BNPS.co.uk (01202 558833)
Pic: SirEricYarrow/HistoryPress/BNPS

As the terrain deteriorated, vehicles were immobilised to prevent the Japanese making use of them.

The haunting accounts of British soldiers and civilians who were forced to flee Burma 75 years ago when the Japanese invaded have come to light in a new book.

Nearly half a million mainly British and Indian civilians embarked on an arduous trip north, predominantly by foot, and about 50,000 people died along the way.

Terrified refugees trekked hundreds of miles across some of the harshest terrain in the world to escape from the Japanese who had a fearsome reputation.

Historian Felicity Goodall has family who were among the refugees and her father Liuetenant Stephen Goodall served there in the Royal Engineers in the Burma campaign from 1943 to 1945.

He has rarely spoken of his ordeal which left him suffering nightmares for years, so Mrs Goodall has sought answers by trawling through the diaries of British soldiers who were stationed there to tell their harrowing stories in her new book Exodus Burma.