Griff Rhys Jones: Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army

Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army, with Griff Rhys Jones, is on BBC2 at 9pm on Sunday, 7th July.

I have spent a week with old, old men, interviewing veterans who served with the West African regiments in Burma in the 1940s. It’s for a television programme about my father’s war. The young men who were shipped off to the Far East are nonagenarians now and, black or white, universally charming and calm: unhurried, unflappable and brimming with patient good humour. At first, I thought that that’s what must happen as you approach your own centenary. But then I realised it might be the other way round. Perhaps this admirable lack of neurosis was what kept them alive. So stop fretting. Get cooler. I fancy another 30 years myself.

The week began with testimony in London; then we went to Ghana to link up with veterans there. These men were shipped across to India and then into the jungles of the Arakan to clear the Japanese 28th Army out of the jungle. Being television, we wanted these grand old men to shed a tear for lost companions. And they did get emotional. ‘We overcame our enemies by force of arms and made a great victory!’ pronounced the first. The rest concurred, in louder voices. The West African veterans remained passionately and emotionally proud to have been the most efficient jungle killers in the service of the crown. Yeah.

From there it was on to Burma, where, on the last day, we were excited to spot an old party eating raw fish for breakfast. The battered golfing hat and checked shirt identified a Japanese veteran. Few survived the battles. Fewer still ever come back. And we had no money in our budget to go to Japan.