大象传媒

Part one of an edited oral history interview with Mrs. Patricia Olney and Mrs. Ann Hurley about their father Mr. Arthur Ronald 鈥楻on鈥� Staveley鈥檚 wartime experiences as a P.O.W. on the Thailand/Burma railway.

Memories of Mrs. Patricia Olney
鈥淥ur father was Arthur Ronald Staveley, called Ron. He was a baker born on 14th January 1916 and he did an apprenticeship with a German baker in Billericay in Essex. He was mainly a bread baker but also a pastry cook and he won gold medals for his bread at Olympia when they used to have the Annual Bread Making Exhibitions and Conferences. He was a very good baker.

He was called-up I believe about in the May 1941 and the reason it was so late was because he was in a protected industry. He was in a bakery in Snodland in Kent, he was Head Baker of a bakery company. He was called-up and he went into the Catering Corp and he spent most of his time training at Moreton-in-the-Marsh in Gloucestershire and then in October 1941 he had embarkation leave, of course they didn鈥檛 know where they were going. Most of the people on the ship he was on, I can鈥檛 remember the name of the ship, they were the Northumberland Fusiliers and everyone thought 鈥� they didn鈥檛 even know what they were because they spoke in their on dialect, it seemed a foreign language! So the Northumberland Fusiliers and some Beds. and Herts. were on there as well. They went to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then down to Cape Town, then to Mombassa, then to Bombay, Sri Lanka, Trincomalee and then off to Singapore. And when they got to the Malacca Straits and this would have been January 1942 time, in the Malacca Straits and they were being bombed by Japanese aircraft. The man who was in charge of them, he said, 鈥榃ell the only thing to do鈥� and he strapped all the rifles to the bars around the side of the ship to keep people safe, and just hoped that people were firing straight up into the air. They reckoned that was what saved the ship because two ships by them went down. They went down but dad鈥檚 ship managed to avoid sinking and they think it just put them off with all this fusillade of bullets coming up and putting off the bombers as they were coming into bomb.

He arrived in Singapore, I鈥檓 not sure the exact date he arrived there but it would be in January 1942. I think he was there about five or six weeks possibly before Singapore fell and of course it was everybody, it didn鈥檛 matter if you were a baker or whatever you were often or not fighting and also getting civilians off, trying to evacuate civilians at the same time. Because one of the big problems was all the reservoirs were on the mainland not on Singapore Island and they were running very short of water and dad always believed that the reason in the end that Percival surrendered was because of the lack of water. (General Percival surrended on 15th February 1942).

Dad also was the cook at the Officer鈥檚 Mess so he knew a little bit more I think than perhaps other people did because they鈥檇 be talking. But, yes that鈥檚 what happened, it was lack of water more than anything else or so dad believed. But not only did you have the troops, the 80,000 troops you also had everybody coming in to Singapore, a lot of the settlers and people had come down into Singapore, mothers and children, it was really crowded.

They were bringing the troopships in and then putting them on troopships and taking them out and of course it was quite dangerous for them going out because the Japanese didn鈥檛 differentiate between civilians and troops even though they had red cross flags on they didn鈥檛 differentiate at all. According to them they were troopships and that was it. And of course it was quite dangerous for those people to go and also leaving everything behind that they鈥檇 worked for.

Then Changi, he certainly went to Changi while he was in Singapore, perhaps you know the story of when they bayonetted all the people in the hospital including the nurses? My father was actually taking an injured person to the hospital, a soldier to the hospital and he got there just after they were captured. I don鈥檛 quite know when he went, it had happened and he walked in and saw 鈥� and of course it was terrible. Apart from the fact things weren鈥檛 too bad at that point but that sort thing made them realise the brutality that was going to happen. And the other thing that he saw which I don鈥檛 think is recorded very much - because the Japanese thought the Chinese were the lowest of the low. They herded the Chinese onto one of the beaches in Singapore and made them walk into the water and if they didn鈥檛 walk in they just shot them, so you either got shot or you drowned. I forget how many he said - but just rounded them up and he saw that happen as well.

He went to Changi and he was one of the first people because he was a cook, he was one of the first people up into Malaysia to set up the first transit camp. Just the first bit of railway up - so that鈥檚 where he got to Kranji, Bukit Timah, Bam Pong there and then Kranji, so he set up camp there. Then once it was set up then he鈥檇 move on with his group. He was with a dear old friend, I saw him a few weeks ago, a dear friend of my father鈥檚, he was with him all the time, he鈥檚 92 now. So they went up there. He went up to the next one which was the River Kwai, he must have gone somewhere before, it was called Non Pladuc, I think that鈥檚 in Malaysia and he set up the camp. That was a huge transit camp and he did the Cook House and sometimes he would have a thousand men come in to feed with very little, as you can imagine. I think he had rice all the time but I think he had to do it like a gruel and what they did allow, because you had to go and get the firewood, he was allowed out of the camp to collect firewood and bring it back. And while he was doing that if you鈥檇 got some friendly Thai鈥檚 or Malaysian people there, in that case it would be Malaysian, they had a little bit of money they could buy some bananas or eggs but they weren鈥檛 suppose to bring them in. So he had to hide them under the firewood to get past the guards and bring them in.

They were usually the sick people that helped in the Cook House, I don鈥檛 know how many would be there, he never said. And the friend I was just talking about now, Ned Sherring, he was the NCO that was in charge of the cooking and that sort of thing, liaising with the Japanese. And if they got caught bringing in bananas he would be in trouble as well as the people bringing them in, probably get a beating if you got caught but they used to try all ways. And sometimes they used to get monkeys and have monkey for meat but then you daren鈥檛 l et that smell get out of the Cook House otherwise the Japanese would want to know why. But it was critical to get eggs and things for the people who were sick in the hospital to try and get that for them.

Memories of Ann Hurley of her father Mr. 鈥楻on鈥� Staveley.
He used to tell us stories round the fire when we were little and of course we didn鈥檛 realise what they were. There are one or two that I can remember. He was a baker, he used to go very early in the morning and we used to have breakfast with him before we went to school and then lunchtime we used to come home for lunch and have lunch with him and then tea time again, so he was always in and out.

In the winter evenings sometimes we used to sit round the fire and he used to tell us stories about what happened out in the camps and because he was the cook there he used to cook for the soldiers. There is one instance that I can remember - a cockerel came into the camp and evidently the cockerels were supposed to be sacred and of course they got this cockerel 鈥� they killed it, they plucked it. They cleaned it out and he managed to get some onions from somewhere, I can remember onions coming into it. He got the soldiers that were ill to peel these onions to take the smell of the chicken away and this is what he did. You can imagine the picture of it, these soldiers sitting there peeling these onions, eyes streaming and this is what he was saying to us and of course the way he was telling us we laughed, we could picture it. Of course then he cooked the chicken, he divided it as much as he could between the soldiers, because don鈥檛 forget there were I don鈥檛 know how many hundreds of soldiers there were in these camps. He divided it as much as he could for the soldiers and anyway a few days later the head chief from the village came in looking for his cockerel! Well, I don鈥檛 really know what happened, but I think he was called up but he denied all knowledge. The feathers, they鈥檇 buried somewhere and they denied all knowledge of it and that鈥檚 the end of the story really. But as you get older you really understand the implications of them.
Another one was about a chicken again and somehow it got up the flue of the chimney of the fire and dad said, 鈥業 couldn鈥檛 kill it after that, I couldn鈥檛 eat it because it had got away鈥�. Dad told my husband that somehow they鈥檇 got hold of a foot plate of a gun or something and they carried this round with them to use in their cooking as well, as a hotplate. And of course when he was in a hospital recovering in 1945 he used to say that he used to hold the lamp for the Surgeon to do whatever he had got to do and he stayed with some of the soldiers who were very, very ill. He was there for some time evidently.

Of course being the youngest I don鈥檛 really remember everything, only odd things. But I know he actually worked on the railway as well as in the Cook House. It must have been 鈥� you can鈥檛 imagine it 鈥� what happened. He used to have periods of time, as he walked up the drive, you would see the look on his face and you knew that you鈥檇 got to behave, you knew that you hadn鈥檛 got to muck about. Just by the look on his face and that was sort of two or three times a year. There was one period around Patsy鈥檚 birthday which is in July, he used to get very moody and another period in September and that was when Jack was killed. That was the air raid that Patsy told you about, that was actually in September. We found reference of it in the letters but he had told me. Because one day, I think he was over my house and it was harvest time and there was a big harvest moon out and I saw this look on his face and I said, 鈥榃hat鈥檚 the matter dad?鈥� He said, 鈥楬arvest moon, that鈥檚 when Jack got killed鈥� during the bombing raid on the railway and that was his very old friend.鈥�

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