<Begin Segment 7>

LD: What was the terrain like where you were? What made it so difficult to work in that part of Burma?

HM: Burma, in northern Burma, that's where we operated, northern Burma is a very mountainous area, mountainous terrain, high mountains, deep valleys, and river down there. Now, the main river there where we operated, Tanai, H-K-A is the river in Burmese, Tanai River, Tanai Hka, the way they pronounce it. And to us, very discouraging was we climb up a mountain, we see down the valley, and we see the mountain, next one here, higher maybe. Holy smokes, now we have to go down through this jungle, no path, no anything, we have to hack our way with a machete, go down there, maybe spend the night down in the lowland. The next day, start climbing, one after another. Because we didn't want to go in the main thoroughfare where it's easy for the enemies to come in and block us off or cut us off and anything. Now, our commanders said it so that we go -- well, originally we were upwards and behind enemy lines. To stay that way, we went all around. Regardless of the number of days it took us to go over a mountain, we took it. Where the enemy least expect us, we didn't have any kind of... what we didn't have was meals. They carried all our radios, the bulky ones, and a few of the mountain artillery we had. And there were pack mules for that, that's the Missouri mule, the big ones.

LD: Who were the other [inaudible] you were working with?

HM: Well, Chinese primarily, many Chinese. Chinese, maybe three divisions. Then we had the Mauritius forces, France, and the ANZACs, Australia and New Zealand, the one with the slouch hat? And southwest Africans, they're British forces, and we were the only American forces. Chinese forces predominately in size, in numbers. British forces came next. We were about the smallest maybe, but we were the most effective because of our high mobility. Like Chinese, they would carry their kitchen utensils, the cooks, they would jangle and all that. They would climb up the mountain, and they set up the kitchen. But I used to eat with Chinese because they'd never die from eating poisonous plants. As they go along, they pick all kind of shoots and all that, edible shoots. And since we lived on ration, sometimes we had bacon. The bacon grease we threw away, Chinese people know, they carried about three, four water bottles. Well, three of them carried bacon grease. So whenever they cooked, steel helmet, throw bacon grease, and these greens [inaudible] they'd eat rice. I used go to Chinese.

Because in our headquarters group, whenever we're going to patrol, we had Ghurkas, we had our American combat engineers, they act as our bodyguards, big six-footers. They were from the Minnesota area, most of them Norwegian, Swedish and all that, and then Johnsons and Swenson and all that. Now, Ghurkas were by far the best fighters, then they're Chinese, they can understand certain Chinese language. Now, I understand a little Mandarin, and because I can read and write Japanese, I can read Chinese, the meaning's the same. When I was stationed in Nanking, they pronounce it another way, Hong Kong another way maybe. But written language all one in China. And then we had some Kachin. In northern Burma, the tribal people, native Burmese, were Kachin, Naga, Shan. And then the Burmans were down south in the Rangoon, Mandalay area, as Burmans. But in the north, in the hills, we stayed mostly with the Kachins. So I'm out of practice so I can't remember words, but we used to converse in fragments, of course. The Chinese, I used to converse with them in Mandarin. Oh, I used to get along with a lot of Chinese people because I used go to and eat with these people.

LD: When people talk about how bad it was there, they're really exaggerating, but it really was pretty bad, right?

HM: It was very bad, very bad.

LD: What were the bad things about it?

HM: Well, the brutalities, captured prisoners. See, I'd rather not go into that detail, it's gory. How they tried to get the information out of these people by force, they're slashing their back just to get them to talk and all those things. But this is not done by Americans, no. So we went the normal... as I just said, interrogating way, the way we were taught, the way we practiced. No physical brutality or abuse was used, never violence.

LD: That's what you really think of as the worst part of that experience?

HM: Well, that's one of... well, snakes, too. With snakes, one gets bitten by a large snake you don't worry, because it's not poisonous over there. You get bitten by a snake this long, yeah, you die in thirty minutes, maybe. You get weaker and weaker. So they just give an incision where the snake bit you, and somebody got to sick this blood out until he just, he can't even move really. Then you're sure you get the venom out. It has to come out, otherwise...

LD: I read somewhere that you don't like shows like MASH because why?

HM: Because it's Hollywood version. War is the, they should portray war as war is, not something somebody can make fun of. Those pictures are, they just make them for entertainment. And war is pitiful. You can imagine yourself in a battle, if you're going up along the trail, dead bodies to the left and right, three or four days old, bloated, black, the bodies turn black after three, four, five days. Then you see the skin bursting, the white skull, and the jaws all white comes out. As you go by, you're going to see all those. And there are great big, I don't know if they're flies or what you call it. They look like small birds, tiny birds. But they're the ones go inside and eat out the innards. Now you see all those things, well, I don't know what a normal person thinks. Those things are never shown in movies. Movies when they show, they show that the Germans are these brutal, Italians are brutal, Japanese are brutal, because that's Hollywood. If you go over there, brutality is there, circumstances do control the brutality, sure. That's for sure. But we, United States forces, never resorted to brutality, we didn't have to. We achieved whatever we went out for, just the way the army operates.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1985 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.