大象传媒

The forgotten army

I was born just after the end of WW2, I remember the bomb craters and collapsed buildings in my home town of Sheffield. The rationing of basic things such as eggs, sugar and coal. The poverty of the 50's and being a baby boomer! But the story I would like people to read is that of my Dads. He was one of the many thousands of British, Australian and New Zealanders from the forgotten Army who fought in the Far East against the Japanese.

Sidney was born in 1922 and at the outbreak of WW2 he was a member of the Territorial Army, it was not long before he joined the R.O.A.C and was shipped out the Far East. It is difficult to know what Sidney was involved in but he saw active service in places like Burma and Bali. February 1942 was the most fateful month of his life, he was in the area of Singapore which was being attacked by the Japanese forces. He was injured during the fighting and left in the jungle to fend for himself while the forces retreated to the heavily defended area of Singapore. For several days he survived before being picked up by the Japanese. He used to joke about having to drink the filthy water he found in an abandoned bath tub!

During 1942 Dads family back in Sheffield received the fateful telegram saying that he was missing in action. His grandfather, John, took this to mean that he had been killed, my mother recalled that day as John, a tough steelworker, sobbed in the back yard. John died in 1943 of silicosis, grinders disease, still believing Sydney was dead.

During the years 1942 to 1945 Sidney was a Prisoner of War and was employed on the infamous Burma railway among other places. During this time many of his comrades died where they worked, usually as a result of malnutrition and disease, and sometimes at the hand of the Guards. There was no dignity in their death, no funeral, not a prayer! The fallen were just thrown into unmarked graves and forgotten. During 1945 Sidney was moved to a POW camp some 30 miles from Nagasaki, with a lot of the ANZAC and captured US forces. He survived in this camp by stealing blankets and bartering them for food with the local Japanese villagers who were almost as malnourished as the prisoners.

August 9, 1945, 11.02am Sidney and every other POW saw a blinding flash of light followed by a huge mushroom cloud in the distance. With no knowledge of what had happened the POW's went to their beds as usual, as hungry and distraught as ever. They awoke on the morning of August 10th to find that the camp guards had deserted their posts and the camp gates left open. The nearby Japanese Airforce base was just as deserted, here they found mountains of red cross parcels that should have been sent to the camps stored in the hangars. The POW's decided that the best thing to do would be to go to the nearest port - that was Nagasaki! It took 3 days to walk the 30 miles to Nagasaki where they were picked up by the Royal Australian Navy.

From Nagasaki, Sidney was taken to a hospital in San Francisco, USA where he was treated for diseases such as Beri Beri and Malaria. He eventually got home to England December 1945 on the Queen Mary which was still being used as a troop ship. He was de-mobbed in Aldershot after a few days - his medical records show his weight as 5 stone 3 ounces, height 5'9" and this was after 3 months of hospital treatment in USA. Sidney walked home from Aldershot to Sheffield where his family and friends decorated the street (Bickerton Road, Wadlsey Bridge, Sheffield) with a huge banner saying "Welcome Home Sidney"

That was not the end of the war for Sidney, he never recovered from the psychological effects of the unspeakable horrors of the death camps. He talked of torture - his back was a mass of scars, the rape of Australian nurses and of being bombed by the USAF while in a POW camp. He had extreme difficulty in recalling any of his life during those 6 long years. He had bouts of anger, violence and deep depression. He had few friends except a few comrades that survived with him. He had a photograph of his family which somehow he managed to keep with him all through war (The Japanese burnt all photographs if they were found). He would occasionally talk about what he saw in Nagasaki, he could go into graphic details about those in villages who were dying of radiation, the twisted molten metal and the hole where the City of Nagasaki used to be. All his life he used to visit the tropical diseases hospital in Liverpool.

Sidney was not unusual, just an ordinary lad from Sheffield amongst thousands of others. They never experienced VE day, nor even VJ day. There was no celebrations for these lads, most never joined in the annual marches and armistice day parades, the memories were too painful. To his dying day Sidney never came to terms with the fact that many of his friends and comrades still lay in unmarked graves where they fell in the jungles of Buma and the POW camps. He always wanted to go back to the Far East to pay his respects and a say final farewell to those who did not make it home. Those of us who watched these men suffer for their entire lives we will never understand how they became to forgotten army. Its interesting to note how so few stories from the war against Japan appear on these pages!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.