From Kew to Kayin State

Article by Thomas Kean

His war had been longer and more notable than most. After enlisting in early 1939, Sydney graduated from the Sandhurst military academy in July 1940 and became a commissioned officer with the Sherwood Foresters that November. Over the next five years, he was sent to North Africa, Spain and Portugal, the Middle East, Italy and later India, Sri Lanka and Burma. Noted for his logistical and operational skills, Sydney had risen to lieutenant colonel, and would later that month be awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE). Sydney had emerged from an unimaginably bloody conflict largely unscathed. The war in Asia had ended the previous month and the visit to Burma, to debrief soldiers recently freed from Japanese prisoner of war camps, was one of his last missions. Civilian life held much promise. Sydney and his wife Eunice were expecting their second child in November and he had lined up interviews for a number of potential jobs abroad, including in South Africa and Canada.

But like so many combatants, he would not return home. The Dakota, carrying 16 people – four crew, seven army passengers and five Royal Air Force personnel – was immediately pummelled by the bad weather that can strike during the unpredictable late monsoon period. It struggled to a low range of hills to the northeast of Yangon, on the edge of Kayin State, before being hit by lightning and crashing into mountains near Mewaing, a

remote village on the road between Papun in Kayin State and Bilin in Mon State. News that the plane had disappeared only reached Eunice a week later, and it was not until January 1946 that reports reached Rangoon confirming the crash. After the plane went down, locals, together with a British officer, had buried the remains of the men beside a Buddhist monastery in Mewaing. The three photos the officer took, showing neat rows of crosses in a shaded compound, were passed to Eunice and the other relatives, ending any hope that they would see their loved ones again.

The hidden wartime history The photos were among just a handful of possessions – the OBE, a wallet with Sydney’s initials and the Sherwood Foresters emblem, and a silk parachute – that linked Gavin Wigginton to the father he never knew. There was little to suggest his wartime exploits went further than the official records revealed. Throughout Gavin’s childhood and adult life, Eunice rarely talked about her husband, except to say that he was a man Gavin should be proud of. When she was diagnosed with cancer in 2002, however, she agreed to let Gavin interview her to create a record of her life. This revealed many previously unknown details about Sydney and sparked a desire to learn more. When Eunice died in 2009, Gavin inherited from her a small

Novice monks stand in front of the monastery in Mewaing, Kayin State, where the remains of the 16 men are buried. Photo: Supplied

locked metal box that contained a range of intriguing items about his father’s life, including papers that referenced unusual wartime activities. In 2013, Gavin, who had migrated to Australia in the 1980s, visited the National Archives in Kew to find out more about Sydney, including why he had received the OBE. The two successive days he spent in the archives “opened a door on my father’s life which was a total surprise”, Gavin told The Myanmar Times in a recent interview. In 1942, Sydney had been recruited into the Special Operations Executive, an undercover organisation of some 13,000 men that conducted operations behind enemy lines, including supplying resistance groups and waging propaganda and sabotage campaigns. An expert in logistics and air operations, he had lived in Cairo, southern Italy and Calcutta during the war. Many of the documents, including the citation for the OBE, had only been declassified decades after the conflict ended. His OBE citation spoke glowingly of an officer who had “outstanding qualities of far sightedness, initiative, and clear thinking” and had achieved remarkable success. One example cited was his role in organising the evacuation of Tito’s headquarters – totalling some 150 men – from Yugoslavia to Italy with just 12 hours’ notice. Aside from details of his decorated military career, Gavin discovered a number of facts about his father’s life – and his own – that took him by surprise. His father had lived with a

guardian as a teenager, after his parents died. The reason for their death is unclear. The documents spoke of a brother, about whom nothing is known. At some points, they mentioned a Gavin Stewart, the head of the SOE mission in Calcutta in 1945. Gavin realised it was from him that his parents had taken his name, Gavin Sydney Stewart Wigginton. They had also inadvertently worked in similar fields. Sydney was an expert in organising complex air operations during the war, while Gavin specialised in operations research, a field developed during World War II, and has spent much of his life improving the efficiency of logistical systems. Gavin had always known that his father died in Burma. His research, however, revealed that the country, particularly Kayin State, was a major focus for SOE and Sydney. SOE was working to undermine the occupying Japanese by supporting resistance movements, including the Kayin – also known as the Karen – who were mostly loyal to the British. “The role of SOE, working in particular with the Karen people, in destabilising the Japanese authorities and operations, encouraging resistance, and preparing for the liberation of Burma cannot be overestimated,” Gavin said. As well as supporting the Kayin resistance, SOE sought to build up the Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO), formed in 1944 by General Aung San’s Burma National Army, together with the communists and socialists, to oppose Japanese rule. In 1945, a Kayin uprising to the east of the Sittoung River valley and AFO attacks to the west helped aid the advance of General William Slim’s 14th Army, which liberated Burma just before the monsoon