The expectation of a long and gruelling land war against Japan was firmly in the minds of British soldiers fighting in the Forgotten Army, but also those wrestling with the massive problems of how such a war might be supplied.

I wrote about this in the final chapter of my 2016 book,War on Wheels. Over the last two years I have researched further and have uncovered material which I include in my forthcoming book,Dunkirk to D Day.

Much of the material is personal, since it was in my father’s archive. In 1943, as Controller of Ordnance Service, Major General Bill Williams was asked by General Auchinleck to visit India and report on the Ordnance Services he found there. This is some of what he found:

There were ordnance bases spread right across the sub-continent from Bombay in the west to Calcutta in the east, and Madras…