The Hero's return

In my opinion they, my father and his mates were made to feel like outcasts and not as heroes at the end of the war. Even recently when I have gone to the reunion of some of them, the bitterness still lingers.

Many of the Far East vets I have spoken to, scathingly say about Churchill and Britain, “He forgot us, they did, and he did not care” and that’s the reason they adopted the name "The Forgotten Army".

When many of the British troops returned, they felt and were treated like Lepers,  and to the promised "land fit for heroes" they were told "the wars over, get on with it"

Why, I came to only one conclusion after talking to them, as far as those in the East were concerned and it’s a bitter and angry one. They said "We were failures, we lost our Empire".

I could only put it down to the fact that it was the way things happened at the start of the war in the East, the Surrender of the troops in Singapore and its affect on the British and Australian Government at the time and subsequent events. As one British Diplomat put it "The loss of Empire"

It has taken many years to tell what they went though, not many who served in that bloody far east war would talk about it, not because they were ashamed, but because of the horrors they witnessed.

The mental scars they had would live with them, there was no treatment as they have now for post battle syndrome. Like those who suffered shell shock in World War One it just did not exist. My own father had nightmares about it, and as he said, “I will be fighting them till I die” and he did.

For me his son it’s hard to put into words what my father told me, how can you express pain, terror and tears in mere words. Not only from my father but the rest of his mates, sadly no longer with us.

Photos taken at the National Arboretum at Alrewas Staffordshire and it is well worth a visit, if only to remember.

These pages are taken from my fathers and his mates in  FEPOW,  (far east prisoners of war) their memories, stories, facts and fiction that I have heard, read and been told of.

Maurice A Christie