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An Ex POW’s Daughter’s Story After 3 and a half years of captivity and deprivation, prisoners of war returned to the outside world: a world which had passed them by; a world that was completely and utterly alien; a world into which they were expected to re-enter and function, as if nothing had ever happened. But how could that be? So much HAD happened. For the prisoners, the memory of their families and life back home, a memory which had sustained them in their darkest hours, was not matched by reality. For the families, the men they had waited so long to see had changed irrevocably, physically and mentally. Fathers came home to find the toddlers they said goodbye to were now at school; their older children, now adults. Their wives, having been forced to fend for themselves, were almost strangers. For my brother, Dad's homecoming was a frightening time. Heading to the train station to meet someone he no longer remembered, he wondered if his father would remember HIM. Now aged 6, he was just a toddler when Dad left. When a soldier Born 3 years post-war, my early memories of Dad are of his drinking, the arguments this caused and his poor health when, wracked by malaria, he would lock himself away for days. Whilst not happy memories, that was how it was. In my ignorance, I thought that was how all fathers were. With the passing years the drinking and arguing ceased, but his poor health remained with him forever. My mother doted on him and cared for him tirelessly - without complaint. I knew very little of Dad's war history. He told me once about the fighting and the men each side of him being killed. He had marks on his arms and back but I never knew what caused them. I knew he was at war with the Japanese as nothing 'made in Japan' was allowed in the house - Mum's orders. About 15 years ago my sister found 27 weekly newspaper articles about World War 2 in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. They had been written by Dad in 1948. These articles gave me an insight to where he had been but I needed to know more, much more. It was from these stories that I now learned what the marks on his arms were - cigarette burns inflicted on him during a 3-day period of torture. And so my search began. Thanks to people like the late Tom Morris and Rod Beattie, my quest to uncover the truth has been successful. I now know my father survived the Battle of Muar, during which his battalion was almost annihilated and his CO awarded the VC. He then survived the fighting on Singapore Island. I know as a POW he went to Burma as a member of A Force in 1942 and worked on aerodromes and roads, then on the Burma/Thai Railway; I know all the camps he was in throughout Burma and Thailand; I know the people he was with; I know that at Nakhom Pathon his mate Chris Guerin gave him a life saving donation of blood and I know he was too ill to go on the draft to Japan, which took the lives of so many when Rakuyo Maru was torpedoed; I know he travelled on the train through Hellfire Pass 5 times; I know he was with the Tunnel Party near the Burma border when the war ended; I know he was in Neike camp when released and eventually sent back to Singapore via Bangkok his very first plane trip. Whilst we tend to concentrate on the horror prisoners endured, we should also remember their families, especially wives and mothers. Husbands and sons returned home traumatised and in poor health. Having managed to survive imprisonment, without the support of their womenfolk many may not have survived freedom. There were years of adjustments ahead and it is to their credit that the majority made it - and without the kind of help they would be afforded today. At times being the daughter of a prisoner of war was tough, but thanks to the help of Dad's friends, and mine, at least now I understand 'WHY'. Fred Howe, my father, died on 7th Aug 1975 - 30 years ago last week.
© Di Elliott 2005 |