1st Bn The King's Regiment, (Liverpool), Chindits.

Hello Bamboo 43. Firstly I apologise that I haven't worked out how to put the reply on the original post and not sure where I am going wrong! I have been reading through all the posts on this thread very carefully and found on your post 360 another report on missing personnel where my dad gave evidence re Sgt Kneale. Presumably this is part of the same report posted by High Wood recently. Is it possible to get a copy of these reports somewhere at Nat Archives and do you know the reference please?
I am still trying to work out which column my dad was in and from the co ordinates given it was around Katha. I am leaning towards col 82.
Horrifying to read on your post about the Gurkhas.

 

Hi Pat,

Yes, it is file WO361/443 at the National Archives. It is not a large document, some 50-60 pages. I will send you a message shortly and we can sort out how to get a copy over to you.

Steve

 

Here is the report in question.

 

Thank you so much

 

Thanks so much. Will try and get hold of whole report.

 

Do you have any more information on Pte Bowles F 5341826 in this list please, as i think he may be my relative.
kind regards

 

I know very little about him other than that he originally enlisted into the Royal Berkshire Regiment before transferring to The King's Regiment. He is listed on the Defence Medal Roll as serving with the H.Q. Company.

Any information that you can add would be welcome, even if it is only his full name.

 

Would anyone be able to give me any ideas about what to do with a knife found by my dad in Burma whilst with 1KLR? I inherited the knife in 1987 and have never known what to do with it. I don't like the idea of it being dumped after I am gone and would like to find it a suitable home. It is a William Rodgers 'I cut my way' knife with a bone handle and the initials F.J.S etched on it. I realise I could sell it but ideally would like it to go to some museum. All I was told by my dad is that he found it in the jungle and had tried later to trace who it had belonged to but no luck. I can't even be sure of my dad's exact whereabouts in Burma. Thanks to High Wood and Bamboo 43 who sent me documents I am 99% certain he was with Col82 also borne out by part of 77 brigade diary posted on another thread. Col 82 then split with most making it to Blackpool to join 111 brigade and rest joining Lancs Fusiliers and going to Mogaung.
It would be wonderful if FJS could be identified but I have been unable to do so from roll of honour and owner may have survived anyway. A pretty impossible task really!
Any thoughts or suggestions would be most gratefully received.

 

It is almost certainly going to have belonged to someone within his own Column (marching in a line through potential jungle conditions, the likelihood of "stumbling" on it would be so remote otherwise), so if he was 1KLR then it is an outside possibility, one day, that High Wood will come across someone with these initials, but...

High Wood and B43 are so far along the road of the Law of Diminishing Returns with their research that they probably need a psych-evaluation, but no one else on the planet will probably know better than they do...

As for the knife, the KLR Regimental Museum in Liverpool, your father's details and a covering letter...
Best you can do, if it means that much to you and there is no one to pass it on to within the family that understands it's significance...
A sad but true reality is that it is often at a point when it is too late to ask the questions that family realise such things...
Also remember the further down the line the memory goes the less important it is often perceived to be...
This is what I would call a "family item" and to me it is where it should stay...

Fred Patterson (26 Col 1st Cameronians) found a Samurai sword (with a Japanese flag, iirc) he took from someone in Burma... it was eventually donated to the regimental museum by his wife, Theresa... too significant not too and too many family members to decide who it should go to...

The problem with all museums is they often do not have enough room to display the (occasional) wealth of material they have in stock, often due to the cost of displaying what they have... space costs money... simple as that...
I used to maintain security equipment in the British Museum, the Museum of Childhood, the V&A, and their common depository... and the stuff you can see compared to the material you can't is paltry in comparison... obviously these are top-of-the-tree when it comes to museums but you get my drift...
Kenny

 

I would say that it would be almost impossible to attribute this knife to any one individual even if we were able to find someone with matching initials. It is possible that, out there, somewhere, there is a letter sent from a soldier to his mother saying, "I have lost the sheath knife that you and dad gave me when I joined the Boy Scouts", or something along similar lines, but I doubt that we will ever find it.

I am not even sure that we can say that it belonged to someone from the 1/King's Regiment as it could have been picked up somewhere like Broadway, The White City or Blackpool where more than one battalion was present.

There is no one on my far from complete list with the initials F.J.S.

It might be possible to search the C.W.G.C. website to see if there are any Burma casualties with the initials F J and a surname beginning with S, but again, even if we found a match, it would not prove ownership.

 

As a purely academic exercise, I have found the following three 1944 Burma Casualties with the initials F.J.S. Neither the 2nd Border Regiment or the 77th L.A.A. took part in Operation Thursday. It is racing certainty that members of the Intelligence Corps took part in the campaign but I have no evidence to show that Francis Joseph Smith did.

CORPORAL FRANCIS JOSEPH SMITH

Service Number: 1554565

Regiment & Unit/Ship

Intelligence Corps

Date of Death

Died 28 March 1944

Age 26 years old

Buried or commemorated at

RANGOON MEMORIAL

Face 19.

Myanmar

PRIVATE FRANK JAMES SMITH

Service Number: 3865663

Regiment & Unit/Ship

Border Regiment

2nd Bn.

Date of Death

Died 24 May 1944

Age 23 years old

Buried or commemorated at

RANGOON MEMORIAL

Face 14.

Myanmar

LANCE BOMBARDIER FRANCIS JOSEPH SMITH

Service Number: 1829552

Regiment & Unit/Ship

Royal Artillery

77 Lt. A.A. Regt.

Date of Death

Died 19 June 1944

Age 23 years old

Buried or commemorated at

TAUKKYAN WAR CEMETERY

7. K. 24.

Myanmar

 

Of course, the knife's owner may not have been killed or wounded but simply lost his knife. We will never know.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my post. I agree that things are best staying with families but I have no one to leave it to, hence trying to find a home for it. I had actually emailed Museum of Liverpool last year and had no reply and as you say most of them don't have enough room to display items. I will either donate or sell knife to someone interested in Chindits. Just seems a shame to dispose of it with it's history. Albeit a gruesome one! I started out on this with a vague idea of finding where in Burma my dad had been and have become completely obsessed with reading everything I can. I have learnt a lot anyway especially thanks to you guys and your research. I like your comment re High Wood and Bamboo 43 needing a pschye evaluation.

 

Thank you so much for your time in replying and doing an academic exercise. I see the problem and agree that it could have belonged to anyone from any regiment. It was a romantic notion on my part of identifying FJS and perhaps finding some family that I could pass it on to.
On a different note I came across someone with a relative on your 1KLR database and have asked them to contact you with some more information. Hopefully they will in a few days. If any other family members turn up on the Burma facebook site I will point them in your direction.

 

Many thanks for the update. Whilst I really appreciate the stories that objects can tell about their owner's experiences, and goodness knows, I have more than enough bits of other people's history in my collection, even I have to admit that it is not always possible to get the object to reveal all. Not that we shouldn't try of course, but sometimes we have to accept that just knowing that an object such as your knife, or a map, or a slouch hat or whatever was in such and such a place at a certain time when history was being made. Just by seeing it or holding it in your hand is a direct link to the past and probably the closest we will ever get to being there.

I have a set of identity discs worn by a soldier of the 8th battalion East Surrey Regiment who was at Carnoy on the first day of the Somme. He survived and came home and later died in his sleep as an old man, but he was there and holding his dog tags still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

 

I have a bottle of mepacrine tablets, a small tin with water purification tablets, and a waterproof paperwork holder... they were my dad's... they were all with him at the fall of Blackpool...
I've handled Fred Patterson's panic map and his slouch hat... they were also at Blackpool...
Only one person in my dad's platoon had a panic map...

 

Hello again
I have finally discovered the last piece of the jigsaw relating to my father's (L G Price) time with 77 brigade. With all thanks to the guys on here for their helpful advice and for supplying me with information that gave me a starting point. I am indebted to you.
Having discovered he was attached to column 82 I could then go no further, although some of his stories led me to guess that he may have been part of the column that got separated and ended up at Mogaung. I could never be sure but this weekend finished reading from Dingle to Delhi in which the final chapters confirm my thoughts. I had often heard of his mate Mario, an Italian, who was also in the next bed to him at the hospital in Panitola. This would be Mario Zecca mentioned in Jack Lindo's book. Another name mentioned in the book ,at the chapter on Mogaung, is Billy Bennett. I am now wondering if this is my father who was nicknamed Billy Bennett and I believe was a bren gunner. Billy Bennett was a comedian who starred in a film called Almost a Gentleman and I have a photo of my dad calling himself that.
I would now be eternally grateful if you could kindly answer a few more questions for me:
Simon (HW) I don't know if you can give details about other people on your database but are you able to confirm whether or not William Billy Bennett was an actual person or was he just listed from Jack Lindo's book? Do you have any info on Mario Zecca or a photo that you could let me have?
Steve (B43) You kindly sent me the witness statements relating mainly to Broadway and Blackpool. I note that there are no mention of the King's casualties at Mogaung of which according to Jack Lindo were many. Do you know if there is another file or do I not have the whole file? Would it be likely they would be included in the Lancs Fusilliers statements who they were attached to?
Thank you.
I say the last piece of the jigsaw but not quite. Still have to work out where he went back into concessional area for 2 days after coming out of hospital!! That is for another day!
Best wishes all
Pat

 

Pat,

William Bennett is on my spread sheet but only as being mentioned in Jack Lindo's book, I have not been able to find any other reference to him.

Mario Zecca is on my spreadsheet. Here is his entry:

Date (of incident): 14/06/1944. Regiment first enlisted in: Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Army number: 5126330. Column: 82. Rank: Pte. Surname: Zecca. First names: Mario Desiderio. Alberto. Wounded 14/06/1944. Other Information: FDTD page 92, close friend of Pte Bondonno. Later served with the 15th (King's) Battalion, Indian Parachute Brigade.

He was born in Islington, London in 1920 and died in 1982.

He was a member of the Burma Star Association.






Simon

 

It would appear that Mario Zecca married Domenico Bondonno's widow.

Marriages Dec 1946
Bondonno Joesphine A. Zecca Islington 5c 2380
Zecca Mario D U. Bondonno Islington 5c 2380

The CWGC states that Domenico Bondonno was the. "Son of Luigi and Lucia Bondonno; husband of Guissepina Augusta Bondonno, of St. Marylebone, London."

Casualty Details | CWGC

 

Wow thank you so much for this info and above. Very kind of you. It is looking more likely that Billy Bennett is actually my dad!
Kindest regards
Pat