615 Squadron - Journeys Through India and Burma. From the Collection of Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell
Captioned, "Comilla Dec 1942." This is one of the photos reproduced in a Beckenham newspaper after Bill encountered his old friend Eric Ackermen by chance on the streets of Comilla.
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
The second photo reproduced in a Beckenham newspaper after Bill encountered his old friend Eric Ackermen by chance on the streets of Comilla.
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
Captioned, "Comilla December 1942."
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
Captioned, "The Brahamaputra."
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
Captioned, "Kohima Manipur Road 1944."
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
Captioned, "Kohima Manipur Road 1944."
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
Captioned, "The Road Going Down the Hills."
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
Travelling by Train, India. Date and location unknown.
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
Captioned, "Some of the Boys."
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
Captioned, "The Road to Chie Hill Station."
Walter James "Bill" Tyrrell via Allan Tyrrell
We are grateful to Allan Tyrrell for these photos from the collection of his Father, Walter James “Bill” Tyrrell, one of 615 Squadron’s riggers.
We don’t know the exact details of the journeys undertaken by Bill and his fellow servicemen, but F/Lt. John Greenwood travelled from RAF Jessore to Army 4 Corps, Imphal, while he was with 615 Squadron and his route seems to coincide with some of the places snapped by Bill on his travels.
John recalled that he travelled by train from Jessore to the Brahmaputra, where he boarded a boat at Miranshah and went up the river for two days. Their destination was a little village called Gauhati which was the beginning of the railhead, where they caught a narrow-gauge train to Dimapur. From there, they travelled about 100 miles by road through the mountains and Kohima to Imphal in an army truck driven by an Indian driver. Greenwood described the ride as, “awe inspiring but frightening,” with precipitous drops of 1000ft on both sides of the road.
Contributor
Allan Tyrrell Reference number
KRP0251 License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC-BY-NC-ND)
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