大象传媒

On my return to the UK as recounted in After Dunkirk I was posted to H.Q 18th Division which at that time was stationed in Norfolk. We were mainly an East Anglian Division. From Norfolk we wnt to Melrose, and then to Knutsford and late Bewdley.
In October 1941 we embarked at Liverpool bound for the Middle East. However we sailed with a Royal Navy escort in a westerly direction. About half way across the Atlantic our convoy was met by what at the time seemed a large part of the United States Navy including an aircraft carrier. They were escorting a convoy bound for the UK.The Royal Navy took over the UK bound convoy We sailed on to Halifax, Nova Scotia with the the US navy escort.
It should be remembered that at this time The United Sates had not yet entered that war.
At Halifax our Division transferred to American transports. I was on the Wakefield. By an odd coincidence I had, as a nineteen year old, travelled on the same ship then the Manhattan to New York in the Spring of 1939.
From Halifax we sailed in convoy with an Amercan Naval escort to Trinidad for refuelling but were not allowed ashore. We then headed into the South Atlantic and the bombing of Pearl Harbor occured a few days before we arrived at Cape Town. The South Africans could not undertand how British troops had arrived in Cape Town when the United States had only been in the war for a few days.
From Cape Town we sailed for Bombay and were sent to a camp at Ahmednaggar. By this time we were in the last days of 1941. From Lord Alanbrooke's diary (at that time he was CIGS) it seems there was some doubt as the where to send us and Iraq was considered and Alanbrooke says that Winston Churchill suggested that our Division could be sent to help the Russians at Stalingrad. Fortunately Alanbrooke was able to dissuade Churchill.
However events did not turn out too well because we re-embarked on the same American ships bound for Singapore. By this time we had no American escort but were escorted HMS Exeter.
The Exeter was subsequently lost in action against the Japanese navy together the the HMAS Perth and the USS Houston.
At the end of January we disembarked at Singapore
and by 15th February were POWs. In April 1943 most our Divison were sent to work on the Thailand-Burma railway. We were lent by the Japanese Singapore adminstration to their Thai adminisstration and after about a year we returned to Singapore but we lost about half our number on the railway.
We lived in comparatively reasonable conditions atChangi camp until the end of the war in Auguat 1945.
As oour Division was the last in we were the last out and sailed from Singapore in the Polish ship the "Sobieski". We arrived back at Liverpool almost four years to the day from the day we sailed.
In conclusion I feel that in the current atmosphere of feeling against America we should not forget the assistance they gave use when they were still neutral in 1941

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