V J Day - 60 Years On.

On September 1st 1945, my mother’s young brother Donald Stewart Bowden, Flight Sergeant with 99 Squadron lost his life along with eight other airmen whilst dropping food and medical supplies to allied prisoners - of - war in the notorious Sungei Ron Camp, Palembang in Indonesia.

Each year, on Armistice Day, we commemorate men and women who lost their lives in both the First and Second World Wars, by placing wreaths on the stone memorial that proudly stands outside our Church entrance doors. Inside Church, on the oak panelling to the organ chamber, hangs a brass plaque bearing the names of the men of our Parish who lost their lives in the Second World War. My Uncle Don is the second name down. As in previous years since the end of the war, my brother David and I will carry on the family tradition of providing the flowers with which Jill (as Mary has done in the past) will decorate the altar, with her usual flair.

Some twenty years ago, I put pen to paper and wrote the following poem depicting how I felt as a ten year old after V J Day.

“I remember V J Day,
When I knelt on my knees and tried to pray.
Just a lad of ten years old,
Not very big but very bold,
With long grey socks and shorts to match,
With holes in the backside, covered with a patch.
I remember my mother with tears in her eyes
Her emotions so strong she could not disguise.
Her brother was missing, presumed dead,
In far distant lands, so the telegram said.
My father was returning on a hospital boat,
I prayed and prayed again it would stay afloat.
The bunting came out on our cobbled street
With all the mothers helping to organize a treat.
It was a sad time for my grandparents that day
With their only son missing, I didn’t know what to say.
To myself I promised that I would one day
Look after them both, come what may.
A veteran I was at ten years old,
Evacuated twice and three weeks in a home.
As I remember some forty years on
With both grandparents and father dead and gone.
The times that we had should never be forgotten
No matter how sad and at times very rotten.”

When I sit back in my chair on my own in a quiet room, with no TV, video or radio to distract me, and read the many letters received by my grandparents following Don’s death, I still get a lump in my throat. I have often thought that the circumstances surrounding his death, as gleaned from eye-witness accounts and confirmed in these letters, would make a far more authentic film than many of the war films we see on television today. The following extract comes from a letter sent to my grandparents by the father of an Airman who died in Sungei Ron Camp. A year after the War ended he had visited the camp and graves and was able to send back these graphic details.

“I think you should know too that the death of your son and his friends was the direct cause of the end to the appalling death rate in Sungei Ron during July and August. During those months the rate was 60 a month in a camp of less than 1,000. September showed only 5. Up to September 1st the Japs not only exercised the same iron discipline as before, but had our men penned in a small part of the camp with the intention of executing them if the General in Singapore decided to fight on as he threatened to do. Then the Liberator crashed, a Jap guard laughed, a prisoner laid him senseless, and that was a signal to the whole camp to take things into their hands. A lorry was commandeered and loaded with our men, rushed out to the scene of the crash, and from that moment the Japanese never regained control. Our men went down into Palembang and brought back food and medical supplies, but the greatest single factor that stopped the death rate was the fact that they were free. Dr Reed said it was amazing the way dying men rallied and recovered. If ever men died that others might live, your Don and his friends did.”

On this Remembrance Sunday, (November 13th) when we sing, as I hope we will, the beautiful hymn “O Valiant Hearts”, I will be especially mindful of the line in the second verse, “ All you had hoped for, all you had, you gave,” as these words form the epitaph on my Uncle Don’s grave.

Keith Ingham

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