Surviving the Death Railway – to be published

Posted on by
71

Surviving the Death Railway: A POW’s Memoirs and Letters from Home

To my intense joy and relief the military publishers Pen & Sword and will be launching this title in June/July 2016.

For six years I have been researching and editing a story using a unique collection of letters and a memoir. The letters between my parents, Barry and Phyllis, and my father’s memoir of life as a Japanese POW tell a chronological story of a young couple during World War Two – these are special, but not, perhaps, unique.

What is unique is another collection of letters and a dossier. Phyllis spent the war looking after her baby son AND trying to look after the relatives of the men in Barry’s Royal Signals Unit, 27 Line Section. There were 68 men under Barry’s captaincy and Phyllis had addresses for many of the wives, mothers and fiancées. She sent circular and individual letters, at first to keep up spirits, later to co-ordinate information, and towards the end of the war to create a simple dossier of the men to help identification by rescued POWs at the War Office. To do this she gathered information about each man.

If it is of any help my son was a jolly natured chap, with wavy hair and a gap between his front teeth.

Although there was nothing outstanding in his appearance… he had a tattoo done on his right forearm, it began at the wrist, and went almost to the elbow. It was the figure of a highlander in full national costume…

These letters are heart-breaking and heartwarming and give and insight into the lives of ordinary people coping with the wall of silence that came down with the Fall of Singapore on February 1942.

Barry memoirs record, without  bitterness or bravado, what the lives of the men were like during those years.Wampo pc1He helped to build the Wampo viaduct, he nearly died, he became a chorus girl and he assisted at amputations. After giving blood he remembers a happy encounter with one of the men from his Unit:

“Sir, yesterday I had some of your blood, and last night I dreamt about a woman for the first time since capitulation!”

This story records the two streams of life in Britain and the Far East. What I find so moving is that year after year these relatives wrote into the blue. Although some received a few multiple-choice field cards; no one, as far as I know, ever received an answer to a letter in three and a half years.

Please forgive me, but for the next two months I will only be a very rare visitor to your blogs.  I am already deep in the final editing of the manuscript, gaining permissions for the ninety odd illustrations and preparing them and the maps for publication.

 

L881 VLB – RIP

Posted on by
26

DSCN8157

My utterly trusty Nissan Sunny has finally gone on to be an organ donor. The engine could have lasted for many more years, but it’s been an age since the rev counter worked. The door locking mechanisms play a symphony at random moments. The shock absorbers are giving up the ghost. The wheel bearings object noisily to multi-storey car parks. The windscreen wipers and washers are finding it all too much. The ventilation system showers the unwary with leaf fragments… my Very Lovely Beast (VLB) has come to a natural end.

The upside is that Chicago daughter’s small Peugot, stabled for 3 plus years in our garage, can now sit in the drive, releasing a fine large dry area of shed space.

I am comforting myself with the smell of lilies and the sight of the Hydrangea Paniculata Pink Diamond  (it turns pink as it fades).DSCN8154 DSCN8155 - Version 2 DSCN8156 And I’ve just discovered that the hedgehog in the pot is sort-of visible (though not posing very helpfully) in one of my photos. Pity about the embarrassing state of the back door. DSCN8152

 

 

The hedgehog’s dilemma

Posted on by
38

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 22.37.52(Photo from The Guardian by David Jones/PA)

We have been feeding and watering our visiting hedgehog since early spring. At first he ate from an open plate, but we became worried that he was having to share with cats/magpies/ foxes. The advice on Springwatch was to put the food into a piece of drainpipe. Lacking a drainpipe we used a deep plastic plant pot. DSCN8144He took to this without hesitation, and if we timed it right, by shining a torch through the back door, we could spot his rear end. In late spring there was a lot of snuffling and grunting and Mrs Hedgehog appeared. They cavorted for a few days, and you could go up and shine a torch on them and they just continued running round after each other. She vanished and we were back to Mr on his ownsome.

Then, a few weeks ago, we started to notice that the pot kept walking in the night. We were also curious that half the food would go between 9.30 and 10.30, but the rest disappeared overnight. Suddenly we have two hedgehogs, we have seen them both several times, we don’t know if this is Mrs or son/daughter or hopeful passerby BUT Hedgehog 2 has a problem. He/she is either short of marbles or has claustrophobia, because H2 will only eat from the back of the pot. DSCN8145 To achieve this H2 has to bump the back of the pot until the food falls through the holes in the back of the pot. On wet nights, we put the pot under the back door porch. If I stay up late, there is a continuous knocking sound and this little fellow bumps the rear of the pot, eats the few fragments that fall through and bumps again. If only H2 would walk round the pot, he/she would see that he was knocking the food to the front open edge, but H2 endlessly circles the rear of the pot and NEVER goes to the front. I have tried to photograph this, but  apart from being collapsed with laughter, I cannot make the camera play.

And no, I can’t sex hedgehogs, it’s deduction.

Tomatoes (plus a little DIY and writing) rule my life

Posted on by
45

Now that the DIY on our two rotten windowsills, after much resin filler and elbow-grease, is nearing completion, I can concentrate on my writing…

DSCN7843 DSCN7840DSCN7840 DSCN7846 DSCN7848DSCN8106DSCN8102DSCN8027DSCN8107

Except that last year my new greenhouse was a pitiful desert. All I managed to grow were three sweet peppers (on one plant). Everything else got fried or damped off as I was ignorant about managing the ventilation. So this spring, I sowed madly… perhaps a little too madly. I was miffed when tomatoes failed to germinate, so I sowed more. Various seedlings got potted on and moved into the garden and veg plot, but new tomato seedlings – unlabelled – kept popping up in unlikely places.

Apart from three pepper plants, tomatoes now rule the greenhouse and my life. There are more than 34 plants. The greenhouse ones need constant  water, and ventilation and they all need non-stop disbudding (a skill I have acquired late in life, but will lead, I am assured, to more tomatoes and less greenery).

DSCN8100DSCN8099 DSCN8097 DSCN8095 DSCN8088 And the hosta, of course, just keeps on growing. DSCN8024I am still writing, and I have exciting news on the POW letters book front, but I will wait for tangible confirmation before sharing it.

 

Pedants revolt – honing, homing and homing in (and waterlilies).

Posted on by
29

Sorry, I have to get this off my chest.

Honing = to sharpen

Homing = to (instinctively) return to the nest

Homing in = to converge on

So:

You hone your knife on a whetstone, or your critical faculties on a course in logic.

You home, after you have delivered your message, to the loft – you are a pigeon.

You home in on a solution after racking your brains.

And yes, I know, the misuse of honing is now so common that it will probably be accepted soon, but you can’t sharpen in on something, it does make sense and please think of pedants like me who get a pain in the head every time they see it.

Rant over. Some soothing waterlilies from Kew Gardens to follow.

DSCN7938 DSCN7902 DSCN7892 DSCN7893 DSCN7890

 

Marketing, a necessary pain?

Posted on by
24

Last autumn I went on writing course run by Patricia Mullin at The Sainsbury Centre in the University of East Anglia. This was a fun and positive experience and Patricia packed in an immense amount of information and writing practise and managed our diverse group in the gentlest, most effective way. She has kindly posted a guest blog from me on her website:

One October day I found myself, aged 52, standing on top of a telegraph pole. Below me the rest of my ‘team’, five youngsters half my age, two of them clinging to the free end of my safety harness, were urging me to jump. At eye level to my right, but way out of reach, dangled the bar of a trapeze.

Another 867 words at Patricia’s blog…

Three operas and an interview

Posted on by
29

I’m still out breath. We saw Flight by Jonathan Dove at Opera Holland Park, including a delightful interview with Dove beforehand. This opera is a rare thing, a modern, English, comic opera. We saw it once, more than ten years ago, and it was so funny we bought the libretto. It is set in an airport, with a cast of very real types that you might meet in such a place. Each of these has a story, and, in spite of many laughs and farcical lift/elevator passages, their stories are very touching with an element of tragedy thrown in – the music’s good too! (Screenshot from Opera Holland Park website).Screen Shot 2015-06-18 at 22.26.09 For opera two we were guests at Glyndebourne for Donizetti’s Poliuto – so obscure an opera that it is unlisted in our edition of Kobbé. This is about early Christian martyrs (set in Sarajevo in the 1990s (??)), but actually it is a classical tragedy with love, honour and duty fighting it out. The music is stunning and it is clear that Verdi rifled through it at some stage. This is my kind of opera, moving, full of dramatic emotional music, beautifully sung and acted. I loved every minute of this performance and I have never (over many years) heard such wild enthusiasm from a Glyndebourne audience. (Screenshot from Glyndebourne website).Screen Shot 2015-06-19 at 23.07.53 Opera three, also at Glydebourne, was all about the event. We were guests of my youngest brother and wife to celebrate, with my oldest brother and wife (middle brother and wife not able to join us), what would have been our father’s 100th birthday. Oh yes, the opera! This was Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Mozart (shame on me) is a bit repetitive and, um, tinkly (?) for me, but this was a very lively and funny performance, beautifully sung, and I loved the sets. (Screenshots from the Glyndebourne website). EDIT I meant to mention that the highlight of the story was that the ‘bad’ guy, the Turkish Pasha, turned into the magnanimous hero at the end. Screen Shot 2015-06-19 at 23.14.31 Screen Shot 2015-06-19 at 22.07.44 Screen Shot 2015-06-19 at 22.06.52And finally the bonus interview. When we were standing around our picnic table BBC Radio 4 appeared and asked to interview the person who had created the table and the picnic. We happily pushed forward my sister-in-law, Susie, who answered their unexpected questions clearly and coherently. Our menu included lobster tart, lamb cutlets on couscous and peach and raspberry trifle (not to mention olives, salmon sandwiches, cold meats and cheese). We couldn’t wait.  DSCN7802 DSCN7810DSCN7819 A wonderful time was had by all and we raised glasses to our father and mother.

Hosta in the rain

Posted on by
31

with self-portrait, I see.

This post is a garden interlude as I shall not be much at home in the next week or so. I will be missing more of your posts, so apologies.

DSCN7789In April this tub was empty and on May 3 it looked like this. DSCN7572 A pink peony, name unknown.DSCN7776 Rosa Warm Welcome (beautifully scented and very prickly) above rhododendron Yakushimanum Titian Beauty.DSCN7771

 

Surviving Far East Captivity

Posted on by
32

Dear friends, I have missed many of  your posts, and I have no hope of catching up, so I will have to skip many of them – my loss.

I have just returned from a conference titled:

Screen Shot 2015-06-07 at 23.16.43

This was convened by the group of dedicated researchers at Researching FEPOW History, held at, and sponsored by, the Liverpool school of Tropical Medicine (LSTM). For two and a half days I have listened to surviving Far East prisoners (FEPOWs) and interned civilians, military historians, doctors, museum curators, family researchers and the children of Far East Prisoners.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose many times on every day. I laughed, and cried in almost every talk. Every delegate had stories to tell and the venues buzzed as we tried to exchange these stories with each other. I have come back loaded with books, but here is the star of the show. Screen Shot 2015-06-07 at 22.23.43

Meg Parkes

Meg Parkes

Meg Parkes, One of the authors of Captive Memories, was also the lynchpin of the whole conference, taking in radio and TV interviews as well as keeping the whole show on the running.

Of the speakers and attendees, the three surviving FEPOWs, provided some brilliant insights, and much laughter. An interview and discussion session with Eric Lomax’s daughter Charmaine McMeekin and Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the scriptwriter of the film The Railway Man had most of us sobbing. This was the first time Charmaine had been among people who, like her, had been brought up by a father so badly damaged by his war experience.

There is much more to say, but I must sleep…

Four-decker book sandwich

Posted on by
28

DSCN7753As usual I have (mis)managed my reading by finding myself in the middle of four books simultaneously. I don’t know how many of you have the same experience, but there is a strange crossfire between books as a result… I have just checked my list and realised that three more books have crept into this sandwich (this is embarrassing, but I have finished two of these and lent the third to a friend who had left her iPad behind).

DSCN7754 - Version 2So, I started David Willetts’, The Pinch, on holiday in the wonderful library in Borgo Pignano, and ordered a second-had copy on my return. As a Baby Boomer myself, I’d like to understand this discrepancy between what we have had and what our children will inherit. What I have read so far, about how the historical structure of the British family make  it different from the rest of the continent (and much of the rest of world) I find fascinating. I reserve judgement on some of the lines he is taking.

 

[I ended the holiday by re-reading an old friend, Mary Stewart’s Airs Above the Ground. Returning to my stacked bedside I picked up The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey, a serious and riveting piece of research taking in the upper echelons of British Society, and WWI. Don’t be put off by the way it is uncomfortably dolled up for marketing purposes as a ‘True Gothic Mystery’. The research and the story are good and very revealing. I finished this in time for the visit last week by the kind friend who had given it me.]

DSCN7756 - Version 2A WWII Spitfire pilot, Geoffrey Wellum, appeared on TV the other night and my husband dropped the book he published in 2002, First Light, onto my desk. Had I really not read it? With an Mosquito navigator uncle and Halifax pilot father-in-law, I should have read this enthralling classic  So I started and am totally involved. This is heart-beating stuff told without the least swagger, carrying you from the schoolboy who writes to the Air Ministry to the (very) young Spitfire pilot trying to keep his end up in the battle of Britain.

DSCN7755 - Version 2However, I have a reading group meeting tomorrow night, so, slightly out of breath, I started Longbourn by Jo Baker. This is unpromisingly billed as: Pride and Prejudice – the servants’ story. It turns out to be an excellent read, full of interesting life and detail and a totally absorbing story in its own right. The P & P narrative is there, above stairs, and acts as a brilliant backstory, because we already know it. I am impressed and read happily and quickly.

DSCN7757 - Version 2In the meantime the winner of the Poetry Business Competition, is a young poet, Paul Stephenson, whose work I really enjoy. The result of the win is his first published poetry pamphlet, Those People. I can’t resist browsing. Some I recognise from individual magazine publications, others are new. There is a delightful mixture of his impish (Passwords) and tragic (Birthday Cards) take on life and delight in words (Wake Up And…) and sharp and hilarious observations (Angle End) and all these elements crossfire within the poems.

***

I’ve finished Longbourn, and returned to First Light; The Pinch next (though I need to fit in Golding’s The Spire for Other Reading group) and I’m dropping in on Those People at intervals. Now I must get down to the serious business of the Researching FEPOW (Far East POW) History conference this Friday in Liverpool.