I made a post about 'Rana Derane' (On the Battlefront), a book written in Sinhala by Wimal Weerasinghe, who served as a British army soldier in World War II back in 2010. Wimal later became the editor of the Lankadeepa newspaper. He served in second line units and saw no combat, but his account of the  time he spent in Egypt and Allied occupied Italy makes for fascinating reading. I have read no other book which provides such insights into the silent war waged between the colonised and their British masters. In Italy, some of the Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) soldiers were practically waging a terrorist war against the British.

The book has many passages of literary merit. A few years ago, I decided to translate this book into English. However, due to the obtuseness of the late author's eldest son, I wasn't able to publish it.

Looking at my first blog in 2010, I can see that quite few people were interested in it (I posted the first chapter in Sinhala). Here's the translated chapter. I shall post the other chapters if readers  show enough interest.

Translator’s note:

 

I remember that Wimal Weerasinha’s ‘Rana Derane’ was first published when I was either in my Ordinary Level or Advance Level class back in the 1970s. I eagerly bought a copy because of an  avid interest in military history. It turned out to be a very different kind of book, different from the accounts of combat experiences written by Western or Soviet writers. Wimal Weerasinha was not a front-line soldier. Rather, this is a unique chronicle of a political consciousness forged in resistance to the imperial power that he was serving in uniform. In any case, it is the only first hand account of life as lived during wartime written a Sri Lankan, were all written either by non-combattant journalists (mostly foreign) and a few senior army officers.

 

Apart from that, the book can be read as a work of literature. The book is full of insights and accounts of daily life in Bombay (Mumbai), Egypt and Italy. What he tells of his experiences mixing with Italian civilians is of especially good writing quality. It is indeed surprising that this book, and its author (who became a Times of Ceylon journalist and wrote a book of short stories as well as several translations) have been almost forgotten. No Sri Lankan literary figure writing either in English or Sinhala within my acquaintance has heard of him or this book. I hope this translation goes some way to redress that injustice.

 

Author’s foreword

 

I wanted to live because of her. I knew she would be desolate without me. If not, I wouldn’t have returned home without teaching a lesson to at least a few of those British officers who maltreated me. Whether my anger was justified or not, her helplessness was the one factor which ensured my return home safe and sound.

 

Thanks to her, I lived to reveal how the British treated their subjects in the colonies.

 

I present this book to my love and  wife Wimala who anxiously awaited my return during three and a half years. She inspired me and gave me the patience needed to write this book. Besides, I owe my life to her in no small measure. That’s why this book is dedicated to her.

 

n  Wimal Weerasinha

 

“Joining the Army”

 

I joined the military  because of poverty. I had absolutely no need defend the so-called democracy of the British by joining the army and risking my life to fight German Nazism, Italian fascism or Japanese imperialism.

 

At a time when unemployment ran very high in the country, the British imperialists were able to enroll thousands of young men in the army to fight in the Second World War.

 

After three months military training, I managed to get a weekend off. While returning to the training camp after my holiday, a tyre burst in the vehicle I was travelling. As this would cause a delay of several hours, and since I never considered such occurrences to be bad luck, I took a bus to Colombo and then boarded another to Kirulapone. Once back in camp, I saw that many of those who went home for the weekend had come back.

 

After waking up on the morning of October 4, 1943, I saw the camp encircled by a special guard. Thinking nothing of it, I went as usual for breakfast after my morning ablutions. There was a sign on the dining hall’s notice board ordering all those soldiers who had finished their training should pack their bags and report to the training section.

 

“Looks like its our turn now,” a friend said while applying butter on a slice of bread.

 

“Much better to leave this country,” I said.

 

“Why? Don’t you like Sri Lanka?”

 

“Like? I prefer to get out and die rather than lose face without a job and be humiliated.”

 

“I feel like creeping through the barbed wire and hiding,” my friend said.

 

“Why, are you afraid to go?” I asked him. He just smiled.

 

I returned to the barracks. The corporal of our section informed us that we should report to the stores, and we did so. We were given warm clothing, which included a huge overcoat weighing about twenty pounds, three shirts, two undershirts, woolen trousers and foreign underwear.

 

At sundown, we stood in formation in our uniforms. Our new clothing was packed in our bags. Lorries, driven by soldiers still undergoing training, stopped in front of us, and everyone boarded them. Altogether, about six hundred soldiers got into thirty lorries, which then left in military formation.

 

The friend who had chatted with me in the camp was now standing by a roadside shop, dressed in a sarong with a towel wrapped around his head and watching the lorries pass by.

 

“The man who was going to die abroad has escaped through the barbed wire,” I told a friend sitting near me.

 

“He managed to save his skin?” the friend asked me.

 

“No idea. Doesn’t matter if he’s going to live forever,” I replied.