615 Squadron - Journeys Through India and Burma. From the Collection of Walter James "Bill" 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.