An officer and other ranker of the 2nd Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) operating as Chindits in Operation Thursday: Burma, 1944
“We were still held up and it was decided to call up some of the Black Watch column which was behind us to help out. Imagine our amazement when we heard the sound of the bagpipes, followed in a few minutes by bayonets-fixed Jocks who went down the track towards the Jap positions with the piper giving forth with all his might. The lads charged, screaming and so on, and the Japs took off. I strongly suspect it was the pipes that frightened them, not the bayonets.” (“A member of the Yorks and Lancs”, Jocks in the Jungle)
Like other regiments of the Chindit expeditions, the battalion was split into two columns, 42nd and 73rd. From March to August 1944 men of the 2nd Black Watch would operate in the Burmese Jungle, behind Japanese lines, dealing with the monsoon, malaria, typhus, dysentery, malnutrition, and the stresses of combat. By the later months of the campaign the average man would weigh 145lbs, while carrying 70lbs of equipment on him. The assessment of the 14, 111, and 3rd WA brigades in August showed out of the 11,200 men total only 3,400 remained. With a majority of those gone evacuated or soon to be.