Dan Snow's History Hit - The War in the East: Part 1 with Bill Frankland

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

In this episode taken from our archive, I talk to Dr Bill Frankland (19 March 1912 – 2 April 2020), a veteran of World War Two who lived through a Japanese prisoner of war camp and who also made imp...ortant contributions to our understanding of allergies.You can listen to part 2 of this podcast here.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hits. I'm really happy we got the opportunity to replay an old episode from our archive today. Dr. William Franklin, one of the most remarkable men that I've ever met, and I was hugely honoured to have him on the podcast. He was born the 19th of March, 1912. He died last year. He was 108 years old. Just before his death, I was lucky enough to meet him and learn about an extraordinary life and career. I say extraordinary a lot on this podcast, but this is extraordinary. He was a medic during the Second World War. He was captured at Singapore. He suffered at the hands of his Japanese captors during the rest of the war. He then came back to the UK. He collaborated with Alexander Fleming on penicillin.
Starting point is 00:00:52 He experimented on himself, as you'll hear, with almost fatal consequences. He pioneered the daily pollen count and he treated Saddam Hussein for dodgy lungs. He retired at 65, suddenly from his job in the NHS, but he continued to work well past 100. He attended conferences and published articles in journals. As you'll hear in this episode, he was still working on an article just before he died, deep into his 11th decade. We think that made him the oldest working man in British history. But please let me know if you have another candidate. This podcast, it was a long interview. By the way, you'll hear my daughter doing some colouring in
Starting point is 00:01:45 the background. Her pen has dropped on the floor occasionally. I thought it was very cool. I took her to meet him. So she was born in 2011 and she was able to hang out, have a few pictures taken and learn some things from a guy who was born before the First World War. Very, very special indeed. If you wish to hear the second episode of this podcast, it's available, like all of our podcasts, on historyhit.tv. It's our digital history channel. You've got podcasts on there. We got TV shows on there. You can watch this interview with Bill Franklin. It was recorded as well. So you can watch the whole thing on historyhit.tv. In this first episode, he talks about life before and during the Second World War. For the Saddam Hussein stuff, you've got to head to historyhit.tv. But enjoy this
Starting point is 00:02:34 podcast with a very, very special man indeed. Very much missed, Dr. William Franklin. So tell me about this remarkable man that we're about to go and meet. Well, he is actually quite remarkable. A hundred and six years and a half, born two and a half years before the outbreak of the First World War. A man who qualified in medicine ten years before the NHS. So that's 80 years ago. And then who served his country.
Starting point is 00:03:04 Prisoner of war of the japanese for three and a half years on the day before it fell he made sure many of the nurses actually got out of singapore onto the safety of a ship a prisoner for i'd say three and a half years then afterwards he came home put it all behind him developed a career in medicine. He developed the whole area of clinical allergy. He worked for two years for a gentleman called Sir Alexander Fleming. He developed the pollen count. And more recently, about 40 years ago, he was summoned to Baghdad to treat Saddam Hussein. And he did that a couple of times. And as he said, that gentleman was my most appreciative patient where did your relationship with him begin how did you become his biographer it all happened about four years ago i was
Starting point is 00:03:51 introduced to him through the then chief executive the not forgotten association a charity which was founded in 1919 pierre story pew introduced me to him from that we became friends and then two years ago i was asked to do a sort of question and answer session with Dr. Franklin at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. And from that, it snowballed, as you would say. I asked him who was going to write his biography because I knew it had to be written. And he said, you. And that's been the last two and a half years. The biography is called, by the way way it's called from hell island to hay fever the life of dr bill franklin and to explain that hell island is the name that they gave to blankamati
Starting point is 00:04:31 which is now you and i know as sentosa where more recently donald trump met the leader of north korea and hay fever of course bill has been instrumental in the development of treatment and and prevention of pollen allergies. And talk to me, I mean, one of the most amazing things, of the many remarkable things about this gentleman, is that he's continued to work well into his 90s, let alone after his 100th birthday, hasn't he? He has indeed.
Starting point is 00:04:58 He was last seeing patients, merely in an advisory role, as he will tell us, when he was 105. He has published four peer-review will tell us when he was 105 he has published four peer-reviewed scientific papers since he was 100 and is currently as we sit here or stand here today he's working on the next one which is again about one of his real main interests is the development of how someone discovered penicillin where these molds were and he'll tell you that you can find reference to them in the Bible, in the Old Testament.
Starting point is 00:05:28 So they've been around a long, long time. So not only is he a veteran of the Second World War, an extraordinary, illustrious medical career, he's probably the oldest person currently still working in the UK. Well, who knows? Let us know. Read the listeners. Let us know if that's true. That may well be the case certainly he is britain's oldest doctor as i say he uh qualified 10 years before the nhs
Starting point is 00:05:50 and people might like to think then he'd heard about penicillin from alexander fleming when he was being lectured to him but it wasn't available he is the oldest former eastern prisoner of war he is probably the oldest former serving officer in the british army and certainly he's the oldest former Eastern prisoner of war. He is probably the oldest former serving officer in the British Army, and certainly he is the oldest former serving military doctor. I'm about to go and meet him now. I'm always interested to take your advice on how to approach veterans of the Far East, because it can be very traumatic talking about their experiences. Is he willing to share some of those memories?
Starting point is 00:06:24 He will, and he will share them graphically. He will tell you, for example, and it is in the book, as he says, when the Kempati were in the camp, there was the smell of death. Everyone was fearsome of it. He saw people being killed, he saw people being tortured, and he saw people just dying because he could not provide adequate medical treatment because the the
Starting point is 00:06:47 japanese would not provide the medical supplies that they needed did he have the japanese even attempt to work with him give him any status as a doctor or is he just a just another number just another prisoner of war he was treated as an officer by the Japanese, he was singled out, unfortunately, like many of the other officers, to be humiliated by being beaten in front of the men. This is the way in which the Japanese tried to break the structure within the units, and so he suffered. He'll tell you one time he came again very close to death because of a beating from the Japanese and he is the man who was saved from having to work at the Alexandra military hospital in Singapore by literally the toss of a coin and without that toss of a coin he would have been certainly killed on the 14th of february 1942 well thank goodness that you've been around to to record
Starting point is 00:07:49 this story as his biographer um the book again is from hell island to hay fever uh paul watkins thank you very much indeed now we're going to go in so dr franklin thank you very much for for having me to sit in your well this is your office as well it's not just where you live and i sleep here too of course very effective because you're still working aren't you I'm still working I'm determined to produce an article when I'm a heart age 106 I'm nearly finished writing it but then of course it has to be accepted by a suitable journal and so on but it's very interesting learning all sorts of new things about famous people that I've been involved with.
Starting point is 00:08:32 Well, I hope I'm still making these shows when I'm 106 years old. That's for sure. So you were born, let's get this clear, when were you born? In 1912, before the First World War. And I remember the First World War quite well, in fact, because my father went away. And what I remember is him coming back and what a joyful thing it was when he came back from France. And you must have been terribly worried about him. Well, I was too young really, but my mother made a terrific fuss and so on.
Starting point is 00:09:05 Then when he was going, he had a TB injection, and he went off to Salonika and then Alexandria in Egypt. But when he had this injection, this vaccine as a protection, everyone, all the army was having, all the army was having, all the services were having. It caused him a temperature and a very sore arm. And I remember we were allowed on a Sunday always to go into the bed with our parents. No, he was really ill, had a sore arm.
Starting point is 00:09:40 I thought he'd been wounded. Was he a doctor? No, no, no, he was a vicar of a parish. But when he married, they had their honeymoon in New York, and then he started as a vicar at St Joseph's Island in Canada, and he was there for two years. My two eldest, my eldest brother and my sister were both born in Canada. But then they came back to this country and eventually finished up in North England near Lake Ullswater.
Starting point is 00:10:22 And did he serve as a Pad padre in the First World War? Yes, he did, yes. And interesting, he had a Sam Brown, which I didn't say whether or not, but I was very proud I took it from him. And I have pictures of me wearing it in uniform. What's happened to it, I don't know. So his webbing, you wore his webbing from the First World War into the Second World War.
Starting point is 00:10:45 Yes, I did. And did he talk about his experiences in the war? No, almost no. But all I remember when he was in Alexandria and Cairo, he sent lovely postcards to us of the Sphinx and the pyramids. And I loved these. I still remember them coming and I thought this is marvellous. And why did you join up in the Second World War? I thought there's going to be war and I was doing a locum job to earn some money because people don't seem to realise it as far as
Starting point is 00:11:31 the National Health is concerned that when I qualified and I did a job at St Mary's Hospital, hospital, you weren't paid anything at all for six months. They gave you a bed and a room and a telephone, which was all I was doing. So then what did I do? I'd go and do locums, and I did a locum in a psychiatric hospital. And I was there for five months and thoroughly enjoyed it. And then I thought with what was happening politically, there's going to be war.
Starting point is 00:12:11 So when September came along, I went back to my old army hospital, which I'd done previous locums, where they actually paid you a pound a day. And so I arrived there on September the 1st. War started on September the 3rd. And I remember that very well because all the regular doctors and other people all left. And I was left on my own with a vast number of beds, an isolation hospital.
Starting point is 00:12:40 And I was working 16 hours a day, but I thought I really enjoyed it. and I was working 16 hours a day but I thought I really enjoyed it and we had an outbreak of meningitis which I treated a hundred patients with one death and he was a he had an abscess of the brain and we also had a very rare disease which is a complication of mumps amongst the Australians and they presented with this complaint which is called encephalitis but there's no treatment for it at all, we just put them in bed and treated them symptomatically and I remember a doctor coming in and he said, well they present exactly the same way as the meningitis case which you say is of a very urgent and you have to sort the sulfonides which were available then, that these other people, you don't even lumbar puncture and you don't give them any
Starting point is 00:13:31 treatment. How do you distinguish them? They're vomiting, they have a high temperature, their neck is back because they've got spasm there. And I said, it's very easy. They're all Australian. It's very easy. They're all Australian.
Starting point is 00:13:48 And they're suffering from this rare disease of so-called encephalitis, which there's no treatment. And when did you get posted overseas with the army? I did one year exactly at the sort of retinue, where I had these vast numbers of beds. And I wasn't relieved for six months, and it meant that I'd had to go to the isolation hospital at six o'clock in the morning, and still the night's off. However, I was there for one year,
Starting point is 00:14:21 and then I went to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment which is in Warwick and Monty's Regiment and I had my own hospital there and it was overstaffed and I thoroughly enjoyed myself because I could treat quite sick people because it was possible and I was exactly one year there and then at the end of one year, on one day I had three letters, two of them telling me that I had to go to somewhere else in England, but the other one was that I was going to go to the outside. They didn't say exactly where,
Starting point is 00:15:03 but I had to have a topical medicine course, which was... I don't know, was it three months? Anyhow, ours was two days long, so that I could recognise easily malaria. And so that's where... So after exactly two years, one year, one year, I was on the way to what I thought was the Middle East. But in fact, when we got to, was it Durban, yes,
Starting point is 00:15:32 instead of, no, when we got to Cape Town, that's right, most of the convoy went to the Middle East and a small group went to Singapore and I was on that group. And you got to Singapore just in time for the Japanese to invade? Well, in fact, it was very interesting, having been bombing of London and Coventry and so on, that when you got to Singapore, all lights were on,
Starting point is 00:15:59 and there was no sign that there was a war going on anywhere. And this was actually exactly seven days before Pearl Harbor, when the war started on that particular Sunday. And so was Singapore quite fun initially? Well, yes, it was. And I was taken to the cricket club to show how they'd played there for years and years and years, and Tanglin Club, which was a very snobbish one, but you could go there and play tennis.
Starting point is 00:16:34 And you just enjoyed yourself. But I still remember the day, it was a Sunday night, the Japanese, besides the Pearl Harbour, Sunday at night, the Japanese, besides the Pearl Harbour, they sent three bombers to Singapore and they dropped their bombs, really to save, you know, we've started a war, but one of the bombs, have you ever heard a bomb coming down? I heard this bomb coming down and I thought the plane was overhead and it was the only time in my whole war experience that I very quickly went under my bed just thinking that it might be hitting me. In fact it was incredibly close. I was lucky as it were but people always ask me how have I lived so long and I just say luck, luck, luck. I've been so near death so many times,
Starting point is 00:17:26 but I've almost just escaped and that's why I'm alive. So the first time you were very near death was in Singapore, basically on the day of Pearl Harbour? Well, no, before then, when we arrived on the third day, When we arrived on the third day, I and another medical officer were just told to go to an Indian field hospital or something like that. And for three days we were, I mean, I even had a batman. And I've never had this before, but he looked, a batman, he was a personal sort of servant who was having everything. Batman, you're a personal sort of servant who does everything. And I remember the first evening he came in and he said,
Starting point is 00:18:11 I normally undress my officer. Do you mind me undressing your trousers and taking them out? I said, yes, I do. Get out. Anyhow, then an officer came from the headquarters in Singapore and said, you two people, let's now do some work. This was just before the war. The war was three days away, I think. And he said, there are two hospitals. One's called Tangling Military Hospital,
Starting point is 00:18:35 and it was dermatology and BD. And the other is the Alexander Military Hospital, which I always said looked a little like Buckingham Palace. It was a vast place. It was the main hospital. And there you'll be in the minor operation room giving an anesthetic to patients. The other one
Starting point is 00:18:56 is largely skins and tropical ulcers and things like that. And I said, well, I'm a very bad anesthetist. I don't want to go there. And I like the skin complaints and things like that. I want to go there. And the other doctor said the same. So what happened? This officer who'd come to tell us where to go, put his hand in his pocket, took the coin out and said,
Starting point is 00:19:25 Franklin, call, as he spun the coin, and it was heads. And so I went where I went. And that doctor that went into the other place was horribly murdered on the 14th of February 1942. So there's my, on the spin of a coin, that's the first time I had a real narrow escape. So it went on all my life. So I think we're going to call this the nine lives of Dr Bill Franklin.
Starting point is 00:19:52 So the one life is they almost dropped a bomb on you in December 1941. I can even say that I was born an identical twin. We were twins and very premature. I weighed three pounds, one ounce, and my twin brother three pounds, one and a half ounce. And my mother didn't even know she was having twins, but we were very premature.
Starting point is 00:20:17 And in those days, the chances of living when you're so premature and so small were small, but I lived. So that's the first time. Okay, so that's, okay, let's count, we're going to count that one as well. So being born and surviving the first few days, then going to Singapore, getting bombed by Japanese. Then tell me about when war, when you arrived in Singapore, did you expect that there would
Starting point is 00:20:40 be a war in the Far East against the Japanese? In fact, I did. We had an intelligence officer, even in the first year of the war, and he said that it was quite likely that the Japanese would eventually come in. And when they started the war, he said it would be a most peculiar beginning, and almost certainly on a Sunday when me expect so many people to be away so he was really right You're listening to Dance Knows History it's a podcast we recorded a couple
Starting point is 00:21:14 years ago with national treasure Dr Bill Franklin, more after this Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.
Starting point is 00:21:51 Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. So it didn't come as a complete shock to you that the British Empire was now at war with Japan? No, no, no, no, no. But did their rapid advance surprise you? Yes, because we didn't tell them that the Japanese were small people, all wore spectacles and so on, and we didn't know anything about their aeroplanes,
Starting point is 00:22:35 and our aeroplanes went up. Theirs were better than ours, and we thought we'd got some really good ones. But to begin with, defending Singapore was an old-fashioned airplane which they'd stopped using in England a few months previously because they said that, and they were training ones in England, got to Singapore and you found that was the first defence, as it were, planes which were too old.
Starting point is 00:23:02 And so your commanding officers sort of dismissed the Japanese. They just said they were inferior and there's nothing to worry about. To begin with. And you learnt within a few days that this was well you learnt on the day that war was declared. And when you saw their fighter planes
Starting point is 00:23:19 and they just were so good in shooting down our defence of Singapore. It wasn't impenetrable, you see. It was very much the same. But the RAF, the air force that we had defending Singapore, was just awful. And as the Japanese then invaded Malaya,
Starting point is 00:23:44 did you start having to treat a stream of battlefield casualties? No, they came into northern Malaya, and that's quite a long way up, and so, and most of the battle casualties in those days were treated locally, but in fact, the Japanese started advancing everyone said there was no roads and there was one big road and if and before the war you could buy a bicycle rally bicycle very very cheaply what and you saw then at the beginning even they could got on the one road that was there and they went on bicycles and they just used that as a quick means of going down successfully, as it were.
Starting point is 00:24:34 And when did you actually think, hold on, I might personally be in danger or I'm going to be on the front line? Was it when the great battleships were sunk off the coast or was it when the Japanese appeared in front of Singapore Island? They were coming down all the time. I thought, even in the very early days, well, I'm going to not get out of this.
Starting point is 00:24:55 Oh, really? Oh, yes. It was... We didn't know then some of the processes that were happening and so on, but even so, everyone was defending. And a lot of civilians were coming down to Singapore. I was offered a lovely car for a nice girl and she said, you can have it for a hundred pounds. I said, no, it's no use at all. I'm not going to buy it.
Starting point is 00:25:20 So I was not gloomy, but factual. They just came down and I never wanted to stop them. And then tell me about the fighting for Singapore itself. And at that stage you must have been treating casualties because the front line was on the island. Yes. There was another thing, you see. The reason they fought so well was that if they died fighting they went to two layers higher in heaven than you can in any other way and if they were taken prisoners they wouldn't be allowed to go back to Japan
Starting point is 00:25:56 or anything like that and people don't realize I mean how many prisons did we take in the whole campaign of an era well I know know we had four Japanese prisons and I looked after them in the military hospital and they didn't want to live. And three of them were paratroopers and had been picked up unconscious and one of them had a meta, an officer at close quarters in the jungle and they both fired a pistol and this man had a wound which in fact he had a collapsed lung and the bullet had just hit the edge of his heart and lesbians all got infected. So I remember this Japanese, this particular Japanese who was not one of the parafusers, he said,
Starting point is 00:26:45 you're trying to keep me alive, I don't want to be kept alive. And I said, no, that's my duty, I'll do that. And at the same time, of course, so we took the whole of that campaign, four Japanese prisoners, and they got, in fact, finally got away to Colombo, still on Sri Lanka and I wished them well at the time but I also looked after we had a terrible super spy it was also in jail and And he'd actually been found guilty of spying for the Japanese. And he'd been... Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt
Starting point is 00:27:40 and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits.
Starting point is 00:28:12 There are new episodes every week. Surveillance, a year or more, a year, because he was so inefficient in everything he did and they didn't, he was, he was always going from one unit in the Indian Army up in the north. What did they do? About a year before the war started they sent him to Japan to learn Japanese. Well, I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing. Here's a man who was considered a spy even then, and what did they do? And what did he do? He learned Japanese, but he learned all sorts of other things, how to use cameras, how to use wires, and so on. And so he told the Japanese when he got back
Starting point is 00:29:05 that every, he told them all the strengths of the army and the air force and the planes, how quickly they could go and everything. And that's before the repulse for the Prince of Wales came along. And I was very worried when the Prince of Wales and we were doing badly and everything was going on, but here we were losing in Java and Smartra
Starting point is 00:29:35 and the Pacific, the Japanese were in charge. But here on the papers and everything, as these two battleships, the Prince of Wales had got all sorts of secret things on the radar and things in those days, and they said if it was attacked by a plane, they knew where it was coming from, and so on. And when they actually were attacked, the Repulse was actually hit by a bomb on the very first three planes that came over and it hit the steering so it was finished. The Prince of Wales was attacked from every side.
Starting point is 00:30:20 The planes came in north-east, south west as it were, and torpedo carrying planes and some of them had crashed and it was a certain death for them. And it was very interesting because in the papers here when they arrived, these two battleships, they were all there. If they'd kept quiet about it everyone would have known but I thought that was wrong. And then they went on to this, I'm not sure whether the spy that I was involved in gave them this phony message that Captain Phillips, who was in charge of the principles, that a lot of, they were told that a whole lot of Japanese were arriving on the East Coast in Northern Malaya, and that's what they went to without any air force protection and so on. So they went to their doom, as it were, on a phone message.
Starting point is 00:31:17 And it's very interesting because I remember reading that in that particular episode we destroyed 34 Japanese planes. Now I've also read, in the Prison of War, in fact, I read, how many planes did they lose? And they said something, 79 I think it was, yes, that's right, 79 planes. And a lot of them had come a very long way and they ran out of petrol and that's why they crashed but they were all willing to die for their emperor and so on and that was that.
Starting point is 00:31:55 So tell me about the fall of Singapore, the fighting, the vicious fighting just in the hours before and then the surrender, what do you know about that, what could you see going on? and then the surrender. What do you know about that? What could you see going on? Well, the question was, they were in Johor Bahru, which is the mainland, and they had this relatively narrow bit of sea
Starting point is 00:32:13 to cross to Singapore Island. And where would they come? There was this one bridge which took everything, Singapore, to the mainland, would they come to one side, this side or the other side of it and Percival
Starting point is 00:32:31 who was the commanding officer of Fortress Singapore said that they were going to arrive on that side, in fact they came on the other side the interesting thing is that when I was actually in prison for war, a Japanese officer came along and he talked to me.
Starting point is 00:32:48 And the day before they had come over from the mainland onto Singapore Island, he himself had come over to Singapore to see whether they should land where they were intended to. And he did, and he came back again. And all these sort of little things you learnt afterwards. And he said, it was just swamps,
Starting point is 00:33:10 and he met quite a few drunken troops, but then he said, this is the place we're going to go and land. And they did that. The British blew up the bridge and so on, but the Japanese, and amazingly, I think it was three or four days, they just came over with tanks. There was another thing, you see, they used tanks even in the north of Malaya.
Starting point is 00:33:35 There was one very good road from the north right to the south, and that's what they used, bicycles and tanks. We simply couldn't do it. And what do you remember of the fighting? Did you witness it or were you locked away with the casualties? No, neither. I wasn't a surgeon, I was a physician and I was looking after various people at the time,
Starting point is 00:34:00 and I can't remember what day it was but all I knew was that they were very successful having landed in Singapore and doing very very well and finally they had a long distance mortars and I was at theier Minister's Hospital and the mortars could reach us. So the front line of the Japanese was very close to me and I finally left there but I was in the last lorry that actually left, where the lorry came from. But I still remember the driver, he was a local driver and he didn't have shoes or socks. And, of course, the mortars were arriving, were coming on the road that we were on. And you saw just in front of you
Starting point is 00:34:51 a sort of a hole up here in the road with some smoke and things. This was one of the mortars. And we hoped we wouldn't get hit. So he said, instead of going slowly, I was going fast. It was the most terrifying journey I've ever been on. I still remember seeing his big toe on the accelerator went down as fast as it would go.
Starting point is 00:35:15 But we bumped back through, and I finished up on the far side of Singapore Island and had my own hospital there. And it was in a... It was called Fulham Theatre. It was very like a theatre you'd see in London and so on, but it was empty. So that's where my patients, the very sick patients,
Starting point is 00:35:34 went in the best seats, as it were. And we survived. I'm going to put that down as another one of your lives. So I think we're on four so far. Well, it's interesting because my colonel, who was simply marvellous, a regular doctor and so on, he actually, just as I was leaving, was hit in the office. He wasn't going to move.
Starting point is 00:35:59 He'd got a military crossing previously. But in fact, he literally lost his head. So it's a sequel to that little story that his widow, who was in Perth, Australia, wasn't told for a year that her husband had been killed on the question of pension. And she finally said, I know what I'll do. I'll write to the British Medical Association
Starting point is 00:36:26 and the War Office to see if Captain Franklin is still alive and can he remember Colonel Clark, he was called, you see, because she said in the letters that she had received in Perth there was so much about we played bridge together and did all sorts of things together. But when he wasn't using his car he lent it to me and i could use his car and go about which is you know i had never met a girl who was willing to do this to a lonely captain this is a silly question so i apologize
Starting point is 00:37:00 but when when your commanding officer officer has been decapitated, when you're driving on the road with mortars going off, are you terrified? Are you thinking about the job you've got to do? Are you thinking about survival? What's uppermost? What was uppermost? I thought this was the most horrible road journey I've ever done. Going at nearly six miles an hour through all these potholes
Starting point is 00:37:24 and you were very much personally involved in where you were going to reach the far end and where was it going to be. Tell me about the surrender to the Japanese. When did you hear about it? Well, the surrender was on the 15th of February 1942. But by Black Friday, Friday the 13th of February 1942, they'd come all over and they were well through into the middle of Singapore city and they had been in charge of the reservoirs and the water and so water was getting
Starting point is 00:38:00 extremely scarce and got more scarce later on. And it's very annoying when you've only got what was in your water bottle and that had to last you for two or three days. You could wash your face and then you thought, no, that must stop. With your hands, no, you drink, what is that? But anyhow, Friday the 13th was things more or less all over.
Starting point is 00:38:24 But on the 15th, the British capitulated and so on. And people, I have to say, that was the day that I was officially to a prisoner of war. I didn't see a Japanese for 15 days. They were quickly, they went on to Sumatra and Java and so on. And they had no plans. they didn't realize what was going to happen they had no plans that they could take a hundred and twenty thousand soldiers what we're going to do with them so they had to make plans there and then and I was in my Fulton buildings and didn't go out to the main
Starting point is 00:39:00 camp which were the Indians, Australians and the British, were at Changi until the 14th or 15th day, it was 17 miles. I don't know where it came from, but I was in a lorry with some sick people. But earlier on, the so-called fighting people had to march these 17 miles, and that wasn't at all present. So I was lucky that I got to Changi and so on and had immediately been given a job to look after the sick and so on. And of course we had a lot of very good physicians and surgeons actually. And when did it become clear that this was going to be a pretty brutal experience as a prisoner of war?
Starting point is 00:39:52 Well, the main thing that happened in the early days and certainly subsequently, we had a very, very poor doubt. And the main thing that you thought about when you're starving, and this happened very, very quickly food food food and what was going to happen to you and so on and we didn't hear about all the atrocities on the railway the death railway which that's another thing. I was, in fact, down to go on, was it Force A4? They all had letters and 3,000 people who had to suddenly leave and go on this terrible journey up towards Thailand.
Starting point is 00:40:39 But it's only when the people came back down from the railway when it was all given up. We heard about all the atrocities. But the other thing is, if you tried to escape, they said you'd be shot. Although we were in prison, there was nothing to stop you trying to escape. And every now and again, the first lot of five people tried to escape. Where were you going to go? You had to cross the sea into Jehovah's room with jungle tigers and things and how could you live? Anyhow,
Starting point is 00:41:13 they were all shot. Five of them were shot. And then about six months later, another five people came. Three of them were shot and they got through onto the mainland of Malaya, but two of them were trying to get back to safety in the British war camp and one of them was slashed by a Japanese sword, the officer's always had the family sword and it left his arm hanging useless with a bit of skin. And he actually got back, and another one got back. How he got back to safety, I don't know. But the Japanese looked upon him as someone that was very, very lucky, and he'd done the impossible thing, tried to escape,
Starting point is 00:42:03 and there was only one answer to that, shoot him. So I treated him. When I got him, he couldn't walk, he couldn't do anything. He was just a skeleton. But after two months, I finally said, in three days' time, you can go back to your unit, because he could walk then and so on. But what happened?
Starting point is 00:42:22 Completely awful Japanese police. One man came along, and he came, two of me as it were, and this man as I was in the office, and he got hold of the man and he said, go outside and dig your own grave. Well he was too weak to do that, but they had brought with him a sick, there were six or seven six little nervous is japanese they were made to take it and then the next thing the um the only thing that was granted that he could have the uh the powdery for his horse you know for days so that's how we knew what was happening. The policeman said, you've got seven Sikhs, and said, no, you can shoot this man. And there was only one bullet in fact, which involved his leg, and all the others were missing. And they were asked to shoot their ex-friends and so on.
Starting point is 00:43:21 So it's a firing squad of his own mates. Yeah, yeah. But the use of the six, so the defeated man was so cross and he came up and just shot him in the back of the head with a pistol and pushed him into the grave and the six
Starting point is 00:43:39 had to fill up the grave and things. So that was, as far as I'm, very personal as far as i was getting because when you've been with a man every day for two months you get to know them and so well and just when he he's taken from you and just very very near you he's shot these things are not very pleasant i feel the hand of history upon shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. I've got just a quick message at the end of this podcast.
Starting point is 00:44:15 I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things, and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. you

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