ONE of Yarnton’s best-known characters, Harold Lambourn, holder of the Burma Star, has died after a short illness. He was 89.

Harold Lambourn, right, was born in Little Blenheim, Yarnton, on April 9, 1920 and lived in the village for all but the last few years of his life, when he moved to Kidlington.

Mr Lambourn was a member of the elite Chindits during the Second World War and spent three years in Burma with the 2nd Leicester Regiment, having previously joined the Oxon & Bucks Light Infantry at Cowley Barracks.

The Chindits were trained to operate behind enemy lines and were supplied only by air. They became known as ‘The Forgotten Army’, harassing the Japanese as they retreated.

Mr Lambourn, who was awarded the Burma Star, was proud of his wartime service and regularly attended Armistice Day in St Giles, Oxford, and commemorative parades, where he would don his hat and medals.

He was a member of the Burma Star Association, the Chindits Old Comarades Association and the Royal British Legion.

Private Lambourn was 23 when he and 12,000 others marched into Burma from India in 1944.

His job was to look after one of the mules which carried all the supplies. The animals were so important that the Japanese would shoot them before targeting the men.

Remembering his service, Mr Lambourn said in 1997: “Often we had to march in mud up to our knees. There were places where it would take us two days just to get over a hill.

“There were times when water had to be dropped from planes.

“Regulations said the mules had to have the water before we did.

“The diseases were terrible. We were soaked through for weeks on end. We didn’t take our boots off for a month at a time.”

Keeping strict military discipline despite the harsh conditions was one of the the Chindits’ strengths but Pte Lambourn felt the force of that. He lost his machine gun in the field and was immediately court martialled in the field, and told he would lose two weeks’ pay.

Six months later after bitter fighting, Pte Lambourn was confident that would have been forgotten – only to find the penalty was already written in red ink in his pay book.

Mr Lambourn had various jobs in his lifetime, including work at Morris Radiators, Benfield & Loxley Builders and for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food as a drainage operator.

He leaves a son Nick, daughter Wendy and four grandchildren.