Film showing a battery of Priest 105mm self-propelled (SP) guns in action at Payagale, and Allied prisoners of war, freed from Rangoon jail, seen after having regained Allied lines at Pegu (Bago), Burma.

A 105mm SP Gun, Priest (M7 in US service) being reloaded. A gunner passes ammunition to another standing in the crew compartment. This crew probably of 18th (Self-Propelled) Field Regiment, Royal Artillery (part of 14th Army's artillery detached to IV Corps). The vehicle is named 'Docking'. A battery of Priests firing with 'Docking' nearest camera. Vehicles on the move. Priest battery firing in dusty conditions. Two Sherman medium tanks of 255th Indian Tank Brigade pass camera; a wooden building burns in the background. Lance Corporal Watson of 9th Battalion, the Border Regiment, escorts a blindfolded Japanese prisoner. Various shots of Allied prisoners of war, both British and American, posing for the camera. Allied servicemen look a Japanese prisoner of war (seen earlier?) confined in a small cell made of wood and wire.

Notes

The Allied prisoners of war seen here were part of some 437 men still fit to march who had been force-marched out of Rangoon jail on 25 April 1945. The Japanese intention had been to march them to Moulmein for shipment to other camps in South East Asia. However, finding their route cut off, the Japanese cut these prisoners loose. They reached British lines a few days later and were received by 1st Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, of 17th Division. Tragically, however, the senior officer of this party (a Brigadier Clive Donald Hobson, who had survived more than three years of Japanese captivity) was killed when a unit of Indian Air Force Hurricanes mistook the prisoners' khaki uniforms for those of the Japanese and strafed them several times; Allied troops at this time wore 'jungle green'.

For other film of Allied prisoners of war liberated from Rangoon jail, see related items.