A Story of War

Division moves back to Maunghnama where there is a small landing ground some 900 feet long on which I nearly prang. Watty, Matthews, the A.L.O. and eight men for refuelling are there. Also Cooper-Davies and Chris Glover, who with David are the three enemy aircraft detachment “investigators”. Cooper-Davies is a character. Fought in the last war, carries a pistol, a sporting rifle and a sten gun and has every imaginable bit of kit to solve any difficulty which he might encounter anywhere in the world. He and Glover have attached themselves to us as being a good place to hang around and wait for Jap aircraft to fall out of the sky (not to be confused with waiting for us to shoot them down.) I go down there a couple of days and and do a sortie down Alethangau – Indin way.

14 Division have now become 26 Indian Division and all the staff changed, bar Higgins (G.R.1). Our serviceability is only 1 at present, which does not give the army a very good impression, especially these new types. Rude letters and signals from Ranchi about the prangs and my signals re. same.

There is a pleasant shower here constructed by 79 Squadron next door, and we had some beer the other day from Maungdaw so are fairly “khushi”. (JDW: a possible origin for the word ‘cushy’, as khushi means happy in Hindi. According to online dictionaries there is no evidence that it comes from India – they prefer ‘cushion’ as a derivation – well here is evidence!)