World: Road to Mandalay

British columns were winding deeper into Burma, strangling Japanese retreat lines, coiling around strong points. They worked their way down the coast of the Bay of Bengal, snaked along the Irrawaddy River, reached out for the gleaming pagodas of Mandalay.

In one central Burma village a character straight out of Kipling stepped up to meet the advancing troops. Regimental Sergeant Major Watts, Retired, of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, now deaf, blind and 88 years old, reported. He had spent 55 years in the British Army, 13 years in the Burma police, learned...

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