"Colonel Charles Mercer, who has died aged 105, took part in Operation Thursday, the codename of the second Chindit deep-penetration expedition into enemy-occupied Burma. In 1943 Mercer, then a second lieutenant, was posted to Nigeria. He joined 7th Battalion, Nigeria Regiment (7 NR), at Kaduna, about 600 miles north-east of Lagos, and commanded a platoon of 30 young Nigerian soldiers... ..Charles Henry Mercer was born in Brighton, Sussex, on November 14 1919. He was educated at Collyer’s School at Horsham in Sussex, and left aged 17 to work in a publishing company. On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, he enlisted in the Royal Sussex Regiment. After attending OCTU at the Royal Military College, near Sandhurst, he received a Regular Army Emergency Commission in March 1943. He was already engaged, and, three months later he married Joan Rice, who was working for Saunders-Roe, the aircraft manufacturers, on the Isle of Wight. He had a 10-day “wartime honeymoon” before he was posted to Nigeria... ...After six months’ training, 7 NR sailed from Lagos to Bombay before moving to Central Provinces in India, where they trained to join Major General Orde Wingate’s Chindit force. They lived in the open in all-weather conditions, practising ambushes, attacks, river crossings and silent movement, while carrying 70lb packs on their backs." Colonel Charles Mercer, one of the last of the Chindits who fought the Japanese in Burma
