大象传媒

This story is contributed by Norman Davies a navigator with 117 Squadron in Burma. It is added to the site with his permission.

Shortly after the bomb dropped, we were still flying sorties and word got around that the war was over and that there were all these prisoners of war....lots and lots of them in Bangkok waiting to be flown out. We had all these planes thirty or forty in the squadron ....we didn't really have to supply the army any more - we were free agents, so we thought: "When are we going to fly them out?" Every day for about two weeks we were briefed that we were going in the next day so would we please go to the NAAFI and, using our own money, buy as much chocolate, cigarettes, sweets anything, biscuits that we could carry so that when we got to Bangkok we could distribute it to the prisoners. But this didn't happen, every day they'd say 鈥淣ot today boys鈥�....then we'd hear it would be the following day....and this went on for about a fortnight. There was a rumour that Mountbatten wasn't very happy about getting the prisoners out he wanted to dot all the is and cross all the ts 鈥� but we felt it was easy enough to fly from Rangoon to Bangkok, it was only a two hour flight, we could bring them back. But nothing happened. Everyone was getting really cheesed off...the war was ostensibly over but nothing was happening.

Then on the night of the 2nd of September, a very good airman, Sqdn Ldr Barnard, decided to take the law into his own hands. His own three man crew was himself, Flt Lt Cuthbert, and Flt Lt Rae, they were a very senior crew. And Barney decided to hell with Mountbatten, to hell with everyone, he was going to fly to Bangkok and get some of these boys out. That night in the Mess he was talking about this and Cuthbert, his navigator, said 鈥淣o I won't have anything to do with this 鈥� it's unauthorised. You can't do it Barney鈥�. But Barney was determined to do it 鈥� his wireless operator said yes, he'd go. And then I was approached by Barney and asked if I'd go as his navigator.

Well when a Junior Officer is asked by a Sqdn Ldr you don't refuse him. I don't know if I really realised the implications of what he was doing. He said right we'd meet at two o'clock. At 0250 鈥� ten to three in the morning 鈥� we got to our plane, had to start it ourselves as there was no ground crew available....and flew off to Bangkok.

It was a night flight and took us three hours. We arrived at Bangkok just before six o'clock in the morning we taxied in to the hangars and there were all these prisoners of war 鈥� it was quite amazing - lying sleeping on the concrete out in Bangkok...they'd been there a couple of weeks you know. Obviously someone must have been looking after them but they were greatly disillusioned. So we did the best we could.

We distributed what little things we'd brought out with us, tried to chat to them and comfort them and we eventually were able to take out on that morning 25 of the ones in worst condition. They were emaciated ....and I thought they were cowed there was no exuberance there ...well lots of them had been prisoners for a very long time, since the fall of Singapore in 1941/42 and they were very, very quiet.

I made myself known to them as a Welshman 鈥� of course I was known to my crew as Taffy 鈥� and I went round and I met quite a few, some of them came up and one of them was a Major Green from St. Dogmaels in Cardigan who had been captured in Singapore and had been a prisoner of war for many years. And we had a chat about Cardigan, and then this little chap came up and he said he was from Llanfyrnach in Pembrokeshire, which is not far from Cardigan so I had a chat with him and I told him I was in the bank in Cardigan and I said 鈥淎re you married鈥� and he said 鈥淵es...and two children鈥�. So I said 鈥淲hen I get back to base I will write to your wife and tell her that I've seen you and you are well and that you hope to be home with her soon鈥�. And that is what I did....I wrote her a letter saying I hoped it would be of some comfort to her. He wasn't one of those that we took back....so I don't know when exactly he got out. After that we were flying them out almost every day after that.

I know my letter reached her because a few weeks afterwards, my mother who lived in Lampeter had a copy of the local Cardigan paper the Tivyside Gazette or something like that.... And there was this big headline: Bank Clerk meets Prisoner of War in Bangkok.... and relating that Flying Officer Norman Davies who prior to the war was a bank clerk at the Midland Bank in Cardigan was one of the people flying into Bangkok to get the prisoners out, and that Norman Davies had met this chap .....

This was our little contribution to the peace effort.....but we realised that what we had done was outside the normal parameters. And when we got back to base there was an escort waiting to arrest us and put us under close arrest...for about five days. We were placed in a tent away from everybody and our escort had to be of equivalent rank to the highest ranking officer, which was a Sqdn Ldr so we had a Sqdn Ldr escort. Then after about four days they started taking a summary of evidence to see exactly what we had done wrong and what the charges would be. After that we were taken out of close arrest and put under open arrest which meant we could walk around the base again. Then about ten or twelve days afterwards Flt Lt Rae and myself were called into the CO and he confirmed to us there were no charges against us. We would have been acting under the superior officer, Sqdn Ldr Barnard, and we were absolved of all blame. He was court martialled
and he was cashiered - he was kicked out of the Air Force which was a tremendous shame. He was a brilliant pilot he had two DFCs and he had actually been promoted as a Wing Cdr to take charge of another squadron. But in the event he was kicked out of the Air Force. I wasn't in touch with him afterwards....but I did hear on the grapevine that he got himself quite a nice job with a civilian airline so I pray to God his life continued in a happy way....

It took quite a while to get all the prisoners out...because we could only bring out two or three dozen at a time. I remember one time....We used to fly in shorts, khaki shirt with a revolver around your waist...so what we did, we had the prisoners come up to the cockpit to see what was happening. I always remember this little chap coming up and saying 鈥渨hy aren't you in your flying suit and goggles and where's your parachute?鈥� I said 鈥淲e don't carry parachutes鈥�, which of course we didn't. He'd probably never been on a plane before.

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