Burma Air, Dusty Answer

An essay on the harsh conditions facing RAF pilots and their supporting personnel during the Burma Campaign.

Bates writes of dust that 'gives the whole landscape the appearance of being under a fine and desolate net', the luxuries of baths and tea, the lack of news of other campaigns, the paucity of fruit and other food, and lastly, of the courage and determination of pilots who 'in this vastly dusty and blistering campaign, and far away from your world of calm and coolness and comfort are giving their own dusty answer'.

A reference to 'the wrecked rice mills, warehouses, ships, houses and banks that were destroyed three years ago' (Rangoon fell to the Japanese in March 1942) suggests that this unpublished essay was written in 1945.

One of a number of unpublished typescripts found in a private collection, probably written while posted to Burma in 1945, (the others being Angel of Mercy; B.29 in Distress on Fire; and It isn't in the Book)