One man's battle for POW survival (From Stroud News and Journal)

One man's battle for POW survival

IN 1942 Rodborough's Bert Ginger survived the fall of Singapore and spent the rest of the war working as a cook in brutal Japanese prisoner of war camps. There he witnessed the most horrific death and suffering but he has managed to keep a positive outlook. Reporter Sam Bond speaks to a man who managed to survive the worst life could throw at him by looking for humour in the darkest of situations.

BEING sent to the front line is like taking your driving test, according to war veteran Bert Ginger.

"It's fine until the day and then you're all nervous," he said. Bert, 83, had been working on the railways when he signed up for action.

"I volunteered for the Royal Engineers but they said 'you don't tell us, you go where we put you,' so I ended up in the infantry," he said.

"That's what they needed most - we were just pushed into the front line to fight."

It was a classic case of ignorance being bliss and Bert had no real idea of what lay ahead.

Assigned to the Sherwood Foresters after the regiment was decimated during the Dunkirk evacuation he was soon shipped out to India.

Bert had not been abroad before and was initially excited by the prospect.

But out of the blue he was sent to Singapore to defend the island from Japanese invasion.

"We were told the Japanese were already there and we would probably have to fight to get onto the island," he said.

"Ships were being bombed as they got near the port - the Empress of Asia was one of those that got sunk with all the tanks and valuable equipment on board.

"When we got off our ship, the Orcades, they put all the civilians on board to evacuate them to Australia.

"We were told to take our pick of the cars that they had left at the harbour - hundreds were left there with the keys and everything.

"I don't suppose the evacuees thought they'd have much use for them."

What followed was six weeks of vicious street fighting.

"The Japanese knew where we were," said Bert.

"They would come out after dark and we'd be fighting for our lives in the streets."

"It's like having fear put into you but you knew that if you were going to survive you had to go out and fight - there was nowhere to hide."

He got his first taste of the reality of war when he saw an artillery man killed.

"He was on the big guns, they were sending the shells over as fast as they could then this chap got hit by shrapnel and that was the end of him," he said.

The sporadic fighting went on for days with men snatching sleep and grabbing food where they could.

"Once it started it just went on and as we ran across troops we were in the action again," said Bert.

"One day I found myself alone for some reason and I saw this Indian soldier crouching behind a bush.

"I went over to ask him what was going on but he'd been shot and was dead. "I heard this screeching and crunching and looked down the hill and there was a Japanese tank but what could I do?

"I could have opened fire but I only had a rifle and there would have been no point.

The troops lost track of time as the days blurred into a hellish nightmare.

"We didn't know what day it was let alone the date," he said.

Bert was given a job driving the second in command, Major 'Robbo' Robinson on reconnaissance missions and remembers vividly the day one of his fellow drivers came back to base, exhausted after two days without food or sleep in the field.

"He asked me where the mess was and I said 'I wouldn't go down there, they drop a couple of bombs every day at 9 o'clock but he said he was starving," said Bert.

"Sure enough, they dropped a bomb and he didn't come back - he had tried to take cover under one of the houses on stilts but he got hit by shrapnel and the house collapsed, crushing him."

By now Bert had become accustomed to comrades-in-arms being killed.

"It's one of those things that gives you a shock but if you're still fighting you get it out of your mind and get on with it - you haven't got a choice," he said.

Singapore fell on February 15, 1942 - five days before Albert's 23 birthday.

"That's what I call a birthday present," said Albert.

"Eventually we were ordered to lay down our arms because we were fighting a losing battle - we just put our rifles in a big stack and left them there but no-one came to round us up for a good while."

Bert recalled a daring plan to spirit a couple of men from each unit away from Singapore before the Japanese rounded up the defeated soldiers.

Apparently if there are no survivors from a particular unit it is disbanded but if just one survives then it is built up to strength with fresh recruits.

"They set up an escape party so a couple of men could try to get back," he said.

"But their boat got bombed as soon as they left the island - one of our chaps, old Bill, had his face blown off.

"I don't think he survived it."

After a few days waiting in limbo the men were rounded up by the Japanese.

"I'd just opened 200 cans of corned beef to cook up a meal for the lads and the Japanese finally turned up," said Bert.

Most of the men were marched off to the notorious Changi prison which was crammed full of soldiers and civilians with barely room to stand.

Luckily for Bert he escaped a spell in the infamous jail and was given the job of helping clear out the warehouses or 'go downs' for anything worth salvaging - the authorised looting of Singapore by the Japanese.

"I was a cook for the blokes who were doing that," said Bert.

He remembers his first taste of trouble when he tried to pocket a tin of cigarettes but was spotted by the guard.

"The first thing I got was a smack under my chin with his rifle butt," said Bert.

"Then he went round offering all the men a cigarette just to make a point.

"I thought 'I'm not having that' and when he was gone I went back in and swiped another tin."

Emptying the warehouses took a couple of months then work parties started being shipped into the Thai jungles to cut a path for a new railway.

While the captured troops were being transported in box cars they had to have a double guard - one to make sure the captives did not try to escape and another, made up of British soldiers, to make sure the Siamese guards did not knife the sleeping men.

Conditions in the jungle were atrocious.

"If you got a scratch from the bamboo there was nothing to patch it up or cure it with and you'd get ulcers an all sorts," said Bert.

But the bamboo was the least of their worries.

The labourers were undernourished and overworked and the Japanese guards were brutal.

"At first we didn't know what the Japs were like then we saw them bashing their own blokes up and we quickly learned.

"You didn't get put on a charge in that army - the officers just gave their men a beating if they stepped out of line.

"If people did not work hard enough they would bash them up with their rifle butts," he said.

"In the beginning they would make men dig deep holes without telling them what they were for then they would hack their heads off with a bloody great sword and kick the bodies into the holes - they'd dug their own graves.

"If they were short of men they would go to the hospital tent and drag them from their beds, whether they were fit to work or not."

As a cook Bert was moved from camp to camp as his skills were needed.

He ended up in Cam Buri camp, a workshop camp where salvaged trains and other vehicles would end up and the British tradesmen would patch them up and send them back out.

"They'd get a train fixed up and moved out and it would be shot up by a machine gun and brought back in a couple of days later," said Bert.

"It kept the men in work.

"If you were there you were better fed than working in the jungle and at least men were doing their trades so it was more interesting.

"Morale wasn't too bad in the workshop camp."

Working for the enemy was a cross they were forced to bear.

"Nobody was happy about it but what could we do?," said Bert.

"There was no escape - there was nowhere to go.

"People tried but when they were caught they were battered to death."

Bert remembered an incident where British officers were taken off for punishment.

"They always doubled the guard when there was going to be a beating to stop any trouble," he said.

"They took three officers and battered them to death, I don't know what they had done.

"The next day some lads were clearing out the big swill pits and found their bodies, dumped under some soil.

"It was the brutality that caused the resentment."

Although there was little love lost between the British and their captors Bert remembers the Japanese sergeant in charge of the camp with a grudging fondness.

"He was a good man," he said.

"He had this big bristling moustache and we all called him Joe Stalin."

'Joe' managed to find the prisoners a football and along with his other officers would sit on a veranda drinking saki and watching the men play as there was no other entertainment.

As the camp's top cook, Bert learned a few tricks about how to get the best rations for the prisoners.

"We'd go down to the storehouse to wait for the blokes who were supposed to give us our rations and we'd swipe a few sacks of rice before they got there," he said.

"And once in a while we'd get an empty tin of pig fat, solder the lid back on and bash a hole in the bottom and tell them they'd given us an empty tin," he said.

"We used to grind the rice into flour and then use what meat there was to make pies.

"Old Joe got wind of this and as their food was hardly any better than ours he'd get us to make English meat pies for his officers.

"If we needed two cows we'd tell him it would take three."

Bert was playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse by ripping of the rations but it did not stop with scams to get more food.

"We used to hide valuables in the big brick oven," he said.

"We wrapped watches and rings in rags and seal them up in tins then just brick them up - they were still there when it was all over."

The subterfuge went on outside the kitchens too.

"There was a chap who was told to repair the Japs' radio," said Bert.

"It took him 18 months," he laughed.

Of course the man had fixed the radio in a matter of days but managed to fool his captors into thinking the problem was bigger and every day would slip on the headphones and tune in and listen to the news to find out how the war was going outside the camp.

Bert knew the war was over before the guards did.

"We got information about what was going on outside from the blokes we picked up our rations from," he said.

"They couldn't speak much English but we worked out they were saying the Yanks had dropped a massive bomb and the Japanese had given up."

The camp guards disappeared while the prisoners were sleeping one night, having discovered the war was over.

"The men were talking about which guards they were going to kill, which ones had treated them the worst," said Bert.

"The Japanese knew what was going to happen and thought they had better get out of there before the trouble started."

The men feasted on duck from nearby farms and looted the Japanese army's warehouses, glad to be free at last.

Weeks later a troop of soldiers led by Lord Mountbatten arrived at the camp to rescue the abandoned prisoners.

"He was the king's uncle - he asked if I had anything he could stand on so he would be high up to address the men," said Bert proudly.

"I told him I had a tea chest but he was taking his life into his own hands if he got up on it but he did it anyway."

Returning home to England was not the joyful occasion it might have been for Bert and although he had been decorated three times and promoted to Sergeant in the field there was no hero's welcome.

After his capture he had been posted as Missing, Presumed Dead.

His wife believed he had been killed and the couple were later divorced.

Things were little better on the work front.

The Government had passed legislation saying employers were obliged to take on ex-soldiers in their old jobs but he went to the railway yard where he used to work he was not met with open arms.

His employers told him they were not prepared to sack someone for him to take up his old job.

Although he has tried to be positive over the years, Bert couldn't help but add: "The war ruined my life."