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  • #108680
    Avatar photovtsaogames
    Participant

    In 1974 I made my first trip across the pond. At dinner in Florence, I met a man who spoke very good English. He told me the following tale. He was in the Trieste Division during WWII. He was sent across the Mediterranean in a group of 3,000 troops. The Royal Navy appeared and sunk them all. The next day Italian destroyers picked up the 300 survivors and took them on to Africa. He arrived in time for Monty’s El Alamein offensive and was captured by Australians, who he said were huge men. He went first to England, then the US. He was a model prisoner and was sent to the Pacific where he worked building airstrips on Okinawa. This explained his command of the English language. He didn’t get home until 1946.

     

    I also have a tale by another POW but that goes in the WWI threads.

    It's never too late to have a happy childhood

    #108811
    Avatar photoIain Fuller
    Participant

    Here’s one for you:

    My grandad Bill, then Lance-Bombardier W.H. Fuller RA, managed to escape being killed out of hand in the Victoria hospital in Singapore where he was laid up after being wounded when the Japanese took it. He then endured indescribable hell on the railway for the next couple of years but was picked as a ‘lucky number’ to be shipped off to be finally worked to death in Japan (he was deemed fit enough only suffering from malaria, beriberi and dysentery but usual for those poor souls I suppose). Along with 1316 other POW’s he was crammed into the Rakuyo Maru, part of a convoy that included another boat, the Kachidoki Maru with 900 other POW’s aboard, obviously they weren’t marked with Red Crosses. A few days into the journey both boats were torpedoed and sunk when the convoy was attacked by a US Submarine wolfpack. Obviously the Japanese didn’t pick up any of the surviving POW’s even shooting some that were trying to get on the rescue boats. My grandad ended up on his own on a hatch cover. Luckily the USS Pampanito was headed back along the route she had taken after the attack and came across survivors 4 days later, and along with the other boats in the wolfpack the USS Sealion, Barb and Queenfish launched a rescue mission. Between them they managed to rescue 159. Bill was one of the last ones. I am very lucky to be here.

    http://ww2today.com/12-september-1944-uss-sealion-sinks-rakuyo-maru-and-1300-pows

    #108815
    Avatar photovtsaogames
    Participant

    Wow! What an incredible story! 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    My over -energetic anti-virus software overlaid this message because my files needed an update. Now I can’t delete the post. What a bummer.

    My original response was: Wow! What an incredible story!  

    It's never too late to have a happy childhood

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