed in, camp fires sprang up all around the airfield. A short time later the smell of spice from the Indian curries prepared by the women wafted across the higher ground where our small group was camped. Unusually, there was little chatter. People were tired, hungry and fearful. Even the children, who would in better times be scampering about before bedding down for the night, were unusually quiet.

  Chapter 4

  At the Airstrip

  The night passed without incident. I heard occasional gunfire, but it came from somewhere far away. The odd explosion also carried in the still night, but nobody took much notice.

  At daybreak an early convoy of army vehicles raced onto the perimeter of the strip. Indian soldiers armed with rifles alighted.

  ‘Move out of the way!’ they shouted as they cleared a path through people sprawled on the ground, who were still hardly awake.

  They proceeded on to the apron and began unloading the trucks. ‘What’s all the commotion about?’ I asked Robert.

  A car drove up and stopped alongside the trucks.

  ‘A plane must be arriving to ship out some cargo,’ he replied. ‘Maybe even a few planes. Perhaps we’ll have a chance of catching one out to India!’

  Word spread that the passengers waiting on the strip included the Governor of Burma and some of his entourage.

  Nobody was allowed near them. I had walked to the well to fetch some water when I heard the drone of aircraft engines. Imagining it to be a Japanese fighter bomber, I scurried back to the campsite. A plane came into view in the west, circled and came in to land. It was an RAF cargo plane. It turned around on landing and was waved up to the group of people on the strip. The side cargo door was facing us and we watched as the soldiers loaded the plane. The Governor and his group climbed aboard, the door closed and the plane taxied to the far end of the strip to begin its take-off.

  Our family was disappointed and angry. Robert could hardly believe it.

  ‘The Governor has got away safely and we, along with thousands of poor Indian refugees, are left behind!’ he said, desolate.

  I did not feel abandoned, as he did. I felt furious.

  ‘How dare those able-bodied people take a ride while Ama

  [Mother] and Ethel have been left behind?’

  While we sat around and hoped another plane would arrive over the horizon, Robert said in a flat voice, ‘This means the British are beaten.’

  I was still angry, not only at those who had just left us behind, but at the system that treated everybody but the British as second-class citizens.

  I recalled the many occasions when, even as a young boy, I had witnessed this discrimination. My mind flashed back just a few months to a day when our family had driven to the Royal Sailing Club for afternoon tea. My mother had been barred at the door, obliged to sit on the lawn outside while we, her children, were escorted in to be served tea. I had thought it was wrong.

  ‘Why don’t you protest?’ I had asked my mother.

  ‘It’s the rule,’ she had answered.

  Some time later I had innocently brought the matter up with my father. He too said, but in an altogether different tone, ‘That’s the rule.’

  I never forgot that incident and I never forgave my father. Forty-five years on, during a visit to the same club as a dinner guest of the Burmese Minister for Tourism, I walked over to the edge of the verandah and urinated into the water below. My host, a good-natured fellow, was astonished. I told him the story.

  ‘That’s the tree where my mother sat so patiently waiting for us,’ I concluded. U Maungyi was a fine man with a sense of humour.

  ‘Perhaps it would be a good idea if I proclaimed this hotel a Burmese-only hotel and banned Englishmen!’

  But now it was May 1942, and we waited for another plane to arrive. There were rumours that the Japanese advance troops had entered the town a few miles away. We knew they had moved their front to the east to cut off the retreat of the Chinese army. They had planned to cut off the only road north from Myitkyina. This was the road we had been thinking of as one option for our escape, a rough track used in peacetime by Chinese jade smugglers who took gems from the region over the mountains into China. We were concerned.

  ‘What if no more planes dare come in or if we are shot out of the sky?’ I asked Robert.

  As we waited, we could hear clearly the distant sound of bombs exploding.

  The airstrip was spared.

  Robert said, ‘The Japs are not stupid, they plan to capture the strip intact and use it as a base to attack India and China.’

  Three years down the track, almost to the day, the British 36th Division and the Americans led by Lieutenant General Merrill captured the town of Myitkyina only a few miles away, but were engaged in one of the bloodiest battles of the campaign to dislodge a small garrison of Japanese from the strip. The battle lasted for seven weeks. The Allies too had recognised the strategic importance of this strip of flat land in the wild north of Burma. For them it was a staging post for supplies from India for the forces in China. Hundreds of planes were lost in this very dangerous air route over the Himalayan ‘hump’, because of the weather and high mountains.

  As the evening closed in, everyone had the time and the inclination to chat and socialise quietly. I befriended a group camped near us and Robert and I joined their family and talked about the events of that day and days past.

  Like us, every one of them had left behind good times. And like us, all their worldly possessions amounted to what they could carry on their backs. I thought of the evenings at home during peacetime when sunset signalled the start of being alive; of noise, music and the sound of bells. Here in Myitkyina it was time to get together and talk, albeit quietly and with anxiety, about the future. Despite the hardship, there seemed to be a strange air of optimism. I was soon to learn that people somehow muster extra strength when the odds seem hopelessly stacked against them.

  The following day we were up and about very early. We had sat down to discuss different escape plans during the night and had decided that, failing a flight out, we would do it the hard way and walk to safety.

  ‘There are two routes out of Burma, one to China in the north and the other to the west and India,’ Mother said. ‘The northern trail is by far the shortest, about 200 miles, and people say the physical features are surmountable. There are high mountains to cross, but mostly they run north and south. India, on the other hand, is much further away and the only remaining trail leads through the Hukawng Valley.’

  This, we knew, was an area of malarial swamps, a multitude of rivers and inhabited by the feared headhunting Naga tribes.

  We asked questions.

  ‘What kind of reception might we receive in China or India?’

  ‘Would we be herded into a remote camp to spend months, or even years, awaiting the outcome of hostilities?’

  ‘Which of the two countries will be more receptive to refugees like us with no means of support?’

  ‘I know from my own experience that India is likely to be more hospitable. I trust the Indian people more and, besides, China has already been under Japanese occupation. And your father is bound
to have left messages for us in Calcutta,’ Mother said, adding hastily, ‘although, of course, I still feel confident that the British will win the day soon and we will be rescued.’

  The last time any white person had walked the Indian route had been in 1927 when a group of British and Indian surveyors had set out to map an overland road to India. At that time many Indian labourers were being sent into Burma by the British for construction work. Transportation was by ship and the authorities were looking for an alternative route. Government reports, however, were not encouraging. The terrain was unsuitable for roads and the cost of building bridges to cross the myriad rivers that were subject to enormous flash flooding was not economic. A health department report also indicated that many workers would be lost through malaria and other tropical diseases. Finally the British Indian Steamship Company, which had the lucrative contract for transporting the natives from India by sea, lobbied the British government to abandon the plan for an overland road to India.

  Our family took all this into account when we discussed the alternatives, but none of us could really envisage the difficulties. How could we? We were a well-to-do family who had never walked further than a few miles in our lives.

  Another day arrived and hopes of a plane arriving to pick us up rose. At mid-morning when our family, along with thousands of other refugees, was busy preparing a meal, we heard the drone of an aircraft. Immediately there were shouts from the crowds; shouts of hope and joy that we might be rescued and flown out of the war zone.

  ‘The plane could well be an enemy aircraft,’ Robert cautioned.

  He was mistaken. It was indeed a friendly plane and as it came into view we identified it.

  ‘Look! It’s just like the one that came yesterday!’

  Indeed, it was a cargo plane similar to the one that had taken off with the remnants of the British Raj the previous day. The crowd surged on to the apron of the strip and waited for it to circle and land. Soldiers armed with rifles appeared from nowhere and took up positions at the point where the pilot would stop. There was much screaming and yelling as the armed men threatened to shoot anybody breaking rank.

  As the plane came to a stop, the cargo hatch was thrown open and the soldiers formed up and proceeded to let people in. Families were separated in the rush and I saw small children sitting on the ground wailing for their mothers who seemingly had already entered the plane. It was nightmarish and despite the throb of the engines still running, the sound of human voices was deafening.

  I looked up at the front of the plane and saw the pilot and his crew half out of the open window waving at the people to hurry along. The pilot, whom I could see clearly, was clothed in a singlet and he had a head of the reddest hair I had ever seen. He was just a youngster and the look of urgency on his face made me think that he was aware of some impending danger from the enemy, who were just a few miles east of the town.

  My mother and sister were bundled aboard but a surly soldier barred Robert and me.

  ‘Only women and children are allowed on,’ he said.

  There was no point in arguing with a madman armed with a rifle. So my brother and I waited to wave goodbye and signalled to my mother, who was still standing in the opened hatch.

  ‘We will walk across the mountains and meet you in India,’ we mouthed, and tried to convey the message in sign language.

  She shook her head as if to say there was no way she would go without us and scrambled off the plane, pulling my sister with her. As she did so, she picked up a young child who seemed to be holding its arms out to somebody on the plane and lifted the crying toddler into the hatch-way.

  It only took us a minute to realise that our hopes of getting on were dashed, so we regrouped and moved away from the milling mob and the stifling heat, back to our campsite about 150 yards from the strip on higher ground. In many ways it was a relief to get away from the dangers of a panicking crowd. We chatted while we watched the final closing of the plane’s cargo hatch from our grandstand position.

  The engines roared as the pilot made to move off with an over-loaded plane. It moved slowly and turned to taxi to the far end of the strip. At this moment I was surprised to see two smaller planes at low level heading straight at the landing strip. Their engines could not be heard above the roar of the larger plane’s engines.

  ‘They’re Japanese fighter bombers!’ I shouted.

  The faces of the two-man crew were plainly visible and the red ball of the rising sun painted on the fuselage stood out against the camouflaged body of the rest of the plane.

  The bomber flew over the aircraft loaded with refugees at tree-top level, before banking and making another run at the bigger plane. It opened fire with all guns blazing and scored a direct hit which burst the tyres of the cargo plane, immobilised it and left it lurching on its side. The second fighter that followed close behind unloaded its bombs which hurtled down to explode directly on the stricken aircraft. We watched in horror as people fell out of the flaming wreck. There was nothing we could do but witness the slaughter.

  The two planes flew back and forth for what seemed a long time, time enough for my brother Robert to display his anger by picking up his old Lee Enfield rifle and having a shot at the planes. I too fired a few rounds at the low-flying planes, until my mother screamed at us.

  ‘Quick! Take shelter! The planes are attacking the people skirting the strip!’

  At this point my mother, sister and brother jumped into the well nearby while I ran behind the only trees in sight. With the plane full of refugees in flames the Japanese aircraft moved off the direct flight and dropped a couple of bombs perilously close to us. I could feel the blast and watched the planes climb and head away. The other three came running over and gave me a dressing-down for exposing myself to the attack.

  Mother put her arms around me and in a flash drew back and exclaimed, ‘You’ve been wounded!’

  I had sustained a wound on my right shoulder and a few minor shrapnel shots down the right side of my body.

  ‘It’s nothing serious,’ I said.

  I had not even felt it during the excitement of the attack. At that moment a middle-aged Anglo–Indian man came over and began to abuse Robert and me for shooting at the Japanese planes.

  ‘Such stupid behaviour could have attracted the pilots and diverted their attention in this direction. We could have all been killed,’ he said. He continued to berate us until he eyed Robert with his hands on the offending weapon.

  The plane on the strip was still alight and clouds of smoke continued to pour out. People were screaming and bodies were scattered over the ground. There was nothing anyone could do. Nobody possessed any first-aid equipment, since we were all travelling with the barest essentials.

  My mother was visibly saddened.

  ‘This looks like the end. The strip has been damaged to such an extent that no plane could possibly land there safely now. Our only option now is to take the long walk back to the township, find a spot to spend the night and talk over our plans for the trek out.’

  Hundreds of people joined the long line of desperately saddened families. I still remember the eerie quietness of the walk. Nobody seemed to utter a word and everybody seemed intent on just following the footsteps of those ahead. I don’t recall the scenery or any of the landmarks along that eight to ten mile walk. Only once, late in the afternoon, did we break rank. A plane flew overhead and, suspecting it was a Japanese plane about to offload its cargo of bombs, the long line of weary walkers dived into the deep drains that are a feature of any town or village in tropical countries.

  The road was treeless, which seemed unusual. Perhaps the adjoining land was cultivated for crops, hence the treelessness; I did not know. I did not want to know. I knew there was a long walk of hundreds of miles ahead, no matter what the decision was about the route. The makeshift bandages on my leg and shoulder were steeped in blood. The superficial wounds did not impede my walk, but the flies were having a feast and I wished the sun would soon se
t, encouraging them to rest somewhere else.

  Chapter 5

  The Walk Begins

  The line of refugees headed straight for the railway station. It is a strange human trait that whenever people are lost, they head for a transport terminal – bus, rail or ferry. The place came alive. The long line of zombies changed into a mass of chattering people and there seemed to be a tinge of optimism in the air.

  Our group settled down to prepare some food.

  ‘There’s water available over there, in the tanks along the rail tracks,’ someone told us.

  Very soon people were lighting fires to start cooking. In the meantime plans were afoot to get the engine that stood idly on the track fired up and hitched on to a few carriages. What would happen then, nobody seemed to know.

  ‘Let’s just get the train moving.’

  Since Myitkyina was a rail head, the only direction we could possibly go was south, straight into the advancing Japanese troops.

  Robert, despite the confusion and turmoil, remembered that the remaining trail into India began at Mogaung, some 40 miles south of Myitkyina.

  ‘So it does seem logical for us to go south.’

  By now there was no more talk of our trying to reach China. My mother had fixed her mind on India.

  ‘Besides, the war won’t last forever. The British will win soon, and we will be reunited as a family.’

  Our train limped into Mogaung.

  Nothing had changed since our earlier visit on our way north except that the bombed-out train that had blocked our passage then had been cleared. Mogaung railway station was deserted save for a few mangy dogs scurrying around in search of a feed. People alighted slowly. There was suddenly a distinct air of hopelessness about the passengers. Like us, most of them were weary of constant displacement. There were hundreds of very young children, mostly in the care of their mothers, it seemed. They were a quiet lot, bewil-dered perhaps.

  Our group of four joined them and walked through the structure that served in peacetime as a ticket office. Many of the Indians spilled on to the street that led towards the more built-up area. We rested a while and I was surprised to see a few people still on the train.