大象传媒

I was brought up by my father, a Tailor, and my mother whose time was fully taken up making ends meet and bringing up my three brothers and four sisters in a small agricultural town called Bungay in Suffolk.

At the age of 14, I left school and went to work on a local farm. I worked long hours for 7 days a week and recieved 15 shillings pay - 75p.

For a break from farm work, I joined the Territorial Army and about 12 months later in 1939, war broke out. I was 19 years of age. I was sent away to train how to be a soldier in various places, like Cambridge, Hawick and Blackburn - where I met a girl called Elsie (on a blind date) who after the war became my wife for 52 years.

From Blackburn we went to Ross-on-Wye, then on 29th October 1941 we sailed from Liverpool on a ship called the "Andes". As we were the first British troops to be convoyed by the Americans, American warships and Aircraft met us halfway across the Atlantic and gave us a magnificent air display. We sailed to Halifax in Canada, where we got a real welcome.

On the American liner SS Wakefield we sailed into Capetown. We had a short stay of four days, in which time we say the magnificent Table Mountain. After Capetown, we sailed to India to Armendagar, where we became acclimatised for three weeks before we sailed to Singapore. There we mined and barbed-wired the beaches.

Twenty-seven Japanese aircraft came over all at once and bombed. I recall we had 5 or 6 Brewster Buffaloes (the old-fashioned type of plane). They said Singapore was an island fortress. They had naval guns, which could only fire out to sea; they couldn't traverse and fire up the mainland, which was where the Japanese came down finally. On February 13th 1942, they got to the causeway and cut the water supply off.

On Feb 15th 1942, we became Prisoners of War. The Japanese got into Alexandra Hospital, where they raped the nurses and bayonetted them to death. They even bayonetted to death the doctors who were operating on the wounded at the time.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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