Right: Robert Callow wearing the green beret
that all British commandos are entitled to wear
INTERVIEW WITH
DR ROBERT CALLOW
FAR EAST
COMMANDO
PART I
In this first of a
two-part interview,
Dr Robert Callow
describes his actionpacked experiences
conducting sabotage
operations against
the Japanese Army
during World War II
WORDS TOM GARNER
THE BRIDGES
NEAR THE
RIVER KWAI
t is dawn over a Burmese river in late
1943. Above the misty water an aircraft
flies overhead containing six British
commandos. Among their number is a
young lieutenant who is about to go on
his first mission to wreak destruction behind
enemy lines. Although he is still in his teens,
the officer is already a skilled professional,
and he is strapped up with various demolition
bombs. Nevertheless, when he jumps from
the plane, events spiral out of control. The
commandos have been spotted and enemy
machine guns fire into the sky, creating deadly
tracers that resemble hosepipe jets. The
majority of the commandos are either killed or
captured and the officer lands in the river. His
only objective now is to survive.
The officer in question is Second Lieutenant
Robert Callow, an expert in explosives and
languages who would subsequently survive
to become a prolific saboteur against the
Japanese in Burma. As a commando in Force
136, Inter-Services Liaison Department, Callow
spent almost a year fighting behind enemy lines
destroying bridges, transport columns and
communication lines, but his military career
took him far beyond the jungles of Burma.
Callow also fought in China and Malaya and
witnessed the brutal partition of India, among
other dramatic events. He would go on to be
awarded a doctorate in neurophysics and is
still, in his 90s, a consultant for the British
government. The following two instalments tell
his extraordinary story.
I
Languages and explosives
British soldiers investigate a
jungle clearing in Burma with
bayonets poised. Callow recalled,
“If there was a leaf that looked
wrong it alerted you.”
46
“THE MAJORITY OF THE COMMANDOS ARE EITHER KILLED
OR CAPTURED AND THE OFFICER LANDS IN THE RIVER. HIS
ONLY OBJECTIVE NOW IS TO SURVIVE”
Born in 1925, Callow volunteered to join the
British Army aged only 17 in 1942. “My father
served in the Boer War and was at the Battle
of Spion Kop, but he had been gassed twice in
World War I and died in 1938. Before he died
he told me, ‘When you get in [the armed forces]
don’t join the PBI [‘Poor Bloody Infantry’], get
into your own regiment.’ Therefore, when I was
‘18’ – I was actually 17 and three-quarters – I
volunteered for the Royal Engineers where I
started out as a sapper.”
Before he volunteered, Callow had been a
bright pupil at King Henry VIII Grammar School
in Coventry where he excelled at languages.
“There were two streams there – languages
and science – but they put me into languages
without asking me. I consequently learnt
French, German, Spanish and Old Greek and
that dictated my future.”
Callow’s military career would largely
be based around his linguistic skills, but
his training as a sapper was literally both
constructive and destructive as he discovered
another skill. “The Royal Engineers are the
47
FAR EAST COMMANDO: INTERVIEW WITH DR ROBERT CALLOW
ones that build bridges and blow them up
again! I did six months in basic training, which
included building Bailey bridges and carrying
heavy loads. I was six-feet [1.83-metres] tall
then and very well built. The Bailey bridge
had two panels, with each one weighing 660
pounds [300 kilograms] and six men had to
put it up. We also trained in a place called
‘Hungry Hill’ where they taught us how to use
explosives, which is my speciality.”
Working with explosives came naturally. “I
found I had a talent for it. There are cutting
and expanding explosives. We learned how to
use each one of these. Mercury fulminate is
the fastest explosive. Nitro-glycerine is fast but
Mercury fulminate is the one that starts off all
the other explosives. Amatol is a slow explosive
that expands whereas nitro-glycerine cuts
through steel and it could cut you in half.”
Callow was made a lance corporal and he
was posted to Scotland, where he became an
explosives instructor at a Command Operation
School. He then returned to England for assault
and pre-airborne exercises. Callow remembered
his airborne training as hair-raising. “We first
learned how to drop off the back of moving
lorries and rolling over. Then we went out of a
barrage balloon, and that was the worst drop,
from about 900 feet (275 metres), because you
could see the dogs on the ground. Normally, we
would drop from about 2,000 feet (600 metres)
but that’s the thing: when you jump from about
2,000 feet you’ve got time to sort yourself out!”
Callow became a qualified paratrooper, and
his unique skills led to him being sent for officer
“YOU HAD TO LEARN ALL
THESE THINGS BECAUSE THAT
WAS WHAT SPECIAL FORCES
WAS ALL ABOUT. IT TOOK THEM
TWO YEARS TO TEACH ME ALL
THAT I HAD TO KNOW BEFORE I
STARTED FIGHTING”
training and a distant deployment. “When I had
finished they wondered what to do with me, so
they sent me to the War Office selection board.
They sent me to a cadet training unit and I
finished as a second lieutenant. By that time I
already knew languages and explosives so they
said, ‘All right: languages, explosives, bridges…
out to India!’ They sent me to India by sea, and
while we were on the ship (it took six weeks
to get to Bombay) we had to learn Urdu. With
languages it’s all about having a musical ear
and I’m good at picking up accents.”
Urdu was the first of many Asian languages
that Callow would eventually learn for the army.
In what was still colonial India at the time,
“There are about 12 main Indian dialects and
one odd one, which is Tamil. Tamil is 14,000
years old and related to bushman languages
such as the Australian aborigines, so it is a
difficult one.”
PART I: THE BRIDGES NEAR THE RIVER KWAI
Callow discovered that many Indian
languages had their roots in a legendary warrior
from antiquity. “The languages in northern India
are based on Sanskrit and ultimately Farsi.
That was taken into India by the Greeks under
Alexander the Great. He started the languages
in northern India and all of them are related
to it. There are about seven of those, and
although I’m not fluent in them I know enough
to get by.”
In addition to Indian and European
languages, Callow also became fluent in Malay
and can also speak Cantonese and Arabic.
However, the military idea behind learning
languages was not purely for linguistics. “The
reason I learned all these languages is that
we had to know the culture of the people,
particularly so that we would not offend them.
You also had to know their religions, history
and customs. You had to learn all these things
because that was what Special Forces was all
about. It took them two years to teach me all
that I had to know before I started fighting.”
An aerial shot of a railway bridge being destroyed
with explosives over a river. Callow would use
nitro-glycerine to blow up enemy bridges
The Burma Campaign
When Callow arrived in India the Allies were only
just beginning to turn the tide of the war in the
Far East. In 1941 Imperial Japan had launched
lightning attacks to expand Japanese territories
in the Pacific region and vast swathes of
European colonies had fallen. Hong Kong and
Indochina had capitulated with ease, while the
British suffered its worst defeat during World
War II when they lost the Malay Peninsula and
Singapore. 80,000 Allied personnel were taken
An Allied patrol crosses a
stream in northern Burma,
March 1944. The troop
consists British, American
and local Kachin fighters
48
49
FAR EAST COMMANDO: INTERVIEW WITH DR ROBERT CALLOW
PART I: THE BRIDGES NEAR THE RIVER KWAI
Robert Callow was
recruited into Force
136 in Sri Lanka by the
legendary soldier Adrian
Carton de Wiart VC
Lieutenant Robert
Callow (code-named
‘Longshanks’) in Ceylon
during his commando
service, August 1944.
The badge above his
right lapel pocket proved
that he had earned his
‘wings’ as a paratrooper
Two British soldiers
patrol through the
ruins of Bahe in central
Burma during the
campaign of 1944-45
Allied POWs constructed
the real bridge on the River
Kwai in 1943. The completed
bridge was made of steel and
concrete, which meant that
Callow avoided it and focused on
smaller wooden bridges nearby
A view of the Burmese jungle from the tail of an
aircraft during WWII. Callow was parachuted into
dense landscapes such as this
prisoner, but the situation deteriorated further
when the Japanese overran the Dutch East
Indies and captured many island bases in the
western Pacific. The security of both Australia
and India was threatened, and the Japanese
invaded Burma in early 1942.
The Japanese advance into Burma had two
goals: to prevent military aid from travelling
overland on the Burma Road into nationalist
China, and to place their forces at the door of
the Indian border. It was believed that the near
presence of the Japanese army would spark
an insurrection against the British Raj, and
thousands of captured Indian soldiers from
Singapore had already been recruited by a
Bengali nationalist to form an ‘Indian National
Army’ to fight the British.
The invasion of Burma began well for the
Japanese and Rangoon was captured, which
deprived the Chinese of their only easily
accessible supply base. Meanwhile, the British
Burma Corps retreated under a scorched-earth
policy until May 1942, when a tense stalemate
lasted until the end of the year. In 1943 Lord
Louis Mountbatten became the supreme allied
commander of South East Asia Command,
but the Allied resurgence in Burma was largely
thanks to Lieutenant General William Slim and
Brigadier Orde Wingate.
Wingate had created special operations
units known as ‘Chindits’ to perform long-range
raids against Japanese troops, facilities and
communication lines. The Chindits initially
50
incurred heavy losses, but their courage and
endurance proved that British forces could
take on the Japanese in the Burmese jungle.
Elsewhere, Slim became the commander of
14th Army, imbued it with a new spirit and
encouraged the soldiers to hold firm against
Japanese attacks while they were supplied from
the air.
When the Japanese attempted to strike
Assam and the Arakan 14th Army stood firm,
and fierce battles raged, with both sides
fighting for every inch of ground. Nevertheless,
the Japanese were now outnumbered and
with American and Chinese Nationalist forces
entering Burma from the north the tide began
to turn in the Allies’ favour. It was into this
bitterly fought and harsh campaign that Second
Lieutenant Robert Callow would be parachuted
as a commando.
“THE CHINDITS INITIALLY
INCURRED HEAVY LOSSES,
BUT THEIR COURAGE AND
ENDURANCE PROVED THAT
BRITISH FORCES COULD TAKE
ON THE JAPANESE”
Force 136
Upon his arrival in India, Callow expanded
his training to include paramedic skills for
jungle warfare, “There are no hospitals in the
jungle so I had to do a nine-month course in
Madras Medical College, learning how to do
amputations. They wouldn’t let me practice on
real people so I could only do it on cadavers.
I also practised giving painkillers, stitching
wounds, giving anaesthetic and, if need be, if
a man was going to die or be captured then we
would give him morphine.”
During his paramedic training Callow was
recruited into a British Special Forces unit
known as ‘Force 136’, which formed part of
the ‘Inter-Services Liaison Department’ (ISLD).
The ISLD was the same organisation as the
more famous ‘Special Operations Executive’
(SOE) that had been formed in 1940 to carry
out sabotage and subversive operations behind
enemy lines in occupied Europe. Once the
war with Japan had begun it was decided to
adapt the SOE in the Far East, and the ISLD
acquired its deliberately bland name to provide
operational cover.
The ISLD established its headquarters in
India, and the code name Force 136 was
used for commando sections being formed in
French Indochina, Malaya, Siam and Burma.
Force 136 was allocated its own RAF squadron
for airborne missions, and all recruits were
volunteers who either had knowledge of the
country, previous experience in Europe or a
useful area of expertise. With his skills in
explosives and languages Callow was an ideal
choice, and he was personally selected in
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) by Major General Adrian
Carton de Wiart VC.
Callow recalled, “Adrian Carton de Wiart
actually selected us in Ceylon and we were
chosen for our skills. Mine were explosives,
languages and paramedics. Carton de Wiart
interviewed us when I was in the medical
college and took one of us who each had
different skills. He introduced us all and then
recommended us.”
Carton de Wiart was a legend of the British
Army who, among other things, had fought in
the Boer War and won a Victoria Cross at the
Battle of the Somme. By the end of World War
I he had been wounded eight times, including
the loss of an eye and a hand. Even during
World War II he had been captured and held
prisoner by the Italians and made five escape
attempts before he was repatriated in 1943.
Nevertheless, Callow knew comparatively little
about the heavily scarred man who wore an
eye-patch and selected him for commando
service. “I only met him very briefly but he was
quite a character, and I didn’t realise quite how
important he was at the time.”
Once he was selected to serve in Force 136,
Callow joined small teams that would be flown
into enemy-occupied Burma to carry out acts
of sabotage against Japanese forces behind
enemy lines. The nature of Force 136’s work
“CALLOW JOINED SMALL TEAMS
THAT WOULD BE FLOWN INTO
ENEMY-OCCUPIED BURMA TO
CARRY OUT ACTS OF SABOTAGE
AGAINST JAPANESE FORCES
BEHIND ENEMY LINES”
was so secretive that Callow didn’t even know
the names of his colleagues. “We didn’t know
each other, but we had to adapt to each other.
One was an artilleryman and another in signals
so each one was busy with his three skills,
which in my case were explosives, languages
and paramedics. The only man I knew there
was ‘Geordie’ because we were both in the
OCTU [Officer Cadet Training Unit] but I didn’t
know his full name because we didn’t use real
names. We used pseudonyms, and mine was
‘Longshanks’. You couldn’t use your real name
because if you were captured and tortured by
the Japanese you couldn’t give away any other
information about other people.”
Baptism of fire
After months of training, Callow was ready
to begin active operations in late 1943. His
first mission was to be airdropped over the
River Tenasserim in southeast Burma to blow
up Japanese machine gun towers at a large
prisoner of war camp. Flying in a long-range
B-24 Liberator, Callow was part of a six-man
team, and he was the last to jump. “We were
flying in overnight. We had a major in charge
of us, and I had the explosives in a kitbag and
was going to jump last, which is what I did.”
Despite all his training, chance meant that
the mission went wrong immediately. “It was
just before dawn when we arrived and the major
jumped, but he jumped too soon. He landed
on the west side of the river, and I jumped
too. Nobody wanted to be near me with all the
explosives but there was a mist on the river.
I don’t think it was deliberate but there was a
Japanese patrol on the ground on the east side
and they saw us coming down. They couldn’t
see me because I was above the mist of the
cloud but the major landed and was seen.”
Once Callow’s commanding officer had been
spotted chaos ensued. “The Japanese all fired
and I could see their tracers. It was like a white
hosepipe of fire coming up and it hit Geordie.
He got blown in half because he had detonators
and high explosives around his waist and they
were triggered. His legs fell away and that was
the last time I saw Geordie. I had to write to his
parents afterwards and say that I’d seen him
die and that he’d died painlessly.”
Under this level of fire the mission was over
before it had begun, and Callow now had to
focus on survival by hiding from the enemy. “I
51
PART I: THE BRIDGES NEAR THE RIVER KWAI
As well as ground commando attacks;
Japanese railways in Burma were
also attacked by Allied aircraft. This
photograph depicts the aftermath of
a strafing attack by an RAF Bristol
Beaufighter in December 1944
The pilot of a Bristol
Beaufighter sits at the
controls of his plane during
the Burma Campaign
“CALLOW AND THE MAJOR WERE THE
ONLY MEMBERS OF THE SIX-MAN TEAM
TO SURVIVE. GEORDIE HAD BEEN KILLED
DURING THE DROP AND THE OTHER THREE
WERE CAPTURED AND EXECUTED”
52
Right: A Bristol Beaufighter
is loaded with a rocket for an
attack on targets in Burma,
including bridges and trains
53
FAR EAST COMMANDO: INTERVIEW WITH DR ROBERT CALLOW
PART I: THE BRIDGES NEAR THE RIVER KWAI
“REMARKABLY THE MINES THAT HE HELPED
TO PLANT WOULD LATER SEVERELY WOUND
HIM AFTER THE WAR”
British troops at a base in the Burmese jungle.
Note that the soldiers wear trousers and not
shorts to prevent being bitten by deadly lice
A derailed Japanese train in a Burmese river
during WWII. Callow’s sabotage missions behind
enemy lines mainly involved destroying bridges
and trains such as this
went into the river, struck my chute, got rid of
my explosives and landed in the mist. I swam
ashore and realised that the Japanese would
be all over looking for me, so I used my knife to
dig into the bank like The Wind in the Willows! I
made a hole and stayed there for days because
the Japanese were looking for me up above
before I came out.”
Callow was in a perilous situation and had
to implement the skills his training and natural
resourcefulness had equipped him with. “There
was nothing you could do, and you had to use
your brain. I had my rations for two days, but
then when I thought it was safe in the mist I’d
swim out and get terrapins. They were terrible
to eat raw and you couldn’t cook, so I was
sucking the juice out of them.”
After several days hiding in the river bank
Callow made his escape. “After a few days I
decided that the Japanese had stopped looking
for me so I came out, found the track and
started going westwards towards the coast. I
then heard some people coming and so I hid
and got my knife ready to kill, but in fact it was
my major bringing two of the special forces
who didn’t belong to us: an Australian and an
American from the SOE and OSS [Office of
Strategic Services]. They were teak planters
and were living there on a plantation, but the
Japanese never got to them. They took us out
and it was about 40 miles [64 kilometres].”
Callow and the major were the only members
of the original six-man team to survive. Geordie
54
“WE WAITED UNTIL THE TRAIN
WAS GOING OVER AND THE
LOCOMOTIVE, DRIVER, TRUCKS
AND EVERYTHING ELSE WOULD
GO DOWN WITH THE BRIDGE
BECAUSE THEY WERE ALL
CARRYING THE AMMUNITION”
had been killed during the drop and the other
three were captured and executed.
Blowing up bridges
Callow’s first mission had been a horrific
experience, but he went to on to carry out
many covert operations against the Japanese
in Burma. Often working with Indian troops,
he was tasked with disrupting Japanese
communication lines and supply chains by
blowing up bridges in the jungle. “They didn’t
have any external supplies like food or medical
supplies except ammunition so we would make
sure they would run out by bringing down the
wooden bridges.”
Destroying bridges was a routine operation
and although Callow’s thoughts on these
dangerous missions are understated, the odds
were alarming. “All we did was hide in the
jungle, prepare some explosives on a railway
and waited for a train to come along and blow
it. There were 134,000 Japanese in Burma
compared to around 100,000 of us [British] but
I didn’t know that at the time.
Callow remembered that blowing up
Japanese bridges required specific explosives
and delicate timing: “We mostly used nitroglycerine on the bridges, which would make
a cutting explosion. We would put it onto the
wooden supports and once it was detonated it
would take the supports away from the train.
We waited until the train was going over and the
locomotive, driver, trucks and everything else
would go down with the bridge because they
were all carrying the ammunition.”
Operations like this would later be
immortalised in the 1957 film The Bridge on
the River Kwai but Callow is scathing about
its historical accuracy: “The film was a load of
rubbish because we would blow up all the little
wooden ones. The real bridge on the River Kwai
was a big steel and concrete structure and the
Americans nearly blew themselves up bombing
it from 1,000 feet [305 metres]. Groups of
six people would blow up the wooden bridges
around it, and that’s what we were doing by
dropping the trains full of ammunition into the
water and blowing them up. We couldn’t blow
up a big steel, concrete bridge like that.”
Force 136’s attacks against enemy bridges
was prolific and Callow lost count of how
Above: Soldiers of the Japanese 15th Army on the
border of Burma during the invasion of 1942
many he destroyed. “I couldn’t put an
approximate number on how many
bridges we blew up, it was a case of
whenever we could we did. We hid from
the enemy in the jungle, and if we came
across any bridge then we hid there,
came out at night, put out the explosives,
blew it and then got the hell out.”
Callow’s expertise in explosives meant
that he was also adept at creating craters on
roads against travelling enemy convoys. “You’d
dig and bore a hole about 12 feet [3.7 metres]
deep, put some amatol in at the bottom and
then blow it to form a chamber. Then you put
black powder in that, place a fuse in there
(both safety and electric) and when you’re ready
you choose your time to blow it up. Depending
on what you were doing you could make craters
for blowing up roads instantly. Otherwise we’d
wait until there was some transport coming and
you blew it up then.”
Despite the dangerous nature of his work
Callow never had many feelings about successful
operations. “It was just the sense of a job well
done, we didn’t have any emotions about it. We
were just glad to be out of it and alive.”
In addition to his sabotage operations, Callow
played a part sinking German U-boats en route
to Japan after a mission. “They sent us a flying
boat from Calcutta. When we got to the coast
the American and the Australian had recruited
the local pirates to spy on the Japanese. The
pirates found that German U-boats were coming
down through the Straits of Malacca. They had
EXTREME JUNGLE RATIONS
DURING THE BURMA CAMPAIGN ROBERT CALLOW HAD TO RELY ON UNUSUAL SOURCES OF FOOD TO STAY NOURISHED WHILE ON MISSIONS
The Burma Campaign was noted
for the development of frequent
airdrops to supply Allied soldiers
while on active service. Robert
Callow’s men primarily received
drops of rice, but cooking conditions
were extremely primitive. “Our
troops were Indian so we also
cooked chapattis on our steel
helmets. If you took the lining out
of a steel helmet and put it over a
wood fire you could fry a chapatti on
top of it. But of course you couldn’t
do that when there was any of the
enemy there.”
Callow also frequently had to find
alternative sources of food behind
enemy lines. “The Japanese ate the
local food and lived off the jungle,
which we also had to do in the end.
We mostly ate rats: not the sewer
rats though, these are jungle rats.
The rats used to run along the palm
trees and eat the palm oil so we ate
them because their flesh was very
tasty. Also, the snakes used to go
up after the rats so we caught the
snakes as well.”
In these severe circumstances
Callow was not picky. “I had no
favourite between snake and rat,
they were all the same: it was like
choosing between fish. There were
certain things that you couldn’t eat
like turtles’ heads but we would eat
anything.” However, some animals
remained unappealing. “Monkeys’
paws were the worst because they
were like babies’ hands. It was like
eating your own hand.”
55
FAR EAST COMMANDO: INTERVIEW WITH DR ROBERT CALLOW
PART I: THE BRIDGES NEAR THE RIVER KWAI
“THE JUNGLE WAS A
PARTICULARLY HARSH
ENVIRONMENT TO FIGHT IN,
BUT CALLOW FELT THAT HIS
TRAINING HAD ADEQUATELY
PREPARED HIM”
Soldiers of the Japanese Burma Area Army fire
a heavy machine gun. Callow respected the
fighting abilities of the Japanese but despised
the Koreans who abused Allied POWs
Japanese soldiers at the
Shwethalyaung Buddha,
Bago, 1942. The invasion of
Burma was the last major
land success for Japanese
forces outside China
Robert Callow worked closely with Indian troops
during WWII and later campaigned for the British
government to pay them war pensions
Jungle warfare
The jungle was a particularly harsh environment
to fight in, but Callow felt that his training had
adequately prepared him for operating there. “It
had taken a long time going out on the ship to
India and by the time I got into the jungle, that
was about nine months later, so we had quite a
bit of time to adapt.”
Nevertheless, conditions were harsh. “It rained
all the time. Humidity was often 100 per cent
and you’d sleep on the mud. We wore trousers
because it was wet as hell and if you wore shorts
you could be bitten by deadly lice.” Callow would
find that the experience of commando operations
was ultimately dehumanising. “You have no
An Allied soldier hides
in the Burmese jungle.
For commandos such as
Callow the dense jungle
provided ideal cover to
hide from the Japanese
during sabotage missions
56
choice and it’s all excitement. You’re like an
animal and you’re living like one. If there was a
leaf that looked wrong it alerted you, if you heard
a sound that was not right you were up and awake
and ready to fight.”
Even 70 years later Callow’s training can still
cause problems. “It becomes a snag. I was in
hospital a few weeks ago when they did my leg
in an operation. Afterwards, I had a nightmare
and pulled the hair and ears of one of the
nurses because I thought I was being attacked.
It never leaves you, and this is dangerous. I felt
terrible and was really apologetic to the nurse,
but they’d seen lots like me. I didn’t know that
instinct was still there, but it’s survival.”
Despite the ferocious nature of the campaign
and contrary to what many other Allied soldiers
felt, Callow did not hate the Japanese. “I
respected them because they were very good
soldiers. They were killers of course and we
would kill them, which we did. Out of 134,000
there were only 25,000 left afterwards.”
Instead, Callow held the Koreans who served
in the Japanese forces with contempt. “The
Japanese had Korea as their subsidiary. They
put the Korean women into brothels for the
Japanese soldiers and they made the men into
prisoner of war guards. The men I mostly blew
up were Koreans. They were not fighting men,
and that’s why I had no compunction about
killing them, because of the way they treated
POWs and everyone else – they ill-treated
everybody. It’s also why the Japanese ill-treated
the Koreans – they didn’t trust them.”
The brutality of the Japanese forces during
World War II is well known and Callow vividly
remembered the human cost of the Burma
Campaign. “We had one in four casualties. We
lost 26,000 men and there were 100,000 of us.
There were also 330,000 Indians and they also
lost one man in four, which is about 86,000,
and then the bloody War Office wouldn’t give
them any pensions! But we made the [British]
government pay them eventually.”
Far away from the Burmese jungle events
were changing rapidly. On 8 May 1945 Nazi
Germany unconditionally surrendered to the
Allies in Europe, but VE Day had no effect on
the war in the Far East because the Japanese
refused to surrender. Consequently, the
bloodshed continued in Burma. Callow recalled,
“Churchill declared VE Day in Europe in May
1945 but we lost 4,000 men between May and
August.” In fact, Robert Callow’s experiences
in Burma were only the beginning of a unique
military career.
IN PART II…
Robert Callow recalls blowing up a mountain,
running a camp for Japanese prisoners,
surviving a sea mine explosion and
meeting Chairman Mao’s right-hand man.
Issue 51 is on sale 25 January 2018. Visit
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Dr Robert Callow is the Welfare Officer for the Coventry branch of the Burma Star Association that is part of the British Legion, the United Kingdom’s largest
armed forces charity. It upholds the memory of the fallen and provides lifelong support for the Armed Forces community, including serving men and women,
veterans and their families. For more information visit: www.britishlegion.org.uk
Images: Mary Evans, Getty
German engineers in them who had invented
the V1 and V2 rockets and they were sending
them on to Japan to carry on [the war]. The
Germans realised that things were going badly
for them by this time and they were building up
Japan with all these things. This was late 1944
and they were doing this already.”
This vital piece of intelligence had to be
relayed to Allied authorities and Callow made
one of the calls. “The pirates reported this to the
American and Australian and they then told me.
I got onto our radioman in Ceylon and he went in
to get mines planted near an island off Malaysia
to stop them. We sunk about 12 U-boats
afterwards.” Callow maintains that his role
during this incident was “wheels within wheels”
but remarkably the mines that he helped to plant
would later severely wound him after the war.
57