VJ Day Commemoration

[Brian 48nav]

Chug

I didn't have time to 'Prune' yesterday, just having a look now. I shouldn't have left the door open as so much dust has blown in - Robin your post really moved me, at least my Dad came back from being a POW having been captured in Tunisia - he did die relatively early aged 51 ( when we were on 30 at Fairford ) and I didn't find out until after his death that he had been discharged from the army as medically unfit due to a kidney infection he picked up in an Italian POW camp.

TTN

I've read quite a lot about the war in the east, particularly the Burma campaign and John Masters in his book,'The road to Mandalay', mentions that when he was acting CO of a Chindit brigade he had to order the 'putting out of their misery' of some dozen or so seriously wounded men who could not be moved when the brigade left their position.

Another very good read is 'Quartered safe out here' by George MacDonald Fraser (the author of the Flashman books ).
I have by my bed, 'War in the Wilderness', by Tony Redding, whose father was a Chindit. He collected personal stories from many Chindits and published his book in 2011.

ICM

The aviation artist, Ron Homes, was one of those very men you describe - after his 30 op' tour as a Lancaster pilot in Bomber Command, he was posted east to Dakotas with I think 62 Sqn.


I have a vague memory of a neighbour in the early 1960s who had been a prisoner of the Japanese and then served in the Korean War and was captured again!