A small airstrip is built at the remote village of Saizang, 8 miles south west of Tiddim, Burma, and British and American light aircraft use it to evacuate casualties, along with scenes of repair work underway in Tiddim.

View from a hillside overlooking Saizang. A memorial, apparently to a village headman, made of animal skulls. An inscribed stone decorated with carvings of men and animals. The stone bears a long inscription in English, legible in parts, but it is not clear to whom the stone is dedicated. View of the village and surrounding terrain. View of the airstrip with an RAF Taylorcraft Auster light aeroplane taxiing. The windsock. A parked Auster with another visible on the opposite side of the strip. Auster taking off. A United States Army Air Force (USAAF) Stinson L-5 Sentinel (serial 299150) landing. Close-up of the engine cowling showing the name 'Murphy's Mistress' and a nose art image of a scantily clad reclining woman (a dancing girl?). Sentinel taking off. Local people at work on the strip with hand tools. A Sentinel arrives. Three casualties, wearing paper tags, awaiting evacuation; a Chinese medical officer, named on the dopesheet as Captain E Q Lim, Royal Army Medical Corps, commander of 75th Field Ambulance, 5th Indian Division, inspects them. A casualty is put aboard a Sentinel; he is named on the dopesheet as Private J Davidson of Liverpool (2nd Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment). Auster Mk IV MT288 arriving. USAAF Sentinel 299399 arriving; it bears diagonal white stripes on its fin suggesting 1st Air Commando Group. Sentinel overhead. Sentinel 299416 taking off. At the nearby Tiddim village a local Chin carries a heavy-looking load of corrugated iron. A damaged building which has had its roof blown off; a local child watches. A briefing (?) nearby. Two local children. Captain P T Barton, the local Civil Affairs Officer, seen conversing with his interpreter.

Notes

Dopesheet gives the unit that the cameraman was attached to as 123rd Brigade, 5th Indian Division.

The USAAF 1st Air Commando Group was formed to support long-range penetration operations by the British 'Special Force' (the Chindits). The Group included fighter, bomber, transport and light aircraft squadrons. The pilots of the light aircraft in particular were enormously popular with ground troops for their willingness to land their aircraft in impossibly small spaces in order to evacuate wounded soldiers. For the service of the light plane force a Lieutenant-Colonel Boebel USAAF was awarded a British Distinguished Flying Cross, by Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Pierse, in a ceremony that can be seen in the film referenced below.

Anthony Brett-James' history of 5th Indian Division, a copy of which is held by the IWM's Department of Printed Books, states that this airstrip was 750 yards long, and had taken the Engineers a week to build using three bulldozers. The destination of casualties flown out of Saizang was Tamu.