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     The country of Burma--now called Myanmar--is still a mystery. Few books have been written about it since World War II. I lived there with my family for three years--from 1962 to 1965. Burma Journal is based on the 70,000 word journal I kept while working as the communications officer at the American Embassy in Rangoon. It concentrates on the humor, frustrations and joys of living in a country where men wear skirts and women smoke cigars. It also covers my family vacation trips to Sandoway and my two trips to the fabled city of Mandalay.

     White smoke suddenly poured from the DC-3's right engine as I sat in a window seat watching cloud formations high over the jungles of southwest Burma. Then came a loud snap and I saw a piston poke up through the engine cowling. The propeller hung motionless.

     I knew this two engine DC-3 could fly and land on one engine but it was no consolation. I began strapping in my two sons, aged two and three. My wife Mitzi and our Burmese nanny, Risha, had already fastened their belts. Risha was holding our third son, nine-months old Steven. I glanced around the cabin. Ethnic Chinese, Burmese and Indians were buckling in as the flight attendant moved down the aisle. I could see the look of concern and fear on their faces. We were the only Westerners aboard.

     The plane bounced around the sky as the Burmese pilot of this Union of Burma Airways flight struggled to compensate for the loss of power and trim it for smoother flight. Americans often joked that the airline's acronym of UBA meant "U're better afoot."

     This was 1963 and Burma was still using surplus DC-3's for its internal airline. We were returning to our home in the capitol city of Rangoon from a vacation at a remote beach on the Bay of Bengal. It was located near the Burmese city of Sandoway in Northwest Burma.

     The pilot finally came on the intercom and said we were returning to the "airport" at Bassein where we'd make an emergency landing. Risha was getting air sick from the turbulence. Mitzi took Steven from her arms and got her a pillow and an airline convenience bag. Always calm under pressure, Mitzi reacted to the engine loss with calmness and logic that would put some men to shame. After seeing that I had the boys' seat belts fastened she was trying to make Risha comfortable.

     I'd known tense moments during my Navy service on submarines. Even on peacetime patrols, submarines are tricky to control and heart stopping moments were common. I don't think anyone ever masters fear but you learn how to control it and still keep your mind and body alert and functioning. My immediate job now was to reassure my two young sons.

     "These old DC-3's are safe as houses," I said to Peter and Mark. "They can fly and land on only one engine." They smiled weakly and looked out the window at the frozen prop and below it the endless carpet of green jungle.

     I settled back into my seat, said a quick prayer to St. Christopher and closed my eyes. My mind went back to Baghdad where Mitzi and I first met. When I'd arrived there in January 1959, Mitzi was the secretary to the economic officer at the American Embassy.

     My Foreign Service career as a communications officer had kept me jumping around the Middle East for more than two years. In 1957, I'd spent two months in Tehran and three months in Amman. In 1958 I'd arrived in Beirut on the last commercial airliner before American military Globemasters filled the airport and U.S. Marines landed on the beaches. President Eisenhower had ordered in the Marines to support the Lebanese government. Ten days later commercial airliners began to fly again and I headed for Jidda for a month. And then back to Amman, where British troops stabilized King Hussein's country just as the US Marines were doing in Lebanon. I stayed in Amman until December 1958.

     I'd extended my two-year tour for six months to help out in the crisis. Now things had settled down. By January 1959, I was ready for home leave. My bachelor apartment was on Larnaca Road in Nicosia, Cyprus. For two years, however, I'd hardly been there long enough to finish a bottle of the local Aphrodite wines.

     The request for me to fill in for two months in Baghdad had come as a surprise. The job I was asked to fill was several grades above mine.

     "It's not a question of being qualified," my boss had said with a wry smile, "it's a question of being available."

     So, I took a week's leave in Beirut on the way. The Marines had departed and Beirut once again served as the Paris of the Middle East. Had I known I'd be spending nine months In Baghdad, I'd have celebrated a little harder in Beirut.

     We were short handed in Baghdad. During the first month I hardly came up for air. Then the workload leveled out. Cable traffic between Washington and the embassies in the Middle East rose and fell according to the political situation. For the first time I could plan on an evening for myself.

     Six months before, all of the dependent wives and children of embassy employees had been evacuated to Athens because several Americans had been killed in local riots. All that remained were male and female staff people and a small group of Marine guards that serve as internal security in all overseas embassies.

     Working hours conformed to local customs so the embassy opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 2:30 p.m. After work, most of the single embassy staff headed to a local swimming club that boasted two Olympic-size pools. It also had a formal dining room and several satellite bars around the pools. For the dining room you had to wear a long-sleeved shirt and tie--it was just too hot for jackets. The bars and dining room closed at midnight but the pools were open 24-hours a day.

     Two months stretched to three and then I was being extended on a month by month basis. The Iraqi government had put soldiers around our embassy and generally gave us a hard time. The Iraqi's also refused to issue visas for staff rotation.

     As a former lifeguard and swimming instructor, I found the pools were made to order for me to relax and get to know the single embassy secretaries. One of the better looking ones, named Mitzi, always seemed to need a ride someplace just as I was leaving. Then came the dinner party invitation to the house she shared with two other secretaries.

     A leg of lamb was slowly cooking in a large electric roaster. Sheep were a staple in the local market so you learned to like lamb and mutton or go hungry. The large roaster however, put a strain on the fuse box and the house was soon plunged into darkness. The ever-ready candles were lit and I took one and headed for the large wooden fuse box on the outside of the house.

     The large porcelain fuse holders used thin wire stretched between two screw heads. They were a cinch to change if you had no fear of the geckel lizards that scattered when you opened the fuse box door. I changed the fuse and became an instant hero as the lights returned and the leg of lamb began to sizzle again.

     Anyone who could cook a leg of lamb that well deserved to be taken to the best restaurant in town. And that's just what I did--over and over again. In the coming months, Mitzi and I sampled almost every restaurant in Baghdad and returned repeatedly to the best of them. The El Mena and the Lake Lucerne were our favorites. One had several decks like an ocean liner and the other had hidden alcoves for private dining. We also visited the hanging gardens of Babylon and the famous Arch of Tesafon.

     In July, during a midnight swim at the club, I proposed. We planned to be married in her hometown of Sheboygan but we could not set a date because of the uncertain arrival of my replacement.

     The Iraqi government's slowness in issuing visas for new arrivals was compounded when sudden illness or other personal emergencies had stopped those who did get one. As a result, I was still in Baghdad when Mitzi's two-year tour ended in September. She'd been assigned to the Embassy in Sao Paulo but resigned because of our forthcoming marriage. My new assignment to Santiago came and went as I waited for Washington to get my replacement into Iraq.

     When I saw Mitzi off at the Baghdad airport, all she had was a suitcase with her homemade wedding dress and a promise that I'd follow when I could. If a woman ever had faith, this had to be the time. Fortunately, my replacement arrived two weeks later. I was off to Nicosia, then home through Europe as Mitzi had done.

     Mitzi was fluent in Slovenian so she traveled through Yugoslavia on her way home. To her surprise, she was mistaken for German when she spoke in Slovenian. It was then she realized her parents had taught her Slovenian with a German accent.

     When I'd flown to Nicosia three years earlier, it had been on a four-engine DC-6B that took 16 hours from New York to the Azores. Now I flew from London on one of the first British Comet jets. New York was only seven hours away. An American custom official duly noted my three year absence and welcomed me home with a sincerity that was never equaled in the next 11 years.

     In Sheboygan, Mitzi's relatives and friends wined and dined us. We were married on a cool and rainy day, the 24th of October 1959, in a church overlooking the Sheboygan River. After a wedding breakfast we headed for the Black Hills of South Dakota. After a brief visit with my mother on her ranch north of the Black Hills it was back to Washington for two months for what was known as "consultation." That's a Foreign Service euphemism for training and orientation for your next assignment.

     With all the delayed departures and extensions, the only assignment available now was Nicosia, so that's where we headed in January 1960.

     A planned stopover in Lisbon gave us time to visit the shrine at Fatima in northern Portugal. In 1960 there was only one curio shop and it was hard to find because it was discreetly located a block or so from the wide plaza in front on the shrine. We purchased rosaries and lace scarfs for close relatives. The silence around the shrine was impressive. It was certainly not as commercial as the Holy Land. Our hopes that it would remain that way were smashed in later years when friends described it to us after their visit in 1975.

     In Athens, we stopped to see Mitzi's roommate from Baghdad. She gave us a whirlwind tour of the city. Finally we reached Nicosia where we moved into a transit apartment and began looking for a house. We settled for half of a lovely new duplex near the Larnaca Road police station in Nicosia.

     The island has two mountain ranges with a fertile plain in between. The 7,000 foot Troodos Range provides skiing and some spectacular scenery. In the north lies the 2,000 foot Kyrenia Range. It provides a setting for St. Hilarian Castle, now an historic site run by the Department of Antiquities. It once served to protect the harbor at Kyrenia which it overlooks.

     Cyprus became fully independent in August 1960. The British kept only their military bases. The National Organization of Cypriot Combatants, known by its Greek acronym EOKA, had gained the islands independence from Britain but not "Enosis," (Union with Greece) for which they had fought. Now it was safe to travel anywhere on the island. Our two year stay proved to be the island's only peaceful time until the 1980's.

     Years before, in October 1956, when I first arrived in Cyprus, the British and French were using the island as a staging area for their short-lived Suez invasion. Centuries before the crusaders from Europe had done the same for their assaults on the Holy Land.

     The staging for the Suez invasion was being done at the same time that British civilians, police and soldiers were being gunned down in the streets by members of EOKA. Ledra Street, the main shopping area in the old walled city of Nicosia, became known as "murder mile." One American had already died when a bicyclist threw a pipe bomb into an open cafe door. The bomb had exploded under his table.

     Americans were not a target so we were eager to be identified as Americans. We avoided doing anything or wearing anything that might lead to our being mistaken as British. Americans who smoked pipes for years suddenly switched to cigarettes. Loud sport shirts became the uniform of the day. One camera hanging around your neck was not enough. Two or three would insure quick identification as an American. (Today you'd be mistaken for a Japanese tourist.)

     The roads were mostly paved but extremely narrow and winding by American standards. On narrow country roads cars meeting from opposite directions had to pull onto the shoulder to clear each other by a safe distance. Once you'd mastered driving on the left, it was something else to pull to the side quickly when oncoming traffic suddenly appeared. Add to this the British Army's penchant for surprise road blocks on blind curves, and you could have an exciting drive just on your way to work.

     Two taxi drivers and their passengers died in a hail of automatic weapon's fire in separate incidents when their brakes failed at the crucial moment. It didn't take long for all the island's cars to have brakes in excellent working order, including mine.

(Author note: The story quickly gets back to the plane's emergency landing and the families return to Rangoon. The rest of the book is about daily life for an American family in Rangoon.)