Click here to go to Home page
Click here to go back the the main Stories page



The Diary of the late Thomas Matthews - 148 Field Regiment RA
October 1941 to September 1944
(Submitted by his Daughter - Yvonne Jones)

1941

OCT 29 Set sail from Liverpool on 'HMS Andes'

NOV 10 Arrived Halifax, Canada

NOV 12 Left Halifax on 'USS Manhattan' - afterwards renamed 'USS Wakefield'

NOV 20 Arrived at Port of Spain, Trinidad. Gunner Hutchinson, who has gone insane, is taken ashore. Leave Trinidad on 22nd. Cross equator on 24th November.

DEC 08 Japan declares war.

DEC 13 Arrived at Cape Town. Wrote to E. and then went to pictures with Sid.

DEC 14 Hundreds of women came to the docks with their cars to take us to their homes for the day. Went to Wynberg.

DEC 15 Rick ------ picks us up in a Cape Town restaurant and takes us to look over his confectionery factory in a little town called Muzemberg. Went to cinema with two elderly Scotch nurses.

DEC 16 Meet a Frenchman, wife and children in a hotel. Stop drinking till 12. Riots and fights all over Cape Town between Yank and British drunks.

DEC 17 Left Cape Town for Libya but convoy receives orders and is diverted to Bombay.

DEC 28 Arrive at Bombay.

DEC 29 Went inland to camp at Kirkee.

DEC 31 Went to barracks at Poona.

1942

JAN 18 Arrive at Bombay.

JAN 19 Set sail on 'USS Wakefield'.

JAN 29 Arrive at Singapore.

One night in Singapore we got news that the Japs had broken through everywhere so we took up positions and waited for them, some of the men in houses, in a Bhuddist temple - I was in a churchyard crouched behind a tombstone with another chap. When we saw dark forms in front and a few shots were fired, we started the battle, thinking they were Japs. After we had been shooting and killing for some time, a loud voice shouted through a loud-speaker - "STOP SHOOTING YOUR OWN TROOPS". We ran across the road and found they were a troop of artillery getting into a new position. Anyway it was good training for meeting the Japs next night.

FEB 15 Taken POW at Singapore.

FEB 16 March to Changi prison camp. From now on starvation diet.

MAR 13 March to prison camp in Singapore.

AUG 26 Sent back to Changi with dengue fever and tropical ulcers.

OCT 29 Left Singapore in cattle trucks - 34 men to a truck.

NOV 03 Arrived at Banpong, Siam.

NOV 05 Arrived at Cambini at the edge of the Siamese jungle.

NOV 06 Forced march through jungle to Raga on River Menim.

NOV 07 March to Tardan.

NOV 08 On to Tarsoa. Hundreds die through fever, dysentery and
starvation.

NOV 15 Arrive at Tonchan wearing only cotton shorts, having sold shirts, boots and hat for food. Working on railway, cutting through jungle.Our huts are built with bamboo poles, with dried leaves (called atap) for a roof. Inside we sometimes build a raised platform with bamboo poles to sleep on, but they soon get full of lice and bugs and most of the time we sleep on the ground in the open.

1944

------ to death or shot for not working as hard as the Japs would like, for stealing food because they were starving, and some because they were found with radios, or for trying to escape, and dozens of other things. Sometimes when we were working on the railway on a cliff side, they would push a man over the edge into the ravine below just for fun. During the 20 months in the jungle I have eaten monkey, python and dog. Of the three I think monkey tastes the best. Bamboo here grows up to a foot in diameter and a hundred feet high.

JUN 25 Left ------- in cattle trucks. All one thinks about nowadays is freedom and big piled-up plates of food.

JUN 29 Arrived at Singapore prison camp. Work in the holds of ships at Singapore docks loading or unloading ships of coal and rice. Food is now less than ever. We have to live by stealing pieces of Japanese dried fish, rice and palm oil from the dockside although we risk our lives in doing so. When the day's work is finished and we are back in camp we start picking weeds and leaves off trees and boil them in old rusty tins to appease our hunger.

SEP 06 Left Singapore on Japanese cargo ship - Rakoyu Maru. 600 British, 750 Aussies crammed into holds and on forward deck.

SEP 12 At about 5 a.m. I watch the ships getting torpedoed one by one, some exploding and sinking immediately, some burning and some sinking slowly. So Ethel will be a widow after all, I thought. I had thought this many times before but I thought it was a sure thing this time. At 5.45 a.m. we got two torpedoes.Luckily only a few got killed in the explosion, and the ship did
not set on fire but started to sink slowly, very slowly.Hundreds were already dead in the water through hitting lifeboats and rafts when they jumped over. I slipped down the side of the ship into a very small lifeboat. (The Japs had already got away.) Eventually the lifeboat got so crowded that the top was almost level with the water. All this time we were drifting towards a burning ship, and some of us began towonder if we could swim back to the ship and get a biggerlifeboat which we could see on the after deck. And then fate decided for us. The lifeboat got full of water and overturned. Six of us got back to the ship. We got the lifeboat lowered into
the water, plugged up a leak with a blanket, lowered biscuits, water and two Jap women into the boat and set…………..

The diary finishes here in mid - sentence.




Top of page