Aberystwyth Prepares for the Arrival of Evacuees 1939

In 1939 the Government Evacuation Scheme listed places in England and Wales that were designated as evacuation areas from which young children and vulnerable people were to be moved to safer locations. Cardiganshire was one of ten evacuation reception areas nominated in Wales.

The Ministry of Health Memo in 1939 identified the people who should be evacuated:

*   Children of school age in organised groups accompanied by their teachers
*    Pre-school children with mothers
*    Expectant mothers
*    Blind and cripple population so far as removal be feasible

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/homefront/evacuation/pdf/britain.pdf

Aberystwyth Borough Council Minutes of 1939 give a picture of when information was received in Aberystwyth and the actions taken. One of the early steps undertaken in January 1939 was an assessment of the accommodation available in the town.

 

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/homefront/evacuation/pdf/britain.pdf

A letter dated 1st April 1939 from the Ministry of Health informed the Council that Aberystwyth was to be a reception area for Liverpool and that the first group who would be evacuated would be unaccompanied children in school units - but no more than the number for whom voluntary offers of accommodation had already been received.  The Ministry decided that 4,000 persons could be accommodated in the town and the Council  had the responsibility to make detailed plans for their reception, consulting with transport authorities and the evacuating area.

A few days later on April 5, the Council set up an Evacuation Sub Committee made up of representatives of the YMCA, the WVS, elementary schools, the British Legion, Urdd Gobaith Cymru and a representative of each church and chapel in the town.

In May,at a conference of local authorities in Cardiganshire it was initially stated that the county as a whole would be expected to receive 14,200 persons under the Evacuation Scheme but at this point in time  the estimate was for 3,190 evacuees to come to  Aberystwyth, 2,360 to Aberystwyth Rural District and none to the other boroughs and districts in the county. The Aberystwyth allocation  of 3,190 was made up as follows:

Elementary school children   1450
Teachers and helpers   140
Pre school children and mothers/guardians   1440
Expectant mothers   120
Adult blind persons   40  

They would arrive in four train loads of 800 persons each,  two trains arriving on each of the first two days of evacuation.  Householders who had volunteered to take children were sent letters of thanks from the Ministry of Health and the Mayor. They were also given a card to display in the window to show that they  had volunteered to take on this form of National Service. These probably reflected the sentiments shown in the poster below.

 

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-evacuated-children-of-the-second-world-war

 

In June 1939, the Council received news that the University College of Wales was expecting to receive 250 students from London and 250 from Liverpool. It was hoped that the students would be able to make use of houses on the College’s list of approved lodgings. Because of these extra numbers the Town Clerk requested a reduction by one train load of evacuee children  to be received in Aberystwyth because it was felt that an unfair burden had been placed on the town compared with the rest of the county. There were also fears that the schools would be unable to cope and that the town’s water supply might prove inadequate.

By July 1939 arrangements had been made for a Medical Officer of Health and first aid staff to be in attendance at Alexandra Road Schools when the children arrived.  Each church and chapel would appoint an Assistant  Billeting Officer who would collect their group of children from Alexandra Road School, take them to be fed and then show them to their billets. The formal order to evacuate children was given on 31 August 1939, three days before war broke out. The photograph below shows evacuees leaving Liverpool  for Aberystwyth in September 1939

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/gallery/second-world-war-local-evacuees-10512910

 

The WVS and local places of worship played a key role in receiving the children. However there were serious concerns  about some children’s health. On 4th September 1939, the Council received a letter which asked,  “owing to the verminous character of a large percentage of the evacuees received into the town”  what steps would  be taken to cleanse them? The Council decided that nurses would carry out initial checks referring children on to doctors when necessary. The Ministry of Health had stated that evacuees would be given medical attention free of charge.

By October 1939, the  Chief Billeting Officer reported that the following evacuees had arrived in Aberystwyth:

971 unaccompanied children
53 Helpers
41 teachers
231 mothers with 351 children of pre- school age.

Evacuees Arriving at Aberystwyth on their way to Alexandra School, photo NLW/LLGC

Before long plans were made for play areas in the town for the children, for example at Plascrug. On 7th October, an entertainment for evacuees was held at King’s Hall arranged by the High Sheriff of the county. That same month the Council appealed to Liverpool authorities for extra clothing for evacuees and requested  a female doctor and health visitors

On December 17th, the Director of Education of Liverpool visited Aberystwyth to check on how the children were faring. Meanwhile a Christmas party was arranged for the evacuees at the Kings Hall  which was largely organised by the WVS, with funding towards it requested from Liverpool.

A bright spot at the  end of the year was the decision to  open The King’s Hall cafe on a Sunday to allow parents from Liverpool to come and meet their children and have meals at cost price.  Once again the WVS were key in providing this opportunity and their frequent appeals for volunteers throughout the land hints at both their industry and organization and also the need of as many hands as possible to do this vital work. 

 

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/17603

 

Blog by Frances Foley

Sources:  

Borough of Aberystwyth  Minutes and Agenda 1939, Ceredigion Archives

The Liverpool Echo

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-evacuated-children-of-the-second-world-war

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/homefront/evacuation/pdf/britain.pdf

Return of Japanese POW's to Aberystwyth

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.  

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.

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.

 

Telegram sent on Capt Read's arrival in Britain, 1945

Blog by Simon Burgess 

Author's website : https://www.richardgeorgeread.com/

 

The Women's Land Army in WWII - Part Three

Josie Rowland-Jones (nee McKenna) met her husband during the war and was married in 1949.  She found it hard to settle despite the friendly people around her.  Her husband worked the land - erecting and repairing fences during the war, and most certainly would not have been happy moving to Liverpool to be near to Josie’s family.  After the war he worked on construction projects – locally at Nant y Moch, sea defences at Tywyn and Borth before moving on to become a porter/security officer in the National Library of Wales until his retirement twenty five years later. Josie worked in catering at the University whilst raising three children and caring for her in-laws until their deaths in the 1960’s. Her daughter Liz remembers growing up in Aberystwyth, where she attended St. Padarn’s Convent school, and of visiting the town with her mum.  There seems to have been a very special bond between Josie and any former Land Army companions that she met.  Happy days remembered it seems!  

 

Olwen and her colleagues enjoying a break

 

Olwen Jones also met her husband during the war. He was from Penrhyncoch and had a farming background, having a small-holding with sheep, and was also in the Home Guard.  He eventually became a porter in the University.  The numerous pictures we have of Olwen’s Land Army Days were only found after the deaths of Olwen and her husband. Apparently Olwen didn’t talk about her work during the war, but did talk a great deal about the friends she had made.  One of these friends eventually made her wedding cake.  Olwen had been a driver during the war, alongside her work on the land, and eventually became a housewife and ambulance driver in later civilian life.  Olwen was in the Land Army from July 1942 to October 1950.

 

Olwen and her delivery truck

 

After the war the hostel in Bow Street was used for civilian housing whilst the new housing estates were being built.  Liz remembers driving past it with her Mum whilst still a child and being told that her Mum had lived there  during the war.  Liz explained that she thought it looked a bleak and unwelcoming place to spend time or live in! 

 

Rita, Nancy and Lilian outside the hostel

 

The lessons we can take from the experiences of the Land Army girls seems to be we that we should make the most of what we have.  The girls had very little in the way of home comforts, entertainment, or leisure time but yet most seemed to have happy memories of those times.  They were “doing their bit” to help the war effort, and mostly seemed proud to be engaged in it. The girls seemed to have made their own fun from whatever they could obtain. 

 

Tea time!

One of the legacies of the Land Army also seems to be that Lady Denman, a strong feminist, brought attention to the fact that Land Army girls had worked tremendously hard during the war and their efforts should have been treated as all other services.  In 1945, Lady Denman wrote to the Minister of Agriculture, R.S Hudson, resigning her position as Honorary Director of the Women’s Land Army in protest at the decision to exclude members of the WLA from Government capital grants to assist in restarting business enterprises.  Women’s roles must have come into question after the war possibly leading to the swinging '60’s and beyond.

 

Olwen's discharge certificate and letter

 

I would like to thank Liz and Brian Ashton and Meinir Davies for agreeing to talk to me via Zoom and to Kate Sullivan for sending me the video of this meeting. 

Thanks to Steven Evans and Meinir Davies for all the superb pictures and to Brian Ashton for scanning them all for me to use in my research.

Blog by Kath Phillips

The Women's Land Army in WWII - Part Two

In 1940 Young women were recruited from across England and Wales to help with the war effort.  They were given choices of occupation such as munitions, office work, meteorology, nursing or working the land. For many working the land seemed to be the best option – indeed it was a chance for new experiences away from home, and so the Land Army flourished once again.

 

Women's Land Army at Birchgrove, Aberystwyth

Training for the work was minimal (between four and six weeks) and so girls had basically to learn ‘on the job’, which must have seemed overwhelming for some, like those recruited from cities such as Liverpool and Birmingham and who had no farm experience at all. For the farms around Aberystwyth, the YWCA Hostel in Bow Street was taken over as a Hostel for the Land Army recruits who were then ferried out to do their farm work.
 

Harvesting by hand

The girls based at  Bow Street looked after animals, ploughed the fields, dug up potatoes, harvested the crops, killed the rats, dug and hoed for 48 hours a week in winter and 50 in the summer. As there was not enough machinery to go round, they often had to work with old fashioned equipment such as horse drawn hand ploughs and to harvest crops by hand. Olwen Jones, who we met in last week's blog, also drove the truck to deliver or collect goods where needed. Generally farmers were kind to the girls, though some were doubtless far more generous than others.   

 

Using the threshing machine

Mary Bott was a Welsh Land Girl who said she had “never worked so hard in all my life” She also told of her fingers being marked and cut and long hours of work from 5.30 a.m. until 7.00p.m.  Mary had porridge to start the day for whilst the farmer had a full cooked breakfast. However the girls from the Bow Street Hostel do seem to have been welcomed and there certainly seems to have been fantastic camaraderie amongst them.*

 

Olwen and two companions shovelling snow at the hostel

 

Digging potatoes, Jean Roache third left

The girls worked the land at Penparcau, Crosswood, Birchgrove, Trawscoed, Tynclawdd and Nanteos. Nanteos seems to have been a ‘hub’ for the Land Army girls: 

'Before the war , an underground boiler heated all the greenhouse which grew peaches, figs, artichokes and asparagus, as well as all the other usual vegetables. At the outbreak of the Second World War, with the help of the Land Army Girls, two front fields of Nanteos were turned into crop fields of cabbage, cauliflowers, Brussel sprouts, lettuces, and potatoes. One year during the war, the whole country suffered with a plague of caterpillars destroying all crops. Mr Newman (a gardener at Nanteos) came up with a solution - sheep dip - which cleared all the caterpillars. He sold onions under the clock tower at Aberystwyth and made £100 in one day. He also sold to many other needy places as far as Birmingham.' **

Olwen and other land girls pulling linseed at Nanteos, 1942

 

At the time of the Second World War, the owner of Nanteos was Margaret Powell. Her only son and heir William, was killed in action in Buvignies, France on 6 November 1918, five days before the armistice ended WWI, aged just 19yrs.  Margaret’s husband Edward died in 1930 so Margaret was left with the task of managing the estate. She seems to have been a remarkable woman – well known around Aberystwyth and certainly very welcoming of the Land Army to her lands to help the war effort for herself and staff as well as further afield. 

 

Margaret Powell and Land Army girls  Gay, Lilian, Naomi, Mary, Nancy and Olwen Jones (Back right)

Blog by Kath Phillips

Photographs by kind permission of Liz Ashton, Meinir Jones Davies and Steven Evans.

* From: WWVA interview with Mary Bott (www.faceoook.com/bbcradiowales/videos/318567829405359/) See also https://westwalesveteransarchive.com/mary-bott/

** From Janet Joel’s book ‘Nanteos’ (1996)

The Women's Land Army in WWII - Part One

The Women’s Land Army (WLA) was first established in January 1917 by Lady Denman to help increase the amount of food grown in Britain; it was wound up in 1919. In 1938 Lady Denman was approached by the Ministry of Agriculture to re-form the Land Army and so it was re-established just before the start of WWII in 1939. Lady Denman had also helped to found the W.I. and had encouraged rural women to become involved in their local community by growing and preserving food. She encouraged WIs to support the WLA and said “The prejudice against a woman attempting to do a man’s work dies hard”.  

 

Lady Denman from womenslandarmy.co.uk

She also said “The Land Army fights in the fields. It is in the fields of Britain that the most critical battle of the present war may well be fought and won”. At its peak in 1943 over 80,000 women worked as ‘Land Girls’, coming from a wide range of backgrounds including towns and cities as well as the countryside.

 

 

Lady Denman was instrumental in ensuring that the Land Army uniform was practical and would make the women feel proud to wear it as they worked the land for their country.

 

Images from womenslandarmy.co.uk

 

I recently held a Zoom meeting with the daughters of two Land Army Girls, based in Bow Street just north of Aberystywth. They were very happy to share as much information as they could but both regretted not having asked more questions whilst their mothers were still alive.  Their mums' names are Mary Josephine McKenna, (1925-1995) known as Josie (Married David Rowland Jones and mother to Liz Ashton)  and Elizabeth Olwen Jones, (1922-1986) known as Olwen (Married Olwen Jones and mother to Meinir Jones Davies).

 

Josie (second left) and Olwen (fourth left)

 

Liz said that her mum Josie was brought up in Liverpool in quite a large family having two sisters and a brother, but was not very 'street wise' at the age of about 18.  Before the war, Josie had worked at Jacobs biscuit factory in Liverpool, she had spent some time in service and briefly a foot messenger during the raids in Liverpool. She and her family thought that she would be happier working on the land in Wales as her way of serving her country proudly. 

Liz thought her mother would have been very happy with the uniform, as it was very practical and during the war none of the girls would have had much of a wardrobe. Liz also said that coming to join the Land Army was probably an eye opener for her mum, Josie. Meinir said that her mum, Olwen, was from Llanilar, close to Aberystwyth, but she chose to stay in the Bow Street hostel. She was very enthusiastic about serving as a Land Army Girl. 

 

Women's Land Army Hostel at Bow Street, Aberystwyth 

Speaking about conditions in the hostel, Meinir and Liz thought that after a long hard day on a farm the women would be looking forward to a hot bath.   However, this didn’t always happen, though a hot meal would have been provided (I think the hostel caretakers cooked – possibly featured in the last picture below, without uniform).  The hostel looks cold but there would have been stories of their day to report and the camaraderie between the girls must have been helpful.  Their hours of work were so long that socialising outside of the hostel was a special event.

 

Another view of the Bow Street Hostel

 

For entertainment, Liz told us the story of her dad who lived in Bont Goch would think nothing of cycling to Bow Street Hostel meet Josie, take a bus or train into Aberystwyth to see a film and visit the Mayflower Café, and of course the reverse trip back afterwards. They also visited the Black Lion in Bow Street.

 

Outside the Bow St Hostel. Note the YWCA plaque, ie, the Women’s Land Army plaque

 

Blog by Kath Phillips

Photographs by kind permission of Liz Ashton and Meinir Jones Davies 

Sources:  

nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides-womens-land-army

womenslandarmy.co.uk

Cardiganshire politics and the Second World War

 In 1921, the long-serving Liberal MP, Matthew Vaughan-Davies, was raised to the peerage as Baron Ystwyth, of Tan-y-Bwlch in the County of Cardigan. His elevation was a cynical move by the ‘Welsh Wizard’ David Lloyd George to bolster his support in Westminster when his leadership of the coalition government was reliant on the support of the Conservatives in the House of Commons. As a Welsh seat, Cardiganshire was widely seen as Lloyd George’s backyard and guaranteed to return an MP supportive of the Coalition. That calculation, however, failed to take account of the split in the Liberal Party since Lloyd George’s coup against former prime minister Herbert Henry Asquith in 1916. As part of the ongoing rivalry with his successor, Asquith, at the head of the Liberals on the opposition benches, decided to contest the seat. 

In the resultant by-election, the Coalition Liberals put up barrister and Lloyd George’s former private secretary, Ernest Evans. After service in the Great War, in which he had been a captain in the Royal Army Service Corps (1915-18), he returned to his native Aberystwyth to fight a bitter election battle. The Tories agreed to support him and there did not seem to be any other potential competition. That was, until the Asquithian Liberals, which included the Cardiganshire Liberal Association, selected William Llewelyn Williams, another barrister who had made a name for himself as a journalist, a former MP for Carmarthen Boroughs, and, more importantly, a bitter enemy of Lloyd George. Kenneth Morgan described it as ‘a bitter civil war’, with ‘violent conflict over the personality and reputation of Lloyd George himself.’*  It tore through the county with Methodists and coastal communities (including Aberystwyth) generally favouring Evans and Baptists, Unitarians, farmers, and inland towns tending to back Williams. In the end, Evans was elected with a majority of 3,000 votes but the scars ran deep and, with rival Liberal clubs being founded in Aberystwyth, they fought it out in the ensuing general elections in 1922 and 1923. This internecine electoral warfare did for the Liberal Party in many of its Welsh strongholds and, by the time they decided to settle their differences in 1923, found that they had lost South Wales to the Labour Party.

Evans lost the seat in the 1923 General Election to the Independent Liberal, and former Asquithian, Rhys Hopkin Morris. Another barrister, Morris had benefitted from the Tories deciding to contest the seat and so deprive Evans of many of his previous voters. With the Liberal leaders recognising that their infighting had left them increasingly less likely to form a government again, Morris took the Liberal whip and was one of their few success, admittedly unopposed, in the 1924 General Election. At the same time, Evans won the University of Wales constituency, one of the non-territorial constituencies elected by graduates, which led to his deep involvement with both the University in Aberystwyth and the National Library of Wales. Consistently electing Liberals, the University proved a safe seat for Evans until he stepped down to become a county court judge in 1942.  

In 1931, when the second Labour government broke apart over cuts to unemployment benefits, the Liberals agreed to join the ‘Government of National Unity’ with the Tories under Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald. This ostensibly temporary alliance was to see through the immediate crisis of the Great Depression. Lloyd George, who was still Liberal leader, did not agree but he was ill and so was not consulted. Sir Herbert Samuel, then deputy leader, and Lord Reading, their leader in the House of Lords, took up positions in this new ‘National Government’ with the support of all but four Liberal MPs. These four, all related to Lloyd George and representing north Wales constituencies, remained in opposition to be joined by the old man when he returned from illness. Their opposition was, officially, because the new government, dominated by Tories, would end Britain’s free trading policy and adopt tariffs on imports. In truth, it had more than a little to do with Lloyd George not being offered a place in the Cabinet. Morris, who disliked Lloyd George, followed Samuel tentatively and, for the first time, faced a Labour candidate at the 1931 General Election. 

The Liberals had agreed with the Cabinet to stand on a separate manifesto to the Tories and National Labour, which enabled them to still campaign for free trade, but the election proved a disaster. The party had been splintering since 1929 into the official party and the right-leaning ‘National Liberals’, led by Sir John Simon. With the official party reduced to a rump, Simon led his followers into joining the coalition, which left Samuel and his allies heavily outnumbered. Morris, increasingly uncomfortable at the ideological sacrifices they were making to remain in government, stood down in 1932 to become a Metropolitan Police magistrate. In 1945, he managed to buck the trend by beating Labour to win Carmarthen at that year’s general election. 

Meanwhile, in the Cardiganshire by-election, the local Liberal association selected yet another local barrister, David Owen Evans, the son of a tenant farmer. Evans did not support the National Government, so the Tories asked for a free run at the seat. Fearful of a bruising contest, the Liberal leaders had Evans publicly commit to supporting the government but to no avail and he had to face both Conservative and Labour candidates. Predictably though, Evans was elected with relative ease. His reservations about supporting the National Government gave him little cause for anxiety in the end when the Liberals in Cabinet resigned. Already marginalised, the death of Sir Donald Maclean and the failure of MacDonald to appoint another Liberal had led to an ongoing argument. Then, when the Government convened the British Empire Economic Conference in Ottawa to agree on an imperial response to the Great Depression, their patience snapped. When the Government agreed to implement ‘imperial preference’, whereby tariffs would be imposed on goods from outside the Empire, Samuel led the few Liberals left in government to cross the floor. 

Following his leaders, Owen Evans dutifully, and more comfortably, adjusted to opposition. It was here that the Liberals would reunite with Lloyd George and be mauled at the 1935 General Election. When Samuel lost his seat as a result, they selected the Lloyd George-backed Sir Archibald Sinclair as his replacement. Evans was not a particularly distinguished parliamentarian, but he was well respected in the Commons. His interventions included topics such as unemployment, agriculture, and army morale. In the debates around the Munich Agreement of 1938, which seemed initially to be wildly popular with the public, he supported Sinclair in voting against it and in other moves that saw the Liberal Party become one of the most consistent opponents of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler’s Germany. In the 1945 Dissolution Honours List, he had been awarded a knighthood but, before he could receive it, he died suddenly whilst going to see a doctor in London about heart trouble.

As the honour had been awarded to mark the dissolution of Parliament before the 1945 General Election, the Cardiganshire Liberal Association, as had become a bit of a tradition, selected another local barrister. Evan Roderic Bowen, a local grammar schoolboy, Aberystwyth graduate, and an army captain in the Second World War, swept to victory over his Labour opponent. In 1950, he was returned with the largest Liberal majority in the country, and, when Montgomeryshire MP Clement Davies stepped down as Liberal leader due to alcoholism-related health problems, Bowen was seen as a potential successor. In the event, Jo Grimond beat him, and he went on to eventually lose the seat to Labour in the 1966 General Election.  

K.O. Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880-1980, Oxford, 1981, p.190

Blog by Ewan Lawry

 

 

The Anniversary of the Fall of Singapore 15th February 1942

During World War II, Singapore was known as the ‘Gibraltar of the East’, one of the most important fortified military outposts in the Empire. The Japanese knew though that it was under-prepared for any potential conflict, with Britain seeing Europe and North Africa as the more important theatres.

On the same day as the bombing in Pearl Harbour, the Japanese had started their invasion of the Malayan peninsular, threatening Singapore. The 118th Field Regiment Royal Artillery, part of the newly formed 18th Division, departed the UK late in 1941 bound for the War in the Middle East. However during their journey Churchill decided to send them to the Far East, the war was not going well there at his point, and Churchill had decided to send additional troops to bolster the defences and hold off any invading forces.

As with the rest of the 18th Division, the 118th were not prepared, trained nor did they have the correct equipment for war in the Far East, nevertheless they landed on 29th January 1942 during Japanese bombing raids of the harbour and , little did they know at the time, just days before the British Surrender on the 15th February 1942.  My Great Grandfather Lt R G Read (QM) was in the 118th Field Regiment Royal Artillery who were sent to train in India prior to posting to Singapore. Two weeks of ‘intensive training’ was all the preparation that they had for War in the Far East.

 

Royal Artillery on Elephants in India

My Great Grandfather arrived in Singapore on the USS Westpoint disembarking with the rest of the 118th Field Regiment RA on 29th January at Keppel Harbour. He kept a diary and he somehow managed to continue to keep these diaries during his imprisonment too. During those days before the surrender, the Japanese carried out intensive bombing missions on the  troops as they disembarked and unloaded their equipment. Here my Great Grandfather writes of the relentless bombing by the Japanese, including the sinking of a troop ship by Japanese dive bombers and the resulting rescue:

5th Feb 1942
'Empress of Asia bombed. 6 miles out. Dealt with about 600 survivors as rescued. 'Q' 125 badly injured looks as though he will loose his sight. Later! he has.'
Diary entry dated 6th Feb 1942
‘We loose 5 at docks whilst unloading by 27 bombers, no resistance from RAF’
Diary entry 14th February 1942
‘Casualties amount to 20 odd dead+many wounded, Capt Martin 259 killed’

 

Here is my Great Grandfather in Singapore, just after his arrival in January 1942.

As my Great Grandfather was the Regimental Quartermaster, he had access to communications received by the Regimental HQ.  Below is a Telegram written by General Wavell (Commander in Chief at the time),  and his last order before the surrender sent on the 10th February 1942, just days before the surrender on the 15th Feb, containing the instruction:  'Commanders and Senior Officers must lead their troops and, if necessary, die with them. There must be no thought of surrender and every unit must fight it out to the end and in close contact with the enemy.'

Telegram from General Wavell, Commander in Chief, Southern Pacific, dated 10th February 1942

As the Japanese invasion reached the final stages, communications were sent offering terms for the surrender of the Garrison.  This telegram presenting an ‘Admonition of Peace’ inviting the Allied forces to an ‘honourable’ surrender. It also attempts to give assurances as to how well that they will treat them upon their surrender:  ‘Upon my word we won’t kill you, treat you as officers and soldiers if you come to us, But if you resist against us we will give swords.’

 

Telegram from the ‘Nippon Army’ inviting the surrender of the allied troops in Singapore, dated 13th February 1942

On the 15th February 1942, the British and Commonwealth troops finally surrendered to the invading Japanese troops. The Japanese Commander, Lieutenant-General Yamashita had successfully led his 30,000 troops to overcome the 85,000 defending allied troops on Singapore. To this day, it was the largest surrender of British led forces in history. Winston Churchill called it ‘the worst disaster’ in British Military History.

Transcript of the Invitation of surrender of Allied Forces, on the 15th February 1942 at 5.30pm, written by Lieut-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, ‘High Commander of Nippon Army’

Here is the diary entry from the date of the Surrender to the Japanese on the 15th February 1942:
‘The Surrender of Singapore to Japan. “B” Echelon to report to RHQ at Thompson Road.’

 

Diary entry by Lt. R G  Read dated 15th February 1942

Telegram written by Lieut-General A. E. Percival (General Officer Commanding (GOC) Malaya) , explaining the reasons for surrender to Japanese Forces:  ‘The essential of War have run short, In a few days we shall have neither Petrol nor Food. Many types of ammunition are short, and the water supply, on which the vast civilian population and many of the fighting troops are dependent, threatens to fail.’

 

Telegram written by Lt. Gen. Percival

And so started three and a half years as a prisoner of war for my Great Grandfather along with 140,000 Commonwealth troops. The Japanese had refused to sign up to the Geneva convention and many of the camp guards were notorious for their acts of cruelty to their prisoners. The Japanese used the prisoners as slave labour, either on the infamous ‘Death Railway’ built by the POWs between Burma and Thailand or in Japan or their invaded territories.

My Great Grandfather was fortunate to survive the ordeal and was shipped back after the Japanese surrendered in August 1945. Upon his return to the UK in late November 1945, he caught the train home to Aberystwyth. I have an original Cambrian News Article dated 7th December 1945 containing an article about my Great Grandfathers return and his time as a POW. He was given a heroes welcome by the town and dignitaries.

He had never really recovered from his ordeal as a Prisoner though, and in August 1946, he was rushed to Chester Military Hospital again,  suffering from what was later found out to be stomach cancer. He died there on the 26th September 1946 and is commemorated on Llanbadarn Fawr War Memorial.

Blog by Simon Burgess

Author's website: www.richardgeorgeread.com/