Tag Archives: Far East POWs

In the Jungle – POWs 3

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Barry and the men of 27 Line Section, arrived in Singapore in the Autumn of 1941. They spent very little time in that teeming, multicultural city, before being posted into mainland Malaya as an independent unit.

This picture shows some of the men in a very relaxed state in Kota Tinggi. Barry and his Lieutenant were familiar with life in Malaya and unfussy about uniforms and the men adapted quickly to the climate and the work.

27LineS1941_1

They did encounter occasional problems. Barry remembers:

So in late 1941, based at Kota Tinggi in Johore, No. 27 Line Section went on with their job of building telephone lines between the many small headquarters, unmanned but established, “Just in Case”, and the small air strips in Johore and Pahang. I don’t remember much in detail of this period just before the invasion but one incident vividly comes to mind. I was with a small party building a two-pair route in fairly heavy jungle, using trees instead of telephone poles. I had surveyed the route in advance and marked the trees which were to be used for the route. We had a light van to carry our ladders and all the other kit and of course, our packed lunches and drinks. Two members of the working party went ahead with a ladder and a hand augur to bore the four holes required, in the marked trees. The next group climbed up and screwed the L shaped bolts into the holes and fitted the insulators on to them.

Everything went on smoothly except for the odd leech. We were used to them and a touch from the hot end of a cigarette caused them to drop off quite easily. Then one of the forward party came rushing back to the van waving his arms and shouting “hornets”. He was followed by a cloud of very angry hornets eagerly seeking targets. We had no shelter except for the van which fortunately had an enclosed cab into which we all scrambled, about eight of us, a very tight fit but this discomfort was much preferable to being stung by a jungle hornet. They are much bigger than bees or wasps and have a reputation for very aggressive behaviour, and deliver a sting several times as powerful as a wasp. […]

So we sat or stood in the cab on top of one another for an hour or more with the hornets buzzing around looking for a way to get at us, but the windscreen and the windows were a good fit and a thoughtful Signalman had stuffed bits of paper or rags around the holes in the floor of the cab where the pedals came in. When the hornets eventually gave up we drove a circular course around their tree and continued our route building on the next section, taking great care to avoid any hollow trees. A day or two later we returned to the area and built a wide curve around the hornet tree. We had been lucky as three or four stings from jungle hornets could be fatal.

Dancing on the Docks 2

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In July 1941 the men of 27 Line Section stood waiting (as soldiers spend so much time doing) at Liverpool docks to embark on their troopship for a distant unknown destination. The Scotsmen in the section decided to while away the time by dancing an Eightsome Reel. Sergeant Pawson (from Glasgow?) was the leader and he made up eight separate Eightsomes – 64 men. Their captain, my father Barry Baker, attempted to play the mouth organ for them, while the Scotsmen taught the Englishmen the steps and the moves. Then they danced.

Barry remembers:

The reel was such a success that it gathered quite an audience of porters, sailors and others, so we did it all through once again. After that came the order to board, so my last memory of England for more than four years was dancing on the platform at Liverpool Docks.

27 Line Section is created – POWs 1

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In 1941 about 70 men of the Royal Corps of Signals gathered on Liverpool docks preparing to embark for service ‘somewhere’ abroad. They carried tropical gear. Some of the men were career soldiers and had survived Dunkirk. Their units had been disbanded and they had been sent to work at Harnham Camp near the South Coast, restoring lines in the much-bombed coastal city of Plymouth. They were perhaps hoping for a cushier posting after their grim experiences.

These Dunkirk men had been allocated to a newly created unit, 27 Line Section, under a newly created Captain, Barry Baker, all of twenty-five years old, married with a baby son. Barry should have been in France, but he was recovering from head injuries after being knocked off his motorcycle by a young Canadian driving on the wrong side of the road. Backing him up was a 40 year-old NCO, 2nd Lieutenant Sutherland Brown, a married Plant Manager from Malaya.

The bulk of 27 Line Section was made of Scottish Reservists mainly from Glasgow. Many worked in the post office but there were also bakers, electricians, butchers, bricklayers, waiters and many other trades. They ranged in age from nineteen to late thirties. Few if any had been abroad before, none, except possibly the Lance Sergeants, had seen active service.

In his memoirs Barry wrote:

The Glasgow party arrived, bringing most of their own lorries with them, and they seemed to fit in quite easily with the men I knew already at Harnham. We had a few days to sort out duties, stores, transport and drivers and then we were sent on detachment as a whole Section to carry out a most interesting job. This was a great bonus as it enabled us, me and the four sergeants, to get to know one another and to get the Glaswegians and the Southerners properly acquainted and working together without the nuisance of Company Parades or C.O.’s inspections.

These weeks together proved crucial in the years ahead. As Barry remembers:

The whole job lasted only a few weeks but by the end of it No. 27 Line Section had a firm personality and individuality of its own. Later in Malaya or up country in Siam, if any of our men were asked what Unit they came from they would not answer “Malaya Command Signals” or “Attached to 8th Australian Div”, or even “2 Group POW Camp”, but simply “27 Line Section”.

Double trouble

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If you are submitting two different manuscripts, of course you get two sets of rejections. Todays’ was for the POW non-fiction book. A very kind email from an agent whose submissions were closed anyway and who still read the first 50 pages. A little troubling though that there was praise for the idea of varying my ‘novel’ by using letters. This is a history book that I am editing, full of original correspondence from 1941-1945.

The remaining Far Eastern POWs are in their 90s and it is now, as these men reach the end of their lives, that their children and grandchildren want to understand what they lived through. These documents need to be made available, so I think self-publishing has to be the route. The materials – letters from many sources, memoirs, linking passages and illustrations would have been better presented and pruned with professional advice, but I can’t spend the next ten years tinkering and waiting for rejections.

I have self-published once before, but the world has changed (e-books etc). So I have downloaded a free up-to-date guide. Just have to pick up the bag and get marching.