‘We must remember all those who didn’t return’

DENNIS Toseland, 96, had trained to drive Bren gun carriers – tracked, armoured vehicles with a crew of four which offered vital support to ground troops through the light machine and anti-tank guns they carried.

However, he landed in the humid jungles of Burma in 1944 only to be told that all the vehicles of his carrier platoon had been lost in the jungle.

“So I joined the infantry,” said Dennis, from his home in Kettering, last night,

“I hadn’t been in Burma long when five of my pals were killed,” he remembered sombrely.

“We had just had a meal down below on the beach at the Irrawaddy bridgehead, eating out of our billy cans, and we were going back up to the trenches when they were hit by a Japanese whiz bang [a high-velocity shell]. I got hit by shrapnel on my helmet, but it didn’t go through, so I was really lucky. It’s still hard to talk about, I was one of the lucky ones – the lads just didn’t have a chance.”

Fighting alongside the 8th Field Gurkhas, they made slow progress battling through villages.

He said: “At night the Japanese would call out English first names. They wanted to draw us out, so we knew we had to be careful.

“One night we heard some Japanese nearby. I stood up to investigate and the Gurkha I was with put a hand on my arm and said he would go. I never

LOST PALS: Dennis Toseland was hit by a shell which killed six saw him again. It pains me to this day that I never even knew his name. It could so easily have been me.”

He adds: “What struck me was that the Japanese were just the same as us, they didn’t want war any more than we did.” A longtime supporter of the Royal Britain Legion, he carried the Standard on Remembrance Day for 20 years but could not attend yesterday’s events. He said: “I couldn’t be there, I can’t move around as much as I used to. I’m very sorry to have missed it. I think this will be the last proper remembrance of our efforts against the Japanese.

“But people must continue to remember, for the sake of all those who didn’t come home.”