WOII William Lewis

Willam Wyndham Lewis was the RAF Warrant Officer in charge of a unit of RAF personnel and associated equipment destined to join other military units in Thailand. Here is his account of the initial move and the first three months 5001 Airfield Construction Sqn spent at Crown Airfield.

We sailed out of Singapore on board the 'Empire Kittiwake' a cargo boat that was to take all our heavy equipment to Bangkok in Thailand. We sailed along the Malaysian coastline to Bangkok. From there we were to make an overland journey of approximately five hundred miles to a place called Mukdahan. After disembarking in Bangkok harbour, all the men and materials had to be organised to form a convoy of heavy vehicles and travel overland for the rest of the journey.This was hard with the men working until midnight and as we were scheduled to start our journey at 0400 hrs, had little time for sleep.

I soon discovered that sleep was far from what the men were thinking of, they were soon to sample the notorious night life of Bangkok. Imagine the problem the next morning, trying to 'arouse' the drivers in time to start the journey (there were no breathalyser tests for what they were suffering from). All I can say is, we were late!

The overland journey that we were to make would be in two stages, with a break at the American Army camp at Korat (now Nakhon Rachasima). It turned out to be long, arduous and eventful, mostly over rough rugged and in places what seemed unchartered territory, most of the way over sand tracks that had become deeply rutted. There were many bridges with bridge weight limits which in most cases were exceeded and completely disregarded.

We eventually arrived at our first destination having covered three hundred miles. The drivers having driven with very little rest, valued and eagerly accepted the hospitality that we were offered and I suppose come to expect from the Americans even abroad. We were to spend three days here to recharge our systems in preparation for the second three hundred miles. We started the final part of our journey heading for our ultimate destination - Mukdahan.

We started with a better understanding of the travel ahead, from our experience of the first leg of the journey. The country and terrain were similar to what we had driven through, but we travelled a considerable distance on a good road which was referred to as the 'American Highway'. Later we reverted to the more basic kind of road with ridges that seemed like those on a corrugated roof and covered all over with an inch of dust, this resulted in each vehicle driving in a cloud of dust from the vehicle in front.

This made control from my point of view very difficult. Bridges and weights remained as inadequate as ever, they all had to be negotiated one vehicle at a time. We evenually reached our destination three weeks after leaving Singapore and in spite of all the difficulties, the convoy arrived with all the vehicles intact. We had come to Thailand to join other military units of mainly the British Army, to construct an airfield. I soon discovered that as an RAF Warrant Officer I would be attached to, and be part of, an Army unit.

I was the senior of three Warrant Officers and as such was landed with a fair amount of the appropriate responsibilities, including the charge of a hundred machine operators that consisted of - British Army, RAF, Australian and New Zealand military. Quite a mixture!