大象传媒

The three members of my family listed above are all now deceased. My grandfather was James McKinley who joined the Royal Navy in 1893 as a boy seaman from his home in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was discharged from the Royal Navy in 1910 and settled in Cornwall, then was called back again to serve in the Fleet Reserve during World War 1. He won a DSM as a Leading Seaman on an armed merchant cruiser on convoy duties in the North Atlantic. I have a copy of his service record as well as his DSM. He died as a comparatively young man in 1922 aged 44.

My father was James Dennis McKinley, born in 1915 in Cornwall. He joined the Royal Navy in 1931 aged 16, to try and escape poverty and the effects of the great depression of the 1920s. In the early part of the war he served on an Admirals yacht called HMS Aberdeen - a ship which went through the war unscathed as far as I can tell. However, father was given a 48 hour leave pass from convoy duty in the Atlantic, and on his way home to Cornwall was involved in a train derailment near Taunton. This involved several weeks hospitalisation. By the time he was fit to resume duty he was posted to HMS Exeter at Devonport as an engineroom PO. She had been refitted after the Battle of the River Plate, and was due to sail for the far east to join HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales, acting (as it was thought) as a deterrent to the Japanese. By the time that the ships reached Singapore, Repulse and Prince of Wales were at the bottom of the sea. The multi-national force of which Exeter now became part was partly Dutch, partly American and partly British. After being boxed in by vastly superior Japanese forces Exeter was sunk on 1st March 1942 in the Battle of the Java Sea. Father, like so many of his comrades was finally picked up after 36 hours on a lifeboat, and began a three and a half year stint as a Japanese PoW. Somehow he survived this terrible experience, and came home in 1945 to pick up the threads of a civilian life. My mother did not know for those three and a half years, whether he was alive or dead, and there was no counselling or support services in those days. People survived through luck and then moved forward again through the wartime spirit and through their own courage and determination. My dear father suffered terribly, in ways that I am still unable to fully comptrehend - both physically and mentally, and my mothers suffering was pretty bad as well. They received no gratuities, no pension, no recognition from a "grateful country" - indeed in my view the far east PoWs almost seemed to constitute a forgotten service - and their suffering matched or exceeded anything found anywhere during that awful conflict - with the possible exception of the prisoners in the German concentration camps. My father died in 1993 at age 78, and always expressed profound gratification that he had been spared to return home in 1945. He saw everything after that as a bonus. I was privileged to meet and know many of his FEPOW friends, so few of whom are still alive these days.

My uncle, George Howard McKinley, always known throughout his life as Ben followed a similar path to that of my father. He joined the Royal Navy at age 15 in 1932 and served his career on the upper deck. After service in aircraft carriers he ended up as a Chief PO (coxwain) on several destroyers and minesweepers, and served on Atlantic and Mediterannean convoys, as well as, I believe on Russian convoys. He was also decorated with the DSM for his Mediterannean service, though he would never wear his medals, as, in his view, "everybody there should have had one - we all went through the same".

Three men from the same family - all of whom served in the same service in different conflicts. Like, I suppose many thousands of other families up and down this land. Good, honest men, serving their country with pride, for precious little reward. My grandfather came back from his military service, like so many others, to a life of near-poverty, the aftermath of which affected the attitudes of my father and uncle for the rest of their lives. I remain totally unconvinced of the merits of a medal system, when my father and most of his comrades received no award at all for their years of captivity. I suppose that was not seen as bravery.

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