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Major Edward (Ted) E G Warland

26 August 1907 - 14 December 1972

Ted Warland (my father) was already in the TA when the Second World War was declared and was obviously immediately called up. He joined the Royal Army Service Corps and was posted for training to Oswestry before being sent out to India in February 1942 (where he had spent his early childhood) for further training for the reinvasion of Burma. This was firstly at Dehra Dun, then on the Khyber Pass before chasing the Fakir of Ipi around the Punjab. He was with the 20th India Division, under Major General Douglas Gracey for the Burma Campaign and returned from Rangoon in October 1945 with the rank of Major (Lt. Col.). He contracted dysentery and tuberculosis in the jungles of Burma and was never very fit thereafter, dying of emphesema in December 1972.

However, his sense of humour brought a number of amusing stories out of the jungle, though, along with most servicemen, he would never talk about the really serious incidents or events.

He married my mother, Cynthia Gray (see under Cynthia Warland) in 1936 and I was born in 1940. I didn’t remember my father when he returned in 1945 and deeply resented this ‘new’ presence in my mother’s life until one day he ‘returned to Burma’ as I had been exhorting him to do. This gave me a bad fright and it was never mentioned again!

~ Mrs Moira Morley