BEWDLEY’S Private Bill Hurst, of the Worcestershire Regiment, wrote a letter to The Shuttle from Burma on September 8, 1944.

The letter was never printed and Mr Hurst was killed in action on January 8, 1945. A relative of Private Hurst came across the letter recently and sent it to The Shuttle. This is an extract from the letter:

“ONE thing that sticks in my memory was the advance from Plesana to 53rd Milestone. We had done a rapid cross-country march up and down mountains to get to the village.

We got to the village in the morning and started to dig in when we were told we were going to do a night march to open the road at 53rd Milestone.

A Japanese-held village would be bypassed and mopped up in our rear by other troops.

We could see our objectives from where we stood, a distance of no more than six miles, but getting there was not so easy.

We set off in single file at 20.00 hours. It was a lovely night with a glorious Indian moon, a cause of great disgust at first but of tremendous comfort later.

Our track led along a ridge and then dipped steeply into the jungle.

The moon didn’t help as we stumbled and slipped down the muddy track, scared stiff of losing contact with the man in front.

We came upon a dead Japanese across the track - not frightening in itself, we had seen too many. But it caused problems when, after he had been moved to the side, the rear company with stretcher bearers and the Royal Army Medical Corps came rushing along, having already lost contact.

The leading man saw the figure on the side of the track, concluded he had caught up with the battalion which was resting and sat down beside the dead Japanese. He had been talking for some time before he realised.

Eventually, the column rejoined and we proceeded at a much slower pace. The track got narrower and steeper and the jungle more dense.

Whispering sounded like shouts and the queer creaking of equipment sounded thunderous.

As we got to the bottom of a steep cliff, you could hear the Japanese talking. The moon came out, our own noise seemed monstrous and every second we expected grenades to come rolling down amongst us.

With great relief we slipped past them. The night was also slipping past and time seemed of no account. The whole time the insect hoardes continued to do their worst - mosquitoes and tiny midges which bit like red hot needles. They nearly drove us mad.”