大象传媒

It was my uncle who was captured at Singapore. He'd been brought up from the age of five with this only surviving sister in a orphanage, and by all accounts it had been a very tough childhood. As soon as he was old enough, he joined the army, and was quickly dispatched to the Far East 鈥� or as fast as a slow boat to Singapore would take him.

I think he really enjoyed being away from Liverpool, the heat and flies were a pain, but it was great to be somewhere so completely different to England 鈥� even if it was on army rations.

When the Japanese invaded he was captured along with thousands of others, but after three days in captivity saw an opportunity, and being a quick thinking scouser - decided he鈥檇 make a break for it. Unfortunately he didn鈥檛 get very far, and was quickly re-captured.

Like many men who suffered at the hands of the Japanese he never went into any detail about what happened, but by all accounts he was badly beaten, and his fingers broken before being locked up in the infamous Changi Prison, where he was told he鈥檇 be shot at dawn.

Faced with the threat of execution at dawn, he spent his last night pacing up and down the length of the cell. He鈥檇 said he couldn鈥檛 sleep, kept thinking he鈥檇 never see his sister ever again, just kept pacing up and down, up and down.

There were several others in the cell at the time, and one, an Australian became highly irritated and told him to bloody sit down:-

鈥淲hat the hell are you worrying about鈥ou won鈥檛 even see the smoke coming from the rifles before it鈥檒l be all over鈥�.

It must have been a hellish night knowing at dawn you were going to be taken out, placed in front of a wall, and shot by firing squad.

In the end, his sentence was never carried out. The word came down, they needed more men on the Burma Railway.

Again he never once told of the terrible things he witnessed on the railway, and despite it all he鈥檚 still alive today 鈥� well into his seventies. All he would say, was it was the hash upbringing in the orphanage that helped him survive. He said he鈥檇 survived many close calls, when many others had died.

It鈥檚 hard to imagine how anyone could live through the horror of the war in the Far East. For my part I feel nothing but awe and wonder. Too respectful to ask any questions, and too scared of the answers and the reaction I might get.

I鈥檓 pleased he did get to see his sister (my aunty) though.

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