Details
Cairns was a lieutenant in The Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert's), British Army, attached to the South Staffordshire Regiment in Burma during the Second World War. The South Staffordshire Regiment was a Chindit battalion, part of 77th Indian Infantry Brigade under the command of Brigadier Michael Calvert. He was 30 years old when he performed the deed for which he was posthumously awarded the VC.
On the evening of 16 March 1944, the South Staffords dug in near what would become a main hinge of the Chindit operation, the block at Henu and Mawlu, known as the White City. A nearby hill crowned with a Pagoda dominated the horizon. It was not occupied by the British or, so far as those present could tell, by the Japanese. The following morning a number of unsuspecting Japanese soldiers were discovered in the area. It was plain that the South Staffords had dug in their positions adjacent to a small Japanese force without either learning of the other's presence. At about 11:00am, the hill erupted with enemy fire.
Calvert, who led the attack in person, wrote "On the top of Pagoda Hill, not much bigger than two tennis courts, an amazing scene developed. The small white Pagoda was in the centre of the hill. Between that and the slopes which came up was a mêlée of South Staffords and Japanese bayonetting, fighting with each other, with some Japanese just throwing grenades from the flanks into the mêlée." Calvert added, "there, at the top of the hill, about fifty yards square, an extraordinary mêlée took place, everyone shooting, bayoneting, kicking at everyone else, rather like an officers’ guest night."
During the attack Cairns was attacked by a Japanese officer who with his sword hacked off the lieutenant's left arm. Cairns killed the officer and retrieved the fallen sword before wounding several other Japanese. He subsequently collapsed and perished the following day. Calvert wrote, "n front I saw Lieut. Cairns have his harm hacked off by a Jap, whom he shot. He picked up the sword and carried on. Finally we drive them back behind the Pagoda.”
Lieutenant Norman Durant, commanding one of South Staffordshire Regiment’s machine gun platoons, was involved in the action on Pagoda Hill. He described the action in a long letter to his family:
“The first thing I saw on reaching the path was horrible hand-to-hand struggle going on further up the hill. George Cairns and a Jap were struggling and choking on the ground, and as I picked up a Jap rifle and climbed up towards them I saw George break free and, picking up a rifle bayonet, stab the Jap again and again like a madman. It was only when I got near that I saw he himself had already been bayoneted twice through the side and that his left arm was hanging on by a few strips of muscle. How he had found the strength to fight was a miracle, but the effort had been too much and he died the next morning.”
After a brief “intermission,” the Calvert’s forces broke the Japanese resistance, driving them from the area:
“The fighting had been not unlike that depicted un scenes from ancient battles in the closeness of the hand-to-hand grappling before the Japs finally broke. In spite of our casualties, we hard all that elation of the winners of a good battle, especially of a bayonet charge…I spoke to Lieut. Cairns before he died. ‘Have we won sir? Was it all right? Did we do our stuff? Don't worry about me.’ Five years later His Majesty graciously awarded Lieut. Cairns the Victoria Cross…We counted forty-two Jap dead, including four officers. More were shot and killed or wounded by our machine guns as they struggled across the open paddy, with the Japs giving them some covering fire from Mawlu, 800 yards across the paddy on to Pagoda Hill.”
Cairns's batman, Private N. Coales wrote "He died a hero."
Read more about this topic: George Albert Cairns
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