I'll have you know I was rocketed 12 times in KAF. I was personally targeted - out of 12,000 inhabitants - by a war lord and had to seek sanctuary in Timmy Horton's. I tracked him down years later, where he was working as a dog-fondler for a charity in Kabul. He has now been successfully rehomed in Rotherham.
Historical Walting
- Thread starter Filthy_contract
- Start date
Retired bloke
ADC
................Henry V act 4 Sc 3. William Shakespeare
And don't forget :-
Eric Blair AKA George Orwell:-
" People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf"
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WhiteCrane
Old-Salt
Can't wait to see the film!
I would suggest that the first stage is to obtain a copy of his service records, via RAF Cranwell. This should have key dates and identify which units and in what Theatre he was in. The Squadron Histories - F540 - are kept at the National Archives in Kew. A friend of mine researched the history of his partner's great uncle - Sgt Wireless Operator/Air Gunner on an RAF Sqn in Singapore - who became a POW. He managed to find a lot of information about 15 - 20 years ago - including tracking down the Sgt WOP/AG best mate who was the last one to see him alive as their POW ship was torpedoed. I suspect he put the story up on ARRSE a few years ago, but it didn't turn up in a quick search.
D
Deleted 15400
Guest
An excellent series when the beeb were actually a "world class broadcaster" where did it all go so wrong for them??
dingerr
LE
So, you’re just like bravo_bravo then.
We have a local walt who has been exposed on ANZMI.net. Wears a couple of tin medals and claims to have served in a special unit “behind enemy lines” in Vietnam. Truth is, he’s a former stoker who was on a ship that did and escort run to Vietnam.
His whole life is built around his former service and he’s been a leading light in discrediting ANZMI.
**** claims to have first enlisted in the Royal Hong Kong Navy……
Yes, what happened to ANZMI? I can't seem to find it.
That’s the spastic who springs to my mind first but I bet there are quite a few on here who give it the big one and did actually fcuk all, it’s pretty sad really.
I did some research into my Great uncle who was RAF and his unit was evacuated to Batavia from Singapore. Once the general surrender went out scores of soldiers and civilians used what ever craft they could get hold of and tried to escape but the Japanese made extensive use of the air to track them down.
Singapore's Dunkirk: The aftermath of the fall by Geoffrey Brook is a good place to start and Alarm Starboard by the same author are a great read.
It's fair to say that BB doesn't claim to have served on ops and doesn't, as far as I know, Walt.
That's my watchlist sorted for a few days.
I get what you say but the guy always call people out for not serving etc, calling them all sorts of names, civvie this and civvie that.
In my opinion it’s a bit rich coming from a bloke who was never a regular soldier and he thinks people would be impressed with photos of boxes of hand grenades and a photo of himself in Thetford forest with the cleanest combats I’ve seen and holding a gat.
The bloke is the biggest knob on here by far.
Effendi
LE
I lived in Singapore as a Padbrat from '69 to '73, whilst it was 30 years after the war there were still many reminders, and memories. I remember tales of Japs on bicycles over the Causeway from JB catching the Brits unawares from behind as the Brits were more or less waiting in the coastal bunkers guns pointed seawards away from the invading bicyclists. As we lived in the region at school we tended to look at geography and world history more from the point of view from that region. The clear message that came across was that whilst there was some order to the evacuation/retreat, however if you were unfortunate enough to fall outside the stream of organised chaos you could end up dead, banged up building railways for the next few years, or trying to E&E best you could. Even during the evacuation through some circumstance (the shit happens principle) you could fall out of the stream and end up floundering around Indonesia*.
From listening at school and listening to the older generation talking about events I don't think "fairly chaotic" begins to describe it. One of the wifes uncles barely survived learning how to lay railway lines and build bridges for the Japs. On his return he turned to drink, used to suffer recurring malaria - nowadays he would have been diagnosed with PTSD - lovely bloke when sober. Her dad, the FiL, was in the Navy when Singapore fell at the end of the war and was one of the few non-officer ranks to be allowed ashore. Word had come down from on high that more or less only officers and SNCO's were to be allowed to wander Singapore to prevent any adhoc lynchings, or shootings of stray Japs.
When I was there you could still freely explore Sentosa as it was an overgrown mess. Plenty of the British camps that were on the coast still had the old WW2 pill boxes and gun emplacements in place, all pointing the wrong way. There was even a local militaria dealer who had a warehouse full of old WW2 uniforms, webbing, and paraphenalia from the Brits and Japs.
Note: * You cannot look at images of the region nowadays and consider what happened, and how it happened back then. Singapore is a modern city island, and Malaysia nowadays and it is more or less farming country, office blocks, motorways and high speed rail links from JB up to KL, similar in Indonesia. Even when I was there 30 years after the war Singapore had some wild places, trips up through Malaysia were on roads with dense jungle, or rubber plantations either side. The small islands off Singapore were uninhabited and much of Indonesia was still rain forest. Easy to understand how someone could have become detached, or lost back then.
AdminVortex
LE
As Bugsy always reminds me, grizzled old warhorse that he is.
Because the war on the East finished earlier than anticipated in Singapore the Japanese troops maintained law and order until sufficient Commonwealth troops were landed. I believe the same happened in Hong Kong.
Effendi
LE
It might have, but many times over the years George (RIP) told me that the ratings were kept on board as much as possible to prevent problems. He was only allowed off as one of the ships entertainment NCOs (I don’t know what they call them in the Navy) to swap movies with other units. After what they saw in Singapore they sailed off to Australia and were all given a couple of weeks leave.
Stanchion
LE
A less reported facet of the war's end and onenot necessarily confined to Singapore but it wasn't only the victorious side and locals that the surrendered enemy personnel had to contend with.
John Dower in his book 'Embracing Defeat' writes regarding Japanese rank and file;
Despised Veterans
When repatriated prisoners began returning from the Soviet Union reciting communist propaganda, it was charged that their indoctrination had been designed to create "class hatreds between officers and enlisted men." It had, but many demobilized veterans returned from other places than the U.S.S.R. cynical and contemptuous of the officers who had led them in battle.
This was especially true among soldiers who had been ordered to fight to the bitter end in the fanatic and futile final campaigns of the war. The group cohesion and discipline of the military hierarchy had not been built, as its propagandists intoned, on some idealized notion of "loyalty" or "harmony," but on a structure of authoritarian coercion that transferred oppression downward. Superior officers commonly commanded fear rather than respect even in the best of times, and defeat unleashed deep, hitherto repressed resentments.
In extreme cases, such hatred led to the murder of former officers. After the surrender, these feelings were vented openly for the first time. In May 1946, a. veteran wrote a typically anguished letter to the Asahi [Shimbun], one of the country's leading newspapers, recalling the "hell of starvation" he and his fellow soldiers had endured on a Pacific island and the abuse they suffered at the hands of their officers. He noted that enlisted men had died of starvation at a far greater rate than officers and asked how he could give comfort to the souls of his dead comrades who in effect, had been killed by the tyranny of their own leaders. He quoted an old samurai saying about bringing a souvenir to hell, which originally had meant killing an enemy at the time of one's own death. Most of his comrades, he said died wishing to take not an enemy but one of their officers with them as their souvenir.
Several months later, a report in the Asahi about an abusive officer lynched by his men after surrender triggered eighteen reader responses, all but two of which supported the murder and offered their own accounts of brutality and corruption among the officer corps. A soldier who had served in Korea described the womanizing and drinking of officers there. A marine bitterly recalled how they beat one of his comrades. Another veteran confessed that he frequently had felt like attacking his officers, but restrained himself because he feared adverse consequences for his family back home.
One of the best films describing what you have written was Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima. The Japanese Admiral who took over the defence was quite humane to the consternation of his officers. Most of the young sailors and soldiers just wanted to get home. Because of previous Japanese cruelty though the US Marines weren't taking prisoners.
Up to the early eighties the South Korean Army had a number of senior officers who had started their careers in the Imperial Japanese Army when Korea was a colony. Although they were trained and equipped US style, discipline was based on the old IJA with a lot of brutality towards conscripts and even cases of some of them being beaten to death and it being covered up. It all changed in the late eighties when the country became a democracy with a civilian government. A lot of officers and former offiers were CM'd. Now days if Pte Kims sgt shouts too loudly at him, his mum is straight on to her local MP complaining.
The last days were chaotic with the final evacuation on the 13th being especially so with many deserters forcing their way onto ships by gun point in front of women and children. Before that it was quite orderly. Convoys were arriving with reinforcements all the way through January 1942. The last elements of the British 18th Infantry Division arrived in Singapore in early February just after the Japanese landed in the NW of the island near Kranji.
For instance most of the crew of HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse were evacuated in January. The exception were the RM detatchments who joined with the remains of 2 Argyles (who had fought there way down the Malay penisula) and became the Plymouth Argyles. They were captured in the surrender. Some were sent to other RN ships in Singapore. The unlucky ones were sent to HMS Exeter, a heavy cruiser which was sunk after the Battle of the Java sea in March 1942 while trying to break out to Australia with a USN destroyer. Even unluckier ones were wounded and still in the Alexandra military hospital on the 14th February when Japanese troops entered and shot and bayoneted RAMC staff and patients in their beds and even on the operating table.
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