CULTURE

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When an officer told me I must report all suspicious people who came for treatment, I had to tell him I couldn’t do that; if he wanted such reports he would have to send soldiers to do it. And one day when the new division commander, Col Tun Sein, visited us and I tactlessly referred to "our" (i.e. the mission’s) leprosy villages, he testily told me that he understood what I meant, but I had better never forget that they were not our villages, they were Burma’s. He was right, of course, and I watched my conversation more carefully thereafter. The Army did indeed have some battles to fight, and sometimes sustained serious casualties. When the Chinese Kuomintang teamed up with Shan rebels, the Burmese Kachin Rifles regiment went into battle up near the Chinese border one Christmas. And the Shan rebels shot up our compound one night to draw the army away from the government hospital on the other side of town, while the rebels killed an informer who was a patient over there. Our area, Nawng Hpa Quarter, was featured in the nation’s newspapers next day as "the center of fighting". Sounded like it, too, at the time. One day, I had to go to Division Headquarters to fill out some papers. As my jeep entered the gate I heard someone roar out the Burmese equivalent of "Ten-HUT!" and a row of soldiers sprang to present arms. The colonel and his staff immediately appeared, expecting to find at least a general arriving. "Why, it’s only the mission doctor," I heard one say, and they went back to their conference. But at the head of the line of soldiers standing rigidly at attention, the sergeant-father of my little empyema patient grinned and threw me a salute. "And what did you think of the Myanmar people, Doctor? Are they as you remember them from former days?" asked General Shwe Aung. "I found them struggling, financially," George said. "But they are still the thoughtful, generous people they used to be, even in hardship. I have not had much contact with enlisted soldiers this time. The army used to be quite friendly with the hospital people back in the old days. But my Burmese friends tell me the situation has changed now, that an encounter with soldiers is something to be feared." "The duty of a soldier is to defend his country." "Yes, that’s the way I see it, too. That was what they did, back in those days." Keith Dahlberg is a retired physician. This article is based on his experiences as mission doctor in Burma from 1957 to 1962. The conclusion is an excerpt from his novel, Flame Tree, based on more recent visits to Burma.