My name is Geoffrey Burton, I come from a Cheshire family, I was 20 when the war started and I'd just done my first year at Oxford, and I joined while there the Oxford OTC, the Oxford Training Corps so when the war started I was able to join up very readily into the Royal Artillery. And for training I was sent up to Catterick and it was a terribly cold winter and now memories of marching and driving over the Yorkshire Moors in heavy snow and one time my vehicle was taken over by somebody else and I had to drive back to camp on a motorcycle and I was so stiff and frozen they more or less had to lift me off, I was kind of petrified. So that was one thing that happened in the whole story of different experiences.

My best experience as an achievement, we all had to give lecturettes to our colleagues and mine was on the gearbox. This was for mechanical transport purposes, and I drew a lovely diagram of a gearbox on the blackboard and had my ten minutes and then when I got back to my seat someone said, "It's very interesting Geoff, did you know that all your gears were engaged at the same time." So I wasn't very good at mechanical transport. I had a friend, Scotsman, and he was equally ignorant, and we had two parts to the exam. One was written and the other was practical, and we both swotted up the pages in the manual of transport and we came out equal top. When it came to dismantling an engine and putting it together again, we came equal bottom. So we weren't very good at that.

Well eventually training came to an end and we were commissioned into various regiments. I had a friend and we said we'd try and get in the same regiment, so what the war office did in its wisdom was to post me to the 118th Field Regiment and him to the 118th Heavy Regiment, so we weren't together and so I never saw him again.

Posting led me down to Eastbourne, where we were put up in boarding houses and improvised barrack blocks and that was quite a pleasant life, plenty of sea air, and at the time of Dunkirk we wondered what was going to happen next. We weren't at Dunkirk but we saw various people who were. One man came back in rather a sorry state one night, we said "where have you been?" He said "I've just got back from the beach." We only realised when it was over that The Beach was a favourite pub just along the road.

Then we had to guard our shore, the beach, with what guns we had, which were wooden wheeled 45 Howitzers with blocked-up muzzles and stencilled on the barrel `for drill purposes only'. So we didn't get very far learning much about how things worked with that lot, but I suppose it impressed people and they thought "oh we've got some jolly good guns here", as long as they didn't look too closely.

After that I had various postings around England and part of Scotland, until the time came for us to leave England in the autumn of 41 and embark for… we didn't quite know where. We were issued with tropical kit, so of course it was to be a great secret if we were going to the Middle East or somewhere like that, so we paraded through the streets of Stowe with our tropical kit over our arms and our bags holding our sun helmets over our shoulders, so nobody had the foggiest idea that we were going anywhere like the Middle East, of course not. Where we did go in fact was in convoy from Liverpool, where we sat in the Mersey for three days waiting to be bombed by the Germans but we weren't, and we went across to Halifax, Nova Scotia and to our surprise we were then put onto American ships and escorted by American warships and this was before Pearl Harbour. And we didn't hear about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the American entry into the war until we were almost in Cape Town. And when we got to Cape Town a couple of days later, there were newspaper headlines, "Grievous Naval Losses In Pacific", and that was when the Japanese had sunk by air attack the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, and that was a terrible blow. And we knew by then that they landed in Malaya and were on their way down the peninsula so we were sent to sit around for three weeks in India, near Poona.

After that time we got back to Bombay and got on the same ships and went hell for leather for Singapore. It was so dangerous by then that we couldn't use the normal channel which goes down north of Sumatra, but you have to go down below Sumatra and come up between Sumatra and Java, that's what we did. So the convoy docked and we disembarked, that was the end of January 42. We never, my division, my regiment, we were the last division to get to Singapore before it fell, my lot never got off the island at all. We were shelled a couple of times by Japanese guns and mortars, one or two people were killed, and then it all became very quiet. And the news got around that we were, we'd surrendered, so this great fortress had capitulated and we began a march a couple of days later of about 14 miles up to Changi, where we were put into the barracks that peacetime forces had used, and we were there for several months, eking out what rations we could get and making the best of things.

There were one or two working parties had to go down to Singapore to help tidy up Singapore, and we learnt then the soldier’s genius for improvising nicknames, because there was a little Japanese mechanic who went round with an oxyacetalin burner, with the flame coming out the end, and he was soon called Willy Burnett, by the troops. Then - we got what amusement we could out of things like that - and then we went to the railway station to get on board closed trucks carrying, what is it, seven horses and forty men or something. Anyway we were all packed into these and went off up north to build, or help build the, what the newspapers soon called the railroad of death, which was 250 miles of single track rail linking Siam – Thailand - with Burma to use as a supply route for the Japanese troops in Burma. The journey up was horrific and took about four days, and you can imagine the conditions with about this number of people crammed into a single truck with no proper sanitation and very little food and eventually we got to the other end where there was an extremely grotty camp, a sort of reception camp, and we were then taken to a rather better camp and divided up, over the months, into various parties to go and build this railway. Which meant that you were given a chunkel which is a pole with a vertical blade on the end and you go like this at the earth and then somebody else is with you with a basket and you tipped the basket down the embankment or into the hole, whatever it is they want you to do. And that sort of work went on for a long long time. Fortunately as an officer I didn't have to do a great deal of the actual manual stuff, we were mainly in charge of groups of people being, other ranks being made to do it, and if anything went wrong of course it was always the officer who got mashed up first. So it wasn't entirely without hazards.

Food was very poor, mostly rice, a few vegetables and the odd bit of meat, and soon people were ill with malnutrition of one sort or another. I got beri-beri, my legs swelled up quite a bit but they say that unpolished rice with its vitamins is a possible cure for that, so I recovered in the end and went on with the story.

And this meant moving as the railway moved along, from, we moved from one camp to another and these varied immensely because some would be little tiny clearings in the jungle with just a few men and a few tents perhaps, and the other extreme, there were quite big well established camps with better food and better facilities all round. My railway days ended when I got involved in an argument with a Japanese guard. He wanted to use my walking stick to beat one of my colleagues and I wasn't too keen on this happening, so I held on one end and he held onto the other end in front of the entire camp parade on this ghastly muddy hillside, and in the end he won of course. I was taken off to the guard room, made to kneel down and beaten by the guards for as long as I don't care to remember and then I was put together really by some wonderful Australians who were great friends at the time, in the camp with us, but the advantage from my point of view was that I developed an ulcer on my leg which became bad enough to get me sent down river with the walking wounded to what was known as the Omelette Belt. Now the Omelette Belt was prisoner of war language for the part of the railway which was still, which was near enough to the better established camps and near enough to native markets, so that we could get food brought to the camps for which we paid, the Japs took a commission on what we paid, so that was a good working arrangement which saved a lot of lives in the end. But of course an enormous number of people either died of the various diseases that were going, I helped to burn one man who died of cholera, we had to burn the bodies, and that was a horrible job as you can imagine. Other people died of dysentery and malaria and various other horrors. And I got eventually down to a better camp where the medical people were simply wonderful and the way they operated on people with bad ulcers and soon the hospitals were, camp hospitals were full but they went on improvising and making all sorts of medical appliances out of old tins and bits of bamboo and well other people have written about this at great length and given photographs of it and everything.

So that was a mixed experience of finding ways of passing the time and reacting with horror and disgust when we saw the victims, because that's what they were, of neglect and brutality being brought down on these various barges down the river and carried into the camp. That wasn't very good.

We moved again to another camp called Nompladuck, funny name, which was quite a big one near Bangkok and it was there in September of 1944 that we had our first allied air raid, and that was quite terrifying. We had the railway sidings just 100 yards or so away from the boundary of the camp and a stick of bombs fell right across the camp and killed a hundred men and demolished a number of huts, and we had to accept the fact that from then on the war would get nearer and nearer to us because obviously they were going to… the number of air raids and the number of planes coming over was going to grow as indeed it did.

And we found that being cooped up, if that's the right word, in the same camp with other ranks which is apparently contrary to what ought to happen, we should have been separated at the very beginning from the rank and file but we weren't, and this made for better relations I think between officers and men, because we were all in it together, and because the officers were paid a certain amount we were able to set up a fund to buy medical supplies and that helped to save lives we hope.

We had our first Red Cross parcels during 1944, about two years after we'd surrendered, and these were sent I think through the Red Cross by American sponsors and they were supposed to be one per man. By the time they reached us it was one per seven men and they were divided really scrupulously between recipients, and some of the stuff couldn't easily be divided and one of the things I enjoyed was a rice rissole made out of one 88th part of a tin of bully beef, that big. But the cooks were very ingenious, in times like celebrations like Christmas and so on they produced all sorts of extraordinary elaborate meals considering what they had, and we didn't fare too badly.

For a lot of the time we were very much on our own resources. I had a friend who was at Oxford - I didn't know him then but we soon became very good friends - he was reading history at Trinity and we met when he was giving talks on the English civil war, and he walked up and down with very disreputable ungainly shorts reaching well below his knees, flapping around improvised shoes, flapping along, and talking eloquently and brilliantly about the battles of the civil war and this is one of the things that helped to pass the time. And we had, he also wrote plays and he ran a Shakespeare reading society, and you can visualise a group of rather miscellaneous people, some with beards and some not, and some looking thinner than others, round a bamboo sleeping platform and all we had was about a yard each and six foot that way and a yard this way, for everything. And he read a Shakespeare reading society and we read, I don't know where the copies of Shakespeare came from but somehow or other people kept them, but extraordinary things people did carry. For miles. One favourite book was T E Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which weighed I suppose several pounds and was about the last thing some people would have paid to get rid of, as we shed our belongings one after the other.

But there we were, reading Shakespeare by the light of coconut oil lamps, home-made of course, tins with a bit of canvas stuck in and oil from somewhere, and a little wick and we managed. And that's a very vivid memory. But of course all good things come to an end and eventually we were separated from the men and sent to a new camp. I had by this time had my first mail from home which took over a year to reach me, but it was a comfort. And my messages home - we were all given the kind of standard postcard which, well you had to delete something, it said I am well, I am ill, I am in hospital, I am dead, and you ticked the appropriate one and off it went and a year later if you were lucky it might reach your loved ones at home. Well a few of mine did, so that was some comfort to my parents who were wondering what had happened.

The end came in the August of 1945 when the atom bombs were dropped and the Japanese surrendered and I always think that it was that action of dropping the bombs which saved my life, because evidence has come out since by the war crimes people, from the war crimes people, that there were very comprehensive plans for the elimination, the ultimate solution or whatever they called it, to the problem of prisoners of war, escaping and becoming a kind of rear guard - not a rear guard but a force to attack the Japanese as they were trying to defend whatever bit of island or land they were trying to hold on to.

So fortunately as I say we escaped that and then rumours abounded, you see, what was going to happen next. I mean here we were in this little camp some miles east of Bangkok, hundreds of miles away from our own troops and before long of course huge aeroplanes were coming over at about rooftop height dropping not bombs but bales of clothing and food and chewing gum because they were American planes, and life became a bit more civilised but we still wondered when we were going to get out.

Well eventually transport was arranged and we were taken down to Bangkok airport where allied planes were coming in bringing troops and we went back in the empties, over to Rangoon. And these old Dakotas flew along the line of the railway, and so we could look out and see the places where we'd been and the remains of some of the camps, and then we reached Rangoon where there was tremendous welcomes of course for us by everybody. And after a few days I got on the first ship, I was put on the first ship home, the Corfu, and we came back through Colombo, another tremendous welcome from people there, Suez and then the climax at Southampton, which I shall never forget.

We enquired whether we had to go through the customs because we'd acquired a lot of cigarettes and things on the way because people showered us with presents, and they said, "Customs for you lot? It's a civic reception for you people."

So we went down and there were bands playing and we got out of these coaches to take us to the reception camp, and I suppose most of the population of Southampton turned out. It was quite fantastic. The streets were full of cheering people, holding up their hands to the windows trying to shake hands with us, and I've never had a reception like it, it was marvellous.

And then eventually I was able to ring up home and say I was back and on one of the remaining Manchester stations, one of the old stations not now remaining, I was met by my family and then we spent the rest of the night with me telling them more or less what I've told you now. Perhaps rather more shortly.

People often say, "what do you feel about the Japanese, do you still hate them, you must hate them after all these horrors." And I read a wonderful book called The Railway Man by Eric Lomax who was involved in the radio business, I mean the business of building a secret radio which the Japanese discovered, they then beat him up and tortured him almost to death. He went back many years later and he met his main torturer and they were reconciled. And he and his wife visited one of the cemeteries, beautifully kept Prisoner Of War cemeteries, place called Jumkari, and they were wondering if they were right, trying to come back onto terms with this Japanese man who had been so horrible. And they said - I shall have to refer - he said, "sometimes the hating has to stop", and I think that is the place for me to stop.

(cut)

You want to know how we passed our time. It was really between work and play and work could be any kind of job that needed doing round the camp, either to help ourselves or to help the Japanese, and it could be working in the cookhouse or it could be clearing up after an air raid or it could be helping to dig a great trench round the camp so we didn't get out. And there were all sorts of things that could happen. And the play, recreation part, we had groups of people who were prepared to give lectures on all sorts of different subjects, we had discussion groups and we had a religious discussion group and there were in one or two of the camps a number of churches. The, it wasn't a very ecumenical arrangement because I was Anglican and the only padrés in my camp a lot of the time, one was Roman Catholic the other was a Methodist, but I think to some extent we sank our differences and things weren't too bad.

The business of writing, and even reading, these were made hazardous because of, if there was a scare on we could expect an impromptu search by the Japanese and lots of things were confiscated and people had to find all sorts of ways of hiding their precious belongings so that they couldn't be taken away because they were too dangerous or too subversive or whatever. So I'm sure a lot of diaries and notes and precious things perished because of that, but still we kept a number of things. And one of the things I kept was a book from a camp library which I helped to run and we had a number of people very clever with their fingers and we collected together old bits of material and old army gas capes and the cover of this is army gas cape material, it's sewn together with thread taken from old kitbags and is glued together where necessary with glue made from rice. And that's one example of many many that there were about the ingenuity that people showed in, well when they hadn't got much to work on, so that was one of my precious things.

Now, I've got also one or two relics, I've got here a cable which I sent home, I sent it home, it's dated the 2nd of February 1942. You remember that we didn't surrender till the 15th of February but still, 1942. It reached home on August 15th 1944 with an apology from the post office regretting the delay owing to circumstances, that's one. That was a letter which was sent to me 11th of January 1942 with the censor's stamp or the post office, army post office, it is regretted that this item could not be delivered at the address stated. Well, by that time we'd surrendered and we were in the bag. This is a card from my mother which says darling I wish we could hear from you again, we're all well and trust you are too. Dearest love Mum. And that was sent on the 8th of October 1943 and I got it on the 15th of November 1944. That was what communication was like.

(The following is the same material as the previous paragraph over the shoulder with shots of the letters, telegrams etc.)

One of the things I was involved in was helping to run a camp library and we had a team of very clever people (gap in recording) Singapore, saying well and safe, address Malaya, fondest love Geoff Burton. That was sent on the 2nd of February 1942, we surrendered on the 15th of February 1942 and this telegram was received by my parents on August 15th 1944. So took a long time. That was one thing. Then I tried to, I was going to receive a letter sent from my family, posted on the 11th of January 1942, that was too late, it is regretted that this item could not be delivered at the address stated, and that eventually found its way home. And this is a card from my mother and she wrote it on the 8th of October 1943, darling I wish we could hear from you again, we're all well and trust you are too, bless you darling, dearest love mum. Again with the Japanese stamp on, and that reached me on the 15th of November 1944. We were allowed to send cards home of a standard kind with messages printed, I'm well, I am ill, I am in hospital, I am dead, and we had to tick the appropriate one and that was the best they could do in the way of allowing us messages home.