Description
Object description
Excellent memoirs (c.330pp ts) of his experiences during the Second World War which he commenced as a twenty year old construction labourer in Norwich, joining the local Royal Engineers (TA) unit in the summer of 1939 and training in camps at Canterbury, Norwich and Thetford, engaged in anti-invasion defence measures on the Norfolk coast during the summer of 1940 before transferring to 560th Field Company RE and military camp construction work in the Scottish Borders and around Liverpool, embarking with his unit on the troopship WARWICK CASTLE to Canada in October 1941 and onward voyage to the Far East in the USS ORIZABA, with an interlude in Bombay before arriving in Singapore in late January 1942, immediate deployment to demolition and guard duties on the island before taking up defensive positions at Mount Pleasant where he went into Japanese captivity when the colony capitulated, incarceration as a prisoner of war in Changi barracks until November 1942 when he was included in a party sent up to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway, initially engaged on service-road building at Tarsao before being set to work on the railway proper at Tonchan and Rintin, returning to Tarsao in late 1943 for hospitalisation with beriberi, after which he was moved to Nakom Pathon and Tamuang, from where he was sent down to Tamarkan as part of a working party to repair the Kwai bridge damaged by Allied air attacks, further moves within Thailand towards the end of the war, including to the newly opened Pratchai camp (? early 1945) where he was liberated in August 1945, his repatriation to the UK, concluding with reflections on his wartime experiences and the effects of captivity (the memoirs include vivid character portraits of many of the Japanese and Korean POW camp personnel he encountered, along with evocative descriptions of the camps and landscapes through which he passed; Chapter 17 contains the story of Neville Painter, a survivor of the bombing of the troopship EMPRESS OF ASIA off Singapore in early February 1942 who succeeded in evading the Japanese and reaching India via Sumatra).
Content description
Excellent memoirs (c.330pp ts) of his experiences during the Second World War which he commenced as a twenty year old construction labourer in Norwich, joining the local Royal Engineers (TA) unit in the summer of 1939 and training in camps at Canterbury, Norwich and Thetford, engaged in anti-invasion defence measures on the Norfolk coast during the summer of 1940 before transferring to 560th Field Company RE and military camp construction work in the Scottish Borders and around Liverpool, embarking with his unit on the troopship WARWICK CASTLE to Canada in October 1941 and onward voyage to the Far East in the USS ORIZABA, with an interlude in Bombay before arriving in Singapore in late January 1942, immediate deployment to demolition and guard duties on the island before taking up defensive positions at Mount Pleasant where he went into Japanese captivity when the colony capitulated, incarceration as a prisoner of war in Changi barracks until November 1942 when he was included in a party sent up to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway, initially engaged on service-road building at Tarsao before being set to work on the railway proper at Tonchan and Rintin, returning to Tarsao in late 1943 for hospitalisation with beriberi, after which he was moved to Nakom Pathon and Tamuang, from where he was sent down to Tamarkan as part of a working party to repair the Kwai bridge damaged by Allied air attacks, further moves within Thailand towards the end of the war, including to the newly opened Pratchai camp (? early 1945) where he was liberated in August 1945, his repatriation to the UK, concluding with reflections on his wartime experiences and the effects of captivity (the memoirs include vivid character portraits of many of the Japanese and Korean POW camp personnel he encountered, along with evocative descriptions of the camps and landscapes through which he passed; Chapter 17 contains the story of Neville Painter, a survivor of the bombing of the troopship EMPRESS OF ASIA off Singapore in early February 1942 who succeeded in evading the Japanese and reaching India via Sumatra).
History note
Cataloguer SWW