Corby war hero who is 'last of the Leicestershire Chindits' celebrates 100th birthday

A Corby war hero who is the last living member of an elite Chindit regiment will celebrate his 100th birthday today (Friday).

Charlie Richards was called up to serve in 1942 to the 7th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment and was picked to be part of the special operations Chindit troops.

He spent months behind enemy lines involved in jungle warfare and now he is the last of the Leicestershire Chindits, the sole survivor of the two, thousand-strong battalions that saw action against the Japanese Imperial Army in Burma (now Myanmar).

He said: "In 1942, I was sent an offer I couldn't refuse - my call up papers."

Mr Richards was born in Dundee and his mother travelled from their Kettering home to Scotland to ensure his birth certificate would bear her homeland's name.

After attending Rockingham Road Infant School and Park Junior School, he went on to Stamford Road Senior School until he was 14 when he left to work in a shoe factory. After a year, he left to join a firm of builders as a plumber's mate.

At the time of his call-up he was a regular at the now-demolished Waggon & Horses pub in Kettering town centre where he was on nodding terms with another patron, Harold 'Son' Johnson.

Nineteen-year-old Charlie and Son received matching buff-coloured envelopes on the same day with call up papers to the regiment.

Charlie said: "We went together right through the war. When he got married I was his best man."

Sporting a regimental tie and surrounded by his proud family, including wife of 71 years Jean, Mr Richards has a keen recollection of the events in the war.

From training camps in England, Charlie and his regiment travelled by boat from Liverpool via Freetown in Sierra Leone to Durban in South Africa, heading to Mumbai (then Bombay) and on to pre-partition Karachi.

Charlie said: "They sent us on a rundown, rat infested boat. There were ants in the bread but we had ten months in Karachi and it was heaven. The barracks were in the city centre and we'd get a rickshaw to the cinema."

He also played many sports including hockey for the regimental team and athletics events which helped keep him fit for the ordeal he was yet to face.

In 1943, Charlie and his pals were told they were to be part of Brigadier Orde Wingate's special fighting force the Chindits and began training.

The Chindits were British empire troops who carried out guerrilla-style operations in Burma, a British colony, taken by Japanese troops in 1942. The Chindits raided deep behind the Japanese lines to disrupt supplies and communications in a bid to recapture the country.

Slogging through dense jungle-covered hills, carrying packs and equipment that weighed about 70lbs (32kgs) in temperatures of up to 43C, the men had mules to help carry their equipment.

Charlie said: "The mud was that thick that the mules slid down the side of the hill. You had to go back down to help them. The rain was something else."

As part of Operation Thursday, they were heading to a base run by American forces to provide air support dropping them in the jungle behind enemy lines to hold a fortress dubbed White City, straddling a main railway supply route.

Wandering around in the allied base before the 'off', Charlie came across an over-weight American glider pilot holding court over a group of open mouthed squaddies.

He said: "The American was describing how he had been to bed with Betty Grable, the film star who we all had drooled over on the silver screen.

"Such was our envy that our eyes matched the green of the jungle uniforms that we wore. It turned out that this gentleman was Jackie Coogan, child star from the ‘twenties’ and Betty Grable’s former husband. This was a marvellous touch of light relief before the ‘main event’."

The flyer that took them into the jungle clearing was a daredevil.

Charlie said: "All credit goes to those Yankee pilots. He landed on a makeshift airstrip marked out in an L shape with lights. The pilots knew where to fly - they could smell the dead bodies and all in the trees were the white parachutes, that's why it was called White City. We were there for six months, it had supposed to be three.

"The bread came in tins and it was blue - covered in mould. I said to Son at least if we get shot we've already had our penicillin. We ate it anyway."

After six months of foot patrols and fending off the enemy the troops left the fortress, booby-trapping it. After a while Charlie could hear explosives going off in the distance. His regiment then headed for another fortress, this time 'Blackpool' but the rain came and grounded the air support including food supplies.

Charlie said: "We went ten days without food. When we finally got food they treated us with tinned fruit, tinned cream and a good tot of rum."

Progress through the jungle was tortuous and when they hitched a ride on a troop train it was involved in a head-on crash.

Sent back in India in 1945, the Chindits had been disbanded and Charlie's regiment was training and preparing for an assault.

He said: "It was breakfast time and we were waiting to be served. The chef came running up shouting, ‘It's nearly over! It's nearly over! the Yanks have dropped summat called an ‘atomic' bomb. It was the heartiest meal I'd ever had."

Sadly Charlie's best friend Son never made it back to Kettering. He was killed in action.

He said: "One minute he was there, the next he was gone. It was the hardest thing I ever did was to tell his wife that he had been killed."

Finally demobbed in 1947, after a stint in Germany, Charlie returned to the UK and back home in Oakley Street.

He said: "It took some time to adjust."

Instead of returning to the shoe trade, he eventually signed up to work at Stewarts & Lloyds steel works in Corby where he was in charge of explosives.

In 1948 a Christmas drink at The Talbot Inn in Meadow Road led him to meeting his wife-to-be Jean Althorpe, a footwear model. Stood at the bar, he offered to buy her a drink.

She said: "I thought he was very brave to ask - I was with my whole family - I was very impressed straight away."

They married at the Fuller Baptist Church in 1950, moving to Corby in 1952 for a bigger house to raise their family - son Lindsay now 69, and daughter Ginny, 65.

Sports mad Charlie played for Kettering Casuals Cricket Club and was an ardent Poppies fan, travelling to matches with Lindsay and then grand-daughter Jemma.

He said: "On my 80th birthday I was invited by the then-chairman to a match as a guest. I told him how when I was small I used to crawl through a hole in the hedge to watch matches for free. I also worked there when they had the greyhound races looking after the dogs."

After being made redundant when the Corby Works closed, Charlie and Jean enjoyed their leisure time gardening, searching out interesting antiques and spending time with their family. But it was not until Jemma McCallum started asking him about his war service that Charlie got back in touch with his old regiment.

Jemma said: "When I was younger I obviously knew grandad had fought in the war but he never really talked about it to me. It wasn’t until about nine years ago, he mentioned something about his time in Burma and I started asking questions.

"When I asked why he hadn’t told me this before I remember him saying 'you need to have an audience to listen'. From that moment I have definitely been his audience.

"It’s been amazing over the last few years for grandad to reconnect with his regiment and see the joy that brings him.

"He is as bright as a button and a real character. I think especially having children makes you realise how important it is for these stories and memories to he heard first-hand and appreciate we won’t have that option forever.

"As much as his war years were such a huge part of grandad's life my standout childhood memory will be our Saturday afternoons at Rockingham Road in the Britannia Road stand watching the Poppies week in week out."

Charlie and Jean will celebrate his birthday with their family with a long weekend of parties.

As well as their children Lindsay and Ginny, Charlie and Jean have grandchildren Jemma, Suzie, Melissa and Richard with great-grandchildren Ella, Freddie, Max, Louis, Josh, Lola, Austen, Izzy and Abbie.

He said: "We have been so lucky with the family we've got. They are all such nice people. We take life as it comes."

And Charlie's secret to a long life? He said: "It's one word. It's just pure luck."

The 7th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment were selected as the only non-regular Battalion for General Wingate’s Chindits. Read about Operation Thursday here.