A small percentage
are of those who fought in battle
just prior to the capitulation on
15th February 1942 or those
who gave their lives to set
free those thousands upon thousands
of men who suffered and died
agonising deaths by the barbaric
and inhuman acts inflicted upon them
by their captors.
If there is one
thought that stands out in the
human mind upon seeing these
cemeteries for the first time
and gazing over a sea of
thousands of small white head stones,
it is that all these men
did not die as soldiers, they
did not die fighting for their
lives, they did not die fighting for their
king or country - they died
as Prisoners of War, they died
in miserable squalor, in filth,
starving, ill, beaten, diseased and
treated as slaves. In
these conditions their lives were
burnt out, they stood no chance against
the evil and black hearted enemy who
were their tormentors.
This was the fate
of these hundreds and thousands
of young men in their prime, condemned
to lie forever in the scorched
baked earth in far off lands.
They lie in peace, in
beautifully maintained cemeteries lovingly
cared for by local gardeners. But
the thought remains, they should
never have died, they were young
men given no chance and
yet their country has never honoured
them.
May the cemeteries
that guard these broken bodies be
blessed for they have in their
care the divine souls of our
fathers and brothers. We, the Children
and Families of the Far East Prisoners
of War, will remember them forever.
