大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the Peoples War website by Jenny Graham of the Lancs Home Guard on behalf of Richard Tron and has been added to the site with his permission.

I am originally from Northumberland where I worked on the coal mines from the age of 14, but at the age of 17, I moved to London. I first became a cook, then a footman (if you remember the series Upstairs Downstairs, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about!) and then I became a chauffeur. Eventually, I drove for the Lord Mayor of London and I'm still a Freeman of the City of London today.

During my time in the army, however, I was drafted into the Royal Engineers where I became a full corporal. Initially I trained as a sapper - an engineer who finds and then defuses mines, or goes out to lay them, but 14 days before we were due to be sent away I was made a driver due to my previous experience, there was a shortage of experienced drivers.

It was after Christmas, 1944 that we were sent to the Heart of Burma, South East Mandalay and I remember at one time being so hungry for meat. We hadn't had any for months so one day I decided I'd travel up the river bed and look for some, or perhaps something similar that would at least satisfy our cravings. Eventually, I came across an Island where the water had washed over but left exposed quite a large patch of land so I crossed over to take a look, see what I might find. However, as I explored further, I came across what looked like a solitary camp.

Assembled in the ground I found an old boy scout structure; two sticks planted upright and parallel in the ground with another one positioned across the top, it was a framework for cooking or heating a kettle on. Next to this, I found a pair of boots, with gaiters by the side of them, a small leather pack and a ground sheet laid out on the floor. I knew that this had to be the camp of a Japanese soldier on account of the leather pack and the boots - we never had leather but the Japanese equipment always was, the camp looked strangely deserted however. I looked around the immediate area and couldn't see sight of the soldier anywhere, so I picked up the corner of the ground sheet and pulled it back. It was there, underneath, that I found him. Stripped to the bone, no meat or flesh left on him, nothing but a skeleton. I don't have any idea how long he might have been there because of course, it doesn't take long for a body to become a skeleton in the jungle, but he was perfectly positioned in what as I remember it now, was a grave not a camp.

Bodies were common; as were shortages of food and water. Part of the role of the engineers was to find and purify water for the soldiers but it was often a very difficult task. I remember once, when I had been moving for a long while, I came across a river. I was so thirsty I took my mug and immediately began to drink, gulping down the water. It was only as I felt the cool sensation of the liquid in my stomach that I noticed dead bodies floating downstream beside me. They were the bodies of Japanese soldiers that must have been thrown over the bridge further up. I drank the water anyway, such was my thirst that if felt like I had never tasted anything so sweet.

Sometime after June 1945 when I had come out of Calcutta, I received a telegram from my sister to say that she had landed in Madras. They were receiving and serving food to prisoners who had been released, they were Japanese prisoners of war. I spent a week with her in Madras before she went on to Malaya and I'll never forget the state of those men, we had to buy clothes for one man because he was too frightened to enter the shop himself. People were in a terrible state.

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