The Return Ticket

By Michael Bennetts

This is the story of a 1941 British Rail ticket and its journey from the UK to Singapore, Malaya and Thailand, eventually returning back to the UK four years after issue. Along the way, it sampled the delights of Cape Town, the hostile environment of the Malayan jungle, the horrors of working and surviving in various Japanese POW camps, and the joy of reunion with its owner’s wife and child.
The ticket belonged to my father John Bennetts, a signaller in the Royal Artillery during World War 2, and was the unused half of a return ticket between his home and his UK army camp. In March 1942, he was captured in Malaya by the Japanese Army and worked on the Railway of Death in Thailand. Both he and the ticket survived and he was repatriated to the UK in October 1945.
In later years, my father wrote of some of his experiences on the way out to Singapore, in the jungle, and in the POW camps. This book is his story, based on his writings and supplemented by what happened after he returned to the UK in 1945.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Bennetts
• Release date: Nov 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311943248

Michael Bennetts

Michael Bennetts is a retired Works Manager now living in Sutton Coldfield with his wife Ann. When not recreating his father’s story, or playing golf, he is an active member of COFEPOW and of his local Freemasons’ lodge. He and his wife have two adult offspring and two very lively grandsons.

Book preview

Maps

Map of Japanese POW camps in Thailand

Produced by Philip Cross, 2000

http://www.britain-at-war.org.uk/WW2/Death_Railway/

Nong Pladuk to Kanchanaburi segment showing the camps where my father was interned.

- FEPOW -

Introduction

Michael Bennetts

1108099 Signaller John Bennetts, Royal Artillery, 137th British Army Field Regiment.

The following book is about the journey of a British Rail ticket issued by the UK Ministry of Defence to my father John Bennetts in September 1941 and which survived as his companion while, first, he was on the run for 72 days following the defeat of the British Army at the Slim river in Malaysia and, second, he was a Japanese prisoner of war (POW) on the Railway of Death in Thailand. The ticket, and my father, eventually returned to England in 1945.

I have produced this account from the writings that Dad made of his life as a signaller in the 137th Field Regiment Royal Artillery up to the completion of the Bridge on the River Kwai. The writings are not dated but I believe he wrote them sometime in the late 1970s. I’ve also added some extra notes of his time on the River Kwai to the Thanksgiving service held in the Kao Din POW camp when peace was declared. I can only go on the few stories he told of the terrible time he had at the hands of the Japanese as a prisoner of war. He didn’t like to mention the subject.

Throughout the book, you will see many instances of very exact detail: the time of day, what was said, what was eaten and drunk, and other minutiae of accounts of events. Given that Dad’s manuscript was not put together until nearly forty years after the events recorded therein, he either had a remarkable memory or had made copious notes many years earlier. I am not aware that he ever made notes but I can testify to his memory. In his post-war masonic life, I saw him learn and present a citation that takes over 45 minutes to recite and he was word perfect on many occasions.

In February 2014, I contacted the record office of the Ministry of Defence for father’s records hoping they would tell me what camps he was in after the Kwai but they only forwarded his conscription form and his discharge papers. Further research however revealed the following chronology:

Chronology

1941

30th September. Departed from Liverpool on the troopship QSMV Dominion Monarch.

1st November. Arrival and shore leave at Cape Town, South Africa.

6th November. Arrival in Durban, South Africa.

Circa 15th November. Arrival and shore leave in Colombo, Ceylon.

28th November. Arrival in Singapore.

1942

6th January. Observation post just north of the Slim River. Overrun by the Imperial Japanese Army advancing down the Malaysian peninsula.

8th January. On the run in the Malaysian jungle.

15th February. Official date of the Fall of Singapore.

20th March. Captured at Seremban, Malaysia.

21st March. POW. Transferred to Pudu Jail in Kuala Lumpur.

14th October. Left Pudu Jail by train for Thailand, arriving a few days later at Ban Pong work camp. Allocated to Japanese Group 4.

Circa 18th October. A few days later, transferred to the nearby Nong Pladuk work camp.

23rd December. Transferred to Kanchanaburi work camp, close to the River Kwai. Worked on the construction of the wooden bridge over the River Kwai.

1943

No firm evidence of location but it looks as if he stayed at Nong Pladuk or in other work camps between Nong Pladuk and Kanchanaburi. (Definitely there between March 1943 and September 1943 as supported by medical records - three times with malaria and once with tonsillitis.)

1944

August or November. Transferred to Japanese Group 7 based at Kao Din work camp and recovered from there in 1945. (Verified up to 2nd August 1945 by medical records.) Note: Kao Din camp was a very large railway engineering workshop with electricity generating plants, foundry, machine shops etc. and many men were sent there if they had a special skill such as electrician, machinist, foundry worker, mechanic etc. Before the war, Dad was a carpenter and it is highly likely that his skills meant that he spent the latter part of his internment working in Kao Din.

1945

15th August. Japanese surrender following the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima (6th August, 1945) and Nagasaki (9th August, 1945).

16th August. News of the surrender reached Kao Din work camp.

19th August. Thanksgiving service, Kao Din work camp, Thailand.

Late August. Repatriated by rail back to Bangkok.

5th September. Transferred to Rangoon and looked after by the Indian Medical Staff.

15th September. Transferred to Bombay ready to return home on the Dutch mail ship MV Indrapoera.

October. Met his brother Gilbert at Port Tewfik, at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal.

19th October. Arrived in Southampton.

20th October. Arrived home to Sunny Bank Road, Wylde Green, Sutton Coldfield where he was reunited with his wife, Elsie, and introduced to his young three and a half years old son, Michael.

The book is in six parts:

Part 1. John Bennetts, the early years based on my own recollections of my dad’s life up to the point where he was called up at the beginning of World War 2.

Part 2. A prologue detailing his journey to Singapore aboard QSMV Dominion Monarch. This part of his story is based on his own hand-written account.

Part 3. His 72 days on the run in the Malaysian jungle following the Fall of Singapore in January/February 1942. This part is also based on his own hand-written account.

Part 4. Captured. An account of his life, again in his own words, in various Japanese POW camps leading eventually to three years working on the Railway of Death in Thailand including The Bridge over the River Kwai and ending in his own written words of the Thanksgiving Service at Kao Din camp when the Japanese surrendered.

Part 5. The journey home, based in part on some hand-written notes and letters plus my recollections of stories he told me

Part 6. Aftermath, the road to recovery. What happened after he returned to the UK and to his wife and son.

Michael J Bennetts, 2014

Part 1

John Bennetts: the early years

Michael Bennetts

John Bennetts (Dad) was born in the small village of Pendeen in Cornwall on the 10th May 1915 to Agnes and James Bennetts. His father, James, was a miner who with his wife had recently returned from mining gold in South Africa. Dad’s sister Bessie (b. 1905) and oldest brother Jim (b. 1907) were born in South Africa. On returning to Pendeen in 1909, Agnes gave birth to Henry (b. 1909, d. 1911), Gilbert (b. 1912), John (b. 1915), and Nicholas (b. 1922).

The Bennetts family lived in a small cottage, 9 Jubilee Place, in Skins Lane, Pendeen and Dad was educated at Pendeen School until the age of 14.

9 Jubilee Place, Pendeen, 1991

In the garden: Dad with Lynda, the wife of my American cousin Nick (son of Dad’s sister, Bessie)

Pendeen School, circa 1929

Dad is middle row, far right, with his hands on the shoulders of his youngest brother, Nicholas

Note: the boys and girls were segregated, boys on one side of the school building, girls the other.

Dad used to tell me of the many adventures he had at this school especially with his long term mate Tommy Laity. (Tommy is not in the school photograph above. He was in a lower form.) Discipline was very strict and the cane was in constant use on those little rascals who were cheeky and mischievous to the teachers and from what Dad told me he had his fair share of punishment. But, in the long run he felt that he probably deserved it and it helped to make an acceptable young man of him when he left to train as an apprentice carpenter at the local tin mine, Geevor.

Geevor tin mine, now a museum

He was confirmed, age 13, into the Church of England at Pendeen Church. Later, you will read of his memories of attending Sunday School.

Pendeen Church

Like many of the boys in the village, Dad was a member of the Pendeen Silver Band and played the cornet. His brother Gilbert was a member as well, playing both the cornet and the trombone. Dad was also a member of the Conservative Association and the St Johns Ambulance where he received a basic medical training that came in very handy in later life.

Dad’s accident at Geevor mine as reported in The Cornishman, 19th February, 1931

At the age of fifteen Dad fell down a mine shaft at Geevor and shattered the bones in his right ankle. He was taken to Penzance Hospital and it was touch and go whether they would amputate his foot but the doctors did a great job and managed to rebuild his ankle.

Because of the lack of work at the mine in November 1935 and with the help of a Captain W E Smith, ex-Army, who Dad used to take on shooting trips (rabbits and foxes mostly) when he was down on holiday, Dad moved to Birmingham to work as a carpenter at ICI Metals Limited, Kynoch Works, Witton, Birmingham. Captain W E Smith was a Director of ICI and he helped Dad get the job.

My knowledge of his first years in Birmingham is very limited. He lived in digs with a Mrs Strange of 135 Stoneleigh Road in Perry Barr which was close to his work. The charge was 25 shillings per week fully inclusive for board and lodgings. He became a member of a small dance band playing the trumpet at various venues around Birmingham.

Birmingham dance band

Centre right: Dad and his trumpet

Detail from above.

He also joined St Johns Ambulance volunteers and had a regular post at the Birmingham Hippodrome. It was here that he met his future wife, Elsie Stokes.

He then moved to live in lodgings on the Chester Road near the Yenton area of Sutton Coldfield so that he was closer to his beloved Elsie.

St Johns Ambulance, circa 1938

Elsie lived with her father, mother and sister Doris at 25 Sunnybank Road, Wylde Green, Sutton Coldfield. Elsie and Doris both worked at ICI Kynock, Elsie on the zip fastener production line and Doris in the wages office.

Dad proposed to Mum in 1939 and they became engaged to be married.

The wedding took place at Chester Road, Baptist Church on the 27th July 1940 with the service conducted by the Minister R.A. Lawrence. Dad’s oldest brother Jim was the best man.

27th July 1940

Chester Road Baptist Church

Dad was called for National Service in the army and enlisted at the army camp at Catterick, Wakefield, Yorkshire on the 21st November 1940 into the 39th Signals Training Regiment (the ‘Skinners’).

In April 1941 Mum visited him and reputedly that was where I was conceived. (My parents used to joke that I was a Yorkshire pudding!) I was born the following January but by then Dad was in Malaysia on the run from the Japanese. We were not to meet until nearly four years later, in October 1945.

After spending his first year at the Signals Training Regiment he was posted on the 25th August 1941 to 137th Field Regiment Royal Artillery stationed at Larkhill on the Salisbury Plain. His army number was 1108099; his job a signaller on the 25 pounder field guns.

On the 29th August 1941 he was granted embarkation leave for one week