Ahead of the 80th anniversary of VJ Day on Friday 15 August, Kenilworth Nub News is sharing a short series on the town's connections to the Second World War and the war in the Pacific. The town will mark VJ Day with a short service at the Abbey Fields war memorial at 11am on Friday.

This latest feature comes from former Mayor of Kenilworth Cllr Alix Dearing.

My father Gordon Leonard Truman was a Corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

He served with the 82nd West African Division, 3rd Gold Coast Regiment, fighting in Western Burma.

He was in charge of Commonwealth soldiers, recruited from Nigeria, and Indians recruited en route to Burma.

It was thought that West Africans could tolerate the Burmese tropical rainforest conditions better - including Bilharzia and Malaria - although my father said that all the recruits lived in the city of Lagos and had never seen a jungle. 

In the words of my father: "In the jungle at the Pegu Yomas River we dug our slit trenches side by side on the bank with machetes which broke the soil and a mess tin scooped it out, so in the course of our stay of two weeks it became five feet long and three feet deep.

"A general arrangement developed: we moved by day, the Japanese by night. 

"Fresh water was essential in that heat."

My father was tasked to look for fresh water at night – a very dangerous undertaking indeed.