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Part one of an edited oral history interview with Mr. Ronald Turner about his experiences as a P.O.W. of the Japanese in Thailand. The interview was conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

“I was born at Kempston in 1921 and lived in Kempston all my life until the war started. I was 18 and well, the Government I’ll say, they said at that time — either you join the Territorials or you go away for six months conscription. So of course — I mean going away was different at that time of day - was different to going away now — and so all we young chaps rushed to join the Territorials.

I was called-up to Ashburnham Road two days before the war began, from the 1st of September. We joined-up and had to finish work. We were put in empty rooms in Warwick Avenue and Linden Road and all round there. They came and commandeered the Girls Training College Gym, they commandeered that for our Mess Hall. We heard that war had been declared on a Sunday morning, we were up the Drill Hall in Ashburnham Road, Bedford and well, we didn’t really know what to expect. The first Company of the Royal Engineers I was in went more or less straight over to France.

I had been working in an engineering works at the time in Kempston and I joined the 248 Royal Engineers. We’d had camps weekends and evenings, Sunday mornings. We went to Canterbury Camp, Territorial Camp for a week roughly a month before the war started. We were training in bridge building and demolitions. We used to go out to the old brick works, old knot holes where the clay was and do explosives. I wouldn’t have joined from choice but to avoid going away for six months and my mother needed me there to help with the money because she had quite a big family and not too well off.

After the First Company went abroad and there were lots there, they formed another Company to which I was transferred and after that some of us were too young to go into active service. Half were sent to Elgin in Scotland and I was transferred to Norwich with others. We did general training until the threatened invasion and we were transferred to Sheringham and we used to be on ‘Stand-to’ from half past four in the morning until about nine o’clock and have the day off and then on again at half past four in the evening until dark. We were guarding the coast, when the invasion was threatened. In the daytime after we put expanding wire and beach mines on the beach, laying beach defences. Different Companies went up from Cromer up to Great Yarmouth.

Then I was transferred to Kings Lynn Docks to put explosives on the lock gates and the cranes after that. Had there been an invasion then we would have blown them up, the cranes and the lock gates. We were confined to the Docks, it was a nice summer in 1940, we just used to sleep out in the open. We were confined - we used to feed in the Docks — just have Mess tents, half and half. I was there quite a while and then we went up to Scotland, well on the borders to Kelso undergoing general training. Then we came back to Walsall in Staffordshire and then we went up to Liverpool and embarked from Walsall in October 1941.

We embarked on the SS Orcadies from Liverpool to Nova Scotia in Canada in a convoy, zig zagging across the North Atlantic. We weren’t there many days in Nova Scotia. We were transferred to American boats then although they weren’t in the war we were transferred onto their troop ships. We were heading to the Middle East, the Japs weren’t in the war then. We were heading for the Middle East.

We were three days off Cape Town and the Japs bombed Pearl Harbour (7th December 1941) so instead of us going to the Middle East — we probably had a week in Cape Town then onto Armanagr in India. Three weeks there training and then we went back to Bombay and got on the same boats that we got off. We called at Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka and onto Singapore, landing in January 1942. We were involved in camouflaging bridges and doing engineers work generally. About five weeks of chaos in Singapore and then they capitulated. (15th February 1942). Nobody knew what was going on in Singapore. Obviously we weren’t trained — we didn’t know the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese and the Ceylonese.

Well, we were all stunned really! You just didn’t know - obviously I was only a young chap. I think the farthest I’d ever been was probably Skegness or something. Just stunned we didn’t know what to expect and what was going on.

The Japanese had worked their way down from Malaya across the Johore Straits. (The Japanese had invaded Malaya 8th December 1941).

(After the Capitulation) Well, we were all Paraded — after so many days messing about, marched up to Changi and put in huts. Sort of taken out to various jobs. I was in Changi for four months and then I was on the second 600 sent up to Thailand in cattle wagons, 25 people to a steel cattle wagon. It took five days and nights to get up to Thailand to a placed called Banpong which was mud heap. There were bamboo huts there and mud up to your necks if I remember rightly. It was the beginning of monsoon time. We didn’t stay very long and then I was moved up to a place called Non Pladuc and my friend, he died very early on, a fellow called Les Rooney. We went out on working parties to help to prepare for other people coming up from Singapore. We helped to build the huts although the troops were all mixed up.

I had met Les in Sheringham, we were together throughout. He was a bookbinder by trade and he made himself a diary and of course he kept this diary up from Liverpool until the time he died. There were one or two other things. He died of diphtheria. The other things diseases hadn’t taken hold at that time, he died very early on. And the officer said, ‘Well, take these one or two things of his’ which I did - tied them up, never opened them. At the age of twenty you see it was always when we get home, many didn’t — and I kept them where ever I went, kept those few things with me with the idea of taking them back to his mother eventually. I just didn’t think anymore about them really, I’d got them with my old bits and pieces.

We just had bamboo knocked in the ground and then bamboo split and long huts, oh probably a hundred men slept on either side just on the bamboo and whatever you’d got, whatever you’d taken with you to lie on, a blanket. And rice three times a day usually. They had cook houses and they had great big woks which probably took half a hundredweight of rice, great big things, they were ever so big and built up dirt ovens, put the wood underneath.

It would have been better probably to be a cook — only a few could go in there and do that. Anyway at this stage the Japs were beating us regular for trivial things and the Koreans, there were Korean guards as well. The Japs wouldn’t allow the Koreans in the fighting line so they gave them allowance for this. One day we said, ‘Right, we’ll go on strike if they don’t stop beating us.’ So they got us on Parade — we all learnt Japanese numerals for our Roll Call and they counted us and we said, ‘We are not going to work!’ So if I can demonstrate to you what happened - they got us in rows and with our arms outstretched, on the balls of our feet. And Japs were all up and down at the back of us and as soon as your heels hit the ground they cracked you one with of their rifle butts on the back of your legs — and that was for five hours, well as far as I can recall five hours. But you can imagine we had wooden flappers, flippers on and that’s how we were in the sun and then they said, ‘Well, now will you go to work and will you sign to promise you won’t ever try and escape?’ And that’s what we did, we had to! We had no choice. There were one or two English officers there and we did what they advised.

Well you had no choice really! For instance you’d do a day’s work, come in and have your rice and then suddenly they’d say, ‘Every one on Parade’ and there would be perhaps two hundred railway sleepers come up from Malaya and we would have to unload them. I mean imagine, we had no clothes, just had this bit of cloth girth round and that. Well, we’d got — most people had a shirt of some description. Well you’ve seen pictures haven’t you of them working. But we thought nothing of it - that was the usual dress. Anyway that’s the sort of thing that they would do. By that time dysentery, malaria and malnutrition had caught up with us. It was a strange thing with the bamboo — if you’d got a scratch, a cut - invariably it turned to ulcers and they would grow bigger. Because as far as I know that was the first place that they ever let blow flies go on to lay maggots to eat the bad flesh. They’ve done it England since, in Oxford I believe. There was a Canadian called Markavitch I think and we used to call him ‘Your leg or your life’ Markavitch. He’d say to chaps, ‘Well, it’s either your leg off or your life’. And then we would see them walking across the Parade ground with the leg wrapped up and put it on the fire where the rice was being cooked. It was obviously the best thing to stop disease. But fortunately I didn’t get into a cholera area - that was the worst thing of all if you got in the cholera area. Through luck and God, if you like, I missed them so you know I always attribute that to being lucky to get home.

We’d moved up further up than Non Pladuc by this time. We had to march! Yes we had to march. We were wearing these wooden flippers. When I got home I could pick up anything between my big toe and the other toe because they were so strong. We wore our shirts and you’d take your bits and pieces with you. It wasn’t all jungle, there were mud roads of course, dirt roads. But the one luxury we did have in one camp, there were two mango trees and if there was a thunderstorm the Japs used to clear off in to the dry. We used to run out in the nude and pinch these green mangoes and often bury them and they’d ripen in the day in the sand. But that was a bit of a highlight really.

Then at one camp, when we were out working and the Japs had an idea that there was a radio in the camp. If there was I never knew of it and I don’t think there was and then when we got in that night they’d searched all our kit while we were out looking for this radio, everybody’s kit where we slept was searched. And they found this diary of Les Ronney’s and I presume the Interpreter read through it and of course Les was very critical of the Japs before he died. And they said, ‘Who’s bed is this?’ And I said, ‘Mine!’ Two of them took me across to the Jap Commandant and gave me a beating up and then one of our own Officers came over and they got an Interpreter. And in the end I convinced him that Les had died in Non Pladuc and these weren’t my things but that I was looking after them and that was my worst beating. They used batons about like that they were hitting me on the back of the neck and that. Everytime if the Jap Officer asked something and you give an answer they would say I was lying, I wasn’t but what could you do? Well after a long time and our Officer and their Officer - as I say he had been very critical of the Japs and their treatment. I was helped back to the hut. I had bruises. But the main thing was to try and stick it out and keep on your feet.

When they’d had an awkward day they would hit you. For instance one evening I was dishing out the rice, we used to dish out the rice in turns — and if you hadn’t got a hat on you were supposed to bow which went against the grain of all of us, bowing. So I just went like that, without a hat — this was a Korean and he set about me for that. If they felt like it that day they would give you one or two. When this happened you kept out of the way or else you were included as well.

There were all sorts of jobs to do on the railway. At one time I was in a camp and we had to receive rails and points and sleepers and what they called the ‘shoes’ that you hammered down to hold the rails in position. And up on the hills digging the shingle out to put the railway on — there was a very bad job for our chaps that went through what they call ‘Hell Fire Pass’ but I wasn’t actually on that.

You did whatever they told you. Once we had, oh I should think three months up in the hills digging shingle and some had to … we used to take turns different days and some would wheel it down and others use the pick and shovel. They were poor old shovels, but anyway. We had to dig it out of the rock and make it into shingle for the railway. You took it turns, different days often. We were breaking them up before they brought them down I think, I can’t remember the details. All that type of thing and laying sleepers, clearings, bamboo clearings. Often we were moving from camp to camp. Sometimes a long time in one - perhaps they wanted 200 men to go and if your name was up you went and if not you stayed. I was a long time in one camp at Tamuan. You were friends but everybody was when the need came, everybody was friends too to the degree that they could be really.�

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