A debt of honour: We need to secure the legacy of Britain's forgotten army

The Burma campaign, despite being one of the longest and most gruelling theatres of the Second World War, remains largely absent from Britain’s collective memory.

That is no accident. It reflects our Eurocentric cultural lens and the uncomfortable complexity of empire. Dunkirk and D-Day offer clean, heroic narratives.

Burma offers heat, jungle rot, and uneasy truths about how we mobilised hundreds of thousands of colonial troops for a distant war that history would later marginalise.

As a veteran of multiple conflict zones, I have seen how history shapes national identity. When we elevate some battles and erase others, we dishonour not only those who fought in Asia but also the millions who suffered through its campaigns.

The Fourteenth Army fought with great courage, but their story is absent not for military reasons, but political ones.

VJ Day represents more than a military victory; it signalled a decisive shift in global history. While some revisionist narratives focus on the Indian National Army (INA), which at its peak numbered around 43,000, that must be viewed against the 2.5 million-strong British Indian Army who fought for the Allies.

The Burmese National Army, once aligned with Japan, had already switched sides by 1944 to support the Allied effort. These facts matter. The Allied victory in Burma did not just end a war; it helped trigger the independence of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. It was a turning point in modern history.

And yet, Britain still lacks a major, state-funded effort to preserve every surviving testimony of the so-called Forgotten Army.

That is more than a national scandal; it is an abdication of duty. I have worked in countries where failure to preserve testimony leads to generational trauma. We are flirting with the same fate.

This is not just about dusty archives; it is about moral obligation. These veterans served in inhuman conditions. Their absence from our national memory, especially those from the Commonwealth, is not oversight—it is erasure.

Legacy is not secured through silence. Flypasts are not enough. Until our schools teach the Burma campaign and our memorials reflect the full breadth of our wartime alliances, we are failing those who served.

Britain’s memory is selective. We remember what flatters us. But the real test of national maturity is whether we can honor not just the easy stories, but the hard ones.

The men who fought in Burma did not ask for glory, only not to be forgotten. Let this be the last VJ Day where that request goes unmet.

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Richard Spence is a spokesperson for Veterans for Veterans and a former army officer.

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