My Great Grandfather, Capt. R G (Dick) Read, spent most of World War II as a prisoner of the Japanese in Singapore, mainly in the infamous Changi POW camp. From an early stage, he quickly began to suffer due to the poor diet given to the prisoners, the harsh treatment they received and from some of the debilitating diseases that many prisoners succumbed to. Dysentry, beri beri, typhoid and many other tropical illnesses were common, and deadly, in the camps. Captain Read suffered from regular bouts of dysentery, ulcers, beri beri and dyspepsia during his time in Changi, being hospitalised regularly.
At the end of the war, many of the POWs that were to weak or ill to be shipped home in the first weeks were sent on hospital ships to other safe areas to recover, gain strength and put on weight safely. Many of the sick were kept at Changi POW camp weeks after the more able prisoners had gone. My Great Grandfather was finally shipped out in mid September on a hospital ship, the SS Rajula, leaving Keppel Harbour bound for Madras.
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| Telegram from Captain Read to his wife from Madras, 1945 |
My Great Grandfather's medical card was issued to him after his arrival in a hospital in Madras to recuperate before the long voyage home.
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| Captain Read's medical card |
It was on this ship that my Great Grandfather found out the the ship's MO
(Medical Officer) was a doctor from his home town of Aberystwyth, as he
noted in his diary: ‘Our M.O. I have just heard is doctor (Hay) Cribb
from Aberystwyth, what a shock!. . . Met Cribb at breakfast and chatted
for an hour, he left Aber in June or July. Told of a few casualties
etc…I had forgotten his partner, Owen Lloyd.’
Capt. R G Read departed Madras on the SS Llandovery Castle, bound for Southampton, then home to Aberystwyth. Though he received a hero's welcome off the train in Aberystwyth, he sadly died within a year of his return, aged 46, in September 1946 of stomach cancer. He spent a total 32 years in service and is commemorated on Llanbadarn Fawr War Memorial.
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| Telegram sent on Capt Read's arrival in Britain, 1945 |
Blog by Simon Burgess
Author's website : https://www.richardgeorgeread.com/
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