BURMA campaign veterans Madge and Basil Lambert will raise an emotional toast to Field Marshall William Slim’s ‘Forgotten Army’ this weekend on the 75th anniversary of VJ Day. Here, author Robert Blair, tells their story…

It is a weekend which will revive golden memories of  how a beautiful young English nurse captured the heart of British Army captain from Horsell, after a chance meeting in Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal in 1944. Madge and Basil were just 21 years of age.

Madge is keeping her fingers crossed that once the Coronavirus epidemic is over she can return to her exercise regime in the gym near to where they live on the South Coast and Basil is desperate to resume his swimming activities. They are now 97 years young!

Basil was one of five brothers and a sister who grew up in Horsell. All responded to the call to arms. They served and fought in confrontations as far apart as D-Day in northern France to Saigon in Vietnam. Bill, Buster, Beryl, Basil, Brian and Bob all survived. Father Herbert had served in France during the First World War.

Madge was born in Dover, but it was only after 5,000-mile voyages on troop carriers from Gourock on the Clyde that their paths crossed in Chittagong.

For Basil, a Luftwaffe bombing raid on the Vickers Armstrong aircraft factory at Brooklands near Weybridge on 4 September 1940, was his short, sharp introduction as a 17-year-old to the brutality of the Second World War.

At Brooklands, Vickers Armstrong was building Wellington bombers, while the Hawker factory was producing Hurricane fighters, when 13 Bf110 fighter/bombers closely escorted by about 25 Bf110s fighter aircraft attacked.

More than 400 workers were injured and 87 died in a raid that lasted just a few minutes. Basil’s elder sister Beryl was employed as chauffeur to Vickers chairman, Hew Ross Kilner.

Ironically it was also a Luftwaffe raid on Dover that set the teenage Madge Graves on route to the Burma campaign because mum Lilly moved her and younger sisters Doris and Doreen to the relative safety of High Wycombe.

Madge trained as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at Stoke Mandeville Hospital before responding to a plea from Louis Mountbatten, Commander in Chief, South East Asia, for more nurses to serve in the Burma campaign. 

In addition to nursing seriously injured Allied troops, postings to a casualty clearing station on the front line in the Arakan and working in a Japanese prisoner of war ward were among Madge’s assignments in the Burma campaign.

She still smiles at the memory of her first meeting with Basil when the handsome young army captain with a natty Clark Gable moustache failed to stand up to greet her – a heinous crime in those days! The story brought the house down at their 70th wedding anniversary in 2018.

Madge retired after serving as an NHS nurse from the 1950s. She is now just one of 12 surviving women entitled to wear the coveted Burma Star on her left breast.

Basil retired after many years as a senior executive with United Newspaper. He also found time to captain Esher rugby club before becoming treasurer, then chairman and president.

A book, Some Sunny Day. A nurse. A soldier. A wartime love story, has been co-written by Robert Blair and Madge Lambert. It has ben published by Pan Macmillan.

If  you have some memories or old pictures relating to the Woking area, call me, David Rose, on 01483 838960, or drop a line to the News & Mail.

David Rose is a local historian and writer who specialises in what he calls “the history within living memory” of people, places and events in the west Surrey area covering towns such as Woking and Guildford. He collects old photos and memorabilia relating to the area and the subject, and regularly gives illustrated local history talks to groups and societies. For enquiries and bookings please phone or email him at: [email protected]