In Memory of GEORGE JOHN ARTHUR LANTAFF Private 5886295 1st Bn., Northamptonshire Regiment who died on Monday, 8th January 1945. Age 33.
Cemetery: Grave Reference/Panel Number: TAUKKYAN WAR CEMETERY, Myanmar 25. B. 2.
Burma (now Myanmar), was formerly part of British India. It became a separate state in April, 1937. During the Japanese occupation the civil Government functioned in India from December 1941, returning to Burma in October 1945. After the war Burma broke away from British rule and became a sovereign independent republic called the Independent Union of Burma, consisting of Burma proper, the Shan States and Karen States. Taukkyan War Cemetery is the largest of the three war cemeteries in Burma. It was commenced in 1951 for the reception of graves from four battlefield cemeteries which were difficult to access and could not be maintained; viz.: Akyab, Mandalay, Meiktila and Sahmaw. The last was an original “Chindit” cemetery containing many of the casualties from the battle for Myitkyina. The individuality of these battlefield cemeteries has been carefully preserved by grouping together in this new cemetery the graves from each. In addition, graves were also transferred from civil and cantonment cemeteries, and a number of jungle and roadside graves were brought in. 52 British servicemen who died during the years 1914-1918 have also been moved into this cemetery from Henzada Cemetery, Meiktila Cantonment Cemetery, Thayetmyo New Cemetery, Thamakan Cemetery, Mandakay Military Cemetery and Maymyo Cantonment Cemetery, where permanent maintenance was not possible.
Mac, as he was always known, was born on 10 November 1912 in St Ives. He left school at fourteen. In 1939 he married Mabel Tabbitt of Needingworth at St Ives registry office and they moved to 34 Church Street, Needingworth. He was working at the time at the St Ives chicory factory, where chicory was dried in the large ovens. In the summer of 1939 he joined the territorial army in Huntingdon with Mabel’s brother, and when called up in September he joined the Northamptonshire Regiment. He trained at Swindon and Barmouth, and served in County Armagh, managing to come home on leave every six months.
When he left for India in February 1944 it was his first time in a plane and his letter home described the turbulence. Mabel had not known where he was being sent. He spent time on leave in India before joining his battalion, flying by helicopter for the first time, and travelling many miles through mountain and jungle. His battalion’s experiences in Burma during 1944 are detailed in the following ‘Chronology of Events of the 32 Brigade’. The day of his death on 5th January 1945, is recorded as follows:
At 0900 hours on that day No 2 Company, with Lieut. Perkins’s platoon from No l Company attached, moved from the area at the southern end of Hlwede where they had been with Battalion HQ. Lieut Stoddart’s platoon led the way, and about an hour later, when they had reached the bund, Capt. Cherrington wirelessed that H-hour should be 1015 hours.
Brigadier W J Jervois M C, History of the Northamptonshire Regiment (1953: London), p. 295.
At that hour supporting fire was brought down by mortars and a 6-pounder anti-tank gun. The Company moved forward, with some interference from Japanese grenade-dischargers but without casualties, and by about noon Lieut. Bacon’s platoon had attacked and taken the area of the large temple south of the lake. Lieut. Stoddart’s platoon then passed through them, with the large water-tank as their objective, but after they had gone fifty yards came under fire of a light automatic. Lieut. Stoddart and one of his men were killed, and the platoon were held up.
By now the rest of the Company had come up and consolidated a position just east of the water-tank and commanding it, and after an hour’s firing by a l.m.g. and snipers, the enemy’s activity ceased…
Towards dark a Japanese who attempted to reach the body of Lieut. Stoddart, lying in the open, was shot. The Company’s casualties had been 3 killed, and 6 wounded.
Marion and Faith were only aged four and one at their father’s death. Today,[1999], they live near to their mother in Needingworth. In November 1985 Mabel went to Burma and Singapore as part of a War Widows, Veterans and ex·POWs pilgrimage from the UK paid by the British Government. She was well looked after and very impressed by the grandeur of the Raffles Hotel, Singapore, in which they stayed. They were later wined and dined at the Rangoon embassy, but many were shocked by the poor Burmese villages.
At the Rangoon cemetery there were 6,400 graves and a memorial for the 27,000 missing. Mabel wrote a diary of her experiences for her family, recording that when she first saw his grave in Rangoon;
…all the years rolled away, I saw him as a young man of 32 when I waved him good-bye at St Ives station, little thinking I would never see him again….The few precious years I had with him flooded before me….he was buried as the padre had written to me forty years ago, with his officer and a companion who had fallen in that first battle with him. His grave was in Mandalay then. Later when he was moved to Taukkyan cemetery they had buried him in exactly the same way, between his two comrades. That really meant a lot to me.
Mabel also found Captain Cherrington’s grave at the end of their row. He had been killed at Monywa, only days after writing his letter of condolence to her. All the members of the battalion had been buried together.
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