Burma Jack Quotes

“The Forest Department started operations by girdling the selected trees in the forest. We girdled the bark right around, about three inches in, stopping the flow of sap and causing the trees to die where they stood. The idea was to leave girdled trees standing for three years because green teak is too heavy to float and gets waterlogged. The dry tree floats. So teak cutting worked by stages: some men would be girdling new trees while others were felling the trees that had been girdled three years before.”
― Jack Girsham, Burma Jack

“At the end, Id report to the authorities that no more trees worth felling were standing there—and that was when an inspector came around to check. His main concern was whether any marketable timber had been missed. That didn’t mean simply that the big trees had to be down, for the inspector went over the stumps, taking measurements to see that no tree had been sawed too high up, leaving marketable timber untouched. There were strict tables specifying length, girth, and volume—the minimum girth, for instance, was four feet six inches—and if you cut an inch above the prescribed level, leaving that much marketable timber on the stump, you were fined.”
― Jack Girsham, Burma Jack