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On the 15th February 1940 I landed in Bombay.
I was moved on the 15th February 1941.
I was taken Prisoner of War on 15th February 1942.

You did have good times.
In India it was peace time training.
In Malaya we operated in the jungle and had a pretty reasonable time there.

When we went to Thailand we were in Changi Prisoner of War camp.
We got captured in Singapore and marched down to Changi near the sea and they put us in native huts.
We stopped in Changi for a bit. The first job they gave us there was going down to the docks.
We also went down there to take things for ourselves and bring them back in our sparse clothes.
One thing we did there was working near the Changi Golf Course and we built roads round the course.
There was an Island on the golf course and we built a Japanese memorial there.

Then they started taking different groups. The groups they took were used in Thailand. They loaded us onto trains in the goods trucks — they put as many as they could in the trucks. At that time the men were started to feel the Malaria and Dysentery. We would help them with their troubles.

We got to Thailand and we went to a camp at the base of the new railway they were building and there they took us into a camp and they had a deep trench and across it was bamboo. There was a small width to stand on facing the other way to do what you had to do.
Then we went to a base camp.
We got out there and we marched up to the camps.
We stopped in a camp and that was when we started building the railway.
The only way they would move earth was with baskets. You would go out to a distance from where the embankment was going to be and tipped the earth out there.
All this time you were living on rice.
We were on this embankment job for quite a while then we moved further up the to the River Kwai.

The railway was built more or less at the side of it. We moved further up and came to Changi which was used as a base camp where the hospital would be. We moved to a little place above Changi. We were in bamboo huts and we got in to bed on the first night and then within the next half an hour everyone was out of their beds — they were full of bugs.
We never slept in those beds again.

I would volunteer for jobs other than the railway.
They needed someone to look after the pigs. It was whilst I was looking after the pigs that bamboo caught my leg so I was moved back down to hospital in Changi.
I had been separated from my group. When I was well enough I was moved back to the base camp.

We kept being used in groups to do different jobs.
I volunteered for another job.
They wanted three chaps to go into the Japanese cook house to help the cook do the grub and that.
So we were going into a cook house used by Civilian Japs.
Whilst at the cookhouse they used lots of pork but never the dripping, but we did.
Dripping and rice cooked up was what we had for our breakfast.

They changed the cooks every few months.
One cook said that when it was his time to change he would have a party. He got a bottle of Sake. They were three of us and him. We got a bit merry so when it was time to go back to camp the guards had heard us having a bit of a sing song.
They asked us if we had been drinking. They said you're not supposed to. They sorted me out and sent the others back to the huts and then they gave me a thumping about. That carried on and they didn't let me go back to my hut until morning and I wasn't allowed to go back out after that so no more cooking.

The railway was getting on.
They wanted another group to go up — we stopped at the River Kwai and started building bridges. Our job was to go to the jungle and cut down the trees and get the trunks back to the camp — we would carry them.
After they treated them they got things to knock them into the ground. They were the base for the bridge they were going to build.
Eventually the bridge got finished. They wanted the bridge for more transport and used that a lot when they started retreating.

We got down to the base camp — they wanted a group of people to go to the Indonesian border. We went. We went by train and went in a boat over the river.
We came to Ubon — we went through a valley on the way and all that was there were butterflies, it was lovely.
We were building aerodromes — they were using this as their method of transport. We used to lay down the things the airplanes would land on. We had to get the rocks out. This carried on for quite a bit and then one day they stopped doing it and a group of Japanese came up and that's when we saw the first attempt of a Japanese soldier to commit suicide.

They just waited for transport back.
We went to Bangkok in a warehouse and waited there and then we were taken to the aerodrome and put on a troop plane and went to Rangoon. Whilst we were there we first went into hospital — those of us who were pretty fit went to the barracks and we went to a field and there was a lady singing — Gracie Fields.

Eventually from Rangoon we boarded a ship and that took us back all the way to Liverpool and then we went home to Syston.
My brother and his wife met me.
9 weeks after getting back I was married.

This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Lisa Reeves of CSV Action Desk Leicester on behalf of Mr J. T Walton and has been added with his permission.
The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions

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