A Poignant Imphal Archive

Today, I have become the custodian of a rather special group of items; the medals, letters and photographs of a soldier of Second Suffolk who was killed during the attack upon ‘Issac’ - a Japanese hilltop position north of Imphal on 7 June 1944.

I saw recently that the medals of Private Sydney Bax, a twenty-two year old soldier from Bow in East London, were coming up for sale at auction and after much pooling of funds, I was successful in acquiring them and today I went to collect them from the auctioneers.

It is a small, but hugely interesting little archive. In addition to the official notifications of death and correspondence on his headstone, there are also airmail letters written by Sydney to his mother, father and his brother - then serving on HMS Birmingham in the Mediterranean, along with letters from his service in the UK before he was sent to India to join Second Suffolk. An airmail to his mother was also included, dating from late 1943, written from the BBRC (British Base Reinforcements Camp) at Deolali, where he was posted upon arrival in India and from where he joined Second Suffolk in Arakan in early 1944.

Perhaps the most poignant item was his last letter home written to his mother on 11 May 1944 where he told her that he had worked out that he should be released from the army and be home by Easter 1946. Tragically, he was killed just four weeks later.

Included was a letter of condolence from his Company Commander, Captain P.B. Forrest, to his mother, recording that her son was buried on ‘Isaac’ where he fell in action. Later his body was moved to the CWGC cemetery at Imphal. His fountain pen is also thought-provoking. Possibly the one that he wrote the letters home with, perhaps it was sent back home to his mother having been recovered from his body?

It really is a fascinating trove of information on a casualty of the Burma campaign, one that I would have dearly welcomed when I wrote my Burma book.