Warwick Corporal’s 500-Mile Trek. Home now with bride. To offset the nightmare of a trek through parts of Burma and India which can never be effaced from his memory, a Warwick regular soldier, Corporal Arthur Thomas Giles, of the Gloucestershire Regiment, has brought home an attractive Burma born bride. They are living for the time being with his parents at 7, Crompton Row, Warwick. The story of a trek studded with adventure and horror was unfolded to a “Warwick Advertiser” representative by the young couple, who were married 17 months ago in India. The narrative begins in Prome, a district lying 100 miles from Mandalay. Cpl Giles was stricken with serving with his regiment and evacuated by hospital boat to Katha, in Burma. Famine stalked through the land claiming thousands of victims among the civilian population, who wandered from the scene as best they could. “Father” of the Party. One of the homeless was Miss Marie Eden, a school teacher, whose parents lived in Rangoon. Miss Eden, an evacuee from Mandalay, reached Katha with her mother and sisters and learned that they were to be transported by train to Myitkyna in another part of Burma. No train turned up and the Eden family began to trek to Naba, 14 miles away. This short distance was done by bullock cart, and on the way the Edens fell in with Cpl. Giles, who was also on the way to Naba. With the party, one of hundreds on the same errand, was another British soldier named Wright, of the K.O.Y.L.I. Regt., who succumbed to phlebitis as the result of a kick from the bullock. Cpl. Giles took charge of the Eden family and the party embarked on a journey of 480 miles through stricken villages, swampy grasslands and over mountains rising sometimes to 6,000 feet on a track lined with the dead bodies of soldiers and civilian victims of cholera and general fatigue. The party left Mrs Eden, at her request, on one of these mountain sides, and there has been no further word of her since. “Rations” from ‘plane. Footsore and barefooted (boots and shoes had been torn to ribbons on the rough path) and left with the scantiest of clothing, the Eden family and Cpl. Giles limped bravely on, living for the most part on plantains and drinking black tea dropped from far-away stations in India. Once, hunting for a package of rations dropped by a ‘plane, Cpl. Giles became lost in the jungle, but started a fire and eventually attracted help and rejoined his party. Leeches and sand-flies made life acutely agonising for the refugees, and leeches in human form appeared when the party were faced with the prospect of crossing the Irrawaddy. Two hundred rupees per head was the “baksheesh” demanded by Indians for the passage across the river. Bayonet as Carving Knife. Cpl. Giles and his charges now commenced the crossing of the cheering (!) “Death’s Valley” and the Yukong Valley, which proved to be a huge cemetery for unburied cholera victims. Food became a problem indeed and “Tom” blessed his Army training when he slaughtered a bullock with his rifle and was able to carve it with his bayonet. A menu of bullock steak filled in the following week. A little, a very little, departure from the bill of fare was obtainable when the weary travellers halted next at a planter’s camp, “stew with gravy” deputising for the bullock meat and proving not very noticeably different. Eventually, Marquerita was reached, and the camp here proved as comforting as its name. New clothes, days upon days of bathing and with periodic inoculation and rest. The journey was not ended even now. Train took the travellers to Dibrugarh, and at last Miss Eden fell to the malaria germ. She recovered and went forward once more, this time to Tezpur, and here learned that Cpl. Giles had rejoined his regiment safely on the Arakan front. On June 21st, 1942, Miss Eden and the few surviving members of her family arrived in India, and she became Mrs Giles in Madras on October 17th at St. Patrick’s Church. “Leafy Warwick” sounds o.k. to Cpl. And Mrs Giles. Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser, 7th April, 1944. Corporal Arthur Thomas Giles does not appear to have been reported missing during the retreat from Burma and does not appear in the official casualty lists. I cannot find any mention of his marriage in the British Army Overseas Banns and Marriages. His birth was registered in Warwick in 1916 and his death was registered in Coventry in 1993. He may have joined the Burma Star Association and may have been slightly confused about the spelling and order of his forenames. There is a mention of the Gloucestershire Regiment (Glos), but his service number is from the block of numbers issued to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, which would tie in with his home town of Warwick. The date of his death on the Burma Star form also ties in with Arthur Thomas Giles's death. The British soldier named Wright, of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, would appear to be 4690645 Pte. Goulding Wright, who died on the 11th May, 1942 and who has no known grave, being commemorated on the Rangoon Memorial. Marie Eden's name does not appear on the list of evacuees who arrived in India on the Anglo Burma Library website, but the list is far from complete.
