Preface by Mark Barker, grandson of Olaf Chapman.

People 60 years ago seemed so much stronger than today. In the 1940's there was no NHS, no DHSS benefits, sick pay or injury compensation, those unable to work for whatever reason were deprived any income at all, so the family breadwinner being healthy was to stay out of poverty

Government propaganda had sold joining the armed forces to Olaf. It'd glamorised fighting for their country being "The War to End All Wars", so he didn't wait to be called up, he volunteered. He was told he'll be serving in the Far East, and led to believe they would be fighting ill-equipped soldiers who were “merely short-sighted little yellow men and all wore glasses.”

Families back home had no idea of the true plight their menfollk were in as all mail back home was vetted. The opposing forces hadn't even signed the Geneva Convention and were one of the most fanatical of any army. Grandad’s war wasn't softened by Red Cross parcels, proper medical care or access to basic necessities of life like clean water and food. They often had to eat anything they could get hold of: rats, snakes and yes, leather boots.. cooked in tin cans over a fire.

For returning men like my grandfather, there was no European Court of Human Rights to turn to. No personal injury claim solicitors. In fact many did not even survive to tell their story.

The Signals Corps was based in Derbyshire, at Bakewell, which is where we did our training. I don't know if you remember - most people do - the summer of 1940 was hot, very, very hot. We completed our training and the weather changed to the other extreme. By October we were under several feet of snow. You couldn't get in or out of the village of Bakewell for some weeks. We were living under canvas in big tents and it really was bitterly cold. We slept on tables, anywhere, in all our clothing. We had everything on, top coats, boots, anything. Even then, waking up in the morning it was a job getting up. When you put your feet on the deck you went crack, crack crack! All your joints had absolutely frozen.

That went on for some weeks, then eventually we were notified that we would have a few days leave and then we would be off. We had a few days leave then off we went. We got on the train at Bakewell station on a bitterly cold morning, at the crack of dawn. Let's see - we left about 8 o'clock in the morning and we didn't get to Glasgow till 12 o'clock that night. It was stop, start, stop, start. Interruptions every half-hour! It took an awful long time. There was a lot of aerial activity and of course there were a lot of trains shunting about and we were very, very glad to get there. We only had one break on the way and that was, I think, Hawick on the Borders, where we had a cup of cocoa and a pie of some description.

It took a long, long time for most of the chaps to get out of that train. Our joints were frozen as there was no heating on the train and of course as you moved about you could hear crack-crack-crack! Then we had to cross all the railway lines for about a mile, to get to the river Clyde.... and there, in front of us, was a beautiful big boat, The Empress of Japan (by coincidence). Twenty-six thousand tons of her!

She had been on a summer cruise. The government commandeered her, provisioned her and everything. We all went on board, which we did very slowly. Then we had to go down three or four decks. We were given hammocks and after a long time we managed to get them fixed somehow, with many fall-outs... Dreadful things to get into, unless you were expert at it. We eventually got sorted and turned in for a little while - not for long. We had to be awake quite early. Then off we went, down the Clyde to the sea.

Well, eventually we got into the warm climates. We approached the coast of Africa and our first port of call was Freetown. We stayed there for two weeks and it really was horrendous. The temperature was almost up in the 90s. To make matters worse the humidity was even greater. Oh, it was dreadful, all swampy, steam rising from the water. It was so hot! Coming from the other extreme we didn't take to it very kindly. I don't think much food was consumed for the next ten days. All we wanted to do was drink. Even moving around was quite an effort.

We had to put up with continual bombardment of the Allied navy. The French were bottled up in the harbour at Dakar and they were given the choice of joining the Allies, or of being sunk. Some of them came out and joined the Allied fleet. Those who wouldn't were bombarded for several days, day and night, and it put paid to most of them. That was their choice!

While we were anchored at Freetown the natives used to come out in their canoes with all kinds of fruit and vegetables and anything you can think of. The little children were very good swimmers, marvellous children, like fish in the water. We used to throw money down to them and they'd dive down and come up with the coins.

There were bargains to be had on these boats beside our big ship. You told them what you wanted and they'd put it in a basket, throw a rope up to you and you would pull it up. Chap next to me went and got his greatcoat. 'What are you going to do with that?' I said. He said, 'I'm going to swap it for fruit. I shan't need it'. Anyway, up came the basket with fruit in it and two or three coconuts. When he picked the basket off the rope one of the coconuts fell off and fell down 50 to 60 feet, straight onto the head of the coloured chap standing up in the canoe. He looked up at us and said something - I know it was a swear word - in his own language. You could tell it was from the way he looked at you. He shook his head and carried on. Amazing! If it had been a European it would have killed him. He just shook his head and carried on. We took the fruit and threw the greatcoat down to him. He stood up in the boat and put the greatcoat on, in a temperature of about 100 degrees, plus humidity. But he sat there in the canoe, with this great big greatcoat on, proud as Punch!

We were mighty glad to get away from there - mighty glad! Next call Cape Town. You can see it miles away - Table Top mountain. You can recognise it! By that time we were in tropical kit and our time out there was very pleasant. There was plenty of sunshine, no humidity, lots of breeze. We had a wonderful time in Cape Town. We stayed there for nearly a fortnight or so, provisioning. A few people got off, many more got on.

So, we went on a tour of Cape Town and he took us out to lunch. I remember the name of the street - Adelaide Street. He took us home and we had tea in the afternoon and he showed us around his patch. Every fruit tree you can imagine grew in his garden! Peaches - pears - apples - grapes - lots and lots of grapes. We had a lovely day until about 8 o'clock. It was a good start. He came to meet us every day for a fortnight - took us somewhere. We were very fortunate.

Time came to say goodbye, and off we sailed. Our next port of call was.... a very busy port.... can't think of the name. They shipped slaves from there in the slaving days... Durban! Didn't stay there long. Off we went again - next port of call Bombay. Very, very hot there, nice dry heat, no humidity. We didn't stay there long. Away we went again, to Colombo in Ceylon. Ceylon's called Sri Lanka now. (I don't know why they change all the names). Most of our passengers had been dropped off here and there. We were the last. We set sail, the only ship left in the convoy. They were in a hurry, you could tell by the drumming of the engines. It was full steam ahead and we guessed we were heading for Singapore, several days journey.

We'd had a wonderful time really, since we'd left home two days before Christmas 1940. A group of us, friends, had volunteered to be mess orderlies, as they had lots of privileges The food on the boat was very, very good - marvellous food. There was quite an altercation between the Captain of the boat and this senior officer of ours. This officer said, 'The chaps are putting on too much weight'. He was going to start us marching and drilling, but the Captain said, 'Now look here! I'm in charge here and you'll do nothing without my permission! Is that understood? I'm not having any marching going on on my boat. These chaps...you don't know where they'll be in a few weeks time. If we're able to feed them well we will, and they'll be eating the same food as you!' That put him in his place, and that's how I believe it should be, not one lot of food for officers and another sort for the men.

There were three swimming pools on the Empress of Japan, but not being a swimmer it didn't bother me a lot. We used to get up quite early in the morning, go on deck, get a nice cup of tea and biscuits... sit and watch the dolphins swimming in front of us. Marvellous how they could get within an inch of the boat and never touch it. Instinct! And of course the flying fishes. You see them come flying out of the water...They do look as if they are flying. They landed on the deck, quite a lot of them. It was sixty foot out of the water, top deck. They must have been travelling very fast to come out of the water and land on the deck. We threw them back...

Then we went down to the decks for breakfast and it was really marvellous the cooking, how it was organised. Breakfast would be porridge in big containers. We took it round. If they wanted porridge they could have it, or cereals, or whatever. Quite a choice. Pots of tea or coffee. They could help themselves. Bread and butter, jam, marmalade. Beautiful food! I know by the time I reached Singapore my weight, from nine stone ten ounces, shot up to eleven stone. It came in very handy later on, the extra weight.

In three or four weeks we were ready to move and a date was fixed. The convoy started off quite early in the morning, from the island to the mainland on the Causeway. On to the main land we went. The first estate in Malaya was well known for its pineapples. Beautiful pineapples... Titbits... Off we went, going for a couple of hours. Clouds came up. It got very ominous and within half an hour we got an endless downpour. Thunder and lightning, dark as night. My first experience of the monsoon!

It was pretty dreadful. Downpour so heavy that we couldn't see. People in trucks and wagons... windscreen wipers couldn't cope with it. Me on my motor-bike had no protection at all. The trucks were driving on radar I should think - weaving about. I thought, 'This is a bit iffy!" and I'd no sooner thought it than somebody bumped me from behind and I felt myself shooting out! Landed on my face! Head hit a tree! Bike gone somewhere I don't know where! I sat up and passed out.

When I came to I said, 'Oh dear! I can't see! I'm blind! I can't see a thing!' I expect it was the blow on my head. Anyway, the convoy had gone on, but one big vehicle had stayed behind. They helped me up and laid me on the floor of the vehicle and I was pretty uncomfortable. I was beginning to see a little bit, but by then I had a horrendous pain in the back of my ribs. I found out that when I landed on the ground, the revolver that I had - you didn't have a holster, you just put it through your belt on a lanyard - the barrel had stuck in the ground and the butt of it hit me in the back and bust several ribs.

For several weeks after that I was spitting up blood. I knew that a splinter or something had punctured my lungs and it was very painful. I didn't want to eat or drink - couldn't get comfortable. Anyway, after two hours we stopped. They took me out and I could see there was a little camp just off the road. There was a clearing in the jungle - a couple of huts made with palm leaves - and they left me there. I couldn't tell what it was - whether it was a holding unit - no medical orderlies - no medics. Chaps were doing the cooking. I never wanted to eat.

The first thing they did to me in the hospital was clean me up as best they could. I must have been in a terrible state! I had a few x-rays and they squeezed me and taped me up so I couldn't get a decent breath. I was panting - couldn't get any air in my lungs, but I was a little bit more comfortable.

As the days wore on I began to improve and was able to sit up. A Chinese boy - they were called 'boy' whatever age they were- - looked after me, gave me a bath every morning, shaved me, even brushed my teeth. I gradually pulled myself together, was able to sit up and later on I was walking about.

Every Sunday the hospital would be crowded with visitors and they would come and say, 'Hello, how are you getting on?' chat a bit, leave you grapes, oranges, bananas - every fruit you can think of. There was a lovely nurse there. I don't know where she came from. She was coloured, but a lovely honey colour She was studying for her final exams, then she would get out of the country and be a ward sister. I don't know how long I was in that hospital. Quite some time I should think.

Many of the old rubber trees had been uprooted to make space, and they'd left great big holes and roots. In the evening, when it began to get dusk, you could see lots of snakes coming out of the holes and disappearing into the dark. It was scary. You used to wonder at night, when you lay down, whether you were going to wake up with a couple of them in bed with you under your blankets. Fortunately it didn't happen...

Eventually the camp was finished. I liked the way they used to build the huts, all open at the front, the whole length of it. The ends and the back were closed in - and the roof of course. The roofs were made of hattab, actually palm leaves. It was waterproof - even the monsoon couldn't get through. It shed the water - quite nice! Usual facilities - showers et cetera.

Time off we went to Penang, an island just off the coast. Very nice place there. First thing we did was go for a row. We had a different climate there, really temperate. Lovely after the heat! The town was a busy, bustling place. Most of the shopkeepers were Chinese. Very industrious people!

By now I was fit enough to do my job as dispatch rider again. Every morning for two weeks I'd get up early, have early breakfast, then take lots of letters - all kinds of stuff - up to the border with Thailand... or Siam. They changed it didn't they?... Don't know why they did it. Nothing wrong with the name Siam was there?... Quite interesting. Set off in the morning, get there and deliver your mail and stuff, have your lunch, pick up all the stuff to go back - and back you'd go again.

Every morning on that journey you'd see some place with lots of dead snakes, where the night time traffic had run over them. All kinds. Our M.O. officer was very keen on collecting snakes. If he could find some he hadn't already got he was very pleased. A lot of them were poisonous - you had to be careful - very poisonous!

One day, returning, I saw in a field adjoining the road a row of about thirty people, some Indian, some Chinese, some Tamils. I stopped to get a better look, and what they had was a HUGE python. Must have been at least 25 feet long. Chap at one end had a sack over the head of the snake. Even then it was so powerful it was waving about, but they kept control of it. I suppose it was worth a fortune for the skin. They grow to a huge size!

Unfortunately, within two days of it arriving the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, and that put the cat among the pigeons! So, for the next two days we were trying to eat up all the cake, instead of spreading it out a little bit.

And then it was all action! You couldn’t carry very much, so every thing had to be put in your kit-bag and we were told it was going to be sent down to Singapore and back to England. But we knew better. As soon as you would leave the camp the natives would be in there, going through everything. They might as well make use of it as have it go to waste. We knew we'd never see any of that again.

Time after time the same thing happened. As soon as there was any contact they would break away and off they would go. They'd got no transport. You've got to hand it to them. They lived off the land. They didn't carry what we did - cook houses and all that caper. They lived off the land. If they came across anything they wanted they just took it - chickens - bicycles... They were not stupid!

It was very hairy at times. I remember one particular incident. I'd been given directions to go to Malacca on the coast, and it was a very stormy day at the end of the monsoon season. It was an uncomfortable journey and when I got there it was very hostile. I got black looks from the natives, and when I enquired where the police station was they said, 'All gone! All gone!' Oh dear! No place for me here. I was quite happy to get away from there without any trouble. It felt very hostile!

Then I had the job of finding where my unit had gone to. Probably withdrawn, but where? Eventually, late afternoon, I found them and I was just about shattered! I'd been gone a long time, travelled some hundred miles, and I'd had no food.

Before I had a chance to get a meal I was told to report to a Signals officer. He said, 'I want you to go with these two officers, as escort'. Where? There were acres of rubber plantations everywhere. Miles and miles of them. Get in there and you could get lost for ever. It looks alike every way! They used to plant the trees in rows, so whichever way you looked, in whichever direction, you saw a straight line of trees. The only tracks in them were cinder tracks, for the natives going tapping the rubber trees for the latex.

So we set off without protesting. Off we went! It was all right in the daylight; I could keep up with them. But as soon as it got dusk - and it comes on very quick in the tropics, one minute it's daylight, and the next the sun goes down and it's pretty dark - I had great difficulty keeping up with the vehicle in front. Every time there was a turning they could decelerate and turn and I'd lose their rear lights. I had to go much slower than I wanted to, so that I didn't pass the turning and miss them.

Eventually, after two hours, we got to where we were going, and I could tell by the raised voices that it wasn't a very happy occasion. A lot of shouting and what-not. I suppose we had brought them the bad news that the Japanese were on the way. Anyway, they came out in a hurry, jumped in and off they went, and I followed behind them very quickly.

I had to travel fast, faster than I dared travel on two wheels. Much easier on four. I knew if I lost sight of that rear light God knows where I'd end up. Wander round those plantations for months! But we eventually made it, got back, and that was that! I was very glad to get back. I was starving hungry! Not very comfortable! Saturated! ....That's how it was.

Soon afterwards there was another hairy incident. One of my best friends had been sent somewhere to get the unit to withdraw to another position, and he hadn't returned. It was very suspicious. I said I'd go out look for him. It was dark, very dark, and after about 40 miles of travel - visibility was very poor but I didn't dare put my headlights on... Anyway, I thought I must be past the position I'd been given, and I hadn't seen sight nor sound of anybody or anything, no vehicles' movement or anything.

I propped my bike on its stand and started creeping into the jungle. Suddenly, in front of me I saw a tank on its side. Both sides had holes big enough to walk through. I'd come to where two roads joined - a main road and a small, minor road. I went across to the other side and saw the barrel of an anti-tank gun poking through the bushes. I realised then that it was one of our tanks, but it had been commandeered by the Japanese. It had probably run out of petrol. Anyway, they had been using it, but our chaps prepared for it and blew a hole right through it. I thought, "This is no place for me!" (laughter) and I started to walk back to the bike.

Within a few paces I felt somebody's arm round my throat and another one holding my arm, hand, wrist... Two little chaps! Anyway, soon there was a flicker of firelight in front of us, and I saw it was a camp of...can't think of the name...little short men...fought in both wars...northern Indian...GURKHAS! A camp of Gurkhas. I found the officer and handed in the notice to move out quick. 'Well', he said, 'you'd better stop and have a couple of chapattis before you go'. The Gurkhas had their big, metal dish sizzling away with chapattis. I was very grateful...

I did finally get back to base, but the friend I had gone searching for never did return. He had been captured by the Japanese and was to spend the next four years as a POW. We did meet again at the end of the war when we all ended up at Singapore.

I was very fortunate in a way. Two or three days before we were taken prisoner we were in a meadow 100 yards away from this little open patch with buildings on both sides. The Japanese began shelling the buildings and it was amazing, you could see the shells dropping on the buildings and the explosions before you heard them. Strange! It's quite true, if your name's on a shell you're dead before you hear it. You don't get any warning.

We had the pay parade and when it came to my turn the officer said, 'How much do you want?' and I said, '100 dollars'. He nearly fell over. '100 dollars?' 'Yes,' I said. 'I haven't had any pay since November. We're not likely to get any more are we, so you might as well pay out what you can, rather than let the Japanese get it'. So he did! 100 dollars! I was rich! The trouble was to find somewhere to conceal it. I thought I would sort that problem out later.

After I'd finished at the pay parade I went back to where I'd left the soldiers on the beach. I spent half an hour or more looking up and down the coast. Couldn't see any sign of them, so I thought it can't be very healthy hanging about here. I went back where I had come from and couldn't find any of them either. They'd disappeared. So, I put sand in my petrol tank, started the engine up...and just waited.

We had already been told to surrender and the evacuation of civilians had been taking place. A few days before capitulation, somewhere close to the naval base, I saw a lovely area of bungalows and gardens, it was amazing. You walked into the houses and the tables were laid for a meal... The food was on the tables, but they'd never sat down to it. All the houses were the same. They must have been told to get out immediately, without taking anything at all, to get off the island. It was like a ghost town.

They were right to be afraid. The Japanese had quickly gained a reputation for ruthless brutality. The Alexandra Hospital on the Island of Singapore was one of the first places that they came to. It was full of wounded, both civilians and military. They slaughtered the nurses, who were totally defenceless. All they were doing was nursing sick people. Even people who were laying on stretchers in between the beds were shot or bayoneted. The Japanese soldiers enjoyed inflicting pain on people! A lot of them paid for it after the war through the War Crimes people.

Singapore was supposed to be impregnable. Well, it was if you attacked it from the sea. Unfortunately it couldn't be defended from the Japanese attack from the rear because our big guns were fixed to fight off attacks from the sea. They only had a traverse of about 60 degrees, so they couldn't be turned round to fire on the land side.

Our military men back home didn't have the common sense to realise that everyone wasn't as stupid as them. Why batter yourself against a front door when the back door is open? In the end all we could do with our big guns was blow them up.

Thailand was neutral so the Japanese landed there and came through the jungle on foot. They didn't have the masses of equipment that we carried about, mobile kitchens, break-down vans and so on. They lived off the land and when they came to a town or village they took what they wanted - or there was trouble! More of a guerrilla army.

It was on the cards that they would attack the one naval warship that we had out there, the Prince of Wales. They bombed it and it sunk with massive loss of life. They'd sunk the American navy at Pearl Harbour and capped that by sinking Britain's biggest battle ship at Singapore!

There were ships disembarking troops onto Singapore harbour right up to the capitulation, ships that had been all over the place - Canada, Jamaica, back to South Africa - a convoy of troops from all over the Commonwealth. Finally they were landed in Singapore. I couldn't understand the mentality! That's what happens when the war is directed from thousands of miles away. They don't know what's going on.

Our unit's withdrawal went on until we finished up where we had started from - on the island of Singapore. We knew that a cease-fire was being negotiated. There was no other choice. Once the Japanese cut off the water supply the thousands of people in Singapore couldn't survive long without it. Water in any quantity all came from the mainland. So they had an easy victory. It was sad to have seen all those thousands of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk troops coming off the troop ships, after being shunted around all over the place.

What a waste...

Only three people ever escaped from Changi and stayed free. They had every advantage you could have wished for. Between the three they spoke five languages. Two of them were managers of rubber plantations and the other was a bank official. They had many contacts in Malaya, so between them they could talk to friends and be sure they wouldn't have the finger pointed at them. They stayed free all the time due to the friendship between them. One of them had the same name as myself - Chapman. I think they wrote a book about their exploits.

The Japanese soon had the prisoners working. They took a lot of them into Singapore each day, to clear up the bomb mess and rubbish. Periodically there would be a group of prisoners taken out. Where they went to nobody knew. Later on we heard they had been taken to different islands - Borneo - Sumatra - on various projects, aeroplane runways and so on.

Wherever you went you knew there was going to be very little food. The Japanese knew they had a wonderful source of labour at very little cost. They didn't believe in feeding sick men. If you didn't work you didn't eat. Simple as that! They had unlimited numbers of prisoners and they didn't bother if anybody died. It wasn't just POWS it was anyone who was fit enough to work - any nationality. Sometimes you'd see whole groups of people, different families, young, old, marching along with their few possessions to a camp site where they would have to work, doing something or another. It was a lottery whether you survived or not. They were very cruel to the Chinese, very very cruel.

I was a bit fortunate in one way. Ever since we left England, these three particular friends of mine - we'd all been very, very good friends. We all came from London and you can't over estimate what a difference it makes if you've got good, reliable friends. I think we saved each others lives several times.

I remember very clearly, we hadn't been in this prison camp long before I had a bout of dengue fever, which you pick up from sand flies. We were near the coast and there were plenty of flies around. Although dengue isn't as bad as malaria you get a very high temperature and of course you perspire. Unless you get some fluid into you it can be very serious. Our ration of water was half a pint twice a day, and that's not much in a hot climate. They used to give me some of theirs to keep me going, and once the worst is over - it's not like malaria - it doesn't keep coming back. Things like that...very important!

While we were in this Changi camp, word came round there was going to be a big working party going somewhere - we didn't know where. We learned later that many of these working parties went to Japan, to work in the copper mines, some in the coal mines, or anywhere where they wanted labour. My name was on the list, so that was that! But on the morning when we were due to march into Singapore we were paraded and the officers were looking at everybody. As we came along they stopped me and said, 'Why are you limping?' I said, 'I turned my ankle over a couple of days ago and it's a bit dodgy'. They pushed me out of the line and said, 'No! If you can't march we don't want you'. So I was separated from my three best friends and this was a bit of a blow.

It wasn't long before I was sent off with another working party. This time we marched into Singapore and we were put into rice trucks, big steel trucks that used to carry rice in bulk. Very uncomfortable! In daytime you daren't touch the steel because you would get burnt and blistered very badly; and at night the cold was just as bad... Very, very uncomfortable!

Off we went. We travelled day and night, stopping just once each evening for a bit of a meal, which was usually a bit of sloppy rice and half a mug of water! Then off we'd go again. After five days we reached a place called Ban Pong, which was just inside the border with Thailand. We only stayed there a couple of days fortunately, because the whole camp was knee deep in water. They'd had some terrific storms. The latrines were overflowing!

We next marched along to a place called Kanchanaburi, which was the take off point for working parties going up on the railway. We stayed there for two days, then we got in this train, which was just an open truck with sides, nothing else, just sides about two foot high - just boards. These old trains were all wood-burners, consequently as you steamed along sparks, soot and muck blew back over us. You couldn't see...turned your head away ... covered your face! We travelled quite slowly along this railway track, then the train slowed right down and the smoke and sparks began to go up instead of into our faces. I turned my head around to look about and I had the shock of my life! We were on a bridge crossing the river Kwai. Looking over my shoulder I could see the boats in the river down below, like toy boats. I should imagine we were about 60-70 feet from the river. I very hurriedly got off my perch on the side of the truck! It was quite a shock - another narrow escape!

Before we left Changi I'd swapped my big, clumsy old boots for a pair of civilian boots - nice soft leather. I thought it would be better for walking. I hadn't reckoned on the swampy ground we were walking through. After two or three days I thought my feet seemed cold and wet. I looked and I had no soles, only the uppers! The stitching had rotted, the soles had come off and there I was with the uppers and no soles. I got rid of them. Back to bare feet!

I suppose we had to march for 1-2-3-4-5 days, until we came to quite a big camp. Tarso it was called, T.A.R.S.O. A very big camp. It wasn't half way to our destination. After a couple of days we were on the move again. We passed two or three other camps, all close to the river. Most of the camps followed the course of the river. One was called River Camp, I remember that. Another was called Spring Camp.

From then on we saw nothing and nobody for four days, till we came to a patch. The new railway that we were going to work on, the ill-famed Burma Railway, had reached about half a mile from here, but they couldn't go any further until a working party hammered out the rocky outcrop. It had to be levelled off before the line could be laid, and that was going to be our job.

First of all we had to spend two days hacking down the bamboo at the jungle's edge, in order to put up three or four tents. They were more like colanders than tents. Anyway, we rigged them up. Then we had to make makeshift beds, which we did by putting in bamboo posts, then getting long pieces of quite thick bamboo, splitting them - not completely, just sufficient to open them up so you could lie them flat. That was to be your bed, with a little bit of spring, but not very comfortable. At least it kept you off the ground.

Next day, off we went to work. Real Fred Karno that was! They'd get you up about three hours before you were supposed to leave. then they'd start counting (laughter). It was funny really. The guards were Korean, not Japanese. A Japanese officer would come to take you to the work place, but first of all we had to be counted.

These Korean guards counted us first, then the Japanese guards - only two of them. They would start counting and it didn't matter how many times they counted, they never got it right. You'd stand there, sometimes in the pouring rain... There were only about thirty of us in this camp, not many really, compared with some of the other camps. Sometimes this would go on for hours. Count, count, count!

They couldn't get it right - they never agreed - they all shouted at each other! Then along would come the little Japanese officer, five foot nothing, with his sword...he had to hold his sword up, otherwise it would trail on the ground (laughter). We had a special name for him, not a very polite one. He would start: first he'd ask them what the total was, they'd tell him and he'd walk up and down a couple of times and ask again. Then he'd start bashing them about.

Their favourite thing was kicking. They were kicking machines! That's what he would start with. Then he would bash them about. Then he'd ask the Koreans what they made the count and they couldn't agree on it, so there was another kerfuffle. In the end there were Japanese and Korean guards all setting about each other. We were splitting our sides and of course that annoyed them. We had to turn and look the other way. Eventually they came to some conclusion... All that time wasted there. What did it matter?

I can still count up to ten in Japanese! Itchy nee san see go roko chuchi hachi kew du!

It was dangerous too. You'd hit somebody's finger with the heavy hammer while they were holding the chisel. I've got a few bent fingers as proof of how many times they were broken. It was funny, if it wasn't so tragic. More times than not you'd hit the ground instead of the chisel. We were getting nowhere. It was silly really, because if they had fed us properly we could have worked much harder or better.

They didn't care. They had plenty more prisoners to fill the gaps. When you were working and you wanted to go to the toilet you'd put your hand up and then off you'd go, into the jungle. Why didn't we try to escape? There was no where to escape to, no where to go. A thousand miles to get to anywhere at all... You'd never get that far, anyway. Too much rough country and jungle in between Thailand and Burma and India... In many instances prisoners would wander off and lay down in the jungle to die. The Japanese didn't bother to search for them. If they couldn't work they might as well die in the jungle. There must have been hundreds and hundreds in various places, just disappeared - never accounted for.

I didn't want to starve, so I volunteered to work for the Japanese in a camp about half a mile from ours, where they did their compilations. My job there was to keep the fire going under a big boiler, to cook their rice. It was a huge boiler, a massive great thing. It was quite an easy job really, keeping the fire going and stirring the rice with a big paddle. A couple of Japanese would come over and have a look at it - see how it was going. At five o'clock in the morning they'd come out, have a look at it and say, 'Pull the fire out'. I'd pull the fire out from underneath it and just let it steam and leave it like that for about fifteen minutes. The steam would come through and every grain of rice would be separate. Really beautiful when it was cooked!

They'd dish out the food, lots of rice, lots of pork. I wanted to eat lots, but unfortunately, after two or three spoonfuls you couldn't eat any more, no matter how hard you tried. Your stomach got so small with starvation that you couldn't take it. Gradually, after a time when the stomach got more used to food, I could eat a little bit more, but still there was a limit. The rice was not for prisoners, but we were fed it there because we were keeping the fires going. The rice the prisoners had was of the very poorest quality; very, very poor, small and hard.

One day a Japanese I hadn't seen before came. He was not in uniform, not the normal uniform. He came and looked at my foot, which was still pretty horrendous. He had a look at it and went off and came back with a great big steak, a huge piece of steak, rare. He put it on my instep and covered it up and tied it in place with a few bits of rag torn from the sleeve of my coat. He pointed to the steak on my foot and he warned me in no uncertain terms, that if I so much as took a bite of it to chew!... I mustn't touch it! I must leave it there! After being on my foot I didn't fancy it in any case. But miraculously, I don't know how, it healed up... absolutely healed up. Within a month it was covered over and healed up.

Most people, if they got a cut or a scratch, particularly with bamboo, it often meant they'd have to lose an arm or a leg or something. It was either that or you'd get blood poisoning. Many of them lost legs or arms, but they survived - with difficulty. I don't know how, but they did.

The doctor out there was an Australian doctor, Weary Dunlop. He did some marvellous work. The only things he had to sever a leg or an arm were little hack saws and that sort of thing There was no anaesthetic. You just got two or three chaps sitting on you, keeping you still while he sawed through your bone. It saved many, many lives, because if you got gangrene, it was fatal, but it was a horrendous way to be operated on. Anyway, fortunately my foot got healed up and I was ready for work again.

The last two or three days in the Japanese camp were a bit hairy. One day a Japanese officer came up and handed me a saw and told me to go and saw down a tree and bring some wood in. I think all the broken branches and scraps of wood had already been collected. I found a few saplings and chose one about as thick as your arm and about six foot tall, and I started to saw. I sawed and sawed most of the day and I finally did get through it and I took it back to the camp. The Japanese looked at the pieces of wood, then he looked at the saw. There were no teeth left on it! You couldn't tell the top from the bottom - they were both the same. It seemed I had been trying to saw through a teak tree! He swore at me and wrapped the saw around my ear a few times, and he didn't send me out to get wood any more.

I then boiled up a can of water and poured it over the pig's head - his ears especially. I boiled up another can, put the head in and let it cook for twenty four hours, and do you know, it was beautiful! Surprising, the jowls on a pig's head... Lovely!....Just beautiful.... But you had to be careful... Quite a few of us had fresh pork...

Several working parties, all within a few miles of our camp, used to come to this tent for their rations. I remember, one day some Chinese came in to collect theirs. When they looked at their rations, instead of a bag of salt he'd given them a bag of sugar. So they argued with the old Japanese, who had a great, big hickory stick with a big knob on the end. One of the Chinese insisted that they needed salt, not sugar (it is much more important than sugar in a hot climate, because you perspire such a lot), so this Japanese fellow just picked up his stick and whacked him on the head three or four times. It sounded like wood on wood - solid. Oh dear! He held his head and got out of there as quickly as he could. I felt so sorry for him. It was sugar that he was given and he didn't want it. It was vital that you had salt.

The Japanese were uncivilised people and they looked dreadful. Most of them had a mouthful of black teeth, spectacles with pebble thick glass and their behaviour was uncivilised. To think men could treat other men as they did, and enjoy it, as they did. That's why in Japanese history books there is no mention of the Japanese war. It's only in recent years that young Japanese who've been abroad have read up the history of the war and realised what happened. No doubt about it, they were a very brutal, uncivilised lot.

Two or three people volunteered to stay there to cremate all the bodies. They built a huge fire with tree trunks and any thing else they could find to get a great big fire going. Speaking to some of the people who were there, they said it was really bizarre to see these huge fires, consisting of masses of big trees, consuming all those bodies. They said that suddenly you'd see an arm come up, all sorts of movements, as the heat got to the bodies. Fortunately we were two or three miles from where the cremations went on.

We'd come to the end of the railway construction by this time, the last bits and pieces, and we were gradually taken back to about half way from where we had originally started. The food in this camp was slightly better than what we had before, not a lot, but a little bit. Gradually chaps, from not having to work, picked up a little bit and looked less like skeletons.

Eventually, within a few months, most of our group were sent back to Singapore, in those same horrendous rice trucks. It was then that, for the first time, I got beriberi. Beriberi is a very bad illness due to starvation diet and lack of vitamin B, and a lot of us suffered from it. You become very weak and when you press a finger into your flesh the dent stays there for some time. I got over beriberi by having friends who were good scroungers.

The camp we went to then, not a very big camp, I think was called Sime Road. There were two very interesting people down there, both nice people. One was George Sprod, an Australian, very clever with his pencil sketches. The other one was - what was his name? Ronald Searle - that's him! The Japanese kept him busy all day long, sketching. When he had a free moment I grabbed this pencil from somebody and got him to do a pencil sketch of me. I don't know what happened to it. I know I got it home, but unfortunately, during different moves it got lost. It wasn't very complimentary, but it was a good record. I don't know where he had been. It must have been somewhere on the railway, but not in our camp.

There weren't so many of us left in this camp now, very few, but the Japanese came up with the idea that they'd get everybody to sign a form saying they wouldn't attempt to escape. Our officers said, 'No! You mustn't sign that. Your duty as prisoners of war is to attempt to escape if you can'. Really it didn't affect us as there was nowhere to escape to, but we refused to sign. So everybody was put in jail - four to a cell, six foot by four. Fortunately it didn't last very long. A week! In the end our officers said we'd better sign or else we'd be in a great deal of trouble, shut up on top of each other like that. So we did!

Then we were free in the camp again, although there was lots of work to do. The latrines needed bore-holes drilling We had these great big drills that you put in the ground and turned and turned to bore holes fifteen to twenty feet deep. Put a wooden lid over it and that's your toilet! At least it was hygienic.

It was in Changi that I at last met up with the good friend that I had last seen nearly four years before. This was the chap that I had gone searching for in the jungle when I was 'captured' by the Gurkhas. It turned out that he had been taken prisoner in the jungle by the Japanese. Like me, he ended up working on the Burma railway. Both of us were lucky to have survived.

We all made fly killers from the spine of the palm leaves. You strip the leaf off and just keep the spine. Get a dozen spines together and you have a wonderful fly killer! Fewer flies about, less chance of diarrhoea.

The food wasn't very good - same old trash. Most days we would collect every tin, anything that would hold water, pile them onto an old car chassis and push it down to the coast, about a mile away. We'd fill all the cans with sea water, then scrounge firewood - anything that would burn - to take back and build a fire under the water to evaporate it and get a nice bit of salt. Very, important! you lose so much salt in perspiration that you'd do anything at all to get a bit of salt. Some of the chaps would climb the coconut trees to get a few coconuts down - a welcome addition to the diet.

The Chinese and Malays did their fishing in the sea by staking off an area at low tide with bamboo posts, a very big area. At high tide fish would swim in, then when the tide went out a few fish would remain trapped. I couldn't swim but I began to teach myself to float by propelling myself around the fish trap. I grabbed the posts, floated down to the end, turned round and floated back again. If I'd had a bit more time I might have taught myself to swim.

The next job we had was building the airfield outside Changi. Providentially we'd finished with the relentless work now. We had to level the runway off and carry earth from one place to another. The Japanese had plenty of labour at no cost. It was a 1^ mile long airstrip. I think it was eventually completed, but we left before that.

Alongside our camp, quite close to the wire, was one of our huge naval guns which had had a shell exploded in the breach to put it out of action. The Japanese used to come up there, all poshed up in their fancy dress, to have their photographs taken. We knew that a narrow gauge railway used to bring up provisions for the people who operated the guns and we had an idea that somewhere, not too far away, there might be an entrance to an underground store. There might still be diesel there that we could steal, bring back in a tin or jar, put a piece of string in it through a hole in a lid... and we would then have some reasonably good lights to read by.

We paused. From the top to the bottom of the shaft there were rows and rows of large U bolts embedded. Standing on a bolt you could reach another one and gradually work your way down to the base, which we did. Just at the bottom we found three huge tanks lined up - like the tanks that deliver fuel oil. We checked and two of them were empty, but the third one had oil in it. Fortunately for us it was diesel, So we quickly filled up our containers and lined them up.

Then we thought we would take a look around. We were amazed! It was like a little village underground. Every thing was just as it had been left by our troops, sleeping accommodation, well equipped kitchen, rest rooms, games rooms, library... everything you could think of. Very interesting! Nothing edible, sadly. I suppose that during their tour of duty our men would have lived here. This was to support 'the ring of fire round Singapore', but the guns were pointing in the wrong direction.

Now we had to climb back up. It was the end of Christmas day and we'd had no breakfast of course. Nothing to eat, but never mind, we'd got what we wanted. But just as we were on the point of leaving we heard voices and clanking. It was people walking towards us, half a dozen Japanese officers all done up in their best, with their clanking swords. We had to get to the back of the tanks and hide there, hoping they'd soon go back up. Unfortunately they stayed there until it was dark. They didn't see us and we thought they would never go, but eventually they did.

We gave them about ten minutes or so, then I said, 'You stay here. I'll nip up and see if the coast is clear', which I did, quietly. As I looked out of the shaft I got the shock of my life! About fifteen feet away from me were three or four Japanese officers, chatting away, backs to me fortunately. A little way away from them was a Chinese man ...and he saw me. I looked at him and he looked at me, then he pointed down for me to go back down, which I did very hurriedly. They didn't go for some time and we realised that if we didn't get back soon there would be no food left for us. At last we made a move and as we came up over the top the Chinese man was still there, in between us and the Japanese, still with their backs to us. He signed to us to get gone along the road quickly, which we did.

We went under the wire, back into the camp and went to the cook-house. 'Any chance of a meal?' we said. The reply was, 'No, you've already had it.' 'No we haven't,' we said, 'We've been out'. 'Sorry, there's no rations left over', we were told.

We said 'Right!' But we did find a couple of coconuts, broke them up and that was our Christmas dinner. Going down that shaft had been a bit hairy. There was a price on your head of 100 dollars if you went under the wire. We would have been shot if we'd been spotted.

Life as a prisoner of the Japanese was very hairy at times, but we never said 'If' we get back home, it was always 'When'. Our group that went on to building the railway - mostly Norfolk and Cambridgeshire Regiments - were sixty in number when we first left Changi. When we came back there were only thirty survivors.

I suppose I was fortunate. I managed to hold on to a fair bit of the money from our last pay parade. I had it all sewn into my shorts. My shorts were long and the bottom part came up and fastened with press studs. They were meant to be turned down in the evening to keep the mosquitoes away. I managed to conceal the money in the double bit. Our pay from the Japanese was five cents a week. Ten cents would buy you a coconut. With my little wad, up on the railway, if I saw someone wandering about, selling something, I'd creep away and buy two or three hard boiled eggs. I didn't like the smell, but it was food.

The main problem in Thailand was the lice. We only had what we stood up in. It got very tatty but as long as it kept you decent it didn't really matter. You didn't need it for warmth. Our officers never worked, but even their clothes got tatty towards the end. There was always one officer with a group and we got to know the officers well. One chap named Smythe, Norfolk Regiment, was in charge of our group. He had many a thrashing from the Japanese because he tried to take liberties with them on our behalf. He would insist that someone wasn't fit for working and they'd kick him in the shins. He was treated brutally at times.

You had to be careful if you started chatting near a Japanese. A few of them could speak English and might pick up on you, and that would put the cat among the pigeons. The only radio I ever heard of any camp having was one that we had hidden in the bottom half of a water bottle. Being a signals unit we had some clever chaps there, but they had to be very careful as the Japanese were hot on repressing news.

Then we heard on our radio that the war was over and the Japanese had unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. They refused to admit it to us because they couldn't bear losing face.

Almost immediately we had a huge surprise. A helicopter came down in our camp and out jumped the pilot and Lady Mountbatten! She was a lovely person, very natural and friendly. She said, 'You'll soon be home now, boys. It won't be long now'. Then she told us we were filthy - which we were - and we said we were waiting for the monsoon to start and then we'd get some nice, warm water off the roofs and wash ourselves.

The boat we came home in was The Monoway, a cigar shaped boat, long and narrow. It was a poor old thing!. It used to dive forward and come up, dive sideways and come up and then go backwards and come up. It did the same, no variations, all the time. Front, side, back - front, side, back. You had a job to stay in your hammock at night without being pitched out. Fortunately the seas weren't particularly rough, but it was a slow boat, very old. I suppose there weren't many boats left after the war, we had so many sunk. I think they had great difficulty getting ships to bring troops back from so many places.

Eventually we arrived at Liverpool. It was late evening when we berthed in the docks and they said we would be getting off in the morning. We were looking forward to that. In the morning they took us to the station and said, 'Tell the clerk where you want to go to and you'll be given a ticket to take you all the way'. It didn't cost anything - we had no money at all. I was given a ticket to Kings Cross. When I got there, having no money I supposed I would have to hitch-hike home but as I was walking up the platform a chap came along and said, 'Are you one of those P.O.W's come up from Liverpool?' I said 'Yes'. 'Right', he said. 'You come with me. Tell me where you want to get to.' I said, 'Well, I want to get to Finchley'. 'O.K.' he said, 'I'll soon get you there'. I popped into his taxi and off we went. It was nice of him. There must have been a bit of publicity in the newspapers about us P.O.W's.

When I knocked on Miriam's mum's front door, where she and the twins had been staying for the duration of the war, Miriam was out, but my twins were there. They had been thirteen month old babies when I joined the army and now they were little girls of seven......

Anyway, we made an application to recover the house and get back home. We got a solicitor to handle the affair and when the case came up we were told, 'No, no, no! There's a family of nine people living in that house. They need it more than you do. You will have to tell your wife their need is greater than yours'. Charming! A real smack in the eye! So, I joined the Far East Prisoners of War Association in London and asked their advice. They said it was a totally ridiculous situation, so they took on the task of recovering our house and did an excellent job.

Unfortunately the house was left in a terrible state. I think they must have been employed by the old tramways department. Every room was painted in the old tram colour - dark brown. They'd done nothing to the outside. There'd been nine of them living in it, mum and dad, a couple of sons and a daughter and their little ones. It was in a state! It took six months to get back into it again.

I went back to work hair-dressing again. The family grew and the years passed. I am sure that my experiences as a P.O.W. affected my health as I got older. I was advised by a friend who was in the Burma Star Association that I should have been receiving a pension like so many others, so an application was made. Various people and doctors came to take down particulars and I was awarded a pension, almost a full one, dated back to ......wait for it....l996! It was very welcome.

Our little girls were very fortunate because I had a lovely mother and three lovely brothers, and they put the twins before everything. They'd give them a lot of their rations and always saw that the twins got any extras that were going. If I'd been on my own with our twins I think we would have had a very hard time. It wasn't easy, but we were happy, if you could call it that .

We were never bombed out, or evacuated into the country. During the blitz crowds of people used to shelter in the deep underground tube stations. I took the twins down Highgate Underground once. It was the deepest Underground in London, but it was horrible for children, dirty and smelly. I thought it was unhygienic. I wouldn't take them back down there! I'd rather risk the bombs.

In 1942 we were told that Olaf was missing after the fall of Singapore. Of course we hoped that he was a prisoner, but as the Japanese refused to divulge the names of their prisoners we were left, like thousands of others, not knowing if he was dead or alive and possibly wounded. I wrote to him - we used to write, his mother as well - as often as we could. We found out afterwards that the Japanese used to burn their letters in front them. They never got their Red Cross parcels either. The Japanese took all the medical stuff and everything.

The authorities said he was more than likely dead, so I should take a widow's pension. Well, several of us mothers - there was a group of us in Finchley - and several of them said we'd got to accept it, and I said 'I don't accept it. Olaf's not dead!' They said, 'How do you know?' and I said, 'I just know!' I wouldn't take the Widow's Pension. There were two or three of us who wouldn't take it. You can't accept these things.

It was three an a half years before we knew he was a Prisoner of War. Well, of course it was nearly the end then. Then we got one or two little cards –

'I AM WELL. HOPE YOU ARE WELL. LOVE OLAF.'

It was nice to get them.

When Olaf came home and knocked on the door I was out - probably getting something to make the dinner - I can't think what it was - whale meat perhaps - Oh no! That was horrible! We couldn't stomach that, we really couldn't. We tried all ways! I wasn't there when Olaf arrived, but the children were there. I don't know what their reaction was. It's all a blur to me. That's why I really didn't want to go back - I mean they were thirteen months old when he left, and then they were seven years old when he came home. Olaf was a stranger to them. They objected to Daddy. He was in my bed....

After the war it took a long, long time for Olaf to settle down. He lost all self confidence. If he came shopping with me he would sing as soon as he got in the shop - he still does it occasionally. He was never the same - never the same. For years afterwards he had bouts of malaria, when you get all hot and wet, then cold. He used to get it quite often, for a long time. He was never the same man. Well, you could understand it couldn't you? It's so unnatural for a man to leave his home to go and fight another man. It's not natural, is it?

We went all those years when he should have had a pension and the care that some of the other men had.

He went to the R.A.F. hospital in Ely at one time, to see if he'd got strongaloids, a horrible parasite, a worm. He stayed there for a week. A lot of people had them and there was no cure for them then. He had a lovely little flat there - a fridge full of beer! He was happy there - and they found out that he didn't have strongaloids after all.

I think they could have looked into his records and seen how he had suffered and should have given him a pension then. But Olaf's never been one to put himself forward. It was very difficult. Like lots of people at that time, you brought your children up; you didn't owe any money; you made sure that you paid what was due - and what was left you lived on. It wasn't easy, but I was able to make all their clothes, Olaf's shirts and the children's clothes.

It was our choice, although it wasn't our choice that we had five children. Olaf said we should make do with three, but I wanted four you see, like my mother had four, but instead of four we got five. We married in 1937 (things were different in those days you see) and the twins, Elizabeth and Sheila, were born in 1939. Then when Olaf came back Ray was born, in 1946. We were very fortunate to have Ray because they said more than likely these men would be sterile, so they wouldn't have children. But we confounded them, because eleven months after Olaf came back Ray was born. And then I did want another baby - I love babies - and Olaf said no, we really had got enough. We didn't rely on anybody to pay for us to bring them up or anything like that. So, I pressurised him and we did have another one, but we got another one as well. We had twins, Collin and Debbie and never regretted it. I suppose I am biased, but our children have been wonderful, they really have been wonderful children. I mean they've got into mischief, but not like some do today ...