Private Papers of Captain A E Charlton CBE

Ms diary/letter (45pp), written between (?) early and July 1943 for his girlfriend by a junior emergency commissioned officer in the 3/16th Punjab Regiment, Indian Army, who had been a journalist in India since 1936, while he was a prisoner of war in Japanese hands and beginning with a retrospective account of how, after recovering from an accident and an illness, he attended the Officers' Training School at Belgaum in Southern India (July - November 1940) and was then attached to the Regiment's Training Battalion in India before embarking with the 3/16th Punjabs for Malaya in March 1941, with interesting comments about his attitude towards the war and military service, his fellow officers and the course at Belgaum and concluding with an excellent, but partly illegible, daily diary, with wordprocessed transcript (19pp), kept in June - July 1943 when he was with (?) H Force on the Burma - Siam railway, initially at Kanburi and then at an unidentified camp, referring particularly to the abominable conditions both in the camps and when employed on the construction of the railway by day and night, the appalling suffering of the native labourers sent to Thailand to work on the railway, the ravages of the cholera epidemic and other diseases, and his own behaviour and that of fellow officers under these circumstances; two ms diaries (34 and 14pp) written from March 1944 - September 1945 in the prisoner of war camps in Singapore at Sime Road up to May 1944 and then in Changi Gaol with frequent very interesting details and reflections about problems with his physical and mental state after a lengthy period of captivity, his relationship with his long-standing girlfriend, the running of Changi camp by the Japanese and the Senior British Officer, the dire effects of ration reductions in early 1945, the behaviour of fellow officers, racketeering, the deaths of friends, camp entertainments, his literary activities for the magazines 'Exile' and 'Here Today', the news of Japan's surrender and the subsequent transitional phase in Changi as well as the transformation of his own outlook on life, his renewal of contact with some of the Indian troops whom he had commanded and his repatriation to India; a notebook containing ms short stories written by him during his captivity and another including ms summaries of books he read as a prisoner of war and of extracts from published prose and poetry; a folder containing an ms draft of a letter to his girlfriend following the death of a fellow officer, Captain E B Clibborn, in captivity (December 1944) and ms drafts (a few with ts transcripts) of poems, some written while a prisoner of war in Changi in 1944 - 1945; obituary notices from Indian newspapers (1983); and also a faded photograph of his girlfriend kept throughout his captivity, a group photograph of No 2 Platoon, A Company at the Officers' Training School, Belgaum (November 1940) and a laser copy of a wedding day photograph of him and his wife (1949).

Catalogue date 2007-07

Cataloguer RWAS