Burmese Civil War : War among Brothers

On 22nd August 1969 a column of 7th Infantry Battalion attacked the jungle camp of CPB’s Southern Shan State HQ on the mountain range west of Inle Lake. Among the killed was a Central Committee member of CPB Bo Pu.

When his corpse was searched the Burmese soldiers found an old photo of young airforce corporal in his shirt pocket. The Burmese major heading the army column was shocked when he saw the blood-stained photo.

The young man in the photo was one of his classmates from his OTS (Officer Traning School) batch and he then was also a major in the army. The photo and the story went all the way to the War Office in Rangoon and the major was called in to explain.

Burma in Limbo - Part 5

Burma Rifles Parade.

British re-formed Burma Regular Army in 1945 according to the Kandy Agreement between Lord Mountbatten and General Aung San. 

Almost all ethnic troops serving loyally in the British army and irregular units of ethnic levies were absorbed into their own ethnic rifle battalions of new army. 

And 200 officers and 5,200 other ranks from demobilized BNA were reorganized as new Burma rifle battalions.

And at independence in 1948 there were First and Second Burma Rifle Battalions of non-BNA Burmese and ethnic mixed troops formerly from British Army, Third and Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Burma Rifle Battalions made up of former BNA troops, three Karen Rifle Battalions, three Chin Rifle Battalions, two Kachin Rifle Battalions, and Fourth Infantry Battalion of Gurkhas, all together only 15 so-called class battalions based on race.

That mixed-matched army was Lord Luis Mountbatten’s compromise solution to keep two opposing wings, the Burmese majority and the ethnic minorities, together as a 12,000 strong standing army. Army was seriously divided not just along the racial line but also the ideological line. Most of the former BNA troops including Colonel Ne Win were considered leftists and anti-British while the rest of the army were the rightists or conservatives and pro-British.

And naturally Karens the loyal soldiers of British Raj initially dominated British re-formed Burmese Army by both troop numbers and the ranks of senior officers.

Karen-Led Burmese Army  

Since the beginning ex-BNA Burmese troops bitterly resented the fact that Karens dominated Burmese Army. This edited extract is from the book “Memoirs of the Four-Foot Colonel” by General Smith Dun the first Commander-in-Chief of post-war Burmese Army and a loyal Karen.

“When Burma gained her independence in 1948, the Karens were well placed in the defense services and in their own right, not through any political pressure or string. There were only two king’s commissioned officers and those two were Karens with nearly twenty-five years service each.

Although not many Karens took active part in the gaining of the independence from British they resisted and fought the Japs from the start to the end, for which they suffered most. Had not the Japanese been defeated, Burma’s independence could never have been given by the British.

I became the C-in-C of the new Burma Army on the independence or rather, was left by the British as such, with the concurrence of the Burmese Government. Saw Kya Doe was nominated to be my Deputy with the rank of a Brigadier. Saw Donny became the Quarter-Master-General with the rank of a full colonel.

There were eight Karen Lieutenant-Colonels: three commanding each of the Karen Rifle Battalions, one commanding the Second Burma Rifle Battalion, one the Fourth Burma Regiment (Gurkhas), one the Burma Signals, one the Training Battalion, one the Assistant-Quarter-Master-General of South Burma Sub-District, and one commanding the Light Infantry Brigade at Meikhtila.

With the exception of one or two who were wartime officers, the rest mentioned above had services ranging from fifteen to twenty-five years (in the British Army). Hence I claim it to be Karen’s own right to be in that position on Burma gaining independence. Of the small airforce that was in making, Wing Commander Saw Shi Sho became Chief of Air Staff. In the small navy there were some Karen officers and men.

Alas! (So many) Karens in such positions must have been a point of sore eyes to the Burmese politicians, especially those who were not in uniform.”

But Ne Win-led Leftist Burmese faction of the army was not in a position to remove Karens from the chain of command, yet. Karens and other ethnic forces were the ones propping up U Nu’s Socialist government in Rangoon as only these ethnic troops were willing to fight CPB now rebelling in the jungle against AFPFL government.

Softly-Softly Civil War

War between ex-BNAs’ Burma Rifles and their former-brothers-in-arm Communists were just a farce. Later two Burma Rifles had even deserted and joined CPB. This is the translated extract from Myat Htan’s (Colonel Tin Maung) Autobiography. (Myat Htan then was a captain commanding the B Company of Third Burma Rifle. He was also a graduate from the first batch of Mingaladon Japanese Military Academy.)

“When my company was in Kyaik Htaw in the Delta the local political leaders (Communists) came for a secret meeting. I didn’t know them well but I’d heard of them and they’d heard of me as we were basically in the same boat politically speaking. One of them was also a former officer from our BNA. They came to tell me they were going to raid the government rice warehouses and redistribute the rice to starving peasants. So they told me the places and dates for the attacks and we agreed to be in somewhere else during the attacks.

Before us Indian soldiers were there and they used to mow the raiding peasants down with machine guns and killed hundreds of Burmese. That was the reason they were replaced by us with the assumption that Burmese troops would be better suited to suppress Burmese rebellion. When our battalion CO Colonel Thunder the Irish man heard of the warehouse raids and asked where were us during the raids I just lied to him we were somewhere else out of reach.

We even gave them a box of Sten-gun bullets and they gave us their spent cartridges so that we can requisition back from the battalion. Their cartridges were so old and brownish-rusty I even got into trouble with our British Supply Captain.”

But Karen and Kachin Rifles and their British advisors took the fight against CPB seriously, too serious for the Burmese officers of Burma Rifles.

According to the Defense Agreement signed on 29^th August 1947 a British Service Mission (BSM) was provided by British government mainly to oversee training and procurement for Burmese Army. Devised by BSM advisors the counter-insurgency campaign against CPB till 1949 was ruthless scorched earth operations which required razing of the Burmese villages suspected of harboring or sympathizing with communists, and executing the villagers.

The troops used in these operations were exclusively Karen, Chin, and Kachin Rifles led by the British or British-trained ethnic officers and they had no mercy and took no prisoners from the Burmese villages deemed Communist sympathizers.

Colonel Chit Myaing of Third Burma Rifles wrote in 1949 that the Burmese army officers didn’t believe those killed in the operations were real insurgents as they were just ordinary men, women, monks, and children. This extract is from the book “Memoirs of the Four-Foot Colonel” by General Smith Dun.

“Prome fell to the First Burma Rifles (all Burmese) who mutinied from Thayetmyo in sympathy with the Communists. The Second Karen Rifles which was at Meiktila was ordered to retake Prome from the Communists from the north, in conjunction with the First Kachin Rifles which had to be flown down from Myitkyina to advance from the south. The two battalions retook Prome after stiff resistance to both sides from the First Burma Rifles and their Communist allies.

It must be remembered that the First Burma Rifles was a regular battalion, equally well armed and trained as the two attacking battalions (one Kachin and one Karen). As the rebels were all Burmese and the population of the area was also all Burmese, the public were naturally on the side of the rebels.

So after Prome was retaken and when all was quiet,  many complaints came from some politicians that the actions of the attacking Karen and Kachin troops particularly the Karen Battalion, was harsh on the Burmese population, deliberately ignoring the fact that, had the Communists overrun the country, a good many of those who complained would have had their throats slit by their now beloved Communists.”

Not just the ethnic Rifle battalions from the army the ethnic paramilitary organizations like KNDO (Karen National Defense Organization) were also heavily used by Karen-led army in ruthlessly suppressing the Communists rebellion with the knowledge of AFPFL leader Prime Minister U Nu, Smith-Dun seriously alleged in his memoirs.

“The Second Karen Rifles was left to garrison the Prome area (after the Battle of Prome) when the First Kachin Rifles was pulled in to Rangoon to form a reserve, but had to be diverted to Thaton and Moulmein to deal with a new situation there. By this time, isolated communal clashes between the Burmese and Karens had already taken place, and the Karen Union Military Police of these two towns had taken the law into their own hands.

At this junction, the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), at least ten thousands strong and expanding, was like an atomic energy, in the position of any big power, that can be put in use for both peace or war.  Being purely a professional soldier and true to my oath of allegiance, I wanted to use them for peace.

So I put up a proposal to the Prime Minister (U Nu), who was also the Defense Minister then, that I could make use of KNDO, if the PM agreed, to reoccupy and garrison the areas where I could not meet with my regular troops, taking full responsibility for their loyalty and reliability.

The Prime Minister agreed, and thus the KNDOs were given several tasks in forming an outer ring of defense for Rangoon. Most important of all was the reoccupation of Twante town, a riverine gate to the Delta towns and Upper Burma both to and from Rangoon. ”

But U Nu’s government had never made that agreement a public knowledge and so the visible surrounding of Rangoon by heavily-armed KNDO forces was alarmingly seen by the Burmese in Rangoon as a major threat to them. This is what General Smith-Dun wrote in his book.

“Meanwhile the Burmese press, not knowing exactly what arrangement the Defense Department had with the KNDO of Insein and Twante, came out with startling news about KNDO plan to gain and seize power in order to fulfill a demand for a Karen state. Many wild rumors and stories against the KNDO and the Karens in general appeared almost daily in Burmese newspapers.”

And Kyaw Nyein’s Socialists used that public paranoia to advance their aim of total elimination of conservative forces in general and Karens in particular. But they had to eliminate other enemy Communists in the army first.

Socialist Purge in the Army

The newly formed Burmese Army was informally grouped into three factions according to their ideological inclinations towards three main political groupings, conservatives, Socialists, and Communists. At the beginning in 1946 Bo Let Yar the Deputy Army Chief was with the conservatives and the Karens in the army, Bo Ne Win the CO of Fourth Burma Rifle was the leader of the Socialists, and Bo Ze Ya the CO of Fifth Burma Rifle was the leader of the Communists. Three most senior members of Aung San’s famous Thirty Comrades.

By the Independence in January 1948 Let Yar became the Defense Minister, Ne Win one of two Deputy Army Chiefs, and Ze Ya was the most senior General Staff Officer (GSO 1). In July 1948 immediately after the defection of large pro-Communist faction of PVO to CPB the army’s leftwing factions led by Ne Win and Ze Ya started their move against Let Ya led conservatives in the army.

This is the translated extract from Myat Htan’s (Colonel Tin Maung) Book. By then he was the major commanding the Second Company of Sixth Burma Rifle stationed in Pegu about 50 miles north of Rangoon.

“Every night representatives from most (Burma Rifles) battalions met in Rangoon. Not many people. Just about ten led by General Ne Win and Colonel Ze Ya. I had to attend the meetings as the representative of Sixth Burma Rifles. By 7 pm every night we would gather ready for the meeting.

Then General Ne Win would arrive and explain us what was happening in the politics of Burma that day. He would also let us know what he had discussed with the politicians that day and consult with us for what should happen in near future. Every night was the meeting, night after night.”

Under pressure from them Bo Let Ya resigned and PM U Nu had temporarily taken the Defense portfolio. So they asked U Nu through Home Minister Kyaw Nyein to choose either Ne Win or Ze Ya as the Defense Minister even though the conservatives in the army were strongly against one of them two leftists taking Defense Minister position.

Without Kyaw Nyein’s knowledge they (Thein Phe Myint, Ne Win, and Ze Ya) had decided that if U Nu rejected their demand the leftwing factions of the army would stage a coup and replace his Socialist-dominated AFPFL Government with another left-wing government led by Left Unity Alliance.

Chaired by General Ne Win the Alliance was the loosely formed coalition of Socialists, PVOs, anti-civil-war Communists, and left-leaning Army officers to counter against a possible coup by the conservatives-led security forces. Their political leader was Thein Phe Myint the former secretary-general of CPB now rebelling in the jungle.

This translated and edited extract is from the book “Saturday Born” the autobiography of former PM U Nu.

“One day in July 1948 Home Minister U Kyaw Nyein came and saw me. He said the situation is quite critical now. So I asked how. He said both Bo Ne Win and Bo Ze Ya were demanding to appoint one of them the defense minister, whoever you like. 

I was really angry at them for blackmailing us when the country was in such troubles. And the Socialist Party leaders knew that if I refused to appoint either Ne Win or Ze Ya the Defense Minister some thing dangerous would happen.

But I still told Kyaw Nyein that I didn’t like such demands and I would not appoint any one of them. Let them do whatever they wanted. We still had our people behind us. We could organize the people and counter their threats. With overwhelming public support we could fight back the army, I told him.

And for some reason Kyaw Nyein cried there with tears rolling down his cheeks. I loved him very much as a trusted right hand man and seeing him cry for whatever reason really hurt my feelings. So finally I told him to bring them to see me. He was then delighted for he knew I was in his hands by then.

Kyaw Nyein then went on one step farther and told me he wanted Bo Ne Win to be the Defense Minister as Ne Win’s Fourth Burma Rifle was the only battalion our Government could trust. He was right though. Out of the whole Burmese Army the only battalion the government could rely on was the Fourth Burma Rifle. So I said YES to him.

At 3 pm same day they came. Bo Ne Win, Bo Ze Ya, two or three army officers, Thein Phe, U Kyaw Nyein, and some other Socialist leaders. They were all seated in the ministerial meeting room and they all stood up when I entered the room. There I saw a big revolver on the belt of one officer and the sight of gun made my blood boil.

But I managed to calm myself down and asked Bo Ne Win and Bo Ze Ya to repeat their demand. They didn’t answer but their representative (Communist) Thein Phe (The political leader of their Left Unity Alliance) told me to appoint one out of them two as the Defense Minister. So far it was okay and I was thinking I should just pick Bo Ne Win as my promise to Kyaw Nyein.

But Thein Phe wouldn’t stop there. He said he could give me only three days to consider their demand. I just snapped and told them I didn’t even need 3 minutes and I would appoint neither one of them two. If they didn’t like my decision just kill me with the revolver on that officer’s belt. And I kicked them all out.

While I was walking up and down trying to calm myself down in my office the telephone rung. The caller was Bo Let Yar and he begged me to see Bo Ze Ya ASAP. So I saw Bo Ze Ya downstairs at my house. He asked me to appoint him as Defense Minster but I bluntly told him NO.

I immediately called Kyaw Nyein to let him know about Bo Ze Ya’s visit and he sounded really happy. He yelled on phone ‘Victory’. When I asked him why, he just replied that he would explain me the details later.

Later I found out he immediately called Bo Ne Win and told him what Bo Ze Ya had just done. Bo Ne Win was really angry and called Bo Ze Ya and so he had to confess that he went to U Nu alone and asked to appoint him the Defense Minster. Then was the end of their Left Unity Alliance. The irreconcilable split of the Communists and the Socialists in the Burmese army. (Exactly what Kyaw Nyein had wanted all along!)  

That night Bo Ze Ya and one-half of Third Burma Rifle led by their Communist CO Lt. Colonel Ye Htut joined the Communist rebellion. The other half stayed back as their leader the Deputy CO Major Chit Myaing was not a Communist and he was loyal to Bo Ne Win.

We were really lucky then. For if they were not split into two that battalion could easily enter Rangoon and capture me and the ministers like hapless animals and declare themselves the military government. We had only a platoon of UMP and a section of Chin soldiers as my bodyguards.”

This translated extract is from Myat Htan’s Book. He had written in details about what happened exactly at the last one of their regular meetings of army’s unified leftwing on that faithful day.

“That night we had to wait for Bogyoke Ne Win and Bo Ze Ya for a while. Then Bo Ze Ya came in with a long face and we all asked him what happened. He just softly replied that he wasn’t that well. Then we heard the car and soon Bogyoke Ne Win came in with an angry face.

Then he sat beside Bo Ze Ya and stared at him for a while. Seconds after seconds, the whole room was dead quiet and we young blokes were scared and didn’t really know how to react. Bogyoke suddenly asked, ‘Bo Ze Ya, what did you do today, tell me?’

‘What did I do?’ replied softly Bo Ze Ya.

Bogyoke turned back to us and said, ‘Bo Ze Ya here went to U Nu and Bo Let Yar today and asked the Defense Minister position. That is not good. We are doing all together here for the good of the country and he has to go in from behind for his own benefit. What’s the point of doing anything? No point at all!’

He then stood up and told us to go home and then he left disappointed. That night was the last of our daily meetings.”

This also is the translated (edited) extract from Myat Htan’s Book. He had written in details about what happened on the day the Burma Rifle Battalions took to the jungle after the Ne Win/ Ze Ya split.

“On 18 August 1948 our CO Lt Colonel Tin Oo called me to his house and told me to go to Rangoon tomorrow. He said the army was to join the Communists in the jungle and my job was to go see the people from the Third Burma Rifles for discussion.

The whole army, I asked him. He said he didn’t know. How about Bogyoke Ne Win, I asked him again. He answered he didn’t know that also. Only thing we were sure was if we decided to join the mutiny we didn’t really need to go to the jungle as the Third and our Sixth could just take over Rangoon and declare our intent.

So I drove to Third Burma Rifles in Mingaladon next morning. There I avoided the CO Lt. Colonel Ye Htut for knowing that he would definitely urge me to join the mutiny. I went straight to Major San Yu and asked his and 2IC Major Chit Myaing’s positions.

He just said they were not joining. He also told me Bogyoke Ne Win was against it and I immediately knew what to do. As I tried to go back to my battalion in Pegu the CO Lt. Colonel Ye Htut saw me and called me into his office and bluntly asked me the position of our Sixth Burma Rifle. I calmly answered him as Bogyoke wasn’t in it we would not be joining the mutiny.

But he forced me to get on his jeep to go see Bo Ze Ya in a small concrete banglo in the wood just next to the battalion compound. Bo Ze Ya was sitting on the polished floor and beside him was U Thein Phe Myint. Once Bo Ye Htut told him that my battalion wouldn’t be in his rebellion Bo Ze Ya asked U Thein Phe to explain me the reasons for the rebellion.

U Thein Phe then sat very close to me and spent nearly half an hour lecturing me why I should join them in the rebellion. But whatever he said just went through me as if a Chinese was listening an Indian song. In my head I was only thinking I must go back to my battalion, I must go back to the battalion, repeatedly. He couldn’t convince me at all.

Finally they let me go as I told them I had to discuss the matter with my CO back in Pegu and we would reply that evening. Of course we completely ignored them. That night half of Third Burma Rifles led by Bo Ye Htut took to the jungle together with Colonel Ze Ya. Some troops and a couple of officers from our Sixth joined them. The whole First Burma Rifles from Thayet Myo also joined the mutiny on the same day.

Out of all (former BNA) Burmese troops only half of Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Burma Rifles were left with the Government.”

This translated and edited extract is from the book “Kyaw Nyein” by Thein Phe Myint. He basically summed up the whole drama of Communist/Socialist split in the army.

“The dream of some of our Left Unity Council was to stage a coup first and then call for peace with the CPB. We could then form a left-unity coalition government with the CPB. All the leftist figures from Kyaw Nyein to Than Htun were to be included.

That idea was widely accepted and they also got me into it by saying Bo Ne Win would stage the coup and I as a political leader could keep the purposes of left unity, peace, and political aims intact. I also started dreaming for that grand vision.

But when we tried to materialize that dream Bo Ne Win refused to participate and for that reason alone many battalions and their COs pulled out of the coup plan. Finally I also decided to quit. Bo Ye Htut had tears on his cheeks when he took to the jungle with his troops from the Third Burma Rifles.”

This extract is from the interview Major Chit Myaing had with the Burma Debate in Washington. He went straight to Ne Win soon after Bo Ye Htut and his men took to the jungle that day. 

“It was nearly daybreak when I arrived home. I took my car out and drove straight to Bogyoke Ne Win’s house to explain what had happened. The General remarked, ‘Now we know who is black and who is white.’

From there Bogyoke and I went to Prime Minister U Nu’s residence. We had to wake the Prime Minister. We reported the situation to him and the Prime Minister told me not to worry. He advised us to report the situation to U Kyaw Nyein who was at that time the minister for home affairs.

When we arrived at U Kyaw Nyein’s residence, we found U Ba Swe and Bo Aung Gyi of the socialist party also waiting to hear from us. U Kyaw Nyein asked who was the brain behind Bo Ye Htut. I said that was U Thein Pe Myint of the communist party.

That day August 10, 1948, if I had decided to join Bo Ye Htut and Bo Ze Ya, the 3rd Burma Rifles could have easily taken over U Nu’s government.”

Kyaw Nyein later arrested his close friend Thein Phe Myint and kept him in jail for more than a year for persuading Bo Ze Ya, Bo Ne Win, and their men to stage a coup, and for forcing some of them to rebel after his plan had failed when Ne Win suddenly refused to obey him after that ugly split with Bo Ze Ya.

U Nu also wrote that Kyaw Nyein was really angry at Thein Phe Myint for destroying his   plan to put Ne Win in charge of the security forces as the Defense Minister. Thein Phe was released by his close friend Kyaw Nyein a year later only after he wrote in desperation to U Nu that he would stage a hunger strike in the prison.

Ze Ya and Ne Win split or the split of Communist and Socialists in the army paved the way for the complete control of Burma by Kyaw Nyein’s Burma Socilaist Party under the banner of U Nu led AFPFL. The removal of Bo Let Yar and Bo Ze Ya and later General Smith Dun had placed the Burmese army under Ne Win who would never let go of that complete control of Burmese armed forces till he was put under house arrest by his own officers led by General Than Shwe in 1995.

After the powerful Communist faction inside the army was totally gutted the victorious Socialist-Party-boss Kyaw Nyein and his seemingly-obedient wardog Ne Win turned their attentions and their guns on the Conservatives both inside and outside of the army.

Conservatives’ Demise

Released in London on 17 May 1945 the White Paper the official British plan for postwar Burma called for a minimum 3 year reconstruction period under British rule as per the 1937 Burma Constitution. This extract is from the June 1945 Far Eastern Survey’s article “White Paper on Burma” by Alice Thorner.

“The terms of the White Paper offer Burma ‘full self-government within the British Commonwealth’ to be attained in three stages.

For the first of these, lasting approximately three years, Burma is to be governed according to the emergency administration proclaimed in 1942, liberalized by the addition of an executive council which may include non-official Burmese, and possibly also by a legislative council.

By or before December 9, 1948, it is hoped that a general election can be held and constitutional government under the act of 1935 restored. During this second period the Burmese are to draw up a constitution and discuss with the British Government matters in which the British would retain control after independence, such as the administration of the Shan States and other tribal areas.

The third stage, for which no date seems to have been given, is complete Burmese self-government within the Commonwealth limited by the safeguards mentioned above.”

The leftwing-nationalist AFPFL strongly rejected the White Paper, demanding nothing less than complete independence outside the British Commonwealth while the conservatives and moderates and the independents on the other side of Burmese politics were willing to consider and enter into negotiations with the British. But as we all knew they lost and Burma gained complete independence in 4 January 1948 and immediately the chaotic civil war erupted between the ruling Socialists and the Communists.

As Kyaw Nyein had outlined as one of his six major problems, almost all British-trained civil servants in the bureaucracy and the British-trained military officers in the armed-forces and police were, in principle, against the Socialist government. And they sought actively to topple the elected AFPFL government. This translated extract is from the book “Kyaw Nyein” by Thein Phe Myint.

“Meanwhile (in April 1948) an important ultimatum was put forward by the top echelon of the administrative machinery and the security apparatus. The National Security Council comprising Defense Minister Bo Letya, Army Chief Karen Smith-Dun, Police Chief U Htun Hla Aung, and Home Secretary U Kasi and other senior figures from the administration had decided to urge the PM U Nu to form a caretaker government without Socialists and PVOs.

Their reason was that the cause of the Communist rebellion and the Karens being restless and near-revolt was mainly because of their hatred of Socialists. They would calm down once the government with no Socialist politicians was formed.

But We including Kyaw Nyein knew their decision was part of the plan to sideline the Constituent Assembly (temporary parliament) and stage a coup by the army, police, and administration. General Smith-Dun and Police Chief Htun Hla Aung were even preparing (the detail actions) according to that plan at the meetings of High Ranking Officers from both army and police in Meikhtila.

Kyaw Nyein had known it from some of his police officers. We also knew the foreign minister U Tin Htut was together with their National Security Council as the foreign ministry is very important in this sort of business (staging a coup).

So we formed a leftwing alliance and called it the Left Unity Council. Bo Ne Win was Chairman and I was the Secretary. The Socialists, PVOs, anti-civil war Communists, and left-leaning Army officers were in it. Kyaw Nyein was the Socialist Party’s representative.”

Even though the conservative alliance controlled the security forces they were rather gentlemen professionals compared to the politically-savvy thugs from the left alliance and so the three conservative leaders were brutally removed from the political stage quickly.

The first to go was U Tin Htut the foreign minister and the Inspector General of the Union Auxiliary Forces the quickly-formed conservative paramilitary (Tin Htut’s Levies) to counter Kyaw Nyein’s levies Sitwundan and Ne Win’s Burma Rifles. This extract is from the book “A Twentieth Century Burmese Matriarch” written by Khin Thida the only daughter of Police Chief Htun Hla Aung.

“New problems of job insecurity for professional and semi-professional government, civil and military personnel compounded the (worsening) situation, as the politicians in power began replacing ex-colonial servants with their own ‘patriots’, branding the former  as ‘British stooges’.

While these conflicts and tensions were building up, another political assassination occurred in December 1948. U Tin Htut was killed and the assassins never apprehended. He was the most senior civil administrator, the first Burman to be admitted to the Indian Civil service.

PM U Nu had sent my father to the Delta (Bassein) on some official duty before assassination. He was told by U Nu to go deal with a problem that had arisen out of Rangoon, and when he told U Nu that he would send one of his deputies to look into it, U Nu said, ‘no, you go yourself, I tell you to’.

And while he was out of town, U Tin Htut was assassinated. He found upon return that the CID investigation was receiving little cooperation from the (AFPFL) government. Suspicions and rumours abounded and my father soon found himself a target of AFPFL antagonism, as he delved deeper into the investigation.”

In 1980 the founding-editor of Kye Mone (The Mirror) newspaper U Thaung (Aung Bala) wrote a book on General Ne Win. By then he became a self-exile in the United States. This translated extract is from that book “Ne Win’s Mess”.

“When I was just a reporter in our ‘Burma Era’ newspaper, I was once trying to write a weekly series on my suspicion about Ne Win’s involvement in many assassinations. When I asked permission from our chief-editor U Ohn Khin he stopped me and said, “Didn’t you see what happened to U Tin Htut and U Htun Hla Aung? Don’t do anything and just shut your mouth.”

U Ohn Khin then continued, “Once I ran into Ne Win and he asked me if I wanted to know who killed Tin Htut. He tried to scare me by threatening me. You know I am not that easily scared. But for you it is quite dangerous to write something right now. Just keep the notes in a safe place. One day you will get a chance to write.”

After U Tin Htut next to go was General Smith-Dun the first Commander-in-Chief of Burmese Army. Once Karen rebellion began after the atrocities committed by the Socialist Levies the government simply forced him to take a long leave and put Ne Win in his place. They even tried hard to kill him in an ambush on his way to airport in Rangoon. This is what he wrote in his autobiography “Memoirs of the Four Foot Colonel”.

“When news of the (UMP and Sitwundan) attacks on Ahlone and Thamaing (Karen quarters) reached the Karen troops at Mingaladon, most of them pushed off to defend their kith and kin in those areas. The shooting war continued and spread to Insein and also to many other districts.

Under the circumstances it was impossible for me to remain in office, and therefore I resigned that very morning. There was a offer of long leave and full pay etc. But I just wouldn’t take it and resigned, and went on my self-imposed exile at Myitkyina in Kachin State where there are few Karens and Burmese.

Early next morning I sent my ADC to the airfield not far from my residence, to make sure that everything was laid on for my journey. The ADC went up and down the runway in his jeep several times without any untoward incident. At about 7 a.m. I and my family started from the house in two vehicles. The ADC in his own jeep led the convoy on same route that he had been on an hour or so ago.

As soon as my car arrived in the middle of the runway every weapon guarding the airfield seemed to open up on us, including 2 rounds of 2” mortars. I ordered my driver to turn round and run the gauntlet until we appeared out of sight. When we reached a safe place I was more than relieved to see all my household safe and not even a scratch on my 8-seater car.

It was now clear that the act was deliberate, and it was an attempt on my life. The rumour and suspicions which had warned me to be careful now became a reality.”

After calling other senior army officers to gather at the airport he managed to overwhelm the Burmese commanding officer of the airport garrison that attacked his convoy and finally he flew out of Rangoon airport. But General Smith-Dun and his family had to land in Maymyo instead of their destination Myitkyina and they had to take their refuge in the house of Colonel Kyaw Zaw then the CO of Burmese Army Northern District.

By then Kyaw Zaw had already disarmed and interned all the Karen officers and men serving under his command. This translated extract is from Brigadier Kyaw Zaw’s Autobiography from the CPB’s website.

“General Smith-Dun phoned me from the airport and I went and brought him and his wife to my house. Only then I knew that his family was ambushed near the Rangoon Airport on their way to the airport. It was just a pure luck that they had escaped without a scratch.

General told me that they came to me here in Maymyo by deciding that they should rely on an influential senior Burmese officer during this extremely dangerous time and had chosen me.  I told them I happily welcomed them to stay with me as long as they wanted.

Next day some Karen officers came and asked my permission to see the General. So I let them wait in the lounge room and went upstairs to general Smith-Dun and told him that some Karen officers were waiting for him downstairs and also added that they had the impression that I had you under house arrest here, so please tell them it was not so. So he went down and laughingly explained them the situations.

A few days later he asked me to look for another house for them since they were feeling bad for my family to share our house with them.  But I told him that by staying together it is more secure for both of us since if some Burmese wanted to kill you they wouldn’t dare because of me and also if some Karens wanted to harm me they wouldn’t dare to because of your presence here.”

General Smith-Dun and family finally arrived at isolated Myitkyina and started his self-imposed-exile away from all the Karen-Burmese troubles. Loyal to the Union of Burma to the end the old soldier quietly passed away in 1979.

While the former C-in-C of Burmese army was slowly languishing into oblivion the last remaining leader of now severely-weakened conservatives the police-chief and the Second-in-Charge of Burmese armed-forces Major General Htun Hla Aung was quickly demoted and sent away to London as a lowly military attaché. Following is what Khin Thida wrote of her father’s demotion and subsequent forced-exile in Ceylon.

“Wave upon wave of ‘purges’ of top echelon civil, police and army personnel occurred during the later half of the year of independence. The first to go were the Karen General Commanding Officer of the Burma armed Forces and my father Major General Htun Hla Aung, IGP and Deputy Chief of Staff, both Sandhurst trained. Colonel Ne Win of the Burma National Army, one of the 30 Comrades trained by the Japanese replaced them.

My father was posted to the newly established Burmese embassy to the Court of St. James as Military Attaché (a low position considering his standing) soon after U Tin Htut’s murder, preventing any further investigation. He told my brother and me that it was better to be demoted and sent into virtual exile than to be the next victim of assassination.

I left Burma in September 1950, part of the second group of Fulbright Fellows, with a stop over in London to see my father. It was a big shock to discover upon arrival that he had left for Burma just the day before. Since taking up his new post, my father’s relationship with the ambassador, a political appointee had been less than amiable and steadily worsened culminating in a confrontation and his immediate resignation. I learned much later that he never reached Rangoon but was stranded in Ceylon.

On his way home by sea and upon arrival in Colombo, Ceylon he received warnings from friends in Government that he would be arrested once he landed in Burma. He was also told that his passport would be seized if he attempted further travel. His only recourse was to seek political asylum in Ceylon, where he lived for next four years with little communication with us. (He stayed in Ceylon and came back only at the time of U Nu’s Buddhist Synod in 1954.)”

Within a year after independence the demise of Burmese conservatives was completed and   the country would be on the left for more than 40 years till the army staged a coup in 1988 and turned Burma around to march on the right again.

Only obstacles left in the way of the determined Socialist Kyaw Nyein and power-hungry   Ne Win were the restless Karens in the form of three Karen Rifle Battalions and various armed-KNDO units.

And they would completely be brutally wiped out in the one-sided, so-called Karen rebellion   the Karens did not really want to start. And they would eventually be forced to fight against the majority Burmese for generations to come till today.

But more than 60% of the Burmese army then was the ethnic troops, and the high-ranking Karen officers dominated the army’s chain of command. And also there were well-armed KNDO forces more than 10,000 strong right in Rangoon and the vicinity.

So Burmese Socialist leaders, mainly Kyaw Nyein with the help of Ne Win from the army, countered them by forming their own Burmese paramilitary units outside the Karen-dominated army’s control. Two such forces were Sitwundan and UMP.

UMP and Sitwundan the Paramilitaries

To protect the Cabinet and AFPFL leaders especially after Aung San’s assassination on 19 July 1947 the UMP (Union Military Police) battalions were raised as armed police battalions under Kyaw Nyein’s Home Ministry. Organizationally similar as the army battalions UMP battalions were equipped only with rifles and GPMGs (General Purpose Machine Guns) and recruited exclusively from the war veterans of Aung San’s PVO.

Two UMP battalions were quickly formed in 1947 and exclusively used in rooting out U Saw’s Galone militia. Also by absorbing three Karen battalions of British Burma Military Police ten UMP battalions in total were raised by the time of Independence in January 1948. The Karen UMP battalions were later found disloyal to the new Union as they deserted and joined their KNDO brothers when Kraen rebellion broke out in January 1949. 

Immediately after the Communist rebellion in March 1948 paramilitary police reserve units called Sitwundan (War Servants) were also raised legally under Kyaw Nyein’s Home Ministry as per the power given by the Burma Police Act (1945). More than 150 Burmese officers and other ranks from Fourth and Fifth Burma Rifles loyal to Kyaw Nyein’s Burma Socialist Party were initially attached to the Sitwundan units for organizational and training purposes.

Based and deliberately-recruited locally in the Communist-controlled and Karen-threatened districts throughout Burma, there were thirteen thousand Sitwundan levies in twenty-six battalions by 1949. Grudgingly called Kyaw Nyein Levies the control and operation of each Sitwundan unit was with the local AFPFL Member of Parliament and these levies simply became the thuggish pocket armies of district-based Socialist politicians. Following is what Kyaw Nyein wrote as the intro for Thein Phe Myint’s book “Kyaw Nyein”.

“English government was really angry at our government for not joining the British Commonwealth and so they wanted the AFPFL government to fall and put a minority government of Karens and Kachins and rejoin the Commonwealth. So the BSM worked against Burmese government by not selling arms from Bratain. They also encouraged Karens serving in the army and the Union Military Police to join Saw Ba Oo Gyi’s KNDO and start a Karen rebellion. 

So while U Nu was buying precious time by softly-softly negotiating with the Karens not to rebel General Ne Win, Major Aung Gyi, and I were recruiting 10,000 armed levies within one or two months. But English wouldn’t sell us guns and Americans also refused to sell too because of the defense agreement between England and Burma. Communist countries wouldn’t sell us arms too since we are in war with Burmese Communists.

We have to thank Nehru for helping us during that serious difficult period. India sold us arms and ammunitions enough for nine full battalions. Otherwise we would be in a serious trouble.”

Nheru’s India then had a massive stockpile of .303 Lee Enfield rifles and Bren guns the leftover from British 14^th army and he sold them cheaply to his Socialist mates in AFPFL government and in some cases even bartered the guns for Burmese surplus rice to feed starving Indians.

Within a year Burma was horribly flooded with thousands and thousands of deadly Indian rifles and machine guns in the hands of Socialist paramilitaries, and Kyaw Nyein’s levies rapidly turned the tide of war against Communists and eventually turned their Indian guns on their restless Karen brethren.

Initially Kyaw Nyein and U Nu didn’t really want to fight the racial war. Also the naturally peace-loving Karens didn’t want the civil war knowing very well that they couldn’t really fight a lasting war against the vastly majority Burmese. But our great villain Ne Win was on the war-path while U Nu was eagerly trying to resolve the dangerous standstill by frantic negotiations with KNU Saw Ba Oo Gyi.

Army C-in-C General Smith Dun and his Karen officers were violently against Ne Win even becoming the Defense Minister in U Nu’s Government. Ne Win badly needed an all-out Karaen-Burmese war to get rid of his boss General Smith Dun and cleanse all the Karens out of the army so that he would have complete control over the mixed-matched army which would be transformed into a staunch Socialist army after all the purges.

So Ne Win orchestrated the Sitwundan massacres of countless Karen civilians to provoke the KNU/KNDO and finally unleashed his UMP battalions on the KNDO positions at Thamaing and Insein Karen quarters in Rangoon to start the Karen-Burmese war.

There began on 31 January 1949 the real Burmese civil war in which the hapless Karen minority is the main antagonists against the Burmese majority. The Karen cleansing was started on that faithful day by General Ne Win and is still going on strong. The Karens have been utterly and indescribably suffering since that day and we Burmese also have been paying dearly for what we have ruthlessly done to our Karen brothers.

The peaceful, prosperous, and law-abiding civil society British had patiently built in Burma for over a century was now truly dead and the so-called armed democracy where every single  politician in power had his very own pocket army of thugs had begun. That struggling democracy did survive for more than a decade till brutally terminated by General Ne Win and his Socialist army eventually in March 1962. 

Burma in Limbo - Part 1
Burma in Limbo - Part 6

Dark Parkway

(The true ghost story of notorious Wakehurst Parkway in Sydney’s Northern Beaches.)

  

Narrabeen of Northern Beaches.

I USED to drive cabs almost four years for good old Manly Cabs between 1997 and 2001. The insular peninsula, well known as the Northern Beaches, is the most pleasant area in Sydney for its pristine beaches on a long sandy coastline.

Like many other Asian migrants I initially lived in Western Suburbs when I first came to Sydney in the late eighties. I worked as an auto-mechanic in a car dealer’s workshop and also drove taxis part-time to pay for our mortgage with 17.5% interest rates during Hawke-Keating labor years.

Then in the middle of the recession we had to have, I lost my job first, later our little fibro house in Campbelltown, and I started working as a middleman between Prawn meat traders here and exporters back in Burma just to survive. Those were the bad and sad times for a lot of struggling immigrant families like us.

Making the story short, a few years later my business failed and I had to take a factory job again but this time in Brookvale and started driving part-time for the Manly Cabs as we were renting a flat in Dee Why, now a fashionable yuppie suburb but back then the Blacktown of the Northern Beaches. According to the locals, Northern Beaches was the God’s Country and Dee Why was the ugliest flats-city in the heaven.

For most of the long-established locals, south of the Spit Bridge was a foreign country and I even knew a little old lady who had never crossed that bridge in her long life. People were quite eccentric in that part of Sydney and sometimes I even thought that plenty of sun and sand got into their heads. But the relatively rich peninsular was a nice place to live and raise a family, I had to admit, compared to the poor south-western suburbs I used to live many years before.

At that time, driving for the Manly Cabs was not really bad at all, provided you didn’t mind getting fewer fares and putting more into your pay-in envelopes, compared to the driving for the Combined Cabs in the city. It was a completely new experience for an old city cabbie like me. In the city I didn’t even need to sit on a rank as there were always plenty of street-hails, but in the Manly area most jobs were from the radio and the ranks. If you drove around non-stop like in the city you would just waste your gas and see not a single fare.

Work the bloody radio hard, mate, that was the first ever advice I received from late Frank Martin, for whom I drove for four long years. You just moved from rank to rank waiting for a fare at the same time keeping a keen eye on the computerized radio screen for a plum airport job. If I were lucky two of them would be enough for the pay-in. Then were the good old days before bloody Silver Service cabs took most of the good long jobs out of Manly.

Manly Taxi Rank.

For any night I drove I took the cab from the base on the Pittwater Road and straight away headed for the Manly rank to join the long queue. Let’s say, if I got a fare to Dee Why after a long wait, I would straight away join the long queue at the Dee Why rank on Howard Ave, as soon as I dropped off the fare from Manly. Busy suburbs like Manly and Dee Why were fine for the rank jobs.

Only problem was when the fare taking me to a quiet place like Belrose or Terry Hills and I had to come back a long way to the busy ranks like Warringah Mall or Manly. Then on the way back I must keep an eye on the radio for jobs. Sometimes I had to try our usual trickery to get a fare from the Radio.

For example if I was in Frenchs Forest in late night and I knew definitely that something was happening at the NSW Sports Academy in North Narrabeen I would log myself into the Radio as I was in Narrabeen. It was a white lie but good for both the fare and me as I could get there in a very short time by using the Wakehurst Parkway.

Wakehurst Parkway

Sydney Northern Beaches.

Cut through the huge Garigal National Park the Parkway was one of many great shortcuts in the area. Single lane either way, the road was good enough to do over 100 for a lot of local boofheads even though the speed limit was only 80. If you did a slow 80 on that road in the middle of the night the honking car behind you would run into your arse unless you let him overtake you at 120.

The long and scary road has two parts, one between Seaforth and Frenchs Forest and other down to the North Narrabeen. From the Forest to Narrabeen there were no streetlights once past the only traffic light intersection at Oxford Falls where the vast compound of the Christian City Church was.

The road was so dark and cars were speeding so fast that countless number of possums and whatever wildlife crossing the road were mercilessly run over every night. Not just eerily dark the road also had the dark history as a dumping ground for the murder victims of Sydney. Just after I moved into the area a jilted lover from the western suburbs brutally killed his former fiancée and dumped her naked body in the bushes by the Parkway.

It was the biggest news of the year and so notoriously well known that many women drivers refused to drive along that road at night if they were alone in their cars. I even got into a sticky situation once with a young woman passenger for going down that dark road in the middle of the night.

That night I picked her up from Forestville and came down along the Warringah Road to drive her to Narrabeen. Time was well after midnight and she was a bit drunk and slumped on the backseat once she got inside the cab. I turned left into the Parkway and we were almost at the Oxford Falls intersection when she suddenly woke up and screamed alarmingly at me.

“Where are you taking me? Turn back, turn back now! I hate this bloody road,” she screamed and screamed and I had no choice but did a U-turn and took her to Narrabeen by the Pittwater Road, definitely a much longer way. She was basically freaking out on me for taking her along the dark Parkway without asking her first. She even called the radio room and lodged a complaint against me just after I dropped her off at her house almost an hour later.

In my honest opinion there was a big difference between a ten minutes trip and one hour trip but she didn’t seem to care. So, since then I always asked my fares before I went down that road late at night especially a young woman alone in my cab. But I still used the Parkway as a shortcut to reach to the northern parts of our territory.

Hitchhiking Nun

As usual, one Friday night shift in year 2001 well after the Sydney Olympics I happily took a job from NSW Sports Academy to a City hotel late at night while I was in the Forest Way on my way back from a Belrose drop. Time was almost one in the early morning and the job was perfect as I could easily get a fare back to Manly area from the City. I just turned on the radio and started dreaming of earning at least 80 bucks in the dying hours of my night shift.

I turned into the Parkway and had to stop at the Oxford Falls intersection for the rare red light. Normally at that time the place was always deserted and the lone traffic light was in a permanent state of green unless the pedestrian button was pressed. I had never seen a red light at that intersection at that time and it sort of annoyed me. Also there were no one on the kerbs or the crossing but the green walking-man was brightly lit as if someone had pressed the pedestrian crossing button well before I got there.

I patiently waited as the red man started flashing and then floored the accelerator as soon as the light turned green. With 180 hp under the bonnet my cab lurched forward and the speedo was pointing at 80 in a few seconds time. Immediately I sort of felt like somebody jumped into the cab and sat on the backseat.

You know that feeling you always get whenever someone suddenly opens the back door and gets inside the cab as you are daydreaming behind the wheel sitting idle at a quiet rank. That was totally impossible as I had no passenger in my cab and there was none outside and I was now travelling at 80 km per hour. I instinctively eyed the cabin mirror and what I saw shocked me as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight.

There was a grey silhouette of thin young woman in the mirror, apparently sitting on the middle of the rear seat and sort of staring straight back at me. She was in a kind of white gown and head-dress like a Christian nun. I couldn’t really see her face clearly, just the shape of her face and her deep green eyes, yes the sad green eyes, but she was definitely real and sitting there and staring back at me at that precise moment. I slammed the brake hard.

Old Falcon shook violently on her four retread wheels, dangerously veered off to the left, skidded noisily on the gravel-covered shoulder, and came to a sudden screeching stop just before a big gum tree. When I looked into the mirror again, she was gone, vanished into the cold thin air instantly filled with that familiar smell of burning rubbers and overheating brake pads. I turned my head around and saw no one in the back of my cab.

My chest was pounding fast with my heart almost in my throat as the blood rushed into my head. Now I had prickly goosebumps all over my body reminding me of our belief back home. Folks back home believe that anyone who died of violent deaths were turned into the wandering spirits stuck forever in the purgatory and you will feel their presence nearby by having goosebumps all over your body. 

She was definitely a ghost and I didn’t dare to stay there any longer and immediately drove off into the darkness. I turned up the radio really loud, switched the high beams on, and deliberately refused to look at the cabin mirror again as I accelerated deeper into the bushy darkness of the eerily misty Parkway.

I picked up the patiently waiting passenger, an athletics coach from Melbourne, at the well-lit main building amidst the pitch-black darkness. First thing he jokingly said to me was that I looked like I just saw a ghost. He was dead right, but I wasn’t in a chatty mood and luckily he asked me to go by the Pittwater Road on the coast, as he wanted to smell the ocean. I was so scared shitless that I didn’t say a word to him during the long trip to city and that night was the last time I ever drove alone on the Wakehurst Parkway.

I didn’t really believe in ghosts before. So, that incident shocked me as well as confused me so much that I didn’t even dare to say to anyone including the wife and kids about the ghostly encounter. But the whole thing wouldn’t go away quietly as I wished. It came back to me in the form of a group of young Goths I picked up one night from the Manly rank.

Manly Goths

You know them if you see one of them Goths in the wharf area. Distinctively dressed in black T-shirts, tight black jeans and Nazi jack boots, they usually gathered by the wharf and meaninglessly hung around the area. From the rank I could clearly see them mucking about among themselves, mostly young girls and boys my two kids’ ages, fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen. Girls had many colorful hairstyles with a lot of rings on their faces and boys usually had either punkish long hair or outrageous Mohawks.

One of the pretty girls always had a T-shirt with Cemetery Bitch written on her chest and we started calling them cemetery bitches just among us cabbies. Sometimes the beat coppers would ask them to move on if they became rowdy and started intimidating the travelling public as Manly Wharf with its bus interchange was the busiest place in Manly during peak hours. But them Goths didn’t scare us Asian cabbies like the Skinheads used to before those thugs became out of fashion.

That night was slow and all the fares I got were short ones and I had to keep on coming back to the Manly rank. At about 9, four of them Goths from the wharf area came up to the rank. One big boy and three big girls. They didn’t usually take a cab as they normally caught a bus to wherever their homes were. I was third on the queue but first two refused them and they ended up inside my cab. Being a part-timer I never refused any fare, as I had to make as much as possible for a shift or two in a week.

“So where’re we heading?” I started the engine and asked the desto.

“We’re going to Narrabeen, cabbie, but we want you to go by Wakehurst Parkway!” replied the big boy beside me and I almost sighed but managed to quickly hide my fear from them.

“That’s the long way, mate, it’ll cost you more, much more!”

“That’s okay. We have money. It shouldn’t be more than 50?” They seemed okay and I did a U-turn on the wide road and headed in the direction of Warringah Mall.

“Good man, cabbie. Other guys said no to do U-ee here.”

So that was the reason other two refused them. Wide Pittwater Road, where the cab rank was, ended at the wharf and to get out of Manly you had only two choices. Either turn left and go through busy traffic at the beach or go right and do two more right turns to get back onto the same road on the opposite direction. Years back, we had our own little left turn onto the Whistler Street immediately after the rank and by that way we were out of Manly in a few minutes.

But some dimwits from the Council decided to block that left turn without even asking any cabbie and since then we were in a perpetual war with every possible passengers trying to get out of Manly in a taxi from the rank. Since the taxi short cut was blocked, sometimes as long as ten more minutes and at least 5 bucks was added to the usual fare by having to go around so many blocks.

Understandably, everybody resented and they all wanted us to do a dangerous illegal U-turn right at the rank. The biggest cops shop in the Northern Beaches was right before the rank and if a nasty copper saw us doing it they often gave us a quick chase and a hefty traffic fine always followed.

“Can you go through Allambie Heights. Much quicker, I think,” the girl in the Cemetery Bitch T-shirt kind of ordered me as I was turning into Kentwell Road towards Allambie Road. She was now sitting in the middle of back seat and she seemed to know the area quite well.

“Shut up, Bitch. He knows where he’s going. He’s a good man,” the big boy beside me shut her up and asked me, “So, what’s your name, cabbie?”

I usually didn’t tell passengers my real name. So I lied to him, “Jack.”

“Jack, who?”

“Jack Oo.”

“Wow, I like your name. Very short one and sounds good. My name is too long.”

“Is your name very long like Longbottom?” I tried to be funny.

“Yeah, bingo. That’s exactly my name.” His answer shocked me.

“You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?” I didn’t believe him.

“Nope. My real name is Longbottom, Damien Longbottom. Nice to meet you, Jack.” He then pulled out his wallet and produced his driver license with that name on it.

“Shit, I was just kidding. Sorry,” I apologized to him after a quick glance at his license.

“That’s okay.”

By that time we were almost at Frenchs Forest Road and the Parkway was just around the corner. “So what’s the reason for the long detour?” I tried to satisfy my curiosity.

“Nothing much. I just want to show my new friends how scary the dark Parkway is at night. I’d been telling them we could even see a ghost or two,” the boy replied and laughed but it sent a cold shiver through my spine.

“Maybe that nun will hitch a ride with us, provided you were not bullshitting us all along,” one of the girls in the back seat interrupted and hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight again.

“A nun? This time of the night!” I couldn’t hide my fear any more.

“Yeah. Haven’t you ever heard of that legend, cabbie, sorry, Jack?” the boy asked me and I decided to play dumb.

“What legend, a ghost story?”

“Yeah mate. A visiting nun from Scotland was run over at the intersection where the church is, about 30-40 years ago. You know, there was another church well before the Christian City Church. She’s been hitchhiking the passing cars since.” By then I was gobsmacked as we were fast approaching the green light at the same intersection where I saw the green eyes ghost.

“Did she have green eyes?” I shouldn’t have said that as I immediately regretted the slip of my tongue to a group of strangers.

Now was their turn to be gobsmacked as they all shut up and the boy was now staring at me like he was on the verge of freaking out on me. Only then I noticed his eyes were kind of a deep green too.

“You saw her. You did see her. Didn’t you?” He alarmingly asked me and I just nodded.

“Yes she did have green eyes, like me. But not many people know that and you know that, unbelievable. Tell us, tell us about that!” the boy demanded.

They all kept on asking eagerly and finally I had to tell them all about my first and only encounter with a ghost.

“You should meet my sister. I am calling her now. Just give me a minute.” He then pulled out a late model Nokia out of his black long overcoat pocket and started dialing. I could hear the faint ringing tone at other end but nobody picking it up.

“She isn’t there. But I’ll definitely tell her about you.”

“So, what is it about your sister?” I asked him.

“She’s been so obsessed with that nun for a long time now since she was at primary. She is my big sister, 6 years older. We were originally from Glasgow and she thought we were in a way related to that dead nun. I still remembered, at one stage she drove with me in her car on this road, up and down, almost every night at around midnight for about six months just to look for that bloody nun. I was only twelve then and she used to scare the living shit out of me.”

They got off at the Domino pizza at Narrabeen after coercing me to give him my mobile number. I gave him a false number and sped out of there in no time. I didn’t drive for about two months to avoid them at the rank.

One strange thing about people’s memory was that nobody really remembers the cab driver’s face unless they saw him again immediately or many more times later. I didn’t want him or his weird sister come looking for me at the rank. But the two months time was too short for a determined person. I discovered that later when I started driving cabs again.

Green Eyes Girl

It was the first shift after my forced break. The freezing winter night was a very quiet one for us as the intermittent drizzle also kept most people at home and by midnight I decided to end the shift and go home early. As usual at the Manly rank, the long line of cabs reached almost to the end of coppers’ joint and I was at 5 cars away from the first cab.

As I was about to start the engine to get out of the queue I saw a tall figure in a hooded black long overcoat approaching the first car. He stayed at the window for a few seconds and then moved down to the second cab. After a few more seconds he walked down to next car and finally reached my passenger side window. He bent down from the waist and asked me through the window crack.

Ghostly green eyes.

“Are you Jack?” He was not a man. He was a tall thin woman with deep green eyes now staring at me straight into my eyes. I immediately remembered that Damien and I knew straight away that she was his sister. “Nope, sorry. Ask the guys behind me.”

She didn’t immediately walk away from my window but still staring at me for a while. Only a few minutes later she continued her desperate search for me towards the cabs behind me. I looked at her in my passenger side rear view mirror till she disappeared. For a young woman she had a very narrow hip and broad shoulder like that tall skinny models on the catwalk. I started the engine and then the feeling of dejavu came in the form of that young woman suddenly opening my front door and swiftly seating herself beside me.

“You are Jack, I know. I’ve been looking for you over a month now. Please, I need your help, please!” she begged me.

“You are Damien’s big sister, aren’t you?” I couldn’t lie to her any more.

“Yes, I am. I desperately need your help!”

“So, how can I help you?”

“You have to take me to the exact spot where you met that nun.”

“You’re asking me too much, miss. Last time she scared the living hell out of me. I’ve promised myself I’ll never go there again alone.”

“Don’t worry, she didn’t mean to harm you or scare you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Trust me, Jack. She’s just sending a message through you. Okay, how about that, I’ll give you 100 bucks if you take me there, okay?” She waved a green plastic note at me and I couldn’t resist anymore for the night was so quiet I made only 50 for myself so far.

“Okay, just shut the door and put the seatbelt on. I’ll take you there.”

She did and I checked through the mirror to make sure that no copper was outside the station and then swiftly did the U-turn. Only at the middle of the road over the double unbroken line I saw a copper car coming up fast from the wharf towards me. It was too late and I tried to speed up but they saw me and quickly turned on the loud sirens after flashing their headlights at me.

“I am fucked now. Bloody coppers!” I swore aloud as I pulled over slowly into the kerb side lane, at the same time thinking about the dreaded 180 dollars fine.

“What’re you doing? Aren’t you taking me to the Parkway?” she alarmingly quizzed me as I stopped by the kerb.

“Don’t you see the cops? They’re now chasing me for doing an illegal U-turn! They always do to us, bloody coppers.”

“No! They are on their way to the beach. Nothing to do with you!”

She said that confidently and I didn’t believe her. But she was right. The cops didn’t even slow down as they sped past me and then slowed down only at the Raglan Street’s lights and carefully turned right towards the beach. Probably some fights broke out at the Steyne Hotel by the beach and they were needed there urgently. She looked at me and slightly smiled from the corner of her thin-lipped mouth like saying I told you so. I just floored the accelerator and in a ten minutes time we reached the Allambie road.

Only there I slowed down and tried to have a quick sideways glance at her. Under the black hood I could only see part of her blond locks and green jade earring on her right earlobe. I came from a jade country and I knew very well that the flawless big stone on her earlobe was a good quality jade with a rare deep green color.

Then I noticed the jade rosary beads on her right wrist resting on her thigh. It was quite common to see that kind of expensive Buddhist rosary beads back home, but the difference was that it had a silver cross dangling from the middle. A strange combination of two faiths, I reckoned. She also had a black scarf around her slender white neck. Except for her very pale complexion, there was nothing unusual about her.

We reached the Parkway and the traffic light was a usual green at the church intersection. I drove through and stopped at the spot well before the big gum tree. She turned her head with an asking look and I nodded. She first handed me the brand new 100-dollar note from her hand and took the rosary off her wrist. She then surprised me by opening the door and getting out of the cab.

“What’re you doing? Can you get back inside, please? I can take you home now!”

She bent down and told me to leave her alone there. As she was straightening herself back to the standing position the scarf around her neck became slightly loose and I saw a nasty ragged wound on her neck just below the jaw line and the sight of it frightened me to the bone. I immediately did the U-turn but stopped on the other side of the well-lit road worrying now that she shouldn’t be here alone in this deserted stretch of the Parkway in the middle of the night.

By then she was standing by the wire fence of the church compound. A bright mercury streetlight was right at the intersection and I could clearly see her face. I reversed back a bit so that I was directly opposite to her. When I looked at her again she stared back at me and her deep green eyes immediately reminded me of that nun in my cab. Her eyes were now exactly like that ghostly sad eyes and I didn’t dare to stand there any more.

But I could only drive off a short distance as the traffic light ahead strangely turned red and the green walking man was on again as if someone or something had already pressed the crossing button. As I stopped and waited I looked into the side mirror again and still saw her tall black figure standing alone by the wire fence.

Then the red man flashed and I drove off as the light turned green again. As the cab was speeding away from there I looked into the mirror again and I saw her still standing except now she had a company of tall white figure with a nun’s head-dress standing beside her. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the side mirror as I was trying to tightly hold the steering wheel in my now shaking hands.

Up the hill and within a few minutes I reached the brightly lit Warringah Road intersection. There were many cars on the main road and it kind of calmed me down and gave me time to think clearly without fear. Now I knew that I shouldn’t have left her alone there and I bravely decided to go back there and take her home even if she still refused.

I did the quick U-turn at the lights and drove real fast back to the spot. From the distance I couldn’t see her there and it worried me extremely. Once I reached and stopped at the spot I tried to look around without getting out of the cab. There was no trace of her and I didn’t really know what to do next. Then I saw a Manly cab with its beaming light coming up from the opposite direction.

Once he saw me on the road the cabbie flashed his headlights like asking me if I was okay. I flashed back and then I noticed a reflection from the grassy ground ahead. I got out of the cab and walked up there and saw her jade rosary beads with silver cross lying in the mildew covered short grass.

“Are you okay, mate?” The other cab with a group of passengers inside stopped and the familiar Aussie driver yelled out from his window as I was picking it up from the ground.

“Yeah, I am fine, mate. Thanks. I just lost something here earlier. Don’t worry, I’d found it now. Just go ahead. I’m going too,” I yelled him back as I was getting back inside my cab.

He left me and I immediately did a U-turn and followed him. I filled up the LPG tank and returned the cab to the base earlier than I supposed to and caught a bus back home to Dee Why. Before going to bed I nicely placed her jade rosary beads in front of my small Buddha statue at home and said a prayer for both of them. It reminded me of her every time I looked at it. I was even thinking of going to the cops and reporting the whole thing but gave up the idea later as nobody with a right mind would believe my ghost story and me.

But I always looked out for Damien or his girlfriends among the Goths at the wharf for I really wanted to know if his sister was okay after all. I even searched the local White Pages for the Longbottoms and found their number. But whenever I called that number I just heard the out of service automated message from the Telstra lady. Luckily I ran into the Cemetery Bitch girl on the evening exactly a week after that night.

Cemetery Bitch

Manly Wharf  'Poo' Fountain.

At that evening I was dropping an old lady at the wharf when I saw her sitting idly with her Goth friends on the Poo Fountain created by some wise guys from the council as a mist spraying water fountain right in front of the busy wharf. It was supposed to be a snail like seashell structure with a water vapor emitting feature, but it looked more like a huge pile of freshly warm steamy shit from a distance and now the locals called it Poo Fountain. I couldn’t stop rushing towards her once I finished helping the old woman out of my cab.

“You are Damien’s friend, aren’t you? Don’t you remember me? I once took you guys to Narrabeen by the Parkway!”

“So, what’s your problem?” She didn’t sound too friendly at all.

“I just want to see Damien. Don’t you have his number?”

“Damien’s been gone for over a week now. His family’s gone back to Scotland.”

“Really, how about his sister? She’s gone back to Scotland too?”

“No. She died last month.”

“That’s impossible. She was in my cab just last week!”

“Are you kidding? She killed herself last month. That’s why they’ve moved back to Glasgow.”

Now I remembered that nasty wound on her neck under the scarf. She was hiding the rope wound from me not to frighten me. I said thanks to the girl and came back to the cab but turned back and asked the girl to confirm my now nagging thought.

“Did she hang herself?”

“Yeah. How did you guess? Damien found her hanging from a beam in the garage. Real bad stuff. Okay, can you leave me alone now?” Her Goth friends were now staring at us and she didn’t like it at all. Knowing an ethnic cabbie wouldn’t be cool for a Goth, I guess.

“Can I ask you one more? Just one!”

“Okay.”

“She had a green rosary beads with a silver cross around her right wrist. Have you ever noticed that on her?”

“Yeah. That rosary was her favorite jewelry. A Buddhist monk gave it to her when she was backpacking in Thailand. Damien put it around her wrist to be cremated together with her body. I saw it at her funeral service.”

Sometimes you could do difficult and complex things without consciously knowing what you were doing. That was exactly what I did that evening after hearing her last words. I rushed back to the cab, turned the taxi light off, sped through the heavy traffic, and reached Dee Why in less than 15 minutes. I pulled over by the kerb near our flat and ran up the six flights of stairs.

After opening the door I rushed into our bedroom where the small statue of Buddha was. Buddha statue was still there calmly sitting in a lotus position on the small wooden throne atop the bed-side drawer but the jade rosary wasn’t. It was gone. Completely vanished without a trace.

Just a couple of hours ago, before I was about to start my night shift, I saw it there and I even touched it with my own hand. Now it was gone, probably forever, and I didn’t understand why. Why me? Why not somebody else? I was just trying to make an honest living in such a harsh world and two bloody ghosts crossed their paths with mine for no apparent reasons at all.

I couldn’t force myself to continue driving that night. I just put all credit card dockets in the pay-in envelope and returned the cab to the base with the excuse of being sick in the stomach. Old Frank back at the base wasn’t too happy but he still let me get away one more time. That night I said a long prayer for both of them before I went to bed and someone from the above gladly answered my prayers a few months later.

Parallel Universes

I didn’t drive for a while and a month later I had to start again, as I badly needed money for the coming rent. A couple of months past without any incidents and I was almost forgetting my encounters of ghostly kind, when I randomly picked up a middle aged woman in the dark near the Quarantine Station at North Head.

At that night, I got a radio job just before midnight to pick up a night duty doctor at the Manly Hospital. So I went up the hill along Darley Road and stopped at the hospital entrance. But, to my disappointment, nobody was there and then I remembered a Combined cab drove past me from the opposite direction while I was coming up. Some thieving city cabbie had stolen my fare and I had to go back to the rank empty handed, bastard. I entered No-Passenger code M3 into the radio screen and drove further up to do the U-turn.

The Darley road beyond the Manly Hospital had no streetlights for some reason. As I was doing U-turn in the dark I heard the high pitched voice of a woman calling me aloud. She was walking towards me on the dark road and I was glad that I had found a fare. She rushed up to the stationary cab, opened the back door, and quickly sat down on the back seat.

“Phew, lucky me. I thought I had to walk all the way down to Manly to catch a cab. Did you see me or just dropping someone at the hospital?”

“Not really, I was just doing U-ee and you called me out. So, where’re we heading now?”

“Oh, sorry. Could you take me to Palm Beach please? Is it too far for you?”

“No, not at all. I loved going all the way to Palm Beach, especially in a very quiet night like tonight.” I was a happy cabby now as the trip was worth almost 50 bucks.

I turned towards the beach and followed the coast heading for Dee Why through a back way. From Dee Why I could get onto the Pittwater Road and after that it was a straightforward drive all the way to the end. As I was driving I started a conversation just to keep me awake, as the destination was almost an hour away.

On long journeys, I always tried to talk to the passenger otherwise I could fall asleep easily at the wheel. That was the peril of working two jobs to be able to pay the bills as my wife was then doing an accounting diploma at the Brookvale Tafe and all four of us were living on my income alone.

“So, how did you end up at the North Head in the middle of the night? Just wandering to meet a few ghosts!” I tried to be funny at the lady in blacks quietly sitting in the back seat by the window.

“Kind of, but I had to pay 25 bucks and all the taxi fares to hopefully see a few ghosts.”

“Really, now I know. You went on the Ghost Tour inside the old Quarantine Station, didn’t you?”

“Clever man, you’re right. But I didn’t see any ghost tonight, quiet disappointing.”

“So you are in that sort of stuff, like supernatural and paranormal stuff!”

“Kind of. Actually I am a professional psychic and a clairvoyant. I also teach and research about paranormal activities.”

“That’s interesting, and you live in Palm Beach. You must be making tons of money reading people’s mind.”

“Oh, no, I was just staying with a friend. I came from Byron Bay. I had a practice there. Have you ever been to Byron Bay?”

“Yes, I was there on the way to Gold Coast, a few years back. It’s a nice place.”

“Yes it is, especially by the beach. People are friendlier there too. Sydney is a big smoke and so full of snobbish people.”

“I agreed, especially in the North Shore suburbs,” I quickly seconded her words. After that I stopped chatting and started concentrating on my driving as I had now reached on the wide Pittwater Road.

“So, have you ever gone on that Ghost Tour?” she asked me.

“Nope, I didn’t really believe in ghosts before and probably that tour was just a waste of money unless you’re really interested in the nocturnal lives of early immigrants.”

“You didn’t before, but you believe in ghosts now. That’s what you meant?” She was very smart and immediately picked my tongue slip. I turned around slightly and tried to catch a quick glance at her face in the dark corner of my cab. She definitely had a kind of face and composure that any one would have trusted her on first meeting. May be she wasn’t really bullshitting about her profession as a practitioner of paranormal stuff.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. I didn’t believe in them ghosts until a few months ago. But now, I really don’t know what I believe in. I am in a state of gigantic confusion since I had them ghosts in my cab,” I honestly explained to her and sighed with a relief. Probably I badly needed to empty my chest.

“So you had a ghost in your cab. How did it happen?” Now she was visibly excited.

“Not once, twice. First time, she was right where you are sitting now. Second time, she sat beside me for almost half an hour.”

“Jesus, are you pulling my leg or you’d really meant what you just said?”

“That’s okay, if you don’t believe me. No one with a right mind would believe me for what I went through.”

“No, no, sorry, I believe you. I myself had a few experiences. Why don’t you tell me your story, if you don’t mind, I really love to hear ghost stories?”

So she persuaded me and I told her everything in half an hour on the road between Collarroy and Bungan Head. She didn’t say a word during my story and commented only after I finished the whole story.

“I’ve heard a similar story in Northern Queensland long times ago and I could explain to you easily about your encounters.”

“Please go ahead. Why me, why not somebody else?”

“The first time was probably a rare coincidence, just a random event. But the second time was deliberate. You basically became a doorway to other universe.”

“Other universe? I thought we have only one universe! The one we are in now.”

“Not really. There are many parallel universes in any given time frame. You see, all that beliefs about reincarnation in Buddhism and purgatory in Christianity. These are all based on other universes parallely happening with our physical universe. We as a physical being can’t really exist in these parallel universes, but our souls can. That’s where the ghost or tortured souls, whatever we called them, temporarily stay before they move again into a physical being for existence.”

By then we were already on the narrow and winding Barrenjoey road.

“That is totally out of my depth. Any way, so why were they bothering me the way they did?”

“For some unexplained reason, I don’t really know, your universe crossed her universe and you met the nun. Probably you have a sixth sense ability, who knows!”

“So, if what you said was right, that young woman killed herself and then she used me to get into the nun’s universe, unbelievable!”

“That’s what supposedly happened, I honestly think. Any way, our world is full of strange things other than we are able to sense with our physical ability. You just have to have an open mind and try to understand and accept the fact that paranormal things exist around us.”

“So, will it happen to me again?” I asked her.

“Yes, it can, the door has already opened,” she replied. “Oh my God,” I cried.

“May your God have mercy on you! Can you slow down please? Okay, just stop there by the street light coming ahead!”

That was the last exact words she told me before she gave me a fifty dollar plastic note for the forty-five something dollar fare and then vanished onto a steep concrete stairway, amidst the thick brush, down towards a group of cliff-faced houses on the shore of dead-calm Pittwater. I never saw her again.

That night was the last shift I ever did for the Manly Cabs. Next day I quitted the jobs and gave a two weeks notice for the Dee Why flat. Now I live in real Blacktown of the Western Suburbs and drive part-time for the good old TCS again in the City and never see a ghost again.

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