Memoirs of Flight Lieutenant George William Milson DFC

Memoirs of Flight Lieutenant George William Milson DFC

From Coningsby to the Far East and back....

A collection of George's letters written in FEPOW camps, describing his daily routine as well as a detailed description of Christmas Day.

1991-11

44 printed sheets

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FROM CONINGSBY TO THE FAR EAST AND BACK . . .

MEMOIRS OF FLT. LT. GEORGE WILLIAM MILSON D.F.C. 1939 – 1945

18 & 84 SQUADRONS RAF

FAR EAST PRISONER OF WAR 1942 – 1945

LETTERS HOME WRITTEN IN FEPOW CAMPS

1942 – 1945

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FLT. LT. GEORGE WILLIAM MILSON DFC

LETTERS WRITTEN IN FAR EAST POW CAMPS

The following letters were all written by George to his family in Coningsby, Lincolnshire when he was in captivity.

They were first written on scraps of paper in pencil then typed up by him in the POW camps when he could borrow a typewriter. Needless to say they were never posted but were brought home when he was repatriated at the end of World War II.

They are all written on light brown Dutch paper so thin that they are difficult to handle. They were painstakingly scanned by my husband, Roy, he then converted the type to make it legible. Some of the scans were difficult to read so there may be errors but I feet [sic] it is better left in the original to keep their authenticity. Paper was scarce and so there are no paragraphs, the pages are completely full

I have no idea he was able to keep them concealed from the Japanese guards but he did and here they all are for you to read . . .

Elizabeth McElwee, Lincolnshire 2022

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LETTERS HOME FROM NO.3 PRISONER OF WAR CAMP BANDOENG, JAVA

NOVEMBER 1942 – JULY 1943

A1.

No 3 PRISONER of WAR CAMP,
BANDOENG.

JAVA.

1.11.42.

TO ALL AT HOME.

I have now been a prisoner of war for little over 6 months, & I should imagine that you have been wondering & worrying yourselves as to what has been happening to me & where I have been. I have often wondered & believe me I often think about you all an awful lot, what you all thought when you heard that things were not; going too well out here, & how first Singapore fell, I hope that you received my cable about that time telling you that I was quite ok how Sumatra had to be evacuated, and finally Java fell. You must have been worried. How suddenly my letters stopped, I can imagine how you waited for news that perhaps I had been able to get away from this Island, & finally NO NEWS AT ALL, how you all took it. Perhaps if the C.O. got away safely you received one of those fatal telegrams saying that poor old G. was missing & believed P.O.W., what your thoughts were perhaps thinking & saying, "there he has gone – just that bit too far & come unstuck!” If he did not make it then perhaps even now you do not know that I am safe & well, fit & feeling fine & up to a point enjoying this enforced idleness. I can imagine Mam shedding a few tears, Dad not saying much but thinking an awful lot, perhaps going off to do some hoeing like he used to do & everyone being a little bit under the weather & how you gradually settled down to put your trust in God that he would see me through safely. He answered both your prayers & mine, has been very near to me. You can Imagine that we saw bags of fun & hope that He has kept you all safe & sound. Remember that the last news from home that I had was last Dec, a long time without any eh? First thing every morning & last thing at night & almost all spare moments are spent thinking about you, with a bit in my prayers for you all. Well, here are a few things about life in a prisoner of war camp how we spend our time. Naturally I cannot tell here & now what happened before we were taken prisoners as we are still one & who knows who may get hold of this before you get it. Quite a while went by after the capitulation before we were taken, but more of that at some future date. Naturally the first thing that I asked when I got Into a camp was, "is it possible to send word home"? & the answer was "N0"; so we had to let it go at that. I had lost all my kit & only had what I stood up in. I had grown a lovely bushy red beard, which by the way I have since shaved off, & was sorely in need of some decent food, we had been on very short rations. There were about 30 officers « 100 men there. RON M. is with me by the way. The first meal that I had was steamed rice almost cold with condensed milk poured over it, it was great you can imagine. Getting into there was almost like going to heaven, especially the first night sleeping on a bed again, to hear it raining cats & dog outside & to think that for once I should not get wet for a change. One fellow gave me a tooth brush & someone else gave me a towel, once again I had started to collect some kit & this is still going on. I have heard fellows complain about rice since rice is our stable food out here. I have done some times myself, but that first meal was just like the Ritz serve, or at any rate it was somewhere near it. Things settled down to a pleasant monotony although the rest did me good. Our menu was, & still is pretty much the same every day. Pap (steamed rice something like porridge); steamed rice & rather clear vegetable soup for lunch & dinner in the evening, with sometimes some minced meat & vegs. But I must admit that just lately the soup has been made a little thicker by adding some small peas, believe me it could do with it. Some of the fellows who had not heard of that little saying "where thought ere thou art there in to be content" especially when you can't do anything about it like this, soon began to mean as the monotony of each day being more or less the same, but I am pleased to say that even after 6 months of it I can still laugh at life as I did when the apples fell on Dads head, "do you "remember. So many conversations start like that these days. I can still find plenty to do to occupy my time. But it is surprising how these poor souls can upset things with their moaning, when we are some what on each others toes & in an abnormal atmosphere. Believe

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me, you have to be very careful what you say to some of them & how you say it, or they will take a joke the wrong way & it will take them days to get over it, it is surprising how prison life affects some people. A little over 4 months ago we moved into the camp which we are in at the moment, about 600 U.K. people a 1000 Australian, I suppose that it is rather unique in the history of prison camps that the prisoners look after their own administration & well-fare, with the Japanese as sort of managing directors. You can imagine what a heterogeneous conglomeration of humanity we are, people from

A2.

all walks of life. We live in a different part of the camp from the men, in nice semi-detached villas which were once Dutch married quarters. There are 7 of us living in this one which stands on it’s own, with 3 batmen to look after our wants, fetch the soup etc & keep the place tidy. It is a very nice climate about 3OOO [sic] ft above sea level, bags of sunshine although the wet season has just started & believe me when it rains it rains, but very nice all the some [sic], but still some people get "brassed" off (R/A/ slang) even in our house. The senior fellow in the house here is an A.M.D.W. chap, holding the rank of Sq/Ldr.(hon) about 35 years old who will always say the wrong thing at the wrong time & can-not keep out of any argument & we sure have plenty in a day but really quite a decent sort. The next senior bloke is another D.W. an F/O about 43 small with a beard an ex RNAS chap who usually wakes with a liver [sic] in a morning & is sometimes not nice to know until the streets get aired. A keen chess player. Then there are 5 of we p/o's. One an Aussie 40 odd years old who always likes his own opinion, usually better to agree with him than argue, 2 more W/D fellows about my age both jolly good types Ron & myself. So you can see that we are a very party of temperaments which even in the best of circles sometimes get out of hand. The batmen are RAF chaps, one who was a classic master one was with the Pru. & the other in some office; & not very good hands at "batting”. As Leslie P. says they are too much of the intellect¬ual types to make good batmen but – we could do much worse. The camp itself is not at all bad, plenty of room even to a small soccer pitch, there is usually a game every night weather permitting. I have played once or twice but am afraid that this diet is not very conducive to running about; in fact the lack of certain vitamins etc is beginning to show itself a to worry the M.O.’s a bit, our own M.O's take our sick parades add hospital. As you can guess there are some school teachers in the crowd a so an educational scheme has been started,

A3.

it has been going now about 3 months. Classes take place morning and afternoon; the subjects number about 35 & even include Russian. I am taking French, navigation, started Spanish, but gave it up. They have also a secondary educational scheme where anyone can take a set course of lectures to get up to school certificate standard; about 150 are taking this course. Also, as all service gatherings have a few red hot musicians in their midst, we are no exception, and have a real good band, who are using instruments given by the Japanese with one or two professional and amateur actors, we get some very good shows. They have given 10 shows up to now, each one running for 6 nights, you can imagine. Now everyone looks forward to their night of going. One or two straight plays, arid one act plays, and the rest variety and all musical shows. You would be very surprised at some of the talent found, several words and tunes of dance music have been written in here. These fellows are doing a real good job of work, rehearsing almost all hours that are sent, the shows are produced in a professional manner. One straight musical has been put on which took amazingly well, even I enjoyed it, and it was not the case of saying “uh well, you had nothing else to listen to”. Church services are held twice on Sundays, a mid-service, a bible class, and a confirmation class, and we have had two baptisms. There are two Padres (and 1 R.C.) one being an extra good type., the gym is usually full for each service. Each evening there are organised lectures or talks given by people on things that they are interested in, or on places they have been too [sic], usually very interesting. Up to now I have not plucked up enough courage to say anything about anything, if you get what I mean. Also a debating society holds forth once a week on the usual topics that debating societies fall over themselves about. A canteen has been organised for the sale of such things as bread, sugar, fruit, cigs, milk etc, and the 101 things which, make life pleasant. There is also a café where you can get small meals, fried eggs and such like. So I can imagine you saying “However can anyone with all these activities; I almost forgot the library, the arts and crafts, a daily news sheet with items of international news out of the local newspaper, a fortnightly camp magazine, the men are going out on working parties, of

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fetching rations etc, can get fed up with life. That is what I sometimes wonder, but guess that is life all over. Up to last month no one received any pay from the Japanese, but now we officers and working corvees are. It is a bit of a sore point with some of the men as quite a number of them have been going as far as selling, and they only get a few cents for their work. I get the equivalent of 7 1/2 pence per day, which is spent by giving the batmen a few cents, in sugar, coffee, bananas, and such like. The Japanese give an issue of shag tobacco which I manage to roll into something like a cigarette and smoke. I had no money on me when I was taken, but thanks to the generosity of two fellows one lent me f/20, and another who gave me, gave mark you, f/15, and carefully considering every cent that I spend, I have been able to buy a few things, given Bill Proctor an odd guilder or two, and kept one or two for a rainy day, toothpaste etc. A guilder marked “f” is worth approx. 7 1/2 pence, there being 100 cents to a guilder. As you can imagine, this Japanese pay was like something out of the blue,

A4.

Of this f/10 per month, f/2 is given to the camp fund to buy extra rations to supplement the Nipponese ration. At the present moment each man is getting an egg per day on the advice of the M.O’s, to help better the state of health. Some fellows have to have special treatment which has to come out of this fund. Everyone has been inoculated for typhoid, dysentery, cholera, and also for bubonic plague. Please to say that up to the present, I have kept clear of illness except for a slight touch of beriberi, a swelling of the ankles, but one or two injections of vitamin B and some yeast tablets soon put me right, and now after 6 months am in fine fettle. I suppose you will ask well, what do you do to fill in your day! Here it is. The batman puts his head in the door and says, “It’s here, come and get it” about 7.30am. Our bed-room is quite pleasant, four of us sleeping in it, Ron and I, and two A.M.W.D. p/o’s. Each has a bedstead and a mattress, and I have a mosquito net to cover me. As I lost my pyjamas, I have acquired a sarong on which Dorothy Lamour has nothing. There is a parade at 0900, in which organisation I am a flight commander. After this, a lecture, one or two mornings, and then back to the house for a cup of coffee. This, and the cup in the afternoon is one of the high spots of the day, the cup I use is an old Quick Quaker Oats tin with a handle wired on. The rest of the day until tea-time about 17.30 is usually spent in talking, you would be surprised at some of the gen, which is supposed to be pukka but which is usually the duffest of the duff, reading, arguing, or gardening, We have got a jolly good garden, growing at the moment about 110 tomato plants which are just beginning to bear fruit, cucumbers of which we have already had some, beans, peas, lettuce, potatoes, kachidjo peas, katchangs, (pea-nuts), onions, silver beet, it cooks like spinach. Cooking is done on a gas ring, we have electric light in the house, including an electric water heater and an electric cigarette lighter we have made, the heater we made to save the gas as we are only supposed to use 30 metres per month. Sometimes of course a sleep after lunch, I can still drop off almost any time. What more could anyone ask for. After tea, a wash or a shower, they do not have any baths out here. Then usually to see a soccer match or to a lecture. For supper I sometimes boil my egg and have a roll, also an issue. Yesterday I made some pea-nut butter by roasting some pea-nuts and rolling them out with a bottle to something like a thick paste, all my own work, and very tasty indeed with the roll. Tonight we are going to have something special for a. change, mashed potatoes, silver beet and a poached egg, it will only cost 5c. And then to bed or perhaps to sit outside a wizard starry sky, frogs croaking in the dyke, crickets cricketing, and just let your mind run away from Java, and prison camps to England home. And Beauty, the best part of the day I think. And so to bed. Sunday is a day of rest even here they do not even get me doing anything in the garden, a lay-in until church time, again in the evening. So you can imagine time passes quite “pleasantly” for me at any rate, each day one day nearer to that day when everyone will return home to their loved ones may that day be soon. I started this letter this afternoon and it is now 21.30 and bedtime, so will bring things to a close, the first since last February, I don’t think that my last letters, one to you and one to Jane got away from this island, I will see if I can type it out sometime just as I have written it here and now, and let you have it sometime in the not too distant future I hope goodnight to you all, God bless you and keep you safe and here’s to that great day of reunion.

All the best to everyone

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P.S So that you do not get the wrong impression, the fellows, who were baptised were about 25 years old, satisfied.

B1.

Many Happy Returns of the Day to Mother And Jane on their birthdays.

No 3 Prisoner of War Camp
BANDOENG
JAVA

3.1.43

TO ALL AT HOME.
It is about two months since I wrote the last long letter, and Xmas ‘42 and the New Year are over. Well, what sort of a time did you all have, you can imagine that I thought about you all, and guess that you were all wondering what I was doing with myself. Here is how we spent Xmas in a prison camp. Of course the high spot was the chance given to be able to write home it was not much but I hope that you will be able to receive it in the not too distant future. At the moment we are supposed to send one every other month, but goodness knows how long it will be before you get it. We were allowed a few lines on Nov 19th last, but I doubt if it ever left here. The last one seemed to be more of a Red Cross affair, and far more business-like. If it was through the Red Cross then here’s hoping for some lines from you some time, just a few would be great. Here is how we spent Xmas 42.
Christmas Eve morning everyone received 20 cigarettes each. This, and 20 cents which every man received, gave everyone a Xmas'y feeling which was carried on during the whole time. There was also that feeling that although we [sic] in prison, no one was going to let it stop them from forgetting Christmas. One of the fellows, a Cockney used to be in the fairground game, got several helpers together, and out of nothing at all produced a fun fair, it was almost as good as ‘ampstead eath’.
There were cocoa nut shies, Aunt Sally's, darts, roll your pennies down onto. squares and a ride on a four wheeled cart down a track in which if you were unlucky you got wet, all complete with flags, pennants, decorations and electric lights for after dark. They had produced the whole show without having to buy anything except the prizes. This is the story of how the Cockney took off his shirt while
he was working, and when he came to put it on again, someone had cut out the sleeves to make something out of them. The show was opened by a procession with some of the fellow who was looking after the stall in fancy dress, together with. the band. Several were dressed as girls selling raffle tickets, they looked very good too. One of the fellows made a speech to open the show and things got under way. All our own people had been given coupons which entitled them to 10 free goes, and after that, they and the Dutch, Ambonese, and Menadoes had to pay one cent per go. It
was a very clever effort on the part of the organisers. On Christmas morning, before it was lignt, [sic] 6 pigs which had been fed on the camp were killed, the British Camp receiving one and one sixth as there [sic] snare. [sic] Since I wrote the last letter almost all the Australians and some of our own chaps were moved out leaving about 550 of us. Also since I last wrote the Japanese have given we officers extra rations, presumably for the f60 which they keep back for or accommodation etc. They issue bread, tea, coffee bananas, pepper, and 10 cigarettes three times a week usually, when the rations came along on Xmas Eve they included 70 fags each, which made things
quite nice. I imagine that perhaps we may have had more per head than you may have
at home. At night there was a short church service with Christmas carols. The three

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Australian padres went away with the Aussie’s and an ex-MP, I think for Southaaki. has taken on the job and make a fair go of it too. The soldier in our house organised a choir to lead in the singing, he said that he wanted someone with a penetrating voice, and as it seemed to be

B2.

right up my street, I went along and helped swell the noise. Miller and Parsons had brewed some rice wine which they started to drink about 9.20pm after supper. By what I heard next morning there must have been 15-20 including the visitors who came, but am afraid that I must have slept through it all. The S/Ldr turned them all out at 12.0 midnight. There were several thick heads the next morning and the room looked like a bar parlour. Christmas morning dawned bright and clear, the sun shining in a clear blue sky. The mountains that we can see about 30 miles away were as clear as anything, you could almost see the monkeys scratching themselves in the trees. I wonder what the weather was like with you at home, rain snow or perhaps one of those mornings with heavy low clouds around. I started the morning by having a cold shower, the first that I have ever had on a Christmas morning. They do not have hot baths out in this part of the world but have a rectangular brick tank in the corner of the bath room which is filled with water which you throw over yourself with a small ladle. Quite a weird operation until you get used to it. The festivities started with a special breakfast, NO PAP, we had nazi goring, that is fried rice with vegetables and minced meat mixed up in it, and an egg. Everyone had the Christmas spirit going round wishing each other a Merry Xmas, and may it be the last one in a prison camp. We had a nice Christmas service with more carols. Christmas dinner was served about half past one, after the men had had theirs. A real nice lunch by our standards, a small piece of roast pork about the size of the palm of your hand, two baked sweet potatoes, brown beans and gravy. Millar produced a tin which contained a Xmas pudding, it was only a mouthful each, but at least we had not had a Christmas with some pudd. In the true tradition of Christmas day almost everyone went to sleep after. About six thirty pm there was an international football match, England v the rest of the camp. The evening meal of rice and thick soup was served at 7.30pm. Afterwards in Radio City i.e. the gym there was community singing, the roof was almost taken off but I think that everyone enjoyed it. Ron and I bought a packet of bacon, it contained six slices, which we fried together with an egg, toasted some bread and along with some pea-nut butter had quite a supper. Afterwards I sat outside and reviewed this Christmas and Christmas's past to myself, hoping that you all at home had as pleasant a time as we had had, and hoping that this will be the last one under these conditions. And so to bed, Christmas Day 1942 over. There was nothing special on Boxing Day until the fair opened about 3.30pm, it gave everyone a chance to get over the gorge of the day before. I helped in the ticket office taking money and issuing tickets, it reminded me of Boston on a Christmas Eve, quite like old times, We finished about 9.0pm. The BTC have produced a pantomime "Cinderella" which opened that night. It was a very clever production, they get better every time, and are getting quite ambitious with drop scenery and changes in scenery and taking female parts, which are jolly good. I sat and roared and laughed the night I went, An [sic] so the festivities ended, everyone I should imagine if they were anything like me thinking of all their loved ones at home, and thankful that we had been able to celebrate another Christmas, it looked rather doubtful at one period of my young life. It is perhaps as well that Sunday followed to give everyone a chance to settle down again. As I have already mentioned the padres have left, but we still manage a service in the morning but

B3.

not at night, the B.T.C. usually produce a Band wagon show for Sunday Monday nights, something like the radio shows which were broadcast at home including Inspector Hornleigh, Sid Walker and the Band Waggoners. On New Year’s Eve we had a sort of round the Empire Show. First of all some community singing, and then someone from each part of the Empire either read or recited a passage which had something to do with their part of the Empire or country. It was great, the only snag was that everyone was not able to get in. Believe me Auld Lang Syne sounded pretty good. As far as the food went, the soup had something extra in to thicken it up, and for tea we had a sort of "toad in the hole”!. To anyone outside a prisoner of war camp, these little extras may not sound much, but ‘nuff said. In the afternoon the officers entertained the sergeants to a sort of "At Home". Tea and cakes or perhaps it would be more correct to say coffee and toast and cheese & sandwiches. Not quite as A La Mrs Haslem's at home at Skegness. Do you remember Jane and Eric eating sausages on sticks, but quite a pally do. On New Year’s Night as we in our house had been broke at

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Xmas time, the Japanese paid us on the 29th, we had quite a beano. Fried rissoles, fried sweet potatoes, and a fried egg, with a sweet made out of banana and papaya cut up to make a fruit salad, to be followed by a coffee. The Quaker Oat tin that I had used for a mug eventually rusted through a short while ago, and I now use an old beer bottle which I have cut down. It is surprising what we can turn our hands to these days. And so ended a very nice hew [sic] Years Day, and may this year be a year of better things. I expect that you may be saying "Yes, but he does not say how he is himself"? Well I am pleased to say that I am still A1, and am absolutely on the top line, both on health and spirit. I weighed myself the other day and turned the scales at 68 kilos, which is about 10 stones 10 lbs, so perhaps I should not complain too much. From our camp newspaper which may be giving a distorted view of things, but reading between the lines things sound to be going well in Europe and the Middle East, and suppose that sometime in the near future they will get cracking again out here, and until that happens we people out here will have to keep sitting around and keep our spirits up for the day when we can walk out of here free again, may that day be not too far away. As I have already said that last Nov 19th we were able to write home, but I personally have not much hope of you getting that one, although I took a chance and sent one. If you do get it all well and good, but am afraid that the way it was set out it was too Heath Robinsonish. The one we sent at Xmas seemed much more business-like. The first three phrases were like an EFM cable, you picked them out of a list, and the last twenty words you composed yourself. One or two new classes have been added in the educational scheme, I am taking book keeping, perhaps after this I will be able to understand my bank statements. I imagine that it should be looking quite healthy by now. Our garden came along very nicely, we had plenty of tomatoes and lettuce, and now one of the AMWD blokes has got 6 ducks to keep him occupied in looking after, We have also a sailing club, it may sound rather crazy but it is very interesting, we meet 3 times a week, to hear all about sailing, boats, and of course the tying of knots. Baseball has also taken on like wild fire. Although some of the uninterested refer to it as rounders it is a jolly

B4.

good game. Not quite so strenuous as football. As there are only nine in a baseball team we can just raise an officer’s team out of those who are interested. Playing the other afternoon I took off my shirt while playing and of course got badly burnt, I am just beginning to peal after a rather painful period, I suppose that I should know better after all these years, how old am I?. You can imagine that my face has rather a tottering time, what with using ordinary soap to shave with, sometimes it is rather like washing soap, along with the sun and no Ponds to help, it takes on a rather vivid hew at times, the slight double chin is now conspicuous by its presence. The M.P. that I have referred to has started a shadow cabinet affair where we decide what we will do to when we have won the war, I think that it is something to keep his hand in. So if you want to know how to put the world right, don’t be afraid to ask I am in the defence syndicate. You can imagine that we have some arguments. And so you can see that if you like, you can always find something to occupy our otherwise empty days, and I for one find it very easy to fall asleep at night. Well I think that is all for this time, there are a hundred and one things that I would like to know about you all at home, but I am afraid that they will have to wait a little longer.

So, cheerio, God bless you all and keep you safe until that day when we all meet again, am always thinking about you.

All the best to everyone.

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C1

Many Happy Returns of the Day to Barbara on her birthday.

No 3 Prisoner of War camp
BANDOENG
JAVA

April 8th 1943

TO ALL AT HOME.

Well! here we are again with a few more jottings of a prisoner of war, to all his folk at hone [sic]. About 11am a year ago today I became a P.O.W. a day to be remembered eh? Looking back over the 12 months it has been an experience. A year of no news from you all at home, of wondering how you all are, of hoping and praying that each and everyone of you is OK and not worrying too much about me, (not much). It has been a year in we have had to change our way of living. From a life of being free and having a mind of our own, to a life of waiting and of being patient, of being at the beck and call to the whims of a people perhaps who do not understand us or we them. To a life of tolerance, of seeing the same people day in and day out, doing the same things in the same way, saying things which only start trouble in an already unstable atmosphere. Sometimes you could almost tell them to pull themselves together, but you usually keep quiet, ‘nuff said! By that I don’t want you to think my wings are sprouting or that I have a halo, no sir! But some of these poor souls who have not had much to occupy their minds have an awful long time to think on their troubles, small things soon appear like mountains to them. A number of people say that I am far too cheerful to be in a prison camp but would far sooner be like that than the other way. Since the New Year quite a number of things have happened which have somewhat altered our otherwise carefree existence. During the first few days in January all our books were taken away to be censured; every kind of reading matter, bibles and all had to be handed in, and up to the present only the bibles and medical books have been returned. . I don’t suppose so few bibles have been read by so many for such a long time. About the same time, they, for some reason, prohibited all kinds of gatherings, which-stopped all the classes, evening lectures, church services, and all entertainments, and no instruments gramophones etc. were go [sic] be played. They were only little things perhaps to people outside but almost like bombshells to us. So you can imagine that with all these things along with a practice black-out, things were a bit deadly for a while. There was quite a lot of patience and bridge played (am getting quite good at. the game) and people walking about the camp in ones and two’s, I could almost tell you every nook and cranny in the place, oh! And I almost forgot, they stopped us sleeping in the afternoon’s which was the crudest blow of the whole lot. They also discovered that Ron was down on their paysheet as an F/O instead of a P/O; they had him up to headquarters, knocked him about which put him in hospital for a wee/k.[sic], and then he had to do 21 days solitary confinement. With this and several other incidents and continuing rumours of us being moved people were on edge as you can imagine, but I am pleased to say that things have settled down again. The church service started again in about a month ago and. entertainments were allowed soon after, so long as they were of a musical nature. Outside games were not interfered with. so at least we still got the odd game of baseball. About a fortnight AGO spinning machines for making a kind of binder twine like farmers use at home were brought into the camp and almost everyone of the men who had not a regular job around the camp are now employed there at about 10 cents per day. It at least keeps their [sic] occupied and gives some pocket money. We who are still living a life of ease

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have to make Jobs for ourselves, and am pleased to say that I do-not get fed up very often. When I do feel a bit like that I have look at the one or two snaps which I have with me. One of Mother and Dad, and the cat, one of the group when I was 21, the one with Mother Barbara Aunty Mag Jane and I and one with Bert and the kittens, and the one of Ron, Dinty Moore I had taken before we left home. About 12 months ago I had left them with my wallet and camera in a place from which I thought we might be able to collect them from in the perhaps not too distant future. But a fellow who came into camp who had been with the squadron way back and came in about 2 months ago, had them with him, given to him by a Dutchmen who had had the job of destroying the other things and had kept the snaps as a matter of interest. So things might have been worse, I might have lost everything; that is how prison life takes you, pleased with small things. When we get back you will be able to give me burnt porridge for breakfast and you will not hear a moan(I hope). As I have already said I do not get fed up very often but very often look at the snaps, and let the old mind wander back home, I get quite a kick out of it. They say

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that it is a small world; a batman in the house opposite, Crosby by name used to work for Fosters or Curtis's the butchers in Lincoln and knows Ted Sowerby, Don Oswin and everyone; there is a fellow from Skegness; and talking to a flight sergeant Browning in the cafe one evening found out that he knows Sam Beall, and Barbara Wilde and her sister, he said that Barbara had been commissioned. I expect that by now almost all the fellows and girls at home are in one of the services or doing something of the sort. We have an official radio in the camp now which is on from about 0900hrs to I7OO [sic] hrs each day. It is stuck up one the wall near the guard room and anyone who wishes to listen just goes along and listens. As all the talking is in Malay, and the music of the oriental type, the English people are usually conspicuous by their absence. But the news bulletin is taken down by an interpreter, typed out and put up on the notice board. Things seem quite fair outside, any time at all. We also see some Nipponese newspapers which are printed in English, no comments. The clothing question in the camp is becoming rather acute. We have not been issued with any fresh clothes since we became POW's. Any extra's we have we have had to scrounge ourselves. When we first came up here I found quite a good pair of boots on a rubbish heap which had evidently been thrown out by a Dutchman, quite a good pair of boots to my way of thinking especially when you are almost on your beam ends. People are still wearing some of the clothes that they were wearing when they were taken prisoner's, most of them rather heavily patched but quite serviceable in these hard times. The shirt that I am now wearing is one like that. For a while boots and shoes were not able to be repaired and of course some of them got beyond repair, but now they are repaired in the camp workshop from old motor tyres, the soles being repaired with the breaker strip part. The ones who have no boots or shoes have been fixed up with sandals made out of the same materiel [sic]. It is a case of inventing things to carry on with. Owing to the gas being turned off due to a shortage of coal, everyone had their own ideas of how electric emersion heaters should be made, usually with no regard to the loads that they were putting on their wiring, increasing their fuses with huge lumps of wire until one house burnt almost all the insulation off their wire, and almost got their conduit pipes red hot, with the rule that all home-made heaters or other appliances except one cigarette

C3.

per house have now been banned, so that there is a wild scramble for wood for the fire. Since the shows started again they have been even better than before. The one which is on at the moment is an all band show, nine people in it end [SIC] one or two extra turns. The set on the stage is an all white one even the piano being white, and each player has a caricature of himself on his music stand. It is rather surprising what can be turned out in the way of scenery from a piece of mosquito net and white wash, with very clever lighting effects, quite a professional effort again. Reams and reams could be written on camp life, people, and impressions but some of them cannot be put down on paper at present. Well enough of camp news. Am pleased to say that I am still fit and almost on top of the world still, but believe me the day will not be too soon that we get out of here. So many conversations are on those lines! which start usually “Well how long do you think it will be now" end then you get some amazing theories which range anywhere from three months to 10 years, you can have just which you like. What with about 10 mins. in the morning, several walks around, a game of baseball some¬times I keep real well, it must be & [sic] pretty poor place to be sick in for long although it is a good climate in spite of it having rained some part of the day 90% of the days in this year up to now. How you all at are home, and what are you all doing! and how is business, that is if we still have one? How I would like to know! I often sit or lay or [sic] my bed and wonder how things will have altered when we get out of here. Just one word from you would be great. Have you yet heard that I am quite safe and sound? perhaps not. I doubt whether the cards which we wrote at Christmas time will have arrived home yet, but who knows they may have. If they have not already done so here's hoping that they may do so soon. A prisoner of war's life seems to be one long hope, but perhaps no different to anyone else’s except that we have more time, to think about it. As I have said before there are a thousand and one things that I would 1ike [sic] to know but which at the moment are a closed book to us all,

So, cheerio! God bless you all and keep you all safe till we -meet again, may it not be too far away, keep smiling.

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D1.
Many Happy Returns of the Day to Dad on his Birthday

NO.3 PRISONER OF CAMP
BANDOENG
JAVA

July 1st 1943

TO ALL AT HOME.

Today we were able to send a postcard to you all at home, the first since boxing day, so think that it is about time I wrote another letter. I perhaps when you get the opportunity to read the post-card you will think the same that I did when I read it through, "What a peculiar thing to send home", all these months without any news, and he has to send along a thing like this, well, beggars and prisoners of war cannot be choosers so we have to be thankful for small mercies. Although there was no date on it, and goodness knows how long it will be before you get it, it is at least something, there was not much to pick from, and even that took some thinking out. I wonder if you have received the last one, and what you thought to it. A few letters have been received in the camp, I think that it was during May, but there was not one for yours truly, but perhaps there are one or two for me somewhere around as I know that you would take the first and every opportunity of writing often if you did not know exactly where I was, but I am keeping my fingers crossed. One good thing happened though and that was that we heard through one letter which came in, that the C.O. had made the trip. safely and and [sic] got back home, so that by now you may know that the last time he saw me I was quite O.K. and perhaps he has given you one or two other pieces of gen. I at least don’t worry quite so much now that you may know now what happened to us all, but believe me I think an awful lot about you all, and wonder now [sic] you all are and what you are all doing. Hello, there I go again, wondering, wondering, wondering, always doing it. Anyway, until we hear from you we patiently wait. Nuff said. Looking back I see that the last letter that I wrote was in April, well quite a lot of things have happened. About seven weeks ago a lot of new people were brought in among them were four of our people who we all thought had had it, and they thought the same about us, and also our own M.O. You can imagine that we had a lot of notes to compare and talk over, we were at it for nights, do you think we could get to bed, two of them live in our house, we are twelve strong now instead of the original seven, and things fit in quite nicely. Among the party were eight wing/commanders, and twenty squadron-leaders, including four padres. Quite a batch what? it means that every house now has ten or twelve each, in one or two they are very crowded, but things might be much worse. The padres have got things organised, two services on Sunday's, and several ones during the week, they are quite good, Our M.O.s have taken over their side of things from a Dutch doctor, who has been looking after us, and things are pretty good. I see on orders that we are to have another inoculation for something or other so expect that there will be a few sore arms again. Am pleased to say that the sick people are very few. Except for having to see the M.O. the other day with a rather badly bruised thumb through playing base-ball, am pleased to say that I am not one of their customers. I keep real fit. Every morning all those not otherwise engaged do p/t to a radio on the parade ground for about ten minutes, and again. in the afternoon about five o'clock, so we ought to keep pretty-fit. You have to be pretty sick to get out of it. I think that it must do us some good

D2.

The season here now is the dry one, and believe me it is dry, with occasional heavy showers, which does not stop the sporting side of prison life. A short while ago all sports were prohibited until five o'clock in the afternoon, except on Sunday when it is allowed all day. Baseball is still the chief game with hand¬ball just beginning to be popular, it does not interest me. Our officers’ baseball team is just beginning to get a grip and we have managed to win one or two games. A few days ago I finished a fortnight as one of the officers in the weaving factory. "What a job!” Walking up and down all day long watching the dear men turning out yards and yards of string. The first two days seemed almost endless but after that you seemed to get used to it and the time passed quite quickly, Even up at this factory, which is another part of the camp, you still do your p/t. There is a radio up there which we used for a while, but a fellow with a piano accordion now provides the music. A fortnight was quite long enough believe me, but it had its recompenses. Parties of approx.. 100, of

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which perhaps 40 are English, now go out for a walk in Bandoeng, each Saturday afternoon, the officers in the weaving shed being included. You can imagine now everyone looks at the list to see if their names are on each week. Except for going out on a convoy, it must have been way back last November; it was the first time that I had been out of the camp since we came in a year last June. It was very pleasant, and for a while one forgot that there was such a thing as a prison camp etc. Here is a brief description of the outing, bearing in mind the thought that it will take at least 30 weeks for my name to appear again on the roster, in theory at any rate. There were about 35 Englishmen who paraded out-side the orderly room at 13.50hrs on the 19th of in the year of our Lord 1943. Each and everyone with a cheerful air about themselves, for this was the great occasion which I for one had been looking forward to for quite a while, a walk out into the outside world. Everyone was extremely well washed and shaven, all regimentally dressed as far as possible, i.e. khaki shirts and shorts, clean boots or shoes. If any of the men had not khaki shirt or shorts, well, they borrowed them from their friends, everyone entering into the spirit of things. British P.O.W's even after 16 months can still turn out looking smart. I must admit that I had to look twice at one or two of them to recognise them as the men who I had seen less than an hour and a half before weaving. We marched up to the Japanese headquarters to join the remainder of the party, about 80 Dutch officers and men. We were given a pep talk about not having any conversation with anyone outside, and we were not to receive any gifts while we were on the march, and off we went out of the camp, he [sic] had a Japanese sergeant-major, an interpreter, and about four Japanese soldiers with rifles. This was the first novelty. As soon as we were outside we were told to march easy, we c [sic] could smoke and talk, but must not move out of the ranks. You can imagine it was with an odd sense of elation that we passed through the last barb-wire fence. The town of Bandoeng is very nice indeed, planned on the usual Dutch style of European towns overseas, wide straight roads with plenty of trees and grassy spaces. The houses are for the most part on the bungalow,

D3.

style with very nice gardens etc. We had hardly got outside when the fun started. You know how at a cattle show the animals are taken into the ring to be shown off, well that was how we were like for the rest of the afternoon. Outside, all men and those women who were not born out here have all be [sic] put into internment camps, and only those who are that is called Indonesians are out and free. I should imagine that at times there must have been at least 400 women, girls, and children, who for the most part were either looking for their husbands, sons, or boyfriends, or some news of them. They were not allowed to approach very close and as we passed each road end, they would jump on their cycles arid [sic] intercept the party at the next corner. This must have gone on for at least four and a half hours, and still they followed. We walked for about two hours before we had our first "yasme" (Japanese for stand at ease or sit down and have a rest) somewhere near the Zoo. After a while the guards let the cigarettes, chocolate, and fruit which these women had brought along be distributed. The amount of stuff which they had brought along was terrific each man receiving at least two packets of fags each. I think that it must have been a case of the poor giving to the poor, as some of them cannot have received money since the capitulation, and are living perhaps on their capital, although they were very well dressed and looked real cheerful. We walked on further, walking I should think the best part of six miles, the guards being very decent indeed, around the edge of the town, which I think must have been the residential part as it was very clean, but had a deserted air around it as some of the houses were shuttered and the gardens had begun to look a little the worse for want of a little weeding etc. And yet, there we were, having for my own part a jolly good time, there was a fellow walking behind me who after about half past three, was for ever wishing that we was back in camp, and that he had had enough. I could not quite make him out at all as I was enjoying every bit of it, even if it was a bit like an exhibition, it was well worth it. Well, all good things must come to an end and this ended about half past six when we returned to camp taking one last look at things before we came through the gate, I remarked to Les Parsons "well another half year or so and perhaps we may go out again", but I did not feel depressed at returning to camp, but thankful for having had the chance of going out, and having enjoyed it. You can imagine that when we got back we had an awful lot of questions and queries to answer. There is also a rumour of people being able to go swimming and one or two nave [sic] been up to the Kebeti to play tennis with the Japanese Sometimes they seem to be going out of the way to let us do things. Who knows why? We had some propaganda camera men around a short while ago, to take shots of happy prisoners of war, I wonder if you have seen anything of them. Am pleased to say

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that almost all the library books have been returned censured, and the library opened again last Sunday. It is run on slightly different lines to what it was before, and now you pick out ten books from a catalogue, take the list along and you get a book if they have it in, it seems to work quite well and stops anyone having more than one book out at a time, especially as there are not very many to go round.

D4.

Camp life still carries the same. Almost all the fit men are weaving during the day or doing permanent jobs around the place, in the cook¬house, the orderly room, the canteen and cafe, feeding pigs, there are about 80 pigs which are being fed at the moment or such like jobs. A short while ago the Japanese decided that the officers were not doing sufficient to pass their time away, (except laying on their beds) so that some of them were given plots of ground to cultivate in another part of the Camp, as it happened that was during the time that I was weaving so that I missed having to stake my claim. Two or three of the people in this house staked theirs find started real energetic like but after it had rained for several days made the ground rather heavy and some of the plants which were already growing there had disappeared during the nights, the interest seems to have died right out. The classes have been started, again but not on quite such a large scale. The lists of classes to be held during that day has to be passed by the Nipponese Camp Commandant, and if he happens to-be away and the chit has not been signed there are no classes. The only subjects now taken pre [sic] languages, and anything that is not of – military nature, radio and engineering and that type of thing are not allowed. At first they were only held in the evening's as the troops are otherwise engaged during the day, or at least ought to be, and the rooms were filled to overcrowding. But as the Japanese had previously said that we officers were not doing enough, permission was given for classes for officers only to be held during the day. This arrangement eased the evening ones. The B.T.C. still manage to run out some rattling good shows. The last play that they put on was “The 10 minute Alibi" which went over very well indeed. The set which had been made was very, very good. An architect and a commercial artist are responsible for turning the scenery out. The show which came off a few nights was an all band show, which you can imagine went down well. The Dutch are running an operetta now, which has some jolly good music in it. Quite a change from the usual type of show. It is not surprising that everyone looks forward to these entertainments, they are the little bright spot in our present existence, which for the most part is rather uneventful, but it could be ever so much worse! The censored news which comes over the radio on the parade ground is quite interesting at times, they don't seem to wrap up the things that are happening in Europe much, on these little news flashes give us something to talk about. It is perhaps not exactly true in every detail but we have no way of checking up on it. It would be very nice to hear a wireless again broadcasting English programmes, we sometimes used to moan at the poor stuff that was put over sometimes but let me hear one now.

It is two years ago this month since we left England how time files? [sic] or doesn’t it, I wonder. Little did I think that when we say [sic] Land’s End disappear behind us in a nice sea haze that morning, that we were going to see a11 [sic] sorts of things, and all sorts of things were going to happen to us before we saw it again, being a Prisoner of War was the thing that did not enter things at all! and the day that we see it again will not be a day too soon. As I have told you before that wondering about you all takes up quite a lot of my spare time, and believe me it covers quite a lot of people. What has happened to people outside the family? Gadwell, Herbert Swinn, Alan Blackburn, Fred Belton, the Farrs, Mrs Sharp . . . I could fill a whole sheet of them, whether Mr Gibbs still writes to you, he invite [sic] me to go and see him sometime, whether you sold the Midget,

D5.

And of course, of you all at home. How are you all? how has life been treating you? of the folk in Lincoln, has Charlie joined the Navy for that tot of rum? What is happening to you all? How I would like to know? Still, who knows! one of these days perhaps we shall get some news from you, but it sure is a long time without any, eighteen months now since I had the last letter, each night I pray that each and every one of you is alright, and that our reunion is not too far away

So cheerio, all best wishes to you all, may God watch over you all and keep you save [sic] until we all meet again, keep smiling

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LETTERS HOME FROM CYCLE POW CAMP, BATAVIA

SEPTEMBER 1943

E1.

Many Happy Returns of the Day to Eric on his Birthday.

CYCLE, P.O.W. CAMP.
BATAVIA.,
3.9.43.

TO ALL AT HOME.

I have just finished the last letter to you all, when one of the many rumoured moves of, which we have had so many began to look as if it were the real thing this time. First the rumour, then the nominal rolls, no service unit is compete [sic] without its rolls. At first Ron and I were not on it, but lo and behold, a few days later we saw our names on . . I am officer i/c of a section of 50 men and Ron is 2nd i/c. A move of prisoners of war has to be taken part in to get the right atmosphere. In the first place you have to carry all your own Kit including your bed- roll, except in one or two cases when the officers have been able to send a little of theirs along with the office gear. What a job it is fixing everything up! Some people have no boots or anything to walk in. Others have no change of Kit, mosquito nets for these, packs or water bottles for those, or someone else is short of a blanket. when fellows are getting short of money they are rather inclined to sell their Kit, and when a move does take place they are usually short of a lot of things. What a life! We had had about 13 months in the Bandoeng camp and I am quite looking forward to the change, a change of people and scenery does no one any .harm now and again. There are about 450 English troops, 25 being officers, the remainder being Dutchmen making our battalion 1,000 strong. This is the third camp which we have been in since leaving B. about six weeks ago, we certainly get plenty of moving around and we still do not know where we are going to. There is one thing about a move and that is that it gives one something to think about. The getting ready before-hand; the total time that one stands on parade waiting for some little Japanese to come along and count you, or because he thinks that it is about time that he had another parade if totalled up would run into scores of hours. Then you usually have a practice pack up and parade with your kit the day before you are due to leave. You pack everything up, and get on parade with it. You may have to wait at least an hour before any Japanese appears. They have to check through their rolls which seem to take ages; and will then decide that they will have a kit inspection. So out you tip all -your belonging into the road way and they go through it all. They then expect you to pack it up in about 5 minutes, although it may have taken you at least a couple of hours packing and repacking trying to get in just those ten extra things which will not go in anywhere. After you have done it several times you soon get the hang of things. If you cannot find room for the sponge bag when you go to the Governor you put it in the back of the car and hope that you can get it passed the boots at the other end. But not when a P.O.W. moves oh no! What you cannot get in you just have to throw it away. It is surprising some of the things that you carry around with you

E2.

a tin for sugar or salt, several pieces 01 [sic] soap, soap is very precious, pieces of string, wire and nails to erect the mosquito net with at the other end. It seems to be an unwritten law that you must not leave any nails in the walls for the next people who may come along. They are able to pack 60 people into a 4th class rail-way carriage, and as our sections are all 50's some of them have to be split up to make the numbers right, and as you usually move off while it is still dark, these people who are attached to you don’t seem to be able to find their correct party. Then you find that you are a man short, the Japanese guard begins to panic, and someone looks as if he is going to get his face slapped. But it usually comes out OK in the end. The day for moving arrives. Reveille usually a couple of hours before you are due to start off. Everyone has been issued with a loaf of bread the day before for his day's ration so at least breakfast does not hold things up. The station may be some distance away, but no matter how far you still have to walk, complete with Kit. Usually a long wait outside the station, waiting for the train. You eventually get outside your own carriage and have another count to see if you have lost anyone on the way. These Japanese are great people for counting P.O.W.’s. I suppose that they would catch a cold if they were short. There is a story of a Japanese who had a party out cutting wood, and when it was time to pack up they counted up the number of saws that they had finding that someone must have found one and they had

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one extra threw it away as it was more than his job was worth to go back with one extra. But back to the move. They have a special way of entraining and woe betides anyone who does not do it as per the book. Eventually everyone is aboard, the kit either stowed under the seats or people sitting on it. The shutters have to be kept closed while the train is in the station, and at ever, [sic] station at which you stop at while the engine is filled up with wood; they use wood instead of coal now and as the wood does not seem to last any time all, you get plenty of long waits in a very hot and stuffy carriage. But what does that matter to mere prisoners, who are perhaps only, a nuisance to the retaining power. On this move you could notice the change in temperature as we came down into the plains, and each stop seemed to become just a little more uncomfortable as the eight hours rolled on. At last our destination. Out of the train onto the platform, plenty of guaros [sic] to keep the civilians back. Another one or two counts before you leaved [sic] the station and a long or short walk as the case may be to your new place of abode. Then comes the job of getting your own particular men into their billets. You get them beginning to move in and someone come along and tells you that these are for someone else and that your billet is over there, so out they all have to come again. And so it goes on. You can imagine that after a long trip in an overcrowded train that things get a little bit strained and you have to handle things very gently. But

E3.

soon everyone has somewhere to sleep. I say somewhere because this camp is very overcrowded, people are sleeping everywhere. All the barrack blocks have verandas around with people sleeping on them. We are as cramped for room as the troops having just sufficient room of perhaps three feet wide to unroll the bedroll at night and stack your kit all around you. Before we left B. I had a narrow mattress made, just wide enough to lay on, packed with Kapok about 1 1/2ins thick, which with a blanket laid on is quite comfortable unrolled on the floor. Here you have to queue up for almost everything just like the front at Hunstanton on August Monday. There is one good thing and that is that the food ration is pretty good so that for once the troops have not that to moan about. Half of a small loaf of bread, with tea and anything, else that you are able to buy such as a hard-boiled egg or something for breakfast, with rice and soup for lunch and the meal in the evening. There is tea for the fetching from the cookhouse at all times of the day, usually boiled in an old 50 gallon oil drum. As we are only birds of passage we were not allowed to buy anything from the canteen but after a while this was washed out so that everyone can get his little bits and pieces. In the officers rations a few weeks ago they started to issue pipe tobacco in place cigarettes so I bought, a pipe and am getting quite proficient with it. Am getting ready for when I retire. I must, admit that there is something rather soothing about an empty pipe and now begin to realise why Albert Taylor used to suck his to keep the hunger away a little. My birthday this month, 27 years old, the war started 4 years ago today, I wonder how much longer, four years in which you at home have had to put up your blackout curtains or shutters up each night, does Mr Farr still do it for you? I often wonder. There I go again, wondering, wondering, wondering . . . always doing it. How are you all? We had about 30 more letters for U.K. people about three weeks ago all dated about July 42, one was for a fellow from Skegness, it gave one rather a thrill to see a familiar postmark again, not one for yours truly but am keeping my fingers crossed, one of these days I shall be lucky. But I keep hoping and praying that you are all alright and keeping well. Am pleased to say that I am still OK; feeling fit and well and in the best of spirits. One or two people come along with all sorts or stories of things that are supposed to be happening outside. How we lap them up. If only half of them had been true we should have been out of this lot a long time ago. But that day is bound to come, be it this year, next year, sometime . . . so we patiently wait, perhaps a little impatiently sometimes. Am writing this sitting on the veranda surrounded by peoples kit, with the roadway about four feet away, with a Japanese sentry doing his duty about 5 yds to our left, to who everyone who passes must salute or bow,

E4.

which he sometimes kindly condescends to acknowledge with a nod of the head. One of the odd things about this camp is that the showers, or to be more correct the communal bathrooms which have a large long trough out of which one ladles the water and throws it over oneself are fed from some natural hot springs, so we now have warm water to wash in the first for about 18 months. The first ladle does not take ones breath away as it used to do. There are no convoys so that one has to find ways and means of passing the time away. I sometimes think that we are getting rather lazy but there does not seem the right atmosphere to sit down and learn anything fresh when in theory this would just be one right time when one has plenty of time on ones hands, but there we are, one of these days we shall have to get a down to things again. I see that I have put “sit down” it would be very nice to sit in chair again, haven’t sat in one for a couple pf [sic] months almost now. Each place that we have been to since B. has been completely void of furniture. We lay on our bed rolls at night and sit on

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them rolled, up during the day with your. back against the wall. You have your meal squatting on it with your dixie of rice etc between your knees. Believe me the old back begins to ache a bit sometimes by bed time. There is no sport of any kind, and with the troops not having much to occupy their minds they soon get a bit discontented especially when there is not much for them to smoke. As I said before, I quite like the old pipe, am not going to badly and can still laugh but will not be sorry when this period of uncertainty is over and we know where we are going too. We keep having tests for dysentery; the Japanese are very frightened of it, so that perhaps we shall be off one of these days, to who knows where and for who knows how. Xxxx perhaps if we knew some people would still not be satisfied

LETTERS HOME FROM CHANGI POW CAMP, SINGAPORE

OCTOBER 1943 – DECEMBER 1943

E4. cont.

CHANGI P.O.W. CAMP
SINGAPORE

18.10.43

I started to write this about a month ago and you will note that by the change of address we have moved a little further on our journey to who knows where! And what a move it was too. Before we left Batavia the draft was slightly altered and all the officers who were 2nd i/c were left behind of who Ron was one. It was a pity as we had been knocking around together for almost 3 years, although it does not seem that long. It was unfortunate but there we are we cannot help some of these things there is a war on, we could have had things happen to us far worse than that eh? We started the move on the 26th my birthday. Four years since I joined the R.A.F . . . The move started by a move off about 04.00 hrs to the station, followed by a train journey of about 10 miles in a carriage with no lights in with 70 people plus their kit. No one could see where they were getting too once inside. I leave it to

E5.

your own imagination as to what it was like. Down to the docks. A short walk; on to the docks, and about 07OO [sic] hrs everyone was sitting on their kit having his breakfast, some of his bread loaf with a drink of cold tea out on [sic] his water bottle to wash it down. The boat we were to get on was loading rolling stock in its lower holds, we were to be in the upper ones. At 1200 we were still there. About 140o [sic] hrs we started to move. About 2800 poor old P.O.W.’s began to file along the dock side to a very small looking tramp steamer of about 5,000 tons. It looked a very small boat indeed to hold us all, its name was the “Macassar Manu”. Our party was about three quarters of the way along the queue and it certainly was & [sic] sight to see two single files , filing up the gang plank and slowly disappearing into the holds, When they had filled up the holds they filled up the deck. We were sprayed with disinfectant as we went up the gang plank, goodness knows what for as there was filth everywhere, the whole boat was filthy. Our little party was destined for the forward hold on the aft part of the ship. We were marched on board and down the stairway below. into a space approx.. 37ft square and about 12ft high. We went in and still they followed us in until we were standing as if we had been standing on a parade ground, and standing pretty tight at that too! The boat had been tied up at the quay for sometime with the sun shining down on it and it was just like going into an oven, the perspiration just ran off everyone, we were soon wet through, When they could not get any more in they said words to the effect It’s all yours’. The only air coming into the place was from the doorway and from a place where one or two hatch covers had been left off. Well I took off my shirt, sat down on the old bed roll, and took stock of our surroundings, Along each side under the actual deck were two long shelves, with people sitting on them five deep. I sat sitting; there was not even sufficient height for them to sit up. These shelves accounted. for about 3oO [sic] of the 480 of us who were in this one hold. On the floor, straw mats had been laid where the remainder of us were to travel. The people on deck were sitting on their kit on any odd space that they could line [sic] which even included the boom for the derricks. That was not a bad spot really as you did at least get a little breeze up there which was saying something. The Isle of Man boats were never as crowded as this one, I’ll guess. And that was how we travelled for four days until we arrived in Singapore on the 30th. There was just room left, more by luck than good management, to form the old queue to get tea to drink and when the tea

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ran out you just stood or leaned against someone until the meal was served out. We had two meals each day, if you were not queuing for one it was the other, or you just stood. It was far too hot to stay down in the hold. As it happened some of the people from below stayed on deck after the first night, where they put themselves I don’t know,

E6.

so that with piling up the kit at one end we were able to recline with our knees on our chests and try to sleep at night down below. And the heat! With only a pair of shorts on you were soon wet through, It rained three nights out of the four, absolutely poured and siled [sic], the people up on deck getting wet through along with their kit, and we down below already wet through with perspiration, trying to evade the streams of water which seemed to find their way in somehow. In the end you just let it rain in on you and thought that at any rate it could not last for ever and that as soon as the sun came up again your clothes would dry on you. And no one seemed to take any ill effects from it, although I think that if we had been on board much longer things might have nave [sic] begun to happen as some of the troops were beginning not to bother to try to get in the queue for their food. But not me! If you keep getting some food you can still keep cheerful. It is really surprising how cheerful everyone kept. One night, it was raining cats and dogs and as black as ink, a little party were singing “Good King Wenceslas” at the top of their voices until a Japanese came along and told them in no uncertain terms to shut up. After the second day I managed to get about a cupful of water and had a shave which made things feel much, better, some people not having a wash the whole of the trip. You can imagine what they looked like when we got off. As it happens the crossing was smooth, if it had been at all rough we should have had some fun – I guess. One or two people had badly swollen feet when it came to getting off the combination of standing for long periods and boots that had got wet and the sun had dried then and shrunk them a little. I heard since that the Japanese medical officer apologised for the overcrowding, he had – every reason to do so. I should think that the trip will stay in people’s minds for some time to come, and may be worth a pint or two when they get home. What a treat it was to get on dry land again, the ground seeming to roll slightly under ones feet for several hours after. Every one looking dirty, their clothes dirty, their kit and bed rolls with their blankets dirty, but still cheerful. We finally started to get off about 11.30hrs. Again looking at the people strung: out across the quay side it made you wonder how we had all travelled on that one small ship. We sat about until about 10.00hrs when a convoy of about 40 lorries came along to take us away. This was indeed a novelty, to be given a ride instead of having to walk. We were brought right through Singapore, so at last I have seen something of our ‘’stronghold in the Far East”. Along the water front, past the famous Raffle’s Hotel, known all over the world or so I believe, past the Airport, through the Chinese area and out into the country. The whole journey was about 12 miles to the camp that we are in now, awaiting our moving orders, again. We are in the transit camp the main camp being over the road to which we are not allowed.

E7.

to go to except on official duty, which usually means some made up excuse to get over to buy bits and pieces from the canteen. If one person is able to go he usually has a long list of things for other people as well. Things are very expensive, eggs costing 30 cents each and sugar 66 cents per pound. The main camp was a British barracks before the war, there being about 5,000 troops there now, the remainder of about 47,000 who were on the island at the time of the capitulation are fairly comfortable over here, at the moment we still have nothing to sit on and the food is not all that it might be, being very short. The troops are out on convey each day, either gardening, trailer parties fetching wood, or working on an aerodrome which is being constructed. I can’t quite know how they excuse P.O. Was doing this kind of work perhaps that calls it a sports field. We were able to have a concert party over the other night to entertain us, which every thoroughly enjoyed, and we have had a quiz to pass the time away. A padre came over last Sunday and will be over again tonight, a jolly good fellow. We go out in charge of convey parties; I have been out almost every day since we arrived which passes the time away quite nicely. You get a walk out side which is something. The climate is very nice, hot and sunny during the day and fairly cold at night, sometimes being a little sticky under the mossy net at first. There are one or two good showers under which everyone stood and steeped themselves when we first arrived. You can imagine that it was just great! One of the surprising things is that the people here all have long hair. They certainly looked rather odd when we first saw them as we must have looked to them. Of course we have all started to let ours grow, until our own Japanese guards catch up with us at any rate. In a few months we ought to look quite normal again, or as normal as we ever shall look again. We are to have another inoculation for dysentery again I hear. Just

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another one to add to the number. We seem to drink an awful quantity of tea, just plain tea with no sugar in, milk being an unknown quantity. My mug is an old Quaker Oats tin again which must hole [sic] about a quart. This several times a day would make a teacup at home a very small affair indeed, it would need continually filling. We often have little discussions on how we shall fit into things, when we eventually get out, we are sometimes only just over the right side of the animal line, we eat on the floor, and sleep on the floor like they do, so that you may have to excuse one or two things perhaps. We have been having a little unrest among the troops during the last few days again. Shortness of food and they [sic] having to do fairly heavy work and not much money to buy any tobacco when what little there is available soon starts discontent. We get exactly the same that they do and I know that I am always hungry so I can appreciate now [sic] they feel having to work on it. That is where the pipe comes in. Anyway, in spite of everything we could be much worse off although you cannot always convince a man that, that is so when

E8.

he is continually hungry. We officers have all been issued with heavy warm clothing; I suppose that the troops will get theirs later on. Ours is a suit of brown army material, a tunic or sort of lounge coat and a pair of slacks. Of course I had the usual trouble of trying to get some slacks that long enough in the leg and small enough in the waist, but after trying almost every one eventually found a pair that are some¬where near fitting me. Also, in a raffle for a few odds and ends. I was lucky enough to get a brown knitted pullover, knitted by some dear old dear perhaps, so that when I get it all on I don’t look too bad, and ought to be OK when we get to some colder clime, the odds at the moment seem to be in favour of either Formosa or Nippon but you never can tell with these people. We shall look a pretty looking lot when we are all geared, up but would gladly walk down Piccadilly in them given the chance.

13.10.43.

The other evening on [sic] of our M.O.’s who lives in our little room had a birthday, and to celebrate it he stood our mess a treat. He bought 4 tins of curried chicken and a tin of pineapple. Along with our
ordinary rice and soup we had a three course dinner, soup, rice and curried chicken, and pineapple.

Along with a few biscuits we happened to have we had quite a meal. I think that we all went on parade that night feeling, more satisfied than we had felt after a meal for quite a long time. Part of our draft left yesterday morning, about, 1300 all Dutch and that we may be going’ any time at all. I am Orderly de [sic] officer this week so am getting plenty of moans about the food, but there is not much that we can do about it as to buy anything extra is very expensive and it is no use spending all the P.R..I. as there is no telling what difficulties may arise before we are through and at the moment there is no money being received for the conveys that are being done. If one man thinks that the man in front of him has got a little more than he has naturally the balloon goes up, and woe betide the servers if they run out with still about 30 more hungry soles to feed. What a life. During the night there was a flap that the water was going to be turned off for an indefinite period today. So there was the hygiene officer and I helping to fill up all the available containers with water . It is now about 11.30 and it is still running so that it was perhaps another false alarm, but you have to be ready for all these things. I thought that I had finished working at night for a while

31.10.43

Well the English part of the draft moved off on the 21st leaving behind 15 officers, of which I am one, and about 15 troops who were sick. The rolls were altered again and only the medical officers and one other going along. What is to happen to us is unknown at the moment. With the exception of Sgt Bennett who was sick all the 84 people went along so that we are now spread all over this part of the world, Java,

E9.

Singapore, and to who knows where the ship has gone to. One of our U.K. fellows came back the next day, there had been a mix up somewhere and he ought to have been in hospital and not with the party, and said that they had been told that they were going to Formosa; so let’s hope that they have a good trip. To allow the old cooks to have a decent nights rest about 6 of us went along to the cookhouse and prepared the breakfast and the food for the two rations that they were to take with them for the next day. We steamed and fried rice and made about 600rice balls which were also fried during the night. When we went to bed about 02.30 in the morning there was the moon shining

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behind some cocoanut trees with a lovely cloudless starry sky which, reminded one of these travel films which usually finishes up with “and so we say farewell to . . .’ but you soon came back to earth when you laid down on your old bed. We were up again about 0500 to make tea and help with the serving out of the food, It was quite good fun for a change and I quite enjoyed myself. I can now include cookhouse chores in my achievements. Everything went off according to plan, and contrary to the remarks that have been passed about the food of late we were even complimented on it. Or perhaps they were only being polite. You never can tell with some of them. The camp was very quiet when they had all gone. The remaining of us all moved into one hut together- which even has a table and some forms so that we now have something on which to lean our elbows on. We have started a little cookhouse of our own which was not possible to do before, and by paying so much into the mess fund we are able to produce one or two little extras or do something to the cookhouse rations to make a little variety. The few troops who are left are also having a share of the extras so that everyone is happy. One of the fellows called King, who used to be a rubber planter in Malaya before then is head cook and we all help him. My specialty is making the coffee in the evening, the Japanese have sent in some bales of old American newspapers, which although dated about 39 or 40 are at least something to read. The few books that we have almost all been read and reading material is getting a little short.

And so time passes quite pleasantly_. Always thinking about you al1,[sic] waiting for some news no matter now [sic] old. Just a little would be just great. As always there are a thousand and one things I would like to know about you all, but one of these days. . . so cheerio. God bless you all and keep you al1 [sic] safe until that great day when we all meet again

LETTERS HOME FROM CHANGI POW CAMP, SINGAPORE

JANUARY 1944 – JULY 1944

F1.

Many Happy Returns of the Day to Mother and Jane on their Birthdays.

CHANGI P.O.W. CAMP
SINGAPORE*
10.1.44

TO ALL AT HOME.

On New Year’s Eve four R.A.F. officers, a Squadron Leader, a P/0 and two P/0’s sat in the porch of a house overlooking the Straits of Johore talking. There was a three day old moon shining in almost cloudless sky. A gong sounded twelve times, they drank a toast, three in hooch and one in cold tea to a Happy and prosperous New Year, and that the S/Ldr would loose [sic] his wager that the war would not be over before Easter 1945; the P/O with the cold tea offering up a silent prayer that his folk at home were safe and well and were not worrying too much about him, and that the great reunion day was not too far away. And so we saw the New Year in. New Year’s Day was a lovely day so let us hope that that was a good omen for the year. I went to bed that night, or rather morning, and lay for quite a long time wondering about you all and hoping that you were all O.K. I hope that you all had a real nice Christmas and that there are not too many more before we are all together again. We had quite a nice time, every one wondering what their people at home were doing, I know that I was. We had an extra large meal on Christmas night which unfortunately had to be eaten in the dark as the lights had failed, but perhaps that added to the novelty of things. I think that everyone enjoyed themselves. It was rather weird to look along the tables and see two long rows of glowing cigar and cigarette ends. We had put five tables together so that our new [sic] remaining troops could also sit down with us, had put out a few banana leaves and a few flowers on the table, to brighten things up a bit. Jimmy King had excelled himself in our little kitchen, and a long with the normal cookhouse issue had turned out a very nice meal, soup, nazi goring, etc and a very nice sweet. He had found out how to make a very nice filling for a sweet out of sweet potatoes and a little ginger, which tasted just like jam. Coffee, cigars, and hooch for those who wanted it. I think that I was the only exception, finished off a very nice meal. The hooch that they had been brewing is very much like the stuff that they used to brew in Java, and according to the people who think that they know all about these things has a pretty high alcoholic content. I noticed that one or two of them seemed to be rather talkative on Xmas Eve after having had one or two. That night as a special favour we were allowed to have the lights on until 23.59 hrs so we had a bit of a party. We had made some fish pasties, coffee, and of course the hooch, and had them about 10.0 [sic] o’clock which made quite a change. On Boxing Day all the British officers and the few remaining troops who had been left behind off the

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draft all moved over the road into the main camp. The party had to be split up into three’s and four’s around the various messes, but we hope that sometime soon we shall be able to have an

F2

R.A.F. mess and all be together again as they were quite a cheerful crowd. Boyce, King and I are in a very nice house which has a Group Captain, 10 Lieut. Colonels, and 7 Majors along with a few of we odds and sods, the total complement being about 40. As most of the old boys don’t seem to be very talkative they leave us alone so we get on vary nicely indeed, some of the younger fellows being quite decent. Most of the old boys are Indian Army who look as if they are used to sitting on a rock up on the North West Frontier on their own and ruminate on things. It is rather interesting to look around at all the old dead beats, you know, just how we used to do when we were on holiday together and say “Just look at that . ,” or something like that. One or two of them look as if they ought to have been in a bath chair long ago with someone to look after them. To hear some of them talk sometimes you have a hard job to realise that in the hands of people such as these, for these cannot be all the exceptions, our fates were placed. Thank goodness that although the R.A.F. is only the junior service, her senior officers seem to know what is what. But ‘nuff said. Who am I to criticise. It is also rather funny to see some of them smoking cigarettes rolled out of newspaper, which look something like Christmas crackers. And to see some of them eating shakes yea [sic] to the core. Some of them look as they used to get both feet in the trough. One of the fellows at Boyce and Kings table, no matter what there is for meals just mixes it into one heterogeneous mess and just shovels it in. There are five of us at our table, a Sqd/Ldr who used to do parachute jumps for one of the air circus’s way back, two captains, a Russian Jew, Mosoeviteh by name, who wears thick leased glasses and has a stutter, who usually finishes off anything that the Sqd/Ldr cannot eat as he is a very small eater having only just some [sic] out of hospital, and yours truly. One of the captains is the spit of Edwin Gwenn who was in the Good Companions. Short, thick set, bald on the top with a thick black moustache. And can he eat. I used to think that I was pretty slick but he has me beaten to a frazzle. At the moment he is quite a long way ahead although he has the added advantage of being able to use his knife. When we came over here we started to use a knife and fork again, the first time for many months, as previously we had been having all our feed in a dixie and all you needed was a spoon. It is almost like being in an Hotel. A batman brings in each course and then comes in and collects the empties. The food which is our chief interest in life is very good and very nicely served up, but a little bit short some days. But we must not grumble at such small things being only P.O.W.’s. It certainly is very nice to be living in something like civilized ways again. As the place is rather overcrowded; we three are living in what was once upon a time the hall, and are very comfortable Indeed before we came over Boyce and I made ourselves a bed each, which is far more

F3.

comfortable than sleeping on the floor. The house is on a overlooking the Straits from which we have a very nice view. It is quite chilly when the wind blows in this direction, and at the moment we seem to be having a a [sic] spell of real ‘English weather, cold, windy, cloudy and rainy, totally different to what one always imagines the weather in the tropics to be like, but very pleasant all the same. Several of the fellows in the house are battle causalities [sic], and it is rather disconcerting to sit and watch a padre sitting scratching the stump of one of his legs which he sometimes absentmindedly Just picks up and lets it drop again. At first I did not think much to the idea of leaving the other side as we seemed to be quite happy, We had a few conveys to do such as fetching wood each day on a trailer. Each trailer which was originally an old lorry chassis with the steering wheel and brakes still on and a flat bottom. It has a wire trace to which about five cross bars are fitted so that about twenty or so of you can pull It, everyone jumping on and riding down any little slope that you come to. Then we have bore holes to dig and A.R.P. trenches to dig, and what with any other little odd job that wants doing I keep real busy. The mess had bought about 24 chicks and 10 ducklings, and I2 du [sic] which were about 4 weeks old. So Boyce and I set about and made some huts and runs for them. When we came over here we had to sell the ducks on account, of the feeding of-them, but one of the s/ld's is looking after the chickens for us. In this mess they have a communal poultry farm into which member pays $2 1/2 each month, and the eggs, if any, are distributed around to each member. We had also transplanted some banana trees over the road hoping at some time to be able to pick our own banana’s off our own trees. Two other gardening enthusiasts had got a garden going. We had also started to build an annex on to the side of the hut as a dining room as we had had 5 Americans put in with us and were somewhat overcrowded again. They had been shot down in Burma last September of last year. Just Imagine only four months ago, they are mere sprogs at the game. Of course when they came in wanted to know what was going on in the outside world from which we had been

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cut off from for so long, but the [sic] they seemed particularly "genless” although I must admit that they had been in China for several months, and so we did not even get know who the latest film star was and what the latest dance hits were. But taking things all round I think that now it was a change for the better. There have been one or two eases [sic] of small-pox over there so perhaps we are better out of it. Everyone has been vaccinated again and although mine took again I had not the trouble that I had when I first joined up, do you remember? The conditions in the camp are still pretty good am keeping on the top line. Two pantomimes along with several other shows have been going over Xmas, all helping to pass the time away. I have been able to join a library by someone giving me

F4.

a book to hand in to become a member, so that we have something to read although the selection is not very big. There is an officers’ club where you can go along in the evening and sit and talk and have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. Most of our old party seems to congregate there most evenings and compare notes on each mess and the people in them. A working party has just returned from up country, they left here about last April to make a road and a railway up in Thailand. They have completed the job and have been returning in parties of about 600. Eight or nine of us were up each night for about five nights helping to show them their billets, fixing them up with tea and showing them where the showers etc were. You cannot imagine in what a shocking state some of them were in, what broken wrecked looking men they looked. They had been traveling for five or six days by train with no opportunity for washing, some of them had hardly any kit or any clothes for that matter, a number of them being bear [sic] footed. Even if some of them had had boots they would not have been able to wear them on account of their feat [sic] being swollen with beri-beri, some of them you could not tell which was leg and which was foot they were so badly swollen. Practically 100% had scabies and lice, and the smell of some of them was not to [sic] good. You can see some of them walking around Just a bag of bones some of them a mass of tropical ulcer scars. Believe me, they looked to be in a pretty pitiful state first but when they had had a wash and been issued with some new clothing did not look quite so bad. Forty or fifty of each party were taken off to hospital straight away, several of whom have since died. Some of the stories that they have to tell are almost unbelievable. Some were taken up as far as the existing railway went and then had to march upwards to 140 mile walking at night and resting during the day in the sun with no covering and not much food which they had to cook themselves each time they halted for their so called rest. They averaged about 15 miles each stage. They arrived at their destination just before dark one evening in a camp which had huts with no roofs on, no cookhouse or latrines organised, and were taken out to work about 07.30 the next morning .From then onwards some of them hardly ever saw their camp in daylight, leaving before it was light in the morning and not getting back until after dark in the evening, sometimes as late as midnight. They had to supply so many men each day which made it necessary sometimes to take out very unfit men who were in no state to walk, Sometimes let alone work. Their food was very poor, the usual steamed rice and thin veg soup, and if a man was sick in quarters the Japanese did not think that he ought to have the as much to eat as the fit ones and would cut down on the ration. One British Colonel is reported to have been beaten to death, and one Major was so badly beaten up that, the last that was last heard of him was that he was in hospital having lost the sight of one of his eyes. Out of about 40,000 British men who have left on different parties, 10,000 are calculated as being

F5.

casualties one party of about 7,000 strong having about 45% casualties one camp of 1,400 loosing [sic] 1,000 the remainder being in hospital still in Burma. The chief causes were typhoid, cholera, dysentery and malnutrition; some of them when they fell sick just gave up all hope and passed away. One Australian officer had had the job of burning 30 odd bodies two days and running. The medical officers in spite of things beyond their control did a jolly good job of work and looked almost washed out when they arrived back. Now if I had been in such and such a camp instead of at so and so I might have been one of those parties. Gosh with the rough times that we think that we have had from time to time we have had nothing like these people; we don’t know that we are alive. We sure have a lot to be thankful for. I certainly hope that our fellows do not run into anything like that. There is one thing that can be said for the breaking up of our little party and that is that you see new faces and find new topics of conversation. I am getting quite good at listening and talking about nothing at all for quite a long time. On Sundavs [sic] I usually go along to church, usually to the C of E service as the little church is quite near. The time of the evening service is 20.30hrs which coincides with the time that you at home are just going to morning service. There are two open air gramophone record programmes each week, one classical and one popular music, so that along with lectures and with shows you need never be at a loose end in the evening. There are about 150 R.A.F. troops in the camp

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who had been saving up for quite a long time for a feed at Christmas, which came off the Wednesday after We went along and acted as waiter’s. A nice time was had by all although the concerts afterwards was not so hot. The R.A.F. officer had a cocktail party on New Year’s Eve Sunday, coffee, hooch and sandwiches, so that taking things all round we had quite a nice time. Am pleased to say that I on the top line and feeling fine. I had three days on the aerodrome last week and got badly burned again, am just beginning to peel, almost brick red on arms chest back and legs, but am pleased to say that I stand the sun much better than I used to do, and can go around all day in just a pair of shorts. A few weeks ago I knocked some skin of [sic] my legs and both went wrong, raised lumps in my groin and put me on my bed for a few days but am OK again now. The M.O’s have quite a job with even small sores going diptheric, [sic] which still sometimes put a person into hospital for anything up to 12 weeks. My hair is almost normal again and I look a little less like a convict. The razor blade that I have just finished using I have used since we came from Java keeping it sharp on a pieces [sic] of broken bottle. That is how we make things last nowadays. Just think that in the good old days if you used a blade even half a dozen times you thought that you had done very well indeed. My clothes are lasting out quite well. When we first arrived I was able to buy a pair of shorts and

F6.

pair of boots, and three pairs of socks through the black market, so that I ought to be alright for a while. One only seems to wear a shirt in the evenings and for meals. People usually wear slacks and carry a stick in the evening but have not got up to that yet. A number of cables were allowed to be sent at Christmas. We were allowed one for we sixteen. We had a draw to see who was to send it, wanting the lucky one to include all our names in it, as 100 words were allowed, but the fellow who drew it only included six of which mine was not one of them. He is married so perhaps we ought not to grumble, but he was not very popular for a few days. We still have not received any mail. Some of the American seamen received some Red Cross parcels a short while ago which contained some very useful things such as razor blades, tooth brushes and paste etc. They would come in very useful as the canteen is not able to supply all the things sometimes. By gee! a few letters and perhaps some snaps would be great, I often look at the few that I have, but to that day will come sometime all being well. We were able to send another card at Xmas on which we were able to put the date so that ought to be a bit more of guide to things, I often wonder if you have received any of the others and what you thought to them when you read them, they read very funny to me when I have written them but at least they are something to let you that at the time of writing I was still OK. I get quite a lot of pleasure out of writing these letters, goodness knows when you will be able to read them but hope that they will be of some little interest when you do. They do not look too good type written but will be more legible than written in pencil hardly anyone having such a thing as a pen and ink. As usual I can find myself at all sorts of odd moments of the day thinking about you all, thinking that the same sun or moon will be over England in another eight or nine hours time, it some how or other ties things together. It is no good trying to put down on paper even a few of the things that I would like to know about you all, one of these (times) I shall know some of the answers perhaps. I sometimes think ah! what day is it, even they get out of hand sometimes, yes so and so will be happening at home, I wonder I how for out I have been in my guesses. People who P.O.W’s in Europe have at least some news from home. As I have said before we must not grumble and keep on hoping and praying that one of these davs [sic] our prayers will be answered. Well enough of this rambling; or I shall not have anything to write about again next time, so goodnight to you all although it is still morning with you, and cheerio and God bless you all until that great day When we are together again.

All the best to everyone.

G1.
CHANGI
P.O.W. CAMP
SINGAPORE.

March 1st 1944

TO ALL AT HOME.

Here we are again with a few more lines to you all. By gee, March 1st again, it will soon be Christmas again. Who knows where we might be next year. You can imagine where I hope I shall be.

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We seem to be settling down in our new home, “in the hall’ in spite of all the colonels, although you cannot imagine how cold it can be sometimes. People in the back part of the house complain that they get no breeze, and so it goes on. Am pleased to say that I am still on the top line, and feeling o.k. I have just finished another week out on the air-strip, my arms, legs, chest, and back looking rather red again, the old nose beginning to peel as usual. I go out alternate weeks so the peeling is now a fortnightly happening. It is not too bad a job really, you leave the mess here about 8.30am, and get back about 6.50pm. While you are there you have a 15min break in the middle of the morning and the afternoon, and an hour for lunch, the rest of the time you stand around and watch the lads working. Some periods seem almost endless, but the day soon passes. I now have my lunch sent out each day, usually bean soup in a thermos flask, I found the rissoles which we used to take out with us, went cold, the cold fat was upsetting my insides. Although the bulk is perhaps a little less, I enjoy my lunch more. The small sweet served in the mess at lunch time is saved for me and I have it with my dinner in the evening. One of the best parts of the day is when you are coming home, you begin to anticipate the cold shower, and a cup of tea with whatever they had with after noon in the mess. Standing under the shower is perhaps the best part of it all. I am very careful not to put any soap on my face. One fellow has lent me one of those big cowboy type of hat, but it is not very effective, but keeps the rain off when it rains. Two days this week I got absolutely wet through which meant putting on wet boots next morning. I sure pity some of the lads on days when it rains, some are very short of clothing. I mentioned food just now, you can imagine that it is our one big thing in life just now. The last week or two the rations have been very short, as a matter of interest here is a list of the I.J.A. daily rations issue, and the C.M.F. (the camp messing fund) into which everyone has to contribute for the week ending 12.2.44. I.J.A. tea 1.76ozs, sugar .634 ozs, salt .705 ozs, cocoa-nut oil .880 ozs, rice 10.579 ozs, soya beans 5.289 ozs, soap .211ozs paper .105 ozs, vegetables 12.695 ozs, fish or meat 1.763 ozs, The C.M.F. weekly issue, peanuts 3. 5 ozs. azuki a small bean 2.0 ozs, togay 5.0 ozs, palm oil 4.666oz blackbeans 19.0 ozs. There has not been an I.J.A. issue of sugar or oil, and hardly any vegetables recently, although I am pleased to say that the meat and fish keeps coming in. The C.M.F. issue has been O.K. except that they have not be [sic] able to buy any oil, and the prices of other things has been very high indeed. We have hardly been able to buy anything edible in the canteen, no sugar, tobacco is rationed, the price being as high as 70c for less than oz of pipe tobacco, and bananas at 23c per pound when they have been available, but perhaps you at home are no better off for these so called luxuries than we are. In fact what little, money we have has hardly any value as you cannot buy anything. Some of the things bought for the mess are so expensive that the cost in messing has been increased and we are getting less food. This is the average menu for a day, Breakfast, porridge made out of rice flour and crushed soya beans, and two slices of bread made from beans about 4ins by 2ins, with some bean and rice mixture spread on it, or perhaps some dried white-bait when there has been any oil. Lunch is usually a thick soup of a glue texture with a few pieces of banana or papaya from our own

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garden, or perhaps a savoury made from fish. In the afternoon we have a cup of tea with perhaps a slice of bread with pea-nut butter, or a small baked cake made from rice flour Dinner in the evening is soup, a rissole or something like that with a spoonful of veg either I.J.A. or from our own garden,

more beans and perhaps a little rice, and a sweet of some description. It may sound fine on paper, but you usually come away from the table hungry. The people who are on a good thing axe [sic] those who happen to sit at a table with one of the old boys with a small appetite who give most of their food away. Because food is short consequently there is very little swill for the poultry, who have to have 3½ lbs of dry rice, which is equivalent to about 111 lbs of cooked to keep them working. This does not seem to make them lay eggs, and as we are supposed to supply 30 eggs per week to the hospital, some weeks fail to meet our target, so do not see many eggs in the mess, but at least someone is getting an occasional one, who perhaps needs it more than me. The squadron leader who was looking after our young birds, which turned out to be about 90% cockerels, found out that he was unable to feed them so we had a snare out. We killed our three, they were no larger than partridges, boiled them and had them cold one Sunday evening. Just straight chicken, with nothing with them, they tasted great. You would have laughed to see me plucking and cleaning them. But as usual, just when things look not so good, the I.J.A. have said that they will increase the rice ration? it remains to be seen if it comes off as so of their things come to nothing very often. They have also said that they will allow the C.M.F. to buy a quantity of oil at a very cheap rate through them instead of the usual contractor. If it come [sic] off things should be a bit better as food we have is much improved by being fried. Also to celebrate Feb 29th, we had an issue of Red

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Cross parcels, the first that I have participate [sic] in, there was one parcel between seven of us. They are invalids boxes weighing 12 ozs ? each containing small tins of corn beef, ham and egg, butter, we had toast and butter today with our cup of tea, coffee, sugar, dried milk, anti-scurvy tablets etc which have been given to the hospital, a couple of pieces of soap, some emergency chocolate, and cigarettes. We had 7 1/2 boxes for this mess, the food is being used in the cookhouse, and the chocolate and cigarettes, about 50 each, have been issued out to each individual. Not very much but you have no idea how the atmosphere has improved in the camp. It has given us something to talk about. I have said that this is the first Red X that I have seen, long live the Red Cross and may they be able to send some more in, Some say that the Camels and Chesterfields are very mild compared to Java shag, rolled into cigarettes using either newspaper or pages out of a bible, that they have been smoking, but I think that they are very nice. Although tobacco is in short supply and expensive, perhaps someone may say “Well why not pack it in altogether” but a pipe even if is empty seems to keep a little of the hungry feeling away. It is rather funny to hear people say that so and so would be nice for dinner, but somehow each time my mind swings to a loaf of new bread, some butter, and a pot of jam or honey. We have some leeway to make up when we get out of this lot. I often wonder how you are all faring for food and always hope that in spite of the rationing you are getting sufficient. Enough of food, the theatres are still going great guns, along with the lectures etc. The other day we had an allotment of one radio message for this mess to be broadcast from the stage at a show which is being put over, but again yours truly was not the lucky one but am keeping my fingers cross one of these days. Almost every night, after I have cleared the one or two people who always seem congregate on it, I let down the mosquito net so shutting out all the sights of a prisoner of war camp, the other two beds, the two green lockers

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in which we keep our bits and pieces, the black-out shade over the light, all lights have to be shaded for some reason or other, and away back home I go. I sometimes lay for a long time, wondering, wondering, wondering . . . day dreaming until I fall asleep. I suppose that that is natures little outlet for the slight strain of uncertainty under which we are living. Thank goodness I keep fit. At the moment there are about 1500 people in hospital, some have been there since the capitulation. Some of them look as if they will be there until we get out. Poor folks. Jimmy King has a fissure, and is in hospital, perhaps the result of all the many glass rod tests that we have had, so we go along each evening. Hr/C Howells has just come out having been in for about five weeks with a diptheric ulcer, And G/Capt Hank More is due out this week after having been there for several months. People go into hospital with some small problem, and finish up with all sort [sic] of problems wailed [sic] there. In the evenings there is hardly any light in the wards, even worse off than we are in our hall, it is most depressing there. Me [sic] are fortunate to keep out. I think that I said in one of the last letters, I was getting lazy, not having the urge to study anything. Well I have started to do a little French again, and a P/O observer is giving one or two of us an astro navigation course, so when not on the aerodrome I don’t seem to be wasting my time quite so much, the odd moments of the day can usually be filled in with a little clothes washing and mending. I can do almost anything iron darning socks to putting a patch on the seat of my shorts, it is a great like [sic] if you do not weaken. The other day I had the job of i [sic] pulling down the leg of a long stocking to get some wool for darning, and had then to fasten up the ends. By the time that I had finished it was not quite the job mother would have made perhaps, but not too bad an engineering gob. [sic] A fortnight last Sunday I went out to dinner with an ack ack gunner who came over from Java with us, a very nice fellow, and had a very good evening finishing up with a game of bridge. There are four keen bridge players who sit at our table, they eat and sleep bridge. It is just beginning to rain again, so hard that you cannot see across the Straits, which means that Boyce who is out on the airstrip this week will get wet again, he came in last night wet through. You have to be very careful how you handle him for about half an hour when he comes in as he does not like the job, and by evening he is not nice to know for a while. I often wonder whether Eric has been posted overseas, or is still in England. I think that it would be a bit thick if we are both away. Oh there are so many things I would like to know which for the time being must remain a closed book. Only about a month to Easter, I don’t suppose that Easter-weekend will be any different to any other week-end. How I remember the Easter Mondays in the good old days, Cadwell Park motor races, Market Rasen steeplechases, and how we used to take the money off the poor people to show them the Spalding bulb fields, with the pictures and dance in the evenings I can see it all as if it were yesterday. I have other thought that the workmen’s contracts must have finished by now, and wonder what has come along to take their place. There I go again wondering,

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wondering, wondering. How 1 [sic] would like the Boston Standard and a letter to turn up each week. There is a major in the next room who has a calendar with Boston Stump on it, and looking through and old copy of the Field the other day I came across a photo of Teapot Hall at Dalderby. It sure brings back memories. And so we end another epistle. May God watch over you all until we meet again.

Cheerio and keep smiling.

S

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Many Happy Returns of the Day to Barbara on her Birthday.

CHANGI P.O.W. CAMP,
SINGAPORE.

Easter Monday 10.4.44

TO ALL AT HOME.

My word, what a difference to the Easter weekends of a few years ago. We have just come off parade after a quite nice dinner, it is now 19.45hrs. On Saturday there was a move round in the camp resulting in all the R.A.F. officers getting together again, along with the Americans, and a few Army odds and sods, making 48 in all. It looks as if things will. be U.K. [sic] the G/Capt being i/c. The house we have moved into is very nice. From the dining room window you lookout over a small lawn, the edge of which falls away into a valley with cocoa-nut palms grow it [sic] across the Straits. There is a decent garden, which the last occupants did not know about too much when they left, which does not happen every time unfortunately. I think Jimmy King is going to be in charge of it and is expecting great things. Among other things there is a large patch of tapioca which will come in useful, if we are here for any length of time. The mess is built on a slope, which makes the kitchen and the rooms upstairs on the ground level if you come in from the back. The front is carried on pillars. Two people are living in the porch and four in the small garage on the left of it. Boyce and I along with two other R.A.F. and an American are in one room together. We have plenty of room for a change, but the kitchen staff has to come through to get into the dining room, which turns it into Clapham Junction. King is just round the corner in the passage, so we three are still more or less together. The three of us got on very well in the last place, getting things organised even to an immersion heater to have the odd cup of coffee in the evening. All the available space has been used for sleeping but I think that everyone is more or less satisfied. Of course it had to rain in the day we moved but am pleased to say the bedding did not get wet. It is some job moving even only from one house to the next. You pack up your kit and put it on a trailer, and helped by those who are not on the move push it along to your new house, and leave it in a heap to allow those moving out plenty of time, and also to sweep out the place before we move in. Then the fun starts. Erecting your mosquito net, we have had plenty of practice recently, hanging up you [sic] kit and soon everything is ship shape. Yesterday morning being Sunday everyone turned out, it was a change, to clean up the debris outside, even one bloke who has lost his arm, a totally different atmosphere to the last mess we were in. Last night I went to church. Today about twelve of us have been all day putting up the mess poultry run, collecting everything that may be of some use for the hut we are going to start to build tomorrow. All being well we are hoping to have around 75 chickens, no ducks

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on a communal basis again, (I have just been cleaning this typewriter, it seems to read a little plainer now), and to join you have to pay 12 dollars or put in two good hens. All being well I shall have a bird and some money to draw out of the last mess. Because swill is still short, I suppose that there ought not to be any at all in a place like this, we are having to contribute about one ounce of our rations to feed them. As far as I am concerned this mess idea is quite good as I would far sooner help to put up runs etc and do other fatigues than feed the things myself. The eggs IF ANY will be distributed around on the roster idea, sometimes I wonder if they are worth the trouble. In the last mess they were trying to feed too many I birds on too small an amount of available food but hope that the smaller number here will deliver the goods. Last night I laid in bed thinking about you all as I do every night, comparing this Easter to the

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Easters at home. How different. All the hustle and bustle we used to have and how we used to enjoy it I have still not received any news from you all at home, one or two odd ones have been received but hardly any of them for RAF people. They say that no news is good news so am keeping my fingers crossed, and keep hoping and praying that you are all OK. I will not dwell any more on the point. Pleased to say that I keep on the top line and keeping cheerful in spite of thing appearing somewhat endless and monotonous, but there we are.

5.5.44

This is rather a jump from the date at the beginning of this letter but contrary to the last sentence I have just had a fortnight in hospital, and really ought to have had another week there but some people came back from up-country and being short of beds I was pushed out and am spending my convalescence in the mess instead. A fortnight last Sunday I got up feeling a little off colour but put it down to having had a bit of a heavy week, two days on the airstrip, a trailer fatigue and two days working until 6 o’clock in the evening on the poultry hut I went to church in the morning and coming back almost finish up on my hands and knees, finally finishing up on my bed at lunch time. First I was hot, then cold, then hot and shivering but together. The M.O. came along, made a guess that I had got Malaria and in the evening off I went to hospital on a stretcher. As a matter of fact he had guessed wrong, I had got bacillary dysentery, and a nasty spin at that. It kept me very busy for the rest of the week believe me. I had a fever with it as well, for about three days I was not very interested in what was going on around, but am pleased to say that I am progressing favourably having lost an awful lot of weight. There is nothing on my arm [sic] and shoulders and legs, as thin as a lathe [sic], I weighed myself when I came out and turned the scales at 120lbs,but with a bit of luck I ought to put a little of it back on in spite of this food not being very good for invalids. While I was in there W/C Howell said that he would send a chicken along for me, but as I had come out earlier than was expected he sent it along to the mess

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I had it yesterday, plucked, drawn, and cooked all by myself. There is nothing to this drawing of poultry, much. And did I enjoy it, every bit of it, the liquor tasting great. If only one at home were to say they had eaten a whole chicken, it was not very big admittedly with nothing else with it I suppose that they would have said that you were a pig. There is one jolly good thing, and that is that up to now I have managed to steer clear of getting these spots and rashes that a lot of people are getting under the arms and on their bodies, due to a vitamin deficiency of something or other. As usual you can look around and find someone who is worse off than you are yourself I am on 10 days no duty but would far sooner be doing something than be sick. For the last few days food has been very short again as they have cut out the maise ration, meat comes in rather irregularly, the fish issue being spread over three or four days when there happens to be an issue, being fried or baked very brown and crisp so that you can eat the bones heads and everything. At each table you can find some people who are unable to eat their full ration even now. I really don’t know how some of them manage to exist on the small amount they eat. There is usually a rush for anything that they have loft. [sic] It is surprising what hunger will drive you too. Boyce is always this way. Last night I had a walk with him to try to find some snails which he fried and ate, they did not somehow appeal to me, he said that I could not be hungry and a few days ago he cooked and ate a snake that someone had brought in which he said afterwards was rather tasteless. The officers pay has been increased to 24 dollars a month but where it goes to is a mystery to me, sugar is $3.50 a pound, coconuts which I do not eat as they act with me like cucumber used to do are $1 each, they used to be about 80 for the same price in peace time, and pipe tobacco is $I.20 for less than an ounce so that when I have smoked up my little stock, I think that sugar is of more Value to me at the moment. I suppose that these prices show the sign of the times. Twenty bags of mail came in the other day, 11 bags from England, which only produced about 10 for the Air Force, we seem fated somehow, there being a lot like me who have not had anything yet, but someday . . . ! won’t go off wondering again I do that quite enough as it is without putting it down on paper again. The concert parties keep turning shows out like a sausage machine which help to take you out of things for about an hour. On the night of April 1st, the R.A.F. birthday, one of the theatres which was putting over a variety show made it an all Air Force night, each fellow being allowed to take along two guests. It was a great success, a number of new cracks being introduced specially for the evening. In spite of all these things of trying to keep cheerful and of trying to keep yourself occupied, it sometimes makes you wonder how long? Over years of this crazy life; over two and a half years since any news from home. Believe me it makes you wonder some times.

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times. You usually come to the same conclusion that someone will come along someday and get you out of it as soon as possible, and until then well here we stay. The number of conversations that one hears around of what people hope to do when they get out cover a very wide range of things, I wonder how many of these things will come to pass. Another popular pastime is that of trying to estimate your bank balance will be in say 12 months’ time. There is still a lot of bridge played, also poker and roulette for those who are so inclined. The Americans are the big poker players, who even have a school going in the afternoon sometimes. Two fellows have guitars, and sometimes in the evening after dinner they sit on the lawn with one or two sitting around singing. Sounds very nice indeed. Our little combine, still manages to have its little cup of coffee in the evening, it just finishes off the evening meal. These little things you know. At long last I have had to destroy the bed which I made last Christmas. Trying all sorts of things I could not keep the bugs out of it. I tried putting it out in the sun, hosing it down with water etc but the eggs had been laid under the bamboo lathes [sic] and would not be moved at any price, and just hatched out, getting on the mattress and in the corners off the mosquito net. I used to wake up in the morning and see them steeple chasing up the side and along the top. Boiling the net stopped things for a few days and then out they would go again. I was fortunate in being able to get hold of an old camp bed frame and have put over the top of it a piece of wire netting used for reinforced concrete. It is quite comfortable and after having had a grand clean out of the main mattress there are no signs of the little things. The beds in the hospital almost walk about on their own with them. There is one thing that it falls down on its cleanliness. The egg production is now coming up to expectation we only getting from 3 to 10 each day from the 75. Since it was formed about a month ago I have had two, the first I had in hospital which unfortunately I kept too long and it went u/s, but I enjoyed the other one. There have not been anymore issues of Red Cross parcels so that the rumour of an issue every month was only a rumour after all. They had an issue of shorts to those who tore [sic] in dire need the other day, so that was something. My own clothes are standing up pretty well although the uppers have come away from the soles of my shoes which the cobblers say are not beyond repair, so that I am almost down to wearing my boots at all times which after all said and done is what quite a lot of other people are doing around the place. Some of our own Squadron people have come in from Sime Road who have been up country. They look perfectly fit now in spite of the rough time they have had. One or two of them have died of cholera.

Well enough of this rambling for the time being. Here’s hoping and always praying that you are all safe and well and not worrying too hoping that by now you have heard that I am

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a P.O.W. and have perhaps received one of those funny little cards which we have been able to send from time to time. So cheerio again, may God bless you all and keep you safe.

All best wishes to everyone.

I1.

Many Happy Returns of the Day to Dad on his Birthday.

CHANGI JAIL,
July 3rd 1944

TO ALL AT HOME,

At last after two and a half years some news, five letters, dated between April and July of last year. What a relief. I heard that there were some for me about a week ago but they took several days to censor. You can imagine that it was like waiting for a bomb to go off but at last they arrived. The address caused a bit of a stir. I must admit that it was not altogether a surprise to me, but hope that it gave you a little pleasure when you heard about it. All the fellows around seemed to be very pleased, it would have been some party if we could have pushed the boat out. I hardly dare open them. I took the last one dated July 5rd [sic], opened it, closed one eye and looked at the end for all the initials, thank goodness they were all there I then opened the first one By gee, the news was even better the [sic] I had ever hoped for. Everyone's at home well. the business evidently going great guns, Barbara in the WAAFS’s, Eric for some reason or other explained in another letter perhaps, out of the Air Force, I rather expected that he would have been overseas and very pleased to hear that he and Betty get home quite often. Bert Cooper in the Air Force, and all the other news. IT WAS GREAT TO READ IT ALL. I must admit that it fetched rather a lump in my throat reading it all. At least I know some of the answers to some of

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the questions that I have been asking myself for so long. I can almost read the relief to you all when you heard officially that I was a P.O.W. It must have been a very worrying time for you all that time without news of me. I read them all through at least half a dozen times the first afternoon to make sure that I had not missed anything out, it was a bit heavy on the tobacco reading and ruminating, and let Boyce and King read them, Boyce was not one of the lucky ones. I can just imagine the garden looking great. I wonder where the trellis work is, and also how they come to be playing tennis on our (underlined in one letter) courts. It sure brought back memories I was an awful long time getting to sleep that night. Let’s hope that it will not be very long before we are all together again. I was very sorry to hear about Fred Belton and Jim Davis. poor Mr and Mrs Belton, and also to hear about Mrs Tinsley. Well here is all the news from the P.O.W. front, for you to read at some future date. You will note by the address that we have had e [sic] change of abodes again. We are in the Civil Jail, about one and a half miles from the old camp. The move started when I was in hospital. Trailers were used to transfer everything down all the huts were taken down and rebuilt here outside the Jail. We are lucky in our hut in that it is on a bit if high ground and we get bit of breeze at night. There are forty of us in this hut, mostly the R.A.F the Americans and some Merchant Seamen. Quite a cheerful crowd. The jail had been used as a civil internment camp for men women and children until war came.

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came [sic] along. The old mess poultry farm was disbanded. I sold my Interest although some of the people brought theirs along. It had not been altogether a huge success. It was rather interesting to note that in the past when people were wanted for fatigues there were quite a number of them who .had not lifted a hand to do anything, but when it came to moving their own personal kit, how they worked. There was one fellow in the mess who during the whole of the time that I was there I never saw him raise a hand to do anything. Suddenly he stirred himself. He had at least three times as much kit as I had, and believe me he saw that it went onto the trailer And when we unloaded he was not interested in anyone else’s except his own. King and I came down on one of the advance parties which job consisted of moving furniture and digging boreholes. At first there was quite a lot to do in the way of fatigues, but things have now settled down more or less and I go on a ration job every other day. I take about an hour and a half each day. Quite a nice steady job. The rice ration has been increased to 18 gms per day with a little tapioca root and vegetables. We have had no meat for the last six weeks but get dried fish in place. The smell of fish coming from the cookhouses is a little overpowering some days. As most of the things have fish in I feel rather sorry for anyone who does not like fish. After the first teething troubles the cookhouses have settled down, for the most part the meals have not very much taste, they are doing their best. The diet at the moment is below the vitamin B.I. Standard and believe that the M.O.’s are expecting some trouble in that direction in the near future. In spite of All the rumours we have not had any more Red Cross parcels. Clothes are beginning to be a bit of a problem. In the officers lines a standard scale of clothing has been laid down, people having excess of this standard are expected to hand it in to form a reserve clothing so that we do not have to draw on the very slender ???? of the troops. We have had a small stage erected among some coconut trees where we have variety shows about once a week, church services and gramophone record programmes. Sunday evenings after church there is sometimes a classical concert. There was a time when I would not have made any effort to go to one but now a days I rather enjoy them. Perhaps our everyday existence is given more to this type of music rather than to red hot rhythm. Last night Boyce and I went along to a debate. During that time an almost full moon came up behind some cocoanut [sic] trees in the sky flecked with a little cloud. It was a wizard sight. It is very pleasant sitting outside in the evening on these sort of nights. It is sometimes rather close inside the huts. Some folk even sleep without a mosquito net because it is so hot, but not this child. The library has again been reorganized having a few new Red Cross books in it. I have read one or two good books lately including one called the Thin Blue Line. The story of the training of six or seven fellows in the Air Force and what happened to them. Mother would enjoy reading it. The other day

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I went to the extent of taking out an Algebra book to see how much we bad [sic] forgotten. Then [sic] results rather shook me. Am pleased to say that since I came out of hospital I have been keeping real well although I have not put on any weight. I weighed 131 lbs the other day when I weighed myself but I feel fine. Out of the 40$ which we now receive per month, I actually receive $24, the remainder being paid into the C.M.F. fund, but it does not seem to go very far as things rather expensive. The old pipe which I had bought in Java eventually gave up the ghost but I was rather lucky in being able to buy an almost new one for $5 the other day. The Group Captain said that in view of the fact that the

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promotion dated back to pre-capitulation days he would try to get me the extra six dollars per month which is the difference between a P/0 and a F/O pay, but I told him that I was content with what I was getting at the moment. The difference will be very nice when we get out. I wonder when you will receive the cable that I was able to send the other day. There were 14 for our particular group for people who had not received any news from. Luckily it was before I heard about my letters, as I was one of the lucky ones. We were able to mention three other names on them so hope that it did not seem too mysterious. I believe that they are to be broadcast so they may not be too long in getting home. It was not a very long message, but beggars and P.O.W’s . . . A nominal roll of the people who are in Palembang has just been received in the camp on which Millars name appears along with some of the other people who we left behind in Batavla, Pleased to hear that you are keeping in touch with Gibbs, Gladwell and Dinty Moore, and pleased to hear that you have heard from Keith Passmore, I suppose that he went back to England with the C.0. and that you have heard from Mrs Proctor, I don’t think Bill had written home until very nearly the end in Java. he asked me to censor it for him and I lost it along with some of my one [sic] which were all already for posting. But us we heard after that all communications with the Island had already been cut it would not have got away. I should imagine that she was a little bit worried about him. You must have had a rotten time wondering what had really happened to us all. I was talking to a fellow the other day who said that some of Herbert Swinn’s crowd were due to go to the Middle East when he left England some time in November or December 41. There is one of the Merchant in the hut here who lives at Grimsby when he is ashore but does not know much about the remainder of Lincolnshire. As I have already said. Clothes are getting a bit of a problem. The other day I carried out a great engineering feat in putting a patch on a pair of shorts. The patch was a piece of old tent cloth, the thread was taken from another piece of canvas which I pulled to pieces. It took me quite a long time to do and then on about the third time of wearing I was on the

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airstrip, sat down and then promptly slit again along the edge of the patch. Ah well just another thing. I am also getting a dab hand at darning socks. I started this yesterday and have heard today that 85 bags of mail have arrived in this morning six of them being labelled Java so I am keeping my fingers crossed,! maybe lucky again. There are perhaps some to fill in the gaps so here’s hoping. Am pleased to say that most of us keep pretty cheerful, always hopeful, that is all our existence seems to be based on, and always ready to listen to any rumours that are going around. The Dutch seem to be the best at getting hold of all these duff stories although some of our people run them pretty close some times. Any way they give us something to think about and so long as one does not believe more than about I0% of it I don’t suppose that it does very much harm, as all our other topics of conversation except food seem to have been exhausted long ago. I and another fellow have been going to a P.T. class for the last two mornings, and every picture tells a story I can hardly bend down, much to the delight of the other people who stay in bed. The Japanese are playing about with the water just now. It is only on for about three periods of the day of about half an hour and as there are about 150 bodies who use our showers you can imagine that you have to the odd spot of queuing up.

July 9th 1944

Out of the new mail which I mentioned the other day I received ten more letters, nine from you and one from Jane. "How I read them all through. The whole fifteen now run almost consecutively from April to July, the last few filling in the gaps between the others, you have no idea what a feeling of
relief it has been to know that at least 12 months ago you were all O.K. Perhaps when you were writing the first ones they may have seemed to have been a bit of a shot in the dark but believe me the pleasure of receiving them has been almost too great. Jimmy King received about 20 from his wife saying that she and their little son who was only about a week old when they left Malaya had arrived safely and were both well. Boyce received three but his folk had not been writing until they heard that he was a P.O.W. and they were not half as newsy as yours were. I shall have to start a filling [sic] system if I get many more. Quite a number of ex-Java fellows have received their first lot of mail in this batch. Yesterday I started help to sort mail in the sorting office so I can now include letter sorting in my repertoire. I was both surprised and pleased to hear that the Midget was still at home. Either you did not receive the letter I sent telling you to sell it or else you used your better judgment. I can just

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imagine all the tennis that is being played. I think that I told you that I had managed to get one game here since we arrived in Changi. The last few nights I have sat out side with

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my old pipe on my own and just sit and ruminate more so than usual perhaps on a11 [sic] the good news, and it takes an awful long time to get off to sleep these nights. It will be a great day when this job if all over. Three years ago today as you remarked in one of your letters we left England, I wonder how long it will be before we see it again. Looking back sometimes it seems a long time and others as if it were only a few weeks ago especially when you feel on the top line as I do at the moment, but one of these days . . .

Well I have so many things and memories to think about just at the moment that I find it rather hard to put some of it down on paper so will close for the time being. May God bless you all and keep you all safe until that great day when we are all together again.

Cheerio and all my love to everyone,

LETTERS HOME FROM CHANGI POW CAMP, SINGAPORE

SEPTEMBER 1944 – JANUARY 1945

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Many happy returns of the day to Eric on his birthday.

CHANGI JAIL P.O.W.

September 27th 1944.

TO ALL AT HOME.

Well! well. Another birthday come and gone. Five years in the Air Force, A year since we left Java. It is beginning to be quite an anniversary day eh! I went to bed last night tired out after very pleasant day. Jimmy King had told me to hang up my stocking the night before, and yesterday morning I found in it a shaving brush from him and a roll of pipe tobacco from Boyce. Previously I had been using a shaving brush made out of bamboo and cocoa nut fibre. Shavex is unknown in these jungle haunts. It was very thoughtful of them. We had bought a coco-nut between us half of which we had for breakfast grated in our pap, and pleased to say that I had no after effect from it, Geoff Skinner had given me an egg which I hard billed [sic] and broke over my rissole. Believe me I felt more satisfied than X [sic] had felt after breakfast for quite a long time. After breakfast I went swimming. During the last month or six weeks we have been able to go down to the beach under escort of course to swim in the sea about ten minute walk from the camp. Even if you do not wish to go in the water you at least get out of the camp for a while. It is very pleasant to sit either on the beach or on the grass bank about 50 feet above the sea. We got back at 11.30 and after a cup of tea and a smoke it was nearly lunch time. To celebrate the occasion I had bought half a pound of towgay, to which we added the remainder of the cocoanut [sic] a little chilli and a few bits of vegetable, and boiled the whole lot up for about an hour and a half. With the usual ration which to say the least is not too heavy just at the moment we all felt a little blown out with a cigar after it was a jolly good feeling for a change. I must admit that after lunch I felt a little bit drowsy. It was perhaps as well that it was the afternoon when a Flt. sergeant was to come along and give some of us a talk on aero engines, or I would have been off to sleep like a shot. It was a bit of a job keeping awake. We had a good dinner in the evening, for the first time on record King could not cope with all of his so I kindly helped him out with it. I think that it was the after effects of the lunch and not large amount of the evening meal that was troubling him. There was a light classical concert after the roll call parade which was not too bad at all. All entertainments outside the jail have to be over by 21.00 hrs so after we sat outside, it was a lovely night, until lights out. And then off to bed to lay thinking about you all at home, and wondering what your thoughts were until I finally fell asleep tired out. I wonder where we shall all be in another twelve months’ time and what we shall all be doing. It makes you think sometimes. Since writing the last letter nothing of any special note has happened time just passes away, some people thinking at times rather monotonous.

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A shower and shave after your morning cup of tea about eight o*clock. Breakfast at 9 o’clock. Perhaps a cookhouse fatigue once every seven or eight days, or some clothes washing or repairing, or a walk down to the beach. A cup of tea about 11 o'clock followed by lunch about 13.OOhrs [sic]. Down on to your bed to read or sleep until tea time at four with a "douver”. Perhaps a game of chess, a shower about 5.30, Dinner at 18.30, A parade at half past seven, except Wednesdays and Sundays. To some entertainment in the evening and then from 21.00 - 23*00hrs talking either inside or outside the hut until lights out, and so to bed all ready for the next day. And so it goes on. About two months ago I had a week in hospital with suspected dysentery. As I was not ill at all it was rather like having a week’s holiday, quite a change to get away from the hut for a few days. The hospital here is quite a cheerful clean place compared to the one in the last area. At the moment the general health in the officers area is pretty good, it seems to have improved a little there being hardly any cases of dysentery or malaria in dock. Swimming one afternoon I grazed my foot on a piece of rock which went U.S. and put me to bed for a day or two but pleased to say that at the time of writing this I am the top line now, fit and well and quite ready to get out of this. I had a cold in the head, it seems to be going round the hut. You have a nasty headache, pain behind the eyes for which even the moonlight is too strong for at night, and a running nose for which you need three or four handkerchiefs (pieces of rag which we use in lieu nowadays) It seems to hang about for perhaps four days and as the sick quarters ran out of aspirins and such like long ago it is not too good a feeling. I know that on two nights a sleeping draft would have been very acceptable. These are just some of the times when one misses that cup of milk, someone to help you into bed and to smooth out your pillow and tuck you in. A few days ago I paid my annual visit to the dentist and had one small filling done. It was perhaps that it was only a small one as the drilling machine is a foot one and seemed to be getting the worse for wear. Anyway we are all fixed up for another nine or twelve months all being well. The tooth brushes one is able to buy are made on the camp out of bamboo and cocoanut fibre. I have read one of [sic] two good books lately, most of them being about English country life. Perhaps the beat [sic] one was A.G. Streets “Country Calendar" and 'The Forsyte Saga. This kind of story seems to take one away from P.O.W. life. About three weeks ago the Group Captain left on a draft for who knows where. A whole lot more mail has come in chiefly for ex Malayan people, consisting for the most part of postcards and 25 word letters including a few photo’s, dated as late as May of this year. One fellow in the hut here had a card from his wife which had 75 words on, about fifty more than anyone else had on theirs When mail first started to some [sic] through

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the same fellow had one letter containing 10 pages at end of which the Japanese censor had written "Too long, no can read." Evidently a bit of a humourist. The other night Boyce King and I went to the opening performance of the new Jail theatre. The stage lighting and scenery and costumes were very good indeed but the show, a variety one was not so hot. Perhaps we are getting a little too critical. The front of the stage looks for all the world like an Odeon theatre at home. They are expecting to put on one of two straight plays witch [sic] will be a change from the road shows that have been going around the different areas. Autumn Crocus is to be the first I hear. The other night Boyce and I went to a lecture given by an officer who was an O.R. P.O.W. in the last war. Rather a bad show to be caught twice in one lifetime eh. It certainly wade [sic] very good listening. The lecturers we go to here are almost without exception very good indeed, especially series of travel talks given by people who have spent some time of their lives in little known out of the way places in the world. Last Sunday afternoon I followed out as usual fortnightly read through my 15 letters, I almost know them off by heart mow [sic], always having a slight feeling of home sickness afterwards. The church which I go to has a. young padre, Duckworth by name, he was cox for Cambridge when they won the boat race in either 38 or 39. He has put on some weight since then by the look of him. He is a real live wire from a very small congregation when he first took over there is now a gathering of sometimes nearly 400 bodies on Sunday evenings. There always seems to be a totally different atmosphere around the place Saturday afternoons and Sundays, follow by the usual Monday morning feeling As from the first of next month the O.R’s aide of the camp is to be taken over by W.0’s so that after two and a half years we are to have something like a conventional P.O.W. camp. Perhaps you would like to know a little about some of the other R.A.F fellows in this end of the hut, so here goes. In the corner in the lower bunk; eight of them have double bunked to give a bit more room is Prattie ( F/Lt Pratt) a little man about 45 years old. He is i/c R.A.F records in the camp. He is F/L who I have been helping to sort the mail with. He used to be on the Stock

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Exchange. Above him sleeps Gibbie (P/0 Gibbs) 35, who used to be in a bank somewhere south of London, is a very nice quiet type who talks sense which is something now a days. In the next lower bunk is Mac (P/0 McIntyre) about 40, was a barrister before he joined the Air Force. He is very quiet until he begins to play his guitar. When he has his guitar and I play a ukulele which I( borrow from time to time it usually brings cries of ‘Quiet' from the people around. He is the hut library representative and a keen chess player. Above him sleeps Reggie (P/0 Bainbridge) 28 with a real boy moustache which I believe he has only grown since

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be [sic] became a P.Q.W. [sic] He used to be in a bank but like Gibbie does not want to go back to it again and would like to take up farming, he is attending an agricultural class here in the camp. He is the hunting shooting and fishing type, was a scratch golfer. He Gibbs ant [sic] I are the only regular church goers in the hut. Then comes the Holy of Hollies [sic]. My bed. On the other side of me sleeps Jonah (P/0 Jones). About 45, who only joined up a few days before the end out here to be put straight into the bag. Not a bad sort unless someone makes a noise in the afternoon when he wants to sleep. A keen chess player, he loves the Americans . . . Next to him is "Battle of Britain Hockey" (P/0 Hockey) a little fellow, looks for all the world like Robinson who used to be with the Snowdon Oil Co. He also used to be in a bank, joined up to be posted out and into the bag. He is one of the book repairers, learns Spanish* and often takes an Encyclopaedia out of the library reads it and then comes along and says "Did you know that . . ." also a chess player. Chess seems to have taken on some popularity in the hut. Then comes another double bunk, Lew (P/0 Lewis) in the lower one and Tow (F/0 Townsend) above. Lew is the hut messing officer, i.e., he sees to the serving out of the meals, issues the salt pepper and soap issues, and the tobacco which we have been receiving for the last six weeks, about an ounce per man. He was an Insurance agent with the Royal. Tow is the one who taught us Astro-navigation in House 220, he always reminds me of Jack Lonsdale, was a school teacher, spends most of his spare time either gardening or designing houses. Opposite him is Mac (Cptn. McIver) a real big fellow, an American by birth but was educated in England which perhaps accounts for a lot. He is what one would call a cosmopolitan type, before the war he lived in Bombay, now is our hut commander. Alongside him is another double berth, Bill (Lt Holt) below, and Jimny [sic] (Lt Clavell) above. Holt is a keen gardener around the hut, helped by Townsend, spends his spare time writing plays and playing bridge, poker, solo whist or Mah Jong, was an insurance agent in Liverpool. Jimmy Clavell, who has just had his appendix out joined up straight from school, hopes to join the Malayan Police afterwards, spends his spare time learning Malay. Then comes Kerle (P/0 Pallin), a big blonde Canadian whose parents were or are English, his big aim in life is to get back his “Joie de vie" as he calls it, he has been suffering from stomach trouble ever since he came over from Java. At the moment is doing adjutants duty. I sometimes wonder how on earth he ever managed to get into the cockpit of a Spit. Along aide [sic] him la Binny(P/0 Benstead), about as high as sixpenny worth of coppers, 22 years old, not much like a fighter pilot, joined up almost straight from school and hopes to become a chartered accountant. Then another double bunk. Jimmy King of

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who you already know something about in the top and Geoff (F/Lt Carr) below. Geoff is one of the camp theatre electricians usually dashing for his meals when every has finished theirs. In the last double bunk, below is Dudley Boyce and above Jeff (F/0 Skinner), very quiet, takes a great interest in his poultry which he and Wilf Wooller, an ex Welsh international rugger player have between them. A more detailed description of some of them at some future date.

And so we bring to an end another P.O.W.’s ramblings. Who knows how long it will be before you will be able to read them or perhaps firstly how long will it be before I can put than [sic] into a letter box, we keep hoping that it will not be too long. Am always thinking about you all. May God watch over you all until we are all together again.

Cheerio and all my love to everyone.

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[Please Note:- Here follows a transcription of two missing pages of this document, the images for which are not included in the Item. The missing text recovered from a word document by the donor]

K1.

Happy Returns of the Day to Mother and Jane on their Birthday.

CHANGI JAIL P.O.W. CAMP

SINGAPORE

New Years’ Night 20.30 hrs
January 1945

TO ALL AT HOME

Well here we are, New Years’ Day nearly over, our Xmas festivities ending tonight with an extra douver with our tea in about half an hour and something extra of our own for lunch tomorrow. I hope and pray that you at home had as good a time comparatively speaking as we had here over Christmas. I have thought about you all I was able to send off a cable to you yesterday wishing you all a happy New Year I wonder what this year will bring forth. Bettor [sic] things we hope. The Christmas feeling did not seem to be forth coming until nearly lunch time on the 24th. We had been paid on the 23rd and for a while before this people had been laying in [sic] little extras. Pork at $20 for pound had been ordered by some people and when It came along it was fresh rather than salted and had to be cooked straight away. The smell of cooking especially from the Americans end of the hut where $170 worth was being cooked was wizard. Boyce King and I had decided to spin ours out over a period after Christmas. Christmas day dawned. It was my turn to get up and scrape the cocoanut [sic] that we had laid in [sic] for our breakfast pap. I was up so early I almost saw the dawn break as I wanted to go to an early morning communion service at church. For about a week previous it had been typical tropical weather, cold wet and miserable, some of the time I had been wearing a pullover to try and keep warm, but even the weather had got that Christmas feeling, it was n [sic] lovely day. Extra rations had been saved for quite a long time in the quartermasters’ store, and breakfast was a good start off in the food line, even having bread and marmalade, and an egg that Binny had given me. After sitting a little while to let things settle, I went along to Church. You must excuse all this talk about food, but it was the day that everyone without exception had been waiting and looking too for so long, the mere thought of some extra rations . . . I then had a walk around to wish one or two people the compliments of the season, and got back to the hut just on 11 O'clock for a cup of tea and something to eat with it. Lunch was a super meal fulfilling everyone [sic] expectations. After lunch, a lay on the bed in true Christmas spirit, a sleep. With our tea at 4 o'clock we had some Xmas cake, with a little imagination of icing etc it would have passed muster anywhere with a blind man, and it did with P.O.W's. Tea has just come up, I have eaten my douver and just lighted my pipe with the last half of my Christmas stock of cigars. It looks as if it will be the last for a few days as I am almost broke unless I have a sub out of my pig pocket which I keep for some rainy day. What with being paid about a week before usual, the Xmas festivities, the donation to the Women and Children’s fund in Sime Road, and other deserving cases we are getting a little short, to last until pay day again. Ah well/ Christmas comes but once a year. But back to the sketchy description of Christmas day enough of this meandering. After my cup of tea I had a walk along to see some of our old squadron fellows. There are about 30 of them in the camp here, of which six or eight who I knew back in the old Mosul days come along in the evening now and again for a smoke and a talk. They are not here very long before someone says Do you remember? and off we go back into the past. I got back just in time to have a shower

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and to celebrate the occasion put a little Brylcream on my hair. We sat down to a ginormous dinner, finishing up with "orsatz" Christmas "pudd" [sic]. Having to rush off to convey W/C Atkins along to see the troops served with and eating their meal, was a little bit of an effort, believe me; but they seemed not to mind us there. I had a walk along to the hospital to see one of the squadron follows [sic] and just managed to see the last of a variety show given by the cooks and batmen of the officers group in the Cocoa-nut [sic] Grove theatre. I must admit I felt so distended that when with our nine o'clock tea along came some more food it almost nauseated me and I gave mine away. You see what human nature is, 365 days in the year usually hungry and then on the odd day there is so much that you cannot cope. (Last year was a leap year). And so finally to bed to lay and think about you all as I had been doing off and on during the day, wondering if you were all together and what you were doing. As I said last year, next Christmas perhaps . . . Our little concis [sic] of three have been having little extras such as a cocoanut [sic] for breakfast or baked sweet potato or fried tapioca chips for our lunch with the ration, to continue the festive season as long as possible. The cookhouse laid on an extra special dinner tonight, it being New Years’ Day; and with our tapioca and towgay stew tomorrow will see it to an end. I went to a pantomime a day or two ago a variety

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show last Saturday night, so that taking things all round we have not done to [sic] bad again. Last night Gibbs and I went to Watch night service. It was a very nice service to. They were not allowed to have any light except one candle on the alter [sic]; we are continually blocked out here now, as there was almost a full moon, that did instead. Have just knocked out my pipe. Last night I read through my 47 letters I think it is. Again I still get quite a kick out of them. I received another 11 about the 30th December, one of them as late as March 44. I have almost a library of them now. One of them was from Herbert Swinn and another from Dinty Moore. Perhaps it does not mean very much to people when they are writing them but they mean an awful lot to me receiving them at this end. I was very pleased to hear that you all at home were all O.K. and hope and pray that you remain so. All little bits of news of what you are all doing means so much especially the family news. It will take us a long time to talk over everything when we all met [sic] again. I was surprised to hear Herbert Swinn was at home as in one letter that Dad wrote he said that he was in the Desert, and very pleased to hear that Cecil Dickenson was safe. When we left home he was missing I believe. As Mother suggested it is a small world Bert Cooper being near home. You keep asking how I am. Well here is a short description. Feeling fine. Brown? Yes in parts or perhaps red would be a truer description. A beard? . . . No. I shave every day and have my hair cut once a fortnight. Thin? . . . Yes slightly, but hope to put some of it back at some not too distant time in the future. Still have a sense of humour? . . . Yes I think so, a little too much at times perhaps but that is what keeps us going, as the apples did when they fell on Dad. Have I still my little black dog? . . . No, I lost that with all my other gear just before the end, but it or something else did good service while it lasted and the powers that be have been very good to me since then. I think that has answered some of the queries.

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Your letters have answered a lot of mine, but not quite and perhaps they will one of these days. About the middle of October I came to the conclusion that this life of leisure was no good either mentally or physically, and that something must be done about it, There was some talk of another fellow and I being posted to the administration group to take turns about on the airstrip but this dropped through, so I went and volunteered to do a job of work in the book repairing department of the officers library. Each morning from 09.45 hrs to about 12.30hrs I now get out of the hut, Sundays it closes down. I have found it rather a fascinating pastime and can now take a book in almost any state of falling to pieces and fix it. Along with a few camp mag’s and some special jobs from time to time it passes the time away quits [sic] nicely. The fellow who is in charge is one from the Merchant Navy who lives in this hut. Standing next him on the parade one evening I happened to mention something about going to Grimsby skating, and he asked me what I knew about Guy. Well. The outcome of the conversation which we continued in the hut afterwards was that he came from Lincoln, his father was at some time a police inspector or super there, he went to the Technical School and then on to Ruston’s. He is about 45 years old Dad may remember him. Then the beginning of last month I was detailed to be the R.A.F. adjutant for three months. What with seeing that people who are under the M.O. go sick when they are duo [sic] to do so, detailing people for different fatigues, having to attend a conference of sorts each day after lunch, making out lists as to when people will go to the jail theatre and fixing them up with tickets, keeping ones eye on the black out shades and any other odd jobs that fall to the lot of an adjutant, and trying to keep everything fair whether he be junior or senior officer fills in any other spare time that I have. I must admit that even if one seems to be a little rushed at times it give [sic] one something to think about, usually going to bed at night tired out if I do not succumb during the afternoon. Dad remarked in one of his letters that it was very nice to have a hot bath before going to bed, well I usually have a cold shower, and cold it is some nights. It is an army Lt/Col who I am the go-between and believe me the workings of an army senior officer’s mind is very peculiar at times. Perhaps an air crew training of thinking a little for ones self now and again shakes him now and again as I am inclined to argue in a mild sort of way now and again if I do not see eye to eye with what he says. You see you cannot keep an old Milson spirit down even in a prison camp. It offers a mild sort of entertainment for me each time I go along and up to the present there have not been any fireworks, and am keeping my fingers crossed. Just after I took over everyone had to have a blood group test so it gave me a good start of in the old nominal roll racket. we don’t seem to be able to do without them. The allotment of the tickets for the theatre I do by putting everyone’s name in a hat and having a draw if that night is not convenient for them it is up to them to fix it up with someone else. The show Autumn Crocus came off in the jail and was a great success. Unfortunately just as it was duo [sic] to come off the Japanese had one of their periodical purges and stopped all entertainments for a few days, and will only allow them on Mondays Wednesdays and Saturdays in the jail and Wednesdays and Saturdays in the officers’ area theatre. Sometimes they order a special show to be put on for the entertainment of their own troops and after filling up about 200 seats allow us to fill

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the remaining 600 or 700 seats. They ordered the panto to be put three extra times and in one
performance they asked for an hours variety first. The people who went along had to be in their seats by 13.45 and were just coming home as the lights out bugles and whistles were blowing. Did you hear the broadcast recording from a P.O.W. camp somewhere in Malaya? It was from here. The recording was made on the Wednesday afternoon after Christmas. Although I was not one of the lucky ones to have his name given out as being in the audience I was there alright. There were two Australian recordings and two British ones. Sitting in the sun for nearly three hours burnt me up a little but it was very interesting to see how it was done. Some people had the gen that it was to be put over the air either that night or the following. It was rather cold blooded to hear the leading female impersonator? who, when all got up in their glad rags behind the footlights look pretty good, even to the extent that in one show a Nip guard who happened to look in immediately went round to the back of the stage to enquire who the lady was and where we had imported her from, standing there in a pair of dirty shorts and a shirt without any make-up on singing in a high falsetto voice songs which had been put over a few nights before and had been such hits. There have been one or two songs composed in the camp which ought to be hit numbers when they are published outside. Everyone seems to be whistling them. The officers’ theatre has been rather hard hit as by the time that roll call is over on Saturday nights there is not time for a full show before 21.00 hrs when it has to close down. We are only able to have lectures and shows on Wednesday evenings, although last Saturday and again next week there has been an after roll call half hour’s musical programme. If a straight play is put on it means that it has to be put on on Saturday afternoons. In spite of all these little snags and problems which occur the standard of entertainment in the camp is of a very high standard, whether they be lectures or shows, and perhaps now that we do not have quite so many we appreciate them far more. “Entertainment means rather a lot in this sort of existence, Black out shades are fitted to the three lights in the hut here so that light does not shine outside the open windows, it means that you have to almost climb over the bridge, mah-jong and solo schools that congregate under the lights and if you only want to read you have to sit where and on whatever you can. Anyway it might be worse they might have made us have no lights at all. Ones clothes got thinner and thinner, my shorts are beginning to look a little like a patch work quilt at the rear and they are good compared to some peoples. This afternoon I spent repairing my mosquito net and my thin Dutch blanket. One of these days we shall be down to the Singapore equivalent of the old fig leaf whatever that may be. There is some talk at the moment, entirely unconfirmed. I believe that battle causalities [sic] and those sorts of people may be repatriated. If it is so jolly good luck to them and I hope that it also includes the women and children who have been interned since the capitulation. A whole lot of toys which had been made in the camp here were sent along to them just before Christmas and as I have already mentioned almost everyone in the camp contributes to a fund for them each month. Every few weeks along comes the old rumour of a Red Cross having come in but they never come to anything, although I should imagine that every effort in that line is being made by someone.

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Clothes and medical gear would be very acceptable, and if they could manage to put in a little food it would be all the better. Jimmy King and Boyce were both in hospital together for a period, King with-undiagnosed pains in his insides and Boyce with a mild attack of dysentery. I used to take them along a cup of coffee in the evening to pass the time away a little and to give them all the latest camp gossip and rumour. Am pleased to say again that I am still O.K. and feeling fine although I do get any fatter but we cannot help that. Palm oil is coming into the canteen again, the first time for several months at $2 per lb. At the moment I am pushing as much as possible into me without making myself sick and begin to feel some benefit from it. It is a good thing if you can keep out of the M. O,’s hands, some people always seem to be there. I forgot to mention when I was telling you about Christmas that I had two Christmas cards from some of the squadron fellows all complete with the squadron crest they all jolly good. There is a bit of a salt shortage in the camp at the moment, we put it on our pap instead of sugar, and people here started to bring back bucket of water bolt it down to supplement their ration, am pleased to day that I am able to make mine last the fortnight without having to mess about. This supply of palm oil coming in means that at the moment most of the food is fried which is not a great help, the baked stuff comes up just like a brick. All these little things make life a little agreeable although perhaps when you got a chance of reading these epistles the life will sound like a convalescence home. It is now Sunday afternoon again, I only managed to write about half of this on Monday evening, peace reigns all around, most of the follows [sic] arc [sic] asleep, King is sitting in front of a little electric heater that he has made for us to warm up our otherwise sometimes cold meals on, frying some

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pancakes for us out of someone’s morning pap that Boyce has had given to him. Again I say that life in a P.O.W. camp may sound all boar and skittles, ‘NUFF SAID. The heater is all unofficial like, but is small enough to go into his locker when we hear of an inspection is duo [sic] to come off. There is one thing, senior officers have no room to moan about as they nearly all have one in their quarters.

Well I begin to feel that it is time that I also got down to a sleep, so will bring this rambling to an end. Again hoping and praying that everyone of you at home is safe and well and not worrying too much about me, and may God watch over you all until that great day when we are all together again.

Cheerio and all best wishes to all

LETTERS HOME FROM KRANJI WORKING CAMP – POW CAMP, SINGAPORE

APRIL 1945 – AUGUST 1945

L1.

Many Happy Returns of the Day to Barbara on Her Birthday.

KRANGI WORKING CAMP,
SINGAPORE.

April 23rd 1945

TO ALL AT HOM£ [sic]

Considering that it is nearly the end of April, I think that it is about time that I wrote a few more lines to you all. You will note the change of address, another move, but more of that later. I wrote the last epistle in January, so here is the latest news. Until Good Friday things passed quite quietly and cheerful I finished my three months being the R.A.F. adjutant the end of February. Very pleased to hand over to someone else for a change. It might be O.K. being adjutant to a bunch of o.r.s, but to 50 odd officers it was not so hot, and a little wearying at times. However it all past off 0K. The only happening worth noting was when our worthy barrister refused to go and prepare vegetables in the cook-house one day, and when we left they were still taking a summary of evidence. I don’t think that he expected anything to happen and that he would be able to talk his way out of it. It sure caused some consternation in the hut, people taking sides, and me, being involved with it remaining strictly neutral. I kept having a quiet laugh about it all. Whether he be one of England’s coming leading barristers or not, he can’t play fast and loose with the system, even in a P.O.W. camp, and they were still trying to sort things out when we left. Up to the time leaving I had still been in the book-repairing department in the library, but was very pleased to have a move. There had been a very drastic cut in the rice ration from 450 gms down to 500 [sic] gms during February, which was no [sic] too hot. but if any- thing the quality may have improved, but snort [sic] on quantity. There was a further cut of 50 gms during March. The canteen prices, when they had anything to sell, were soaring up out of all proportion. $2.50 for a cocoanut [sic], and around the same for a pound of tapioca root which in peace time would have cost around one cent. Our pay was not increased. People were selling almost anything they had in the black market, watches fetching as much as $2500 and over, and were giving I.O.U’s at the rate of $2 for £1,00. Thank goodness I was able to watch people doing extra cooking without it troubling me. When I heard that I was on this draft, I sold a tin of beans which I had carried in my kit for about three years for a rainy day, for $45 with which I was able to get pair of boots and shoes repaired, buy a little stack of soap etc as we had no idea where we were going. I received some mail about the middle of March just before I sent the last card. One of them had the snap of Barbara in. You have no idea what a relief it is to get some from you all, and that at the time of writing you were all O.K. I am always thinking about you and wondering what you are all doing. The main answers some of the little queries. It will be a great day when I can ask for Coningsby 40 again. One of these days, about a fortnight before we left Jimmy King had an operation for a perforated ulcer, there has been a spate of them recently, and is well on the way to recovery, taking milk etc. One afternoon I went along to see him, he had saved a cup of tea with sugar and milk in, it was great. Boyce looks as though he will be living in splendid isolation all on his own with the folding table and the electric oven, until Jimmy gets back. It was around the 20th of March that the rumour of a working draft was leaving began to get around, one or two parties have left, but no R.A.F. have been on them. when it was heard that one R.A.F. officer would

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L2.

be going on it sometime in the near future. W/C Howells asked if anyone was falling over themselves to go on it. Having been the service, and becoming a P.O.W. for so long no one volunteered, and yes, yours truly was detailed for the job. People kept saying that it was rather rough luck being the only one among 10 army officer [sic], but again the Gods have been good to me. I had quite a lot of things to tie-up. George Hogg, the fellow lost his arm exchanged his camp bed for my mattress and iron bedstead, Boyce gave me his small stool, someone else gave me a pair of puttee’s, to be quite candid I began to look forward to the change, some telling me that it was not going to be another up-country show. I have an excellent R.A.F. warrant-officer who has around 28 years’ service with me. We were not due to leave until Easter Sunday, but when I got back from a do at one of the churches on Good Friday eve, I found out that we were leaving the next morning, this was about 2l.00hrs and light out was at 23.00hrs. I sure had to run around, packing up my kit and saying cheerio to a few people, and with the help of everyone I made it. At one time I had a L/Col, a Major, and a Captain in the quartermasters store all trying to find a blanket that I had handed in to be repaired. Boyce ground my salt and managed to get my cigar issue and palm oil from the canteen which was due to be issued the following morning. When things were tied up I had a shower and sat outside and smoked a pipe-full of real pipe tobacco given to me by S/Ldr Roberts. He had had it since the capitulation and that day was his birthday. It tasted lovely. I was a long time getting off to sleep that night, wondering what the fates had in store for me. We had to be in the jail all ready to move off at 09.00hrs the next morning. So there I was all booted and spurred with my camp bed, a beer box with my bits and pieces in, and my rations in my haversack. There was the usual chaos which always happens when the Japanese have to move more than two men at one time. The first party was due to leave at 10.00hrs, they were still there at 13.00hrs. Then six lorries arrived, which of course would not hold the number of bodies they first thought off. Imagine for yourself 700 troops sitting among their kit in a road-way about 25 feet wide with stone walls 40 feet high on either side with the sun beating down on us. Some way of spending Easter weekend. I wondered while we were sitting there what you were all doing at home. The second party left around 19.30hrs, and the Japanese then decided to call it a day, and that we would stay the night. You can imagine that the lads were fed up by this time. However I got them fixed up for the night, and went back to the hut like a bad penny. Having said cheerio to everyone once I would sooner have pushed off, but as the second party did not arrive at Kranji until after dark, perhaps we were better off. Most people in the hut had been doing extra cooking for Good Friday. I sent the remainder of my haversack, two large rissoles and a large pie along to the cookhouse to be warmed up. Boyce and I put our two meals together and “had a right good do”. All my gear except my washing things had already gone on the first lorry with the heavy kit. I borrowed Jimmy Kings bed, and someone lent me a blanket. Believe me, having been on my feet most of the day I slept better that night than the previous one. We had better luck the next morning, leaving Changi by about 10.30hrs by lorry. We were taken through part of Singapore and arrived at our new camp about 12.30hrs. It had been a hospital camp, a hutted one. Most of the patients had been moved, and that part of the camp they had vacated was wired off. There was to be no contact with the hospital except through the I.J.A. but three strands of barb wire were not sufficient to keep people from seeing

L3.

I went out in charge of working parties for two days until a signal’s officer put his foot in it. One Hunter by name, with the Kip guard. That stopped us going out, the working parties, a W.O. now goes in charge. We had the usual teething troubles, people being short of food at the various messing points, but they soon sorted themselves out. The troops are making roads and digging tunnels for defence purposes. The Japanese have been keeping them out later and later, we do not eat in the

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evening until 20.00hrs and usually finish up in the dark until the engine is started up to give everyone some light. We have made a couple of tables out of two doors for use outside the hut, taken off the hut between the rubber trees, at which we have our meals at, and lean our elbows on after. This not having comfortable to sit on gets a little wearying at time on the hind quarters which has not so much fat on as it used to have. There is a forty watt lamp in our hut under which the bridge players congregate, the remainder just sit around and talk most nights I go along to the R.A.F. huts to have a yarn with the lads. The food ration as far as bulk goes is not too bad. Some days the total is around 1000 gms per man. There was an issue of tapioca root (for a period of ten days.) so much the cookhouse could not cope with it. It was not properly cooked, and with the amount that the troops were receiving out on the working sites, parties of 50 receiving sometimes 1121bs [sic] of it, started sickness and stomach troubles, which began to trouble the M.O.’s, as the number of fit men for working parties dropped with a bump. The outside working Japanese organisation has been sending in oatmeal, jam, cigarettes, sugar and milk. The oatmeal is used in the morning pap, the sugar and milk taken out by the troops. We have an issue of sweet tea with milk in every other day at lunch time, every 5 days half the camp have the day off, that is if can call having to clean the camp up, dig A.R.P. trenches etc, having a day off. Canteen supplies come in once a fortnight. You can buy to tobacco stalk for 60c per 4 ounces, which when soaked and cut up smokes quite well in a pipe. I still get a lot of pleasure out of the old pipe. Our I.J.A. sugar ration is issued individually each morning, I have mine on my pap, quite a change to only having salt. In Changi it was all used up in the cookhouse. The C.O. of our party is a Major Bradshaw, an actor and film star before the war. He is very interesting to listen too when he gets on about some of his experiences. One or two sticky situations that might have turned out nasty, he has handled very well indeed. Full of tact and blarney. There are 14 of us all told in the mess, including 4 M.O.’s and a dentist, he answers to the name of “Briller”. One of the M.O.’s a fellow called Ian Findlay, comes from Ilford, but does not know that friend of Dad’s who lives down there. Our interpreter was one of the staff at Eton. You see that we move in very distinguished circles these days. I have had one or two bits of tummy trouble since we came here, had to have a few days on a fluid diet to let things settle down,. Not a very good places P.O.W. camps to be sick in, believe me. I think that some of the dehydrated veg. we are issued with from time to time may have something to do with it. Today is Dad’s birthday, Many Happy Returns of the Day. There is a rumour of some mail being in at Changi so am keeping my fingers crossed. I have been very lucky up to date. We are a little short of reading material, but as one has not much time to read during the hours of day-light, am [sic] not much light to see with at night, it does not worry me too much. The other day, feeling not quite on top of the world, I got out my letters and photos, and let my old mind wander back home from this existence. I am always wondering about you all and your doings. To keep getting even these 25 word letters and cards

L4.

are just great. The things that you are able to tell, help to conjure up the little pictures of you all. The business sounds to be going great guns. Two 32 seaters in six months is pretty good going. One of these days . . . and what a day it will be. It is nearly time for a cup of tea, so cheerio to you all. May God watch over everyone, and keep you safe until we are all together again.

Love and Best Wishes to everyone.

G

M1.

Many Happy Returns of the Day to Dad and Eric on their Birthday.

KRANJI No 2 P.O.W.CAMP
SINGAPORE.

Aug I8th I945

TO ALL AT HOME

At last after nearly 5 years I can write to you as a free man (almost). We have not been told by the Japanese officially yet that things are all over. What a funny position to be in. We know on the quiet that it is so, and yet working parties are still going out, at least they were until yesterday, they are all in camp today and I hope that it continues so. I think that it is fairly safe to say that we

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have been lucky enough to have the up-to-date news practically during the whole of the 3 1/2 years, the people who have been operating the sets ought to receive public recognition for what they have done and for the risks that they have taken they have helped to make things a little more bearable. Although I have been giving the lads every evening, it was not until today with working parties being cancelled that it has been fully brought home to them. One can hardly realise it even now that it has happened. It must have been an anxious time for you all at home waiting and listening for all the news from this part of the world. Here, during the last few days the tension has been something terrific, waiting, waiting, waiting trying to keep up the spirits of the lads, the weather, and the general attitude of the Japanese cancelling out the good news we were telling them when they returned to camp each evening. First their spirits were up, then right down again, some of them could not sleep at night, everyone smoking far too much. What a week. Perhaps it was a little easier for me as all along I have had complete faith that I was going to get out O.K. although I must admit that my day-dreams have reached far into the night. However your prayers and mine have been answered and it is all over at last, all we want now is for someone to come and get us out and to take us all home. What a day that will be, I wonder what the home coming will be like. You will have to kill the fatted calf. Looking back I see the last letter I wrote was back in April, soon after we arrived in. this camp when I was writing that one I wondered if the next one would be the last as a P.O.W. and lo and behold it is. Here is a little of the news. I have received a further 18 letters and card since leaving Changi. How I have read them through and through. I think that I must have biggest fan mail in the camp. when on the odd occasion I slip off the top of the world, I take out my small library of letters and read them through again. Since writing the last letter I have been a bit off colour, stomach trouble on and off, and a bit of beriberi (deficiency of vitamin B) for which I had a couple of injections, and rest on my bed for a week, was de-wormed about a month ago, a few cuts and sores went u/s, and finally have just got over a touch of tonsillitis. What a life, but as I have (said) already “everything in the garden looks rosy? About the middle of the month, June, we had an additional 330 added to the camp, men who had been with Ron Millar in Sumatra, 70 of them being R.A.F. He is over at Changi. The Japanese have only given us two more huts each holding around 65 bodies, so we now have people sleeping under the huts. The majority of them are in a very poor state, almost walking skeletons. The M.O.’s say that they should never have come. We are awakened each morning by an Australian orderly sergeant doing his rounds just before day-break. You have no idea what an Australian voice sounds like at that time of day. Always the same “Rise and shine, 7 o’clock reveille, rise and shine.” Always the same call. A few minutes later you can hear people begin to cough and move about. The next cry is “Mess orderlies, mess orderlies”. One W/O a short thick set rather dour type calls his hut to consciousness with “Wakie, Wakie,

M2.

breakfast up, come and get it” and then they start to serve out the food. The sound of metal ladles being knocked against the side of the food containers, mingled with such phrases, as “Come and get it, anymore for breakfast” 59-58.57. 56 . . . for “lagi” (each man has a messing number in his hut for messing) lagi is extra food portions. All this goes on in the dark with the aid of a few candles which have been pinched from the Japanese out on working parties, or small tins which have a wick in palm oil; there is no electric light in the morning. With six huts around you can imagine what it is like. Then the M.P. in the next camp beats a gong about 07.30 followed by the Aussie again on his job shouting “Sick parade, sick parade” This is my cue to get up. We have had a change of messing officer, Ian Lindlay has taken over, with me 2nd i/c and Sergeant Cruickshank, he was the fitter who flew out with me from Middle East is the N.C.O. i/c. Fitters and such trades make the best P.O.W. cooks. I am still a bit of a stooge around the cook house, filling in my day with a spot of wood sawing, digging out tree stumps for fire wood, or repairing food containers. We have been sending out 900 men’s rations each day for lunch in oatmeal tins, 4 gallon petrol cans etc. Even in a P.O.W. camp a petrol tin is a very useful thing to have around, these little things have won us the war. Some of the lads have the happy knack of trying to acquire them for their own use which necessitates a walk around the camp each morning to round them up. All these little things pass the time away, one does not seem to have much time to do anything for one’s self, except sleep. I can still do that O.K. The Japanese rations had gradually deteriorated both in quantity and quality since we first moved here, and are now throwing rice around like a man with four arms, not too good as far as the beriberi is concerned as there is nothing to balance it with, For days we have been receiving maize in lieu of tapioca, we can almost crow. The veg ration has been very poor indeed. We had an issue of Red Cross parcels (food) roughly 900, a

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little clothing, and some boots but not nearly enough. I was lucky to get a towel the other day. The food all went through the cookhouse, some of the chocolate was in a sorry state, the serviceable blocks being issued one to two men. It tasted great. Perhaps you at home have not been able to get any more of these luxuries than we have. The working party Japanese have been sending in oatmeal, jam, sugar, and cigarettes, but that has all dried up, I used to swap my fags for sugar.

19.8.45

The Japanese have told us at last that the war is over. We are not allowed to celebrate or make any demonstrations against them. The Japanese C/O said that the Japanese soldiers had come to Singapore to fight to their death if necessary, but as they have been ordered to lay down their arms, they were obeying orders. They have increased the rice ration to 800 gms per man. A few more Red Cross parcels would have been more use. The wire is being taken down between the two camps today, not that it has stopped people going over almost every night. We have not been told when British troops are due in, so we must wait a little longer and be patient. The work was beginning to get the lads down, the sick figures increasing daily; they have been digging tunnels in the hillside around the place for defence purposes. We have had one man killed, and several injured by tunnels caving in. Malaria has been one of the big snags, I have been lucky to have missed that, and diphtheria ulcers have been rearing their ugly heads again. As the sick increased so were our rations decreased. It came only just in time. One of the Padres who was posted in recently had an operation for pancreatitis. I think the M.O’s called

M3.

it, and he failed to make it. He died and was buried the same day Friday 13th, as is the only death that we have had in the hospital. The M.O’s and the surgeon have done an excellent job under the worst possible conditions. Perforated ulcers have been the big thing, caused by eating rough food. They say that one man’s food is another man’s poison. When the Padre’s gear was split up, I got his shirt and slacks. I had to lengthen the slacks and fix them up, have never been so well dressed since becoming a P.O.W. I do not seem able to concentrate on any more of this writing, I think that at this stage of the proceedings I shall be able to remember the happenings of these last days. Cheerio to you all, God bless you and keep you safe. All the best. G.

POSTSCRIPT

These letters were first written on scraps of paper in pencil and then, when it was convenient to borrow a type-writer, perhaps two or three weeks after completion, were typed on thin light brown Dutch paper, some 8”x 9 1/2 ”, and some 6 3/4”x 9”, the paper being so thin it was difficult to handle. I decided to sort them out; it has taken three weeks, making it possible for someone to read, by having them photo-copied. The pages with the large type are copies of the originals, those with the small type (my type-writer) had to be re-typed because the originals had either faded or the ribbon so bad they could not be copied and then fiddled with to be copied on to A4. You will note that there are no paragraphs or wasted spaces, the whole sheet used from top to bottom.

Having looked through them again, all sorts of things have been brought back to my mind, things that I had forgotten all about, and in reading, the more I realise how lucky I was to have been in a certain place at the right time, instead of being somewhere else at the wrong time. The ground personnel, around 400 bodies, we left in Bandoeng when we air-crew left for Tjilatjap, were split up after several months, some were on “H” Force on the Burma Railway, some were taken to islands in the Dutch East Indies such as Ambon, some ships were torpedoed, many failed to survive. Ron Millar, who was taken off the party at Batavia before the rest us left on the Macassa Maru, went later to Sumatra and had a very nasty time, All the squadron N.C.O. air-crew who were on our party left Singapore for Japan had a rough passage, and finished up working in the mines.

The luck that I had had while actively participating in the war effort, held while I was sitting behind the wire. I did not really leave civilisation.

Langham November 1991

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LETTERS HOME – WRITTEN AFTER 5.9.43

1.

Sept 5th 1945

Dear All

A quick few lines to let you know that I am safe and well and in British hands again. Am sending off a cable tonight and a longer letter as soon as possible. Have kept real well during the whole of the three and a half years. Jolly pleased that it is all over. Hope every one of you is safe and well, and hope that these few lines will set your minds at rest. Cannot tell you any thing more for the present. Have been receiving mail dated up to January of this year. They have satisfied some of my thoughts about you all. You have no idea how I have wondered and thought about everyone. Remember me to all relations and friends and best wishes to you all. Don’t worry, will be seeing you soon.

All the best to everyone.

2.

Singapore

Sept 7th 1945

Dear All At Home

At last after 3 1/2 years I can write to you all again. The last news you had from me was evidently the cable I sent from Palembang way back, according to the letters that I have received. Am pleased to say that during the whole time I have not had any doubt about coming through O.K. and your prayers and mine have been answered – here we are back in British hands. What a long time it has seemed to be sometimes and it must have seemed almost as long for you all, only receiving the odd card now and again. How you must have listened to the news from this part of the world and wondered how and where I was. I hope that you have not worried too much about these horror stories, I have been very lucky to have had an almost uneventful time. We left Java nearly two years ago and have received almost all your letters dated from March 43 to January of this year, which you have addressed here. How I have read then through time and time again, I almost know them off by heart. They have at least answered some of my thoughts and day-dreams. You have no idea how I have thought about you all and wondered how you all are and wondered what you all have been doing. These letters, even the 25 word ones have at least told me that at the time of writing you were all safe and well, I keep hoping and praying that things have remained so. I have kept really well except for a touch of stomach trouble and recently several bits of beriberi, (deficiency of vitamin B). The last few weeks have been a bit of a strain for some people but am pleased to say that my patience, we have learnt of that during this period and my sense of humour, I can still laugh even when things look a little black, have seen me through O.K. All we want now is to get out of this lot and get home to you all. We are not putting any address on as the powers that be expect to get us away before a reply can be received, so here’s hoping that we shall not be here much longer. I had hoped that we might be home for my birthday but don’t think that it is quite on. Everyone has been issued with new clothes; you can imagine that we were in need of some. The food ration has been increased it has been a bit thin at times, everyone is fairly cheerful and all hoping for one thing, to get out of here. The excitement of allied troops, seeing some nurses and white women, the issue of English cigarettes and tobacco, I smoke a pipe these days, it has helped to forget the hungry moments, have all added interest to things. For the last five months I have been the stooge to the messing officer, helping in the cook-house, which has given me plenty to think about. Some people who have had no job or have been sick for long periods, have found time hanging on their hands, and had too much time to think and worry about all their troubles, aches and pains. In one or two letters you have asked if I have altered much, well, you will have to form opinion about that. After

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two months I shaved off my lovely red beard and except for not putting on any weight, I seem about the same but won’t it be nice to get away from this life that we have been leading, you have no idea. When I am able to tell you all about it, it may sound to have been a picnic but more of that when we are all together sitting round the fire that has always been one of my little dreams. We shall sure have a lot to talk about; we shall be sitting up all night. Have been very pleased to hear each time that business has been going great guns in spite of everything and hope that you are using the car again, that is if you still have it, we shall have an awful lot of people to see. I quickly wrote a few lines to you last night and think that I think that I [sic] put on the wrong date in all the hurry, a fellow who was due to leave today said that he would post it for me, I hope that the fact that there was no address on it will not worry you too much. We have to censor about 2,000 of these letters for the camp tonight and look as though we shall be at it for sometime yet. So cheerio, God bless you all and keep you safe until we are all together again, it will not be very long now I think, please give my best wishes to everyone, and all my very best ones to you all at home, everyone of you.

All the best.

3.

C/o No 2 R.A.P.W.I.
S.E.A.C
SINGAPORE.

9.9.45

Dear All

Not knowing if you have received any of the two cables or the air mail letter, of [sic] the letter with no address on yet, so am taking the opportunity of Doc Jackson leaving by air tomorrow to send along a few more lines. We are just beginning to realise what it is like to be almost free again. There is no news as yet as to when we fit people are due to move, any time at all I hope. They have started to move of [sic] the sick already, so perhaps we shall soon be on our way. Am pleased to say that I keep myself occupied to pass the time away. Some people are getting to be a little impatient waiting. A few nurses and F.A.N.I.’s came into the camp giving cigarettes away, I even had a piece of chocolate today, it was great. Some people have been into Singapore, yesterday and today and have been given a great welcome by the Navy. We have had one or two of the relieving officers and war correspondents in the mess, who have been giving us all the war and home news but have still quite a lot to catch up with, we seem to have been missing quite a lot. However I think that I am lucky to even to be here today. I keep on wondering how you all are at home; it will not be a day too soon when we go ashore in England, four years is plenty long enough. One of our squadron fellows, Wyllie by name, left today. He took the phone number and address and will let you know that when he left here I was O.K. I have put on the heading this time the address to which you might try to send a cable, only two lines. All I want is some news from you. I saw Millar about a week ago, he is in another camp on the Island, he looks about the same. Perhaps you already know that he got a D.F.M. when I got my bit. There seems to be some story going round that all R.A.F. bods will be flying home, but perhaps a few days longer at sea may do us all a lot of good. Some of the fellows would not stand the change from Singapore to English weather, in the few days that it would take to fly. I think that the Milson patience will stand a few more days after all (this) time. As each day passes, having my birthday at home become more belated, so we may have to celebrate it a little late. All being well, Ian Findlay and I are going to have a walk on the road outside the camp tomorrow, it will be a great occasion. So cheerio for the time being again. All the best to all at home, keep smiling, will be home soon.

Love to everyone.

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4.

SINGAPORE

14.9.45

Dear All

Boat leaves tomorrow morning all being well. Busy packing, a little pushed for time. See you all soon.

Love to all

5.

SOMEWHERE IN THE INDIAN OCEAN,

M.V. TEGELBERG

4th Day out of Singapore.

18.9.45

Dear All

Have just had a cup of tea and managed to get an almost unobtainable seat at a table, so must really get down to tell you what is happening to me. You will gather from the above that at last we are on the way home. As we left the jetty on the lighter someone was heard to say “Who said that we should never get off the Island”. It certainly was a wizard sensation to feel the boat begin to move. You will have to excuse the lines waving about a little, the boat will not keep still. I managed to get my little flock on board without loosing [sic] any one, 276 in all. What happened to us before is now a closed book as far as letters are concerned; I will tell you all about it when we are all together. The 9th of next month is the rumoured date for our arrival, port unknown. I say rumours, there are as many going round here as we had in any camp. Another story is that although some other ship left four days before we did, the skipper, a Dutchman, hopes to be the first P.O.W. ship home. I hope that he makes it but at the same time I don’t want to see any red carpet and brass band playing. No sir! The ship is a motor vessel of about 15,000 tons, fitted out for tropical use. It has been carrying 4,000 troops but has on board less than 2,000 of we ex-P.O.W.s and civil internees. We have got a first class accommodation, at least a first class two berth cabin in which eight of us are sleeping in, you can hardly swing a cat round, have nowhere to stow anything but who minds, we are on our way home. At the moment the food is semi-invalid’s diet, by order of the M.O.’s, It would have shaken some of them to have seen the amount some of us so-called invalids have been eating since our people took us over. Am pleased to say that the sea has been very kind to us, this is my first long sea trip. Yesterday I did feel a little off colour but up to the time of writing this, I have not been seasick, am keeping my fingers crossed. We managed to pay all our party their initial £5 which some people had already received. One can buy a few bits and pieces. There is a ration of 100 cigarettes or its equivalent in pipe tobacco; I bought a tin of each. According to rumour smokes are scarce and expensive at home, so will see what I can do about it. As I told you in one of the airmail letters, I smoke a pipe chiefly. It has helped to cancel out the food craving from time to time in the past. The troops are down in the mess decks, very cheerful and enjoying life, but who would not be, we only beat the gong by a few days I believe. The other six officers from the same camp as I was and one internee are all together in one cabin. Quite a cheerful party and things are passing very pleasantly. The complete rest is quite a change. A cinema show is put on twice a day, it is being shown now about ten yards outside the lounge where I am sitting, a high speed American film, which is not helping to make the place any more peaceful but again (who) cares! They have a Tannoy loud-speaker system for issuing order [sic] and announcements. When not being used for orders they play a few gramophone records. All these things pass the time away and every one is enjoying themselves.

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All I want now is some news from you all at home but as we are reported to be coming straight through, putting in at only two places for stores and water at which places we are not going to be allowed ashore, I can’t give you any address. When we disembark and I am able to ask for Coningsby 40, I am hoping and praying that you will be able to report everyone safe and well, and on the top line. I will let you know just as soon as I am able. I hope that they do not expect to keep everyone for any length of time locked up at some station, or even I, who am a fairly law abiding chap may kick over the ropes. We have not heard how they are going to handle us when we land, but every one has his own theory or hope. My hope is a railway ticket straight away to Lincolnshire. I had hoped to make it by the 26th of this month but it looks like being a few days late. We have been issued with heavy brown battle-dress for the expected cold weather but personally I think that this story of ones blood getting thin in the tropics is a long story. So cheerio for now, God Bless you all and keep you all safe and remember me to everyone. Will be seeing you all soon.

Lots of love to you all.

6.

M.V. TEGELBERG AT SEA
28.9.45

Dear All

Well here we are again, feeling fine, eating and sleeping well, and enjoying life. The happenings up to about 6 weeks ago seem to be only a night mare now. We seem to take everything for granted you see. Everyone except me seems to be putting on weight perhaps I have enough as it is. Some of the fellows I brought on board I have to look at twice to recognise. The complete mental and physical rest is doing a world of good. Contrary to everyone thinking we were allowed to go ashore in Colombo and had a very nice break. It was great to feel the ship keeping still for awhile. They gave us a great welcome as we sailed into harbour, hooters and sirens on the ship all trying to make themselves heard above each other. When we left flashing lights added to our send off. They took us ashore in invasion barges so can now say that not only have I seen one, I have sailed in one. A party on [sic] WRENS AND WAAF’s had been laid on to show us around, but we managed to shake off the one who had attached herself to us. We were issued with some kit, some of which I shall never wear but the old P.O.W. complex is still there of taking every thing on offer, it might come in useful some day. We had an advance of £3 so I bought a pair of good shoes. It is great to walk round in a pair of shoes that fit. We are to get our heavy clothing at Port Said (due there tomorrow) I hope that it is blue not brown battle dress. I have been kept busy for the last few days doing pay parades and acting as an interrogation officer, we have all had to fill in a whole wad of papers which have all had to be checked. One fellow who came along called Sampler, was married to one of Sid Pearson’s daughters from Horncastle. He said that he had seen Dick Allison, Daisy Cammack’s husband in Colombo. Things are pretty crowded on board, it is too hot on the mess decks for the troops at night, so you just sit where you can. We usually stake claim to the lounge stairs if there are no vacant chairs and watch the world go by. They have unearthed some deck chairs from some where which, if you are lucky enough to get one, is a change to laying on the deck to sun-bath [sic]. Am getting a real bright red even after all these months of not wearing a shirt. A block of chocolate every other day is now an issue. It tastes great. We are to be vaccinated when we leave Port Said, some have already had theirs. I hope that mine does not take as well as the first one I had. The two I have had since have not taken at all. It is still not known where we are we are [sic] going to disembark. Put up a bit of a black with the O/C Troops, a L/Col. He ask Hutton, the other F/Lt and me to go along to his cabin for cocktails last night. I asked to be excused as I only drank lemonade he took rather a dim view I think. Cheerio, all best wishes to everyone, see you soon.