"Memories of World War II bloodshed surface in a trek" Topic

… across India

"Bakebonang Bariam, a farmer in subtropical Manipur state, in northeastern India, has been digging up relics for years in the rice and ginger fields of his hill village called Haochong.

"We never find bones," Bariam said. "Just these."

In his leathery palm lay two copper coins minted during the British Raj. The coins were blackened by the fires of shifting cultivation. There was a silver Indian rupee as well, dated 1943 and stamped with the bust of George VI, king of the Britons during the middle of the last century. None of the finds could rightly be described as treasure. They were more like memento mori—a currency of tragedy. The coins had been carried to remote Haochong in the pockets of men who had died horribly. Most of the doomed had been Nepali and Indian. A few might have been indigenous Naga villagers, like Bariam himself. One certainly was an adventurous Englishman who, on a lark, had driven from the United Kingdom to India in a 30-horsepower car. All were fighting for the British in World War II. Ambushed by a Japanese patrol, they had been captured, bound, and bayoneted to death or decapitated. Their bodies were dumped into a ravine above Bariam's fields…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand