Wartime stories - with the War Veterans

Its 9th August - Singapore Independence Day! And its time I dust my shelves and take out old files and albums again.
Three years ago, I attended a gathering of war veterans at the Imperial War Memorial Museum in South London where ex war prisoners met up to remember the 60th anniversary of the fall of Singapore into the hands of the Japanese on 15th February, a day that Winston Churchill described as the greatest disaster in British history. Here was what I wrote then...

"It was a cold bleak day in February when more than 100 Far Eastern PoWs and civilian internees met at this reunion, to yet again relive the experiences of working in labour camps and the notorious Death Railway and to remember their friends and relatives who did not make it home. It must have been a darker day in February 60 years ago for the Singaporeans then as well as the Allied soldiers.


Many were accompanied by their children and grandchildren and it was not difficult to spot the veterans. These British war veterans, who had served in Malaya and Singapore, came with their medals, walking sticks and in their wheelchairs and the painful, bitter memories of their embittered years as prisoners of war.

One even came with a painting of a harrowing image that still haunts his days and nights, but putting it on canvas has helped him to cope. Besides their impressive array of medals and name tags, they had colour-coded dots to help us identify them. Those with red dots, and there were quite a few of them, were prisoners of war. Green-dot bearers were civilian internees while those with blue dots were those who managed to escape and the ones with black dots were child evacuees.

But there was one distinguished-looking man whose surname could not have made it very easy for him to turn up and mingle with the rest. He was Brigadier James Percival, son of Lt-General Arthur Percival who was in command of the Allied Forces during the war. He was also the one who surrendered the supposedly-impregnable fortress of Singapore to the Japanese, which to Churchill was "a grievious and shameful blow to British prestige." The fall of Singapore did have dire consequences for the thousands of men, women and children who were forced to work in terrible conditions. Many did not survive. A few came to tell their stories again.

For the junior Percival, who himself served in Malaya fighting the terrorists in the Fifties, criticisms levelled at his father were unfair.
"He never had any conscience about surrendering Singapore because he always felt that if we had not surrendered it, the civilian population would have been annihilated by the Japanese," Percival said of his father. Although his father never spoke about the surrender, he knew that his father was bitter till his death, as all the blame for the loss of Singapore was on his shoulders. "The reason we lost that particular campaign was one of resources and we as a country were very pressed in the Middle East (and) on the Russian front. We didn't have many tanks in Malaya or sufficient ships. "So that was the result. He didn't have enough to fight with. We didn't know very much about fighting in the jungle and the Japanese knew a lot about it. He was a very honourable person and with his upbringing, he kept a stiff upper lip," said the younger Percival.

General Percival and his troops remained as prisoners of war until the end of the Second World War. He died in 1966 at the age of 78.

Robert Brook was a mere child when he and his parents were thrown into Changi prison.
"As children, we were better treated by the Japanese. They were strict with education and insisted that we be given sterilised milk," he remembers.

But for others, there were no fond memories. Wing Commander Peter Kingwill, who was a flight lieutenant with the Royal Air Force and served in Kuantan during the Japanese landing in Kota Baru, spoke of the starvation and tropical diseases he had to endure. He worked on the Death Railway for three years after his plane was shot down in southern Thailand. Not many escaped but one did and lives to tell the story. Roy Pagani, who was a corporal with the Reconnaissance Regiment, stained his skin with burnt rice and walked barefooted for 400km wearing a lungyi.

"What can I say; we were slaves on that railway track and many people died carrying the sleepers. So I had to escape."

Escape was not the end of the story, for it was only the beginning of nightmares for some.How does one cope with the trauma that haunts every waking hour only to turn into nightmares at night? Ronald Delavigne, who was imprisoned in Japan exorcised his nightmares onto canvasses. What he showed us was harrowing, what he experienced was worse. "The older I get, I become more intolerant of people who complain about being hungry, cold and wet. I think to myself, they don't know what it means to be hungry, cold or wet. But I am glad they didn't know," Delavigne says. Bitter as he is, he cannot hate his captors. He told a story about a Japanese worker, who gave him tobacco at the risk of losing his own head. The Japanese worker also helped him with his digging chores as Delavigne had broken his leg. On the day of his departure, he met the old man again and was invited into his house.

"He gave his tobacco pipe as a memento. He helped me," he sobbed. "So how can I say I hate all Japanese?"

The people in that room that day share a lot together. They appreciate solidarity, friendship and human kindness although it can be difficult for them to explain to those who never went through their ordeal. "

But pls continue sharing your stories in the entry below - ones that you hear from your parents or grandparents.