Sunken flotilla

I looked in utter disbelief at what we were doing. It was a supreme

act of denial

AMID Japanese apologies, Alister McCrae views the Campsies from his

garden at Killearn and recalls a part of his life which will forever

haunt him with bitter-sweet memories.

For this sprightly 86-year-old represents a breed of Scots who found a

career in colonial Burma with the remarkable Irrawaddy Flotilla, the

greatest river fleet in the world.

It was a Scottish company which plied 650 ships up and down that

jugular vein of Burma, but found itself, in the Japanese invasion of

1942, ordering staff to scuttle its beloved fleet.

Alister McCrae had gone straight from Glasgow High School to work for

the Clyde shipping company of Paddy Henderson, whose Victorian bosses

founded the Irrawaddy Flotilla as a sister company. For bright young

men, the ambition was to be transferred to the magic of the Orient.

By 1933, McCrae was in that enchanting land of pagodas, one of 25

Scots on the executive staff, with 200 more as officers on a fleet

largely built by Denny's of Dumbarton. The flotilla had a total staff of

15,000.

From Rangoon he was promoted to take charge at Mandalay but, by 1941,

with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Rangoon was now being bombed.

The reigning boss of the Irrawaddy Flotilla was the ebullient John

Morton, son of a Glasgow baillie, who had to face the crisis that the

Japs would soon be invading.

''The 48 Armoured Brigade arrived and General Alexander flew in for a

last desperate effort to save Burma,'' Alister McCrae recalls. ''But not

even the future Field-Marshal could perform miracles. It was time to

evacuate the civilians, including my wife Margaret and young son Graham,

who reached Darjeeling.

''Rangoon was deserted but I remained with a small group known as the

last-ditchers, whose task was to get our ships up north,'' he says.

The British Army was in full retreat, however, and the men of the

flotilla found themselves ferrying the troops first across the Irrawaddy

and then its tributary, the Chindwin.

''We knew we were trapped and I was terrified the Japs would get us,''

McCrae remembers. ''We knew what might happen but didn't know till later

how bad the atrocities could be. The Japs were just hours away as we

ferried the troops.''

Then came the traumatic experience of a lifetime for anyone who served

the Irrawaddy Flotilla -- the order to scuttle the fleet so the Japs

wouldn't get it.

Imagine the heartbreak of John Morton, as revealed in his diary on

April 28, 1942: ''We are being chased out even quicker than expected.

Imagine how I felt drilling holes in the ships' bottoms with a Bren

gun.''

Morton had sent McCrae to take charge on the Chindwin, where there

were more ships to be scuttled. In all, they sent 550 to the bottom.

Ironically, among soldiers helping with the destruction was Eric Yarrow,

whose family had built some of those vessels on the Clyde.

''I have not got over it to this day,'' Alister McCrae told me. ''I

looked in utter disbelief at what we were doing. It was a supreme act of

denial. By the time the monsoon was over the ships would be silted up

and not recoverable by the Japs.''

McCrae made his escape and joined the Indian Army. John Morton flew

home to Glasgow, already planning his new flotilla and, by November

1942, had set sail for India -- on a ship that was never heard of again.

With victory over Japan, McCrae returned to Burma: ''We thought we

might have a few years but the nationalists had completely taken over.''

The Attlee Government had promised independence and McCrae, who was

now in charge in Rangoon, was soon told that his beloved flotilla would

be nationalised. There was nothing for it but to say goodbye to that

land of charms.

He rejoined Paddy Henderson in Glasgow, became senior partner and

rounded off a distinguished career as chairman of the new Clyde Port

Authority -- a man with a mixed memory of horror, humiliation and a

great deal of happiness, lingering still from those distant days of the

British Empire.