大象传媒

My War as a P.O.W.

I was born in Caterham, Surrey, on 25 March 1920. I was nineteen when the war started and I joined the Royal Marines in 1941,reporting to the Royal Marines Barracks in Deal, Kent. I was sent to Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth for training and then posted to Birkenhead, where I joined the battleship Prince of Wales. I was one of the first 400 men to join the ship when it sailed for its trial run.

Great pressure had been put on the workforce of Camel-Laird workforce to complete the battleship as it was desperately needed to combat the strength of the German navy. The ship was not fully fitted out when we sailed and so a group of Camel-Laird civilian workers sailed with us to finish the outstanding work. They were kept very busy making adjustments, for example they found the hatches were badly fitted and let in the daylight!

Our first assignment was patrolling the Atlantic and escorting supply ships. We were involved in sinking the Bismarck, and we took the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, to Newfoundland, where he met President Roosevelt, and they negotiated the Marshall Plan.

Our last mission was to Singapore. We had stopped off at South Africa and again at the Maldives to refuel, and arrived in Singapore on 8th December 1942. Meanwhile the Japanese Army was advancing from the North through Malaysia. We were accompanied by two elderly battle cruisers, HMS Electra and HMS Express. They were short of ammunition and we had no air cover and on the 10th of December our ship was hit by Japanese bombers. The ship quickly sank but as it rolled on to its side a few of us managed to slide into the water. I was unable to swim but we were wearing cork life lifebelts. The sea surrounding us was full of oil slicks. Somehow we managed to get clear before the sinking ship sucked us down with it. We were eventually picked up by a destroyer and taken to Singapore

There was no proper organisation in Singapore and no one knew what to do with us, so we were attached to then Argyle Southern Highlanders. The guns they had been practising on were all trained out to sea as this was where any invasion was expected. The officers sat in their clubs and waited. Meanwhile the Japanese invaded from the North through Penang and on 15 February 1942 the British capitulated.

The Japanese put us to work dismantling anything that could be transported to Japan to help their war effort. We had to dismantle telegraph poles, brick walls, army ambulances-and anything that could be removed. A treasured memory that still stays with me is the sight of all the children from the many nationalities in this cosmopolitan city, all playing and laughing together happily as we were working.

Scaffolding was erected outside Raffles Hotel from which the bodies of beheaded Chinese were swinging. This was to warn us what would happen if we did not obey our captors. Later we were taken by rail to Siam (Thailand), where we worked on the Burma railway for thirteen months. Conditions were extremely harsh. Food was scarce, mainly rice and water, and medical supplies and food parcels sent by the Red Cross never reached the prisoners. Conditions in the camps were so appalling that I prefer not to talk about them.

My next move was to a brothel run for the Korean officers and soldiers, where I was a cleaner. In August 1945 rumours began to circulate that the Japanese were about to surrender, but news was very scant and we dare not get our hopes up. We had to wait another week for confirmation. Then British planes began to drop food. Many men were too weak to celebrate but soon we were transported by plane to Rangoon and then put on the SS Chitral for the journey home to Southampton, where I had a very emotional reunion with my parents.

Robert

This story was submitted to the People's Warsite by Pat Oakley (volunteer) and has been added to the website on behalf of Robert Brown with his permission and he fully understands the terms and conditions

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