Letters to the Author The surrender in Java, 1942 I have just read that incredibly moving and very sad story ‘Spice Islands Hell’ in the book Seventy Years On. The fate of Dennis Moppett as a POW of the Japanese was unfortunately shared by thousands of other European, American and Asian people between 1942 and 1945 and a lot earlier by the unfortunate Chinese. However, what I found astonishing about Dennis’s preserved letters is how little they convey of the hatred he and his fellow prisoners must have felt for their captors who held them in such inhuman conditions. Maybe he was wary of his letters being discovered and then him being punished for recording the ill treatment. Or perhaps the letters were his way of escaping from the horrors of the camps to live again, at least via the written word, in happier times in and around his Sussex home. At one point, concerning the British and Dutch surrender on Java, he wrote: ‘This is a bit different from France … the whole of the RAF was just ordered to sit down and wait like a lot of sheep for their captors to come. It was little use trying to get to the coast as you can’t swim 1000 miles. Before the Dutch capitulated we were making for a boat and but for one or two of the usual blunders that get made, we should probably be sailing back to Blighty now.’ The fate of the RAF men on Java is well documented in the 1954 HMSO book Royal Air Force 1939 – 1945. After the fall of Singapore, those forces that had evaded capture or destruction fell back on the islands of Sumatra and Java where reinforcements of aircraft and troops bound for Singapore were also diverted. Sumatra is a huge island, 1000 miles long and proved impossible to defend although the RAF and Australian airmen put up a good fight before being overwhelmed by Japanese attacks that included a parachute landing at Palembang airfield in mid-February. Orders were given for the Allies to retreat to Java. The RAF ground staff were told to go by sea from Oesthaven. Unfortunately, the Dutch authorities at the port had panicked and hastily set about destroying all the military equipment and supplies they could lay their hands on. The situation was further aggravated by a stubborn British Military Embarkation Officer who insisted his orders were to confiscate and destroy all the RAF motor transport, anti-aircraft guns, ammunition and equipment. Even spare Hurricane engines were left behind. It meant the ground staff sailed to Java with just the uniforms they stood up in and very little else. In fact the Japanese did not enter Oesthaven until three days after the evacuation. Three-pronged invasion fleet By 18 February over 10,000 men from various air force and army units had arrived on Java, to find the island’s defenders already in confusion. Available to fly against the enemy were 18 Hurricanes, 12 Hudsons and 18 Blenheims. In subsequent raids against Japanese shipping at Palembang, they reported sinking a 10,000 ton vessel. But the Japanese could not be stopped and a three-pronged invasion fleet was soon approaching Java. An Allied naval force led by the Dutch Admiral Dorman attempted to intervene on 27 February but outnumbered and outgunned, the entire fleet was sunk in the Battle of the Java Sea. The Allied air force was also quickly worn down. A US carrier bringing P40 fighters as reinforcements was bombed and sank. The last RAF action took place on 5 March when two Vildebeest torpedo bombers attacked an airfield on Java just occupied by the Japanese. With the enemy closing in, the colonial Dutch military and civilian authorities now wanted to submit to the inevitable and surrender before their towns and plantations were destroyed and more lives were lost. The Dutch tried to seize British military vehicles. A British officer later wrote: ‘I was in command that last morning of a big convoy with all the remaining spare arms and equipment of the RAF in Java. We practically had to fight our way through the mess to prevent lorries being forcibly stopped, and then get them, according to our orders, up on the hill roads where we understood - poor mutts – that at last we would have another go at the Nips.’ It was obvious Java must fall and soon. With the indigenous Indonesian population hostile to their Dutch masters, the latter would not take to the hills to mount a last ditch defence or begin a guerrilla war. The Allied Commander-in-Chief was General ter Poorten who made no secret of his view that the British should give up at the same time as the Dutch laid down their arms. An effort was made to evacuate as many RAF personnel as possible. Priority was given to aircrew and technical staff and some 7000 got away by sea from several ports. Then there were no more ships. British in terrible quandary Granted that the Dutch air force and navy had fought bravely and sustained very heavy losses, the same could not be said of the Dutch land forces who showed a marked reluctance to take on the Japanese. At 8am on 8 March, ter Poorten made a radio broadcast announcing that all organized resistance in Java had ceased and that the troops under his command were to lay down their arms. The British commanders had not even been consulted and at first considered fighting on. But they found themselves in a terrible quandary. Should they continue the struggle and disobey their nominal commanding officer then the Japanese might well consider the British to be in breach of international law with summary execution facing captured combatants. With no air cover, no heavy weapons and food and ammunition in short supply, the British concluded they too must also surrender. On 12 March they signed terms with the Japanese who undertook to treat all prisoners under the terms of the 1929 Geneva Convention. The RAF History goes on: ‘Of course, no such treatment was forthcoming. How they subsequently fared can be gathered from a description of the arrival in Batavia two years later of a contingent of POWs which had been sent to work on airfields on Malayan islands. It was set down by an RAF squadron leader who survived the horrors of Java, horrors that were repeated in Malaya, in Siam, in Korea, in Japan - anywhere where the Japanese were in control of unarmed and defenceless men. Here is one of the few printable pages of a diary kept intermittently during his captivity and hidden from his gaolers: “Of all the sights that I would like to forget I think I would put first some of these returning island drafts being driven into Batavia . . . Imagine a series of barbed wire compounds in the dark with ourselves a gathering furtive stream of all races East and West, in every kind of clothing or none; here an old tunic in rags with a pair of cut down pyjama trousers, there a blanketed shivering malaria case or someone with night-blindness groping along with a stick, blundering over gypsy bundles of still sleeping prisoners. At the side runs a camp road with one high floodlight and all of us waiting to see if any of our friends have made the grade and returned. At last a long procession of stooping figures creeps down the road with jabbering Nips cracking at their shins with a rifle or the flat of a sword. Most of them half naked, and they were leading those going blind with pellagra. Others shambling along with their feet bound up in lousy rags over tropical sores (not our little things an inch across but real horrors), legs swollen up or half paralysed with beri-beri, enormous eyes fallen into yellow crumpled faces like aged gnomes. And then a search -God knows what for after months in a desert and weeks at sea. Some Jap would rush up and down hurling anything any of them still possessed all over the place, while as sure as the clock, the dreadful hopeless rain would begin again like a lunatic helplessly fouling his bed. Everything swilling into the filthy racing storm gutters; men trying to reach out and rescue a bit of kit and being picked up and hurled bodily back into the ranks; others clutching hold of a wife's photo or suchlike souvenir of home, small hope for the Nips always liked pinching and being obscene about a woman's picture. And at last after two or three hours when everyone was soaking and shivering with cold, the dreary, hunted column would crawl down the road out of the patch of light where the great atlas moths disputed with the bats, away into an isolation compound, with no light, no food, no knowledge of where to find a tap or latrine, with wet bedding or none at all. The Nips would disappear laughing and cackling back to bed, we faded away to our floor space and all was quiet again; and the evening or the morning was the eight or nine hundredth day and God no doubt saw that it was good.” Bestial behaviour towards POWs The RAF history continues: ‘In few respects does a nation show itself in its true colours more clearly than in its treatment of enemies who have the misfortune to fall into its hands. To describe as bestial the behaviour of the Japanese towards their prisoners of war of whatever race or rank is an insult to the animal world. ‘Of the thousands of RAF and Royal Australian Air Force officers and airmen who fell into Japanese hands in Malaya, Sumatra, Java and later Burma, 3462 only were found alive, after due retribution had fallen from the skies above Hiroshima upon the sons of Nippon. ‘Not by any means all the Air Force was captured in Java. Some, as has been related, were successfully taken by ship to Australia, and a small number to Ceylon. By good fortune a still smaller number escaped. Of these, the most remarkable was Wing Commander J R Jeudwine, commanding No 84 Squadron, which had lost the last of its Blenheims at the capture of their airfield at Kalidjati. Such pilots and ground staff as remained had been sent to the port of Tjilitjap, there to be taken by ship to Australia. No ship, however, was forthcoming; the port was in flames, and the Scorpion, the only seaworthy vessel to be found, was a ship's lifeboat capable of holding at most 12. To try to avoid capture by taking to the woods and jungles near the shore there to await rescue by submarine offered a slender chance. To seek that help in an open boat seemed certain death.	This is an actual map secretly kept by Dennis Moppett when he was a prisoner of the Japanese. Dennis died in captivity in January 1945 but the map and a whole series of letter he wrote to loved ones at home but never sent were preserved in a bamboo container that was presented to his family in Lewes, East Sussex, by POW survivors repatriated at the end of the war. It’s a map made by the Dutch colonialists who controlled most of the East Indies (present-day Indonesia) before the Japanese invaded. Java can be seen at the bottom left, just above the box with title CELEBES. Dennis drew on the map a number of lines depicting how he and his companions were taken from island to island constructing airfields for the Japanese. The POWs were kept in appalling conditions that got steadily worse as the Allies gained mastery of the sea and air in the region making it difficult for Japanese supply ships to get through. There was also the danger of ships carrying POWs being sunk by Allied aircraft as the Japanese did not generally display Red Cross signs. Jeudwine and 10 others chose this course and boarded the Scorpion. Flying Officer C P L Streatfield alone knew the elements of sailing; Pilot Officer S G Turner could handle a sextant and was chosen as navigator; the remainder of the crew was made up of another officer and seven Australian sergeants. On the evening of 7 March, they put to sea, bound for Australia which the navigator calculated would take 16 days. It took 47. Through all that time they never lost heart, though as day after day passed in blazing sun or torrential rain, the chances of reaching land grew smaller and smaller. Saturday night at sea was kept religiously, a ration of liquor being issued, which was found on closer investigation to be a patent cough cure. Their worst experience was the visit paid to them by a young whale, about twice the size of their boat, who came to rest lying in a curve with its tail under the boat. Eventually it made off, much to the relief of the men. At long last, they sighted land near Frazer Islet, were found by a Catalina flying boat of the US Navy, and taken to Perth. An American submarine sent at once to Java found no sign of their comrades. ‘Such men as these typify the spirit of the less fortunate who had fought to the end in circumstances which, from the very beginning, made victory impossible, and even prolonged defence out of the question. It was through no fault of theirs that they did not accomplish more.’ see new material about Dennis ... ALAN HUXLEY, UCKFIELD, EAST SUSSEX *Seventy Years On author David Arnold adds a postscript to this letter: One of Dennis Moppett’s letters as reproduced in my book (page 332) refers to heading for a port that turned out to be destroyed before embarking on a special troop train that he and his companions hoped would take them to another port. Dennis records how the train was ambushed and how the front party of the RAF men was on a bridge when it was blown up. Some were rescued but many died. My research on the web has uncovered the following account about a tragedy on Java on the night of 6 – 7 March 1942. I believe the story must be linked to the incident that Dennis experienced: ‘Following the heavy bombing of shipping at Tjiltjap there was now little hope of getting away by sea, so a considerable body mostly of unarmed RAF and RAAF men (about 2500), who had amassed at Poerwerkerta, about 30 miles inland from the port, were now to be moved westwards by rail. Their destination was Tasikmalaja airfield, 50 miles south east of Bandoeng. By the evening of 6 March two trains had arrived at Poerwerkerta, each made up of a few carriages and a number of freight vans, the first of which were carrying a load of high octane fuel and aircraft spares. This train, under the command of Wing Commander Ramsay Rae and packed with airmen, departed at about 7pm, heading south to the junction with the main east-west line at Maos, a short distance from the Serajoe river. The second train, with Wing Commander N Cave in charge, followed about two hours later but soon caught up with the slow moving first train. At least 600 airmen were packed on the two trains. At 10.15pm when seven miles north of the junction, near the trackside kampong at Sampang, the first train was ambushed by advanced units of the Japanese 56th Infantry Regiment. Attacking with mortars, machine guns and hand grenades, they blew several of the metal freight vans off the track, in one of which two airmen were killed while a number of others were wounded. S H Adcock, formerly of 152 MU, recalled: ‘We had been travelling for quite a while and started to cross an embankment - the doors of the wagons were open to give some fresh air - then we ran into an ambush. A shell burst in the freight van in front of ours, causing many casualties, and the young airman talking to me in the doorway fell dead at my feet, shot between the eyes. The driver and fireman jumped from the engine and let the train go. The rear wagons were full of oil and were blazing furiously. In one of the leading wagons was an airman who, prior to the war, was a fireman on the LMS railway, and when he saw the engine crew dive over the side, he climbed along to the engine and kept it going until it ran out of steam, as it had been damaged.’ Meanwhile the second train, forced to stop by the wrecked vans, also came under attack. The engine was hit, and there were further casualties amongst the airmen in the crowded carriages. F/Officer J Fletcher-Cook was ordered to proceed towards Maos in an endeavour to acquire a rail car in which the wounded could be conveyed. One party of 74 under Flt/Lt G Carr, including a dozen wounded, set off towards Sampang but ran into a Japanese patrol just after midnight and were forced to surrender; five of the wounded died. Other groups of survivors made their way southwards along the tracks towards Maos and after a march of two to three miles arrived at a deserted trackside farmhouse. Here the men were told that not far away was a river that had to be crossed via a railway bridge. Seven seriously wounded men were taken into some huts where it was intended they should remain, with two medical orderlies, until help arrived. The five-span steel railway bridge which crossed the Serajoe river at Kesogihan had a walkway to one side. The Dutch troops, whose duty it was to defend the bridge, had placed demolition charges and had orders to blow the bridge at midnight, a time now rapidly approaching. When the bridge was duly blown up there were RAF men actually on it. The centre spans collapsed into the river and there were many casualties. An unfortunate sequel was that the seven wounded airmen left lying in the huts could not be evacuated. Corporal Bob ‘Butch’ Finning of 84th RAF Squadron was one of the wounded: ‘There was a lot of blood around and fellows were moaning and some were in a very bad way and dying. We lay there for quite a time, then, as it began to get dark, I heard screams and yells from the shed next door. The Nips burst into our shed and began to bayonet the men on the floor. I knew it was curtains for me. I wriggled close to the poor bastard nearest me and lay on my side to take the thrusts on my arse and thighs. The screams from our blokes were terrible, but the Japs were as bad every time they lunged with their rifles. When they reached me I pretended I'd snuffed it!’ Finning was bayoneted several times but miraculously sustained no fatal injuries. He continued: ‘The light was fading inside the godown, thank Christ, and I managed to pull myself among a pile of corpses. I could still hear other Japs next door. Three or four of them came in and began to thrust at the people on the floor. I was lying on my wounded side and took another few jabs on my other side. I thought my time was up.’ By the time the Japanese patrol departed, Finning had suffered 14 wounds but somehow was still alive. When he thought it was safe, he dragged himself to a window and managed to tumble out and staggered off into the bush. He passed out and when he regained consciousness it was light. Although in great pain from his wounds and numerous insect bites, he was able to force himself further away from the scene of carnage, until he came to a river. This he managed to swim, although by now very weak from loss of blood, and lay exhausted on the bank; suddenly he became aware of half a dozen natives watching him. They dragged him to their kampong: ‘They jabbered around me, then decided to finish off what the Nips had started. They tied me up like a trussed chicken and put a rope round my neck to hang me. By that time I didn't care. They slung the end of the rope over the fork in a tree and hoisted me off the ground; I kept falling back down because I was heavy and they hadn't quite got the technique of doing the job. This time I was quite convinced I'd had my chips. They got me off the ground for about the forth time, my tongue was out and I was turning black and everything was spinning. Then I heard a car engine and they dropped me again. There was a loud yell and I heard them scatter and I vaguely made out a strange-looking bloke waving a bloody great sword around him and I made up my mind that I was going to be beheaded instead of hung.’ This Japanese officer was however his saviour. He had already picked up two other wounded airmen and now he cut Finning loose and put him in the car. All three were driven to a local POW camp full of Dutch prisoners. Finning eventually recovered. There was only one other survivor of this massacre, another RAF corporal, who had managed to escape unobserved from the hut before the murderous soldiers reached him.	Dear David I've just spent two hours scanning and cherry-picking articles from the book. It's brilliant. Every page has excitement and the use of those great artists Wootton, Shepherd,Taylor and McGill is wonderful. I read from the introduction to the acknowledgments and was struck by all the various coincidences. You've done a wonderful job and you deserve success with it, not least for all the memories that it will provide for all readers. My son had suggested I write in my blog about my experiences of the London Blitz - I was 5 at the time so my memories as I recalled them couldn't beat those that I read here. So even I can refer to this book for past experiences, well told. Continued success with it, David. Best of luck. PAT AND PETE BETTS, LAGUNA NUGUEL, CALIFORNIA * Pat and Pete Betts moved to California from London early in 2009. While out there they suggested that a friend of theirs, Marshall Goldberg, a Beverly Hills stamp dealer, should submit his memories of serving with George S Patton's US Third Army as it advanced through France to the German border in 1944. The result is the story "The Third Man" that appears on pages 311 and 312 of Seventy Years On. ‘A unique take on an evocative time’ Dear David I wanted to say how much I have enjoyed your book. I think the format is great. I have particularly liked reading the many personal accounts and observations / articles that were written at the time. The chronological war diary is very clever and I have found the historical content fascinating. I love the artwork too and the overall style and layout. It’s certainly a unique take on such an evocative time in our history. Thank you. STEVE WARD, SUSSEX

Letters to the Author

The surrender in Java, 1942

I have just read that incredibly moving and very sad story ‘Spice Islands Hell’ in the book Seventy Years On. The fate of Dennis Moppett as a POW of the Japanese was unfortunately shared by thousands of other European, American and Asian people between 1942 and 1945 and a lot earlier by the unfortunate Chinese. However, what I found astonishing about Dennis’s preserved letters is how little they convey of the hatred he and his fellow prisoners must have felt for their captors who held them in such inhuman conditions. Maybe he was wary of his letters being discovered and then him being punished for recording the ill treatment. Or perhaps the letters were his way of escaping from the horrors of the camps to live again, at least via the written word, in happier times in and around his Sussex home.

At one point, concerning the British and Dutch surrender on Java, he wrote: ‘This is a bit different from France … the whole of the RAF was just ordered to sit down and wait like a lot of sheep for their captors to come. It was little use trying to get to the coast as you can’t swim 1000 miles. Before the Dutch capitulated we were making for a boat and but for one or two of the usual blunders that get made, we should probably be sailing back to Blighty now.’

The fate of the RAF men on Java is well documented in the 1954 HMSO book Royal Air Force 1939 – 1945. After the fall of Singapore, those forces that had evaded capture or destruction fell back on the islands of Sumatra and Java where reinforcements of aircraft and troops bound for Singapore were also diverted. Sumatra is a huge island, 1000 miles long and proved impossible to defend although the RAF and Australian airmen put up a good fight before being overwhelmed by Japanese attacks that included a parachute landing at Palembang airfield in mid-February. Orders were given for the Allies to retreat to Java. The RAF ground staff were told to go by sea from Oesthaven. Unfortunately, the Dutch authorities at the port had panicked and hastily set about destroying all the military equipment and supplies they could lay their hands on. The situation was further aggravated by a stubborn British Military Embarkation Officer who insisted his orders were to confiscate and destroy all the RAF motor transport, anti-aircraft guns, ammunition and equipment. Even spare Hurricane engines were left behind. It meant the ground staff sailed to Java with just the uniforms they stood up in and very little else. In fact the Japanese did not enter Oesthaven until three days after the evacuation.

Three-pronged invasion fleet

By 18 February over 10,000 men from various air force and army units had arrived on Java, to find the island’s defenders already in confusion. Available to fly against the enemy were 18 Hurricanes, 12 Hudsons and 18 Blenheims. In subsequent raids against Japanese shipping at Palembang, they reported sinking a 10,000 ton vessel. But the Japanese could not be stopped and a three-pronged invasion fleet was soon approaching Java. An Allied naval force led by the Dutch Admiral Dorman attempted to intervene on 27 February but outnumbered and outgunned, the entire fleet was sunk in the Battle of the Java Sea.
The Allied air force was also quickly worn down. A US carrier bringing P40 fighters as reinforcements was bombed and sank. The last RAF action took place on 5 March when two Vildebeest torpedo bombers attacked an airfield on Java just occupied by the Japanese. With the enemy closing in, the colonial Dutch military and civilian authorities now wanted to submit to the inevitable and surrender before their towns and plantations were destroyed and more lives were lost. The Dutch tried to seize British military vehicles. A British officer later wrote: ‘I was in command that last morning of a big convoy with all the remaining spare arms and equipment of the RAF in Java. We practically had to fight our way through the mess to prevent lorries being forcibly stopped, and then get them, according to our orders, up on the hill roads where we understood - poor mutts – that at last we would have another go at the Nips.’

It was obvious Java must fall and soon. With the indigenous Indonesian population hostile to their Dutch masters, the latter would not take to the hills to mount a last ditch defence or begin a guerrilla war. The Allied Commander-in-Chief was General ter Poorten who made no secret of his view that the British should give up at the same time as the Dutch laid down their arms. An effort was made to evacuate as many RAF personnel as possible. Priority was given to aircrew and technical staff and some 7000 got away by sea from several ports. Then there were no more ships.

British in terrible quandary

Granted that the Dutch air force and navy had fought bravely and sustained very heavy losses, the same could not be said of the Dutch land forces who showed a marked reluctance to take on the Japanese. At 8am on 8 March, ter Poorten made a radio broadcast announcing that all organized resistance in Java had ceased and that the troops under his command were to lay down their arms. The British commanders had not even been consulted and at first considered fighting on. But they found themselves in a terrible quandary. Should they continue the struggle and disobey their nominal commanding officer then the Japanese might well consider the British to be in breach of international law with summary execution facing captured combatants. With no air cover, no heavy weapons and food and ammunition in short supply, the British concluded they too must also surrender. On 12 March they signed terms with the Japanese who undertook to treat all prisoners under the terms of the 1929 Geneva Convention.

The RAF History goes on: ‘Of course, no such treatment was forthcoming. How they subsequently fared can be gathered from a description of the arrival in Batavia two years later of a contingent of POWs which had been sent to work on airfields on Malayan islands. It was set down by an RAF squadron leader who survived the horrors of Java, horrors that were repeated in Malaya, in Siam, in Korea, in Japan - anywhere where the Japanese were in control of unarmed and defenceless men. Here is one of the few printable pages of a diary kept intermittently during his captivity and hidden from his gaolers:
“Of all the sights that I would like to forget I think I would put first some of these returning island drafts being driven into Batavia . . . Imagine a series of barbed wire compounds in the dark with ourselves a gathering furtive stream of all races East and West, in every kind of clothing or none; here an old tunic in rags with a pair of cut down pyjama trousers, there a blanketed shivering malaria case or someone with night-blindness groping along with a stick, blundering over gypsy bundles of still sleeping prisoners. At the side runs a camp road with one high floodlight and all of us waiting to see if any of our friends have made the grade and returned. At last a long procession of stooping figures creeps down the road with jabbering Nips cracking at their shins with a rifle or the flat of a sword. Most of them half naked, and they were leading those going blind with pellagra. Others shambling along with their feet bound up in lousy rags over tropical sores (not our little things an inch across but real horrors), legs swollen up or half paralysed with beri-beri, enormous eyes fallen into yellow crumpled faces like aged gnomes. And then a search -God knows what for after months in a desert and weeks at sea. Some Jap would rush up and down hurling anything any of them still possessed all over the place, while as sure as the clock, the dreadful hopeless rain would begin again like a lunatic helplessly fouling his bed. Everything swilling into the filthy racing storm gutters; men trying to reach out and rescue a bit of kit and being picked up and hurled bodily back into the ranks; others clutching hold of a wife's photo or suchlike souvenir of home, small hope for the Nips always liked pinching and being obscene about a woman's picture. And at last after two or three hours when everyone was soaking and shivering with cold, the dreary, hunted column would crawl down the road out of the patch of light where the great atlas moths disputed with the bats, away into an isolation compound, with no light, no food, no knowledge of where to find a tap or latrine, with wet bedding or none at all. The Nips would disappear laughing and cackling back to bed, we faded away to our floor space and all was quiet again; and the evening or the morning was the eight or nine hundredth day and God no doubt saw that it was good.”

Bestial behaviour towards POWs

The RAF history continues: ‘In few respects does a nation show itself in its true colours more clearly than in its treatment of enemies who have the misfortune to fall into its hands. To describe as bestial the behaviour of the Japanese towards their prisoners of war of whatever race or rank is an insult to the animal world.

‘Of the thousands of RAF and Royal Australian Air Force officers and airmen who fell into Japanese hands in Malaya, Sumatra, Java and later Burma, 3462 only were found alive, after due retribution had fallen from the skies above Hiroshima upon the sons of Nippon.
‘Not by any means all the Air Force was captured in Java. Some, as has been related, were successfully taken by ship to Australia, and a small number to Ceylon. By good fortune a still smaller number escaped. Of these, the most remarkable was Wing Commander J R Jeudwine, commanding No 84 Squadron, which had lost the last of its Blenheims at the capture of their airfield at Kalidjati. Such pilots and ground staff as remained had been sent to the port of Tjilitjap, there to be taken by ship to Australia. No ship, however, was forthcoming; the port was in flames, and the Scorpion, the only seaworthy vessel to be found, was a ship's lifeboat capable of holding at most 12. To try to avoid capture by taking to the woods and jungles near the shore there to await rescue by submarine offered a slender chance. To seek that help in an open boat seemed certain death.

This is an actual map secretly kept by Dennis Moppett when he was a prisoner of the Japanese. Dennis died in captivity in January 1945 but the map and a whole series of letter he wrote to loved ones at home but never sent were preserved in a bamboo container that was presented to his family in Lewes, East Sussex, by POW survivors repatriated at the end of the war. It’s a map made by the Dutch colonialists who controlled most of the East Indies (present-day Indonesia) before the Japanese invaded. Java can be seen at the bottom left, just above the box with title CELEBES. Dennis drew on the map a number of lines depicting how he and his companions were taken from island to island constructing airfields for the Japanese. The POWs were kept in appalling conditions that got steadily worse as the Allies gained mastery of the sea and air in the region making it difficult for Japanese supply ships to get through. There was also the danger of ships carrying POWs being sunk by Allied aircraft as the Japanese did not generally display Red Cross signs.

Jeudwine and 10 others chose this course and boarded the Scorpion. Flying Officer C P L Streatfield alone knew the elements of sailing; Pilot Officer S G Turner could handle a sextant and was chosen as navigator; the remainder of the crew was made up of another officer and seven Australian sergeants. On the evening of 7 March, they put to sea, bound for Australia which the navigator calculated would take 16 days. It took 47. Through all that time they never lost heart, though as day after day passed in blazing sun or torrential rain, the chances of reaching land grew smaller and smaller. Saturday night at sea was kept religiously, a ration of liquor being issued, which was found on closer investigation to be a patent cough cure. Their worst experience was the visit paid to them by a young whale, about twice the size of their boat, who came to rest lying in a curve with its tail under the boat. Eventually it made off, much to the relief of the men. At long last, they sighted land near Frazer Islet, were found by a Catalina flying boat of the US Navy, and taken to Perth. An American submarine sent at once to Java found no sign of their comrades.

‘Such men as these typify the spirit of the less fortunate who had fought to the end in circumstances which, from the very beginning, made victory impossible, and even prolonged defence out of the question. It was through no fault of theirs that they did not accomplish more.’

see new material about Dennis ...

ALAN HUXLEY, UCKFIELD, EAST SUSSEX

*Seventy Years On author David Arnold adds a postscript to this letter: One of Dennis Moppett’s letters as reproduced in my book (page 332) refers to heading for a port that turned out to be destroyed before embarking on a special troop train that he and his companions hoped would take them to another port. Dennis records how the train was ambushed and how the front party of the RAF men was on a bridge when it was blown up. Some were rescued but many died.

My research on the web has uncovered the following account about a tragedy on Java on the night of 6 – 7 March 1942. I believe the story must be linked to the incident that Dennis experienced: ‘Following the heavy bombing of shipping at Tjiltjap there was now little hope of getting away by sea, so a considerable body mostly of unarmed RAF and RAAF men (about 2500), who had amassed at Poerwerkerta, about 30 miles inland from the port, were now to be moved westwards by rail. Their destination was Tasikmalaja airfield, 50 miles south east of Bandoeng. By the evening of 6 March two trains had arrived at Poerwerkerta, each made up of a few carriages and a number of freight vans, the first of which were carrying a load of high octane fuel and aircraft spares. This train, under the command of Wing Commander Ramsay Rae and packed with airmen, departed at about 7pm, heading south to the junction with the main east-west line at Maos, a short distance from the Serajoe river. The second train, with Wing Commander N Cave in charge, followed about two hours later but soon caught up with the slow moving first train. At least 600 airmen were packed on the two trains. At 10.15pm when seven miles north of the junction, near the trackside kampong at Sampang, the first train was ambushed by advanced units of the Japanese 56th Infantry Regiment. Attacking with mortars, machine guns and hand grenades, they blew several of the metal freight vans off the track, in one of which two airmen were killed while a number of others were wounded. S H Adcock, formerly of 152 MU, recalled: ‘We had been travelling for quite a while and started to cross an embankment - the doors of the wagons were open to give some fresh air - then we ran into an ambush. A shell burst in the freight van in front of ours, causing many casualties, and the young airman talking to me in the doorway fell dead at my feet, shot between the eyes. The driver and fireman jumped from the engine and let the train go. The rear wagons were full of oil and were blazing furiously. In one of the leading wagons was an airman who, prior to the war, was a fireman on the LMS railway, and when he saw the engine crew dive over the side, he climbed along to the engine and kept it going until it ran out of steam, as it had been damaged.’

Meanwhile the second train, forced to stop by the wrecked vans, also came under attack. The engine was hit, and there were further casualties amongst the airmen in the crowded carriages. F/Officer J Fletcher-Cook was ordered to proceed towards Maos in an endeavour to acquire a rail car in which the wounded could be conveyed. One party of 74 under Flt/Lt G Carr, including a dozen wounded, set off towards Sampang but ran into a Japanese patrol just after midnight and were forced to surrender; five of the wounded died. Other groups of survivors made their way southwards along the tracks towards Maos and after a march of two to three miles arrived at a deserted trackside farmhouse. Here the men were told that not far away was a river that had to be crossed via a railway bridge. Seven seriously wounded men were taken into some huts where it was intended they should remain, with two medical orderlies, until help arrived. The five-span steel railway bridge which crossed the Serajoe river at Kesogihan had a walkway to one side. The Dutch troops, whose duty it was to defend the bridge, had placed demolition charges and had orders to blow the bridge at midnight, a time now rapidly approaching. When the bridge was duly blown up there were RAF men actually on it. The centre spans collapsed into the river and there were many casualties.

An unfortunate sequel was that the seven wounded airmen left lying in the huts could not be evacuated. Corporal Bob ‘Butch’ Finning of 84th RAF Squadron was one of the wounded: ‘There was a lot of blood around and fellows were moaning and some were in a very bad way and dying. We lay there for quite a time, then, as it began to get dark, I heard screams and yells from the shed next door. The Nips burst into our shed and began to bayonet the men on the floor. I knew it was curtains for me. I wriggled close to the poor bastard nearest me and lay on my side to take the thrusts on my arse and thighs. The screams from our blokes were terrible, but the Japs were as bad every time they lunged with their rifles. When they reached me I pretended I'd snuffed it!’

Finning was bayoneted several times but miraculously sustained no fatal injuries. He continued: ‘The light was fading inside the godown, thank Christ, and I managed to pull myself among a pile of corpses. I could still hear other Japs next door. Three or four of them came in and began to thrust at the people on the floor. I was lying on my wounded side and took another few jabs on my other side. I thought my time was up.’
By the time the Japanese patrol departed, Finning had suffered 14 wounds but somehow was still alive. When he thought it was safe, he dragged himself to a window and managed to tumble out and staggered off into the bush. He passed out and when he regained consciousness it was light. Although in great pain from his wounds and numerous insect bites, he was able to force himself further away from the scene of carnage, until he came to a river. This he managed to swim, although by now very weak from loss of blood, and lay exhausted on the bank; suddenly he became aware of half a dozen natives watching him. They dragged him to their kampong: ‘They jabbered around me, then decided to finish off what the Nips had started. They tied me up like a trussed chicken and put a rope round my neck to hang me. By that time I didn't care. They slung the end of the rope over the fork in a tree and hoisted me off the ground; I kept falling back down because I was heavy and they hadn't quite got the technique of doing the job. This time I was quite convinced I'd had my chips. They got me off the ground for about the forth time, my tongue was out and I was turning black and everything was spinning. Then I heard a car engine and they dropped me again. There was a loud yell and I heard them scatter and I vaguely made out a strange-looking bloke waving a bloody great sword around him and I made up my mind that I was going to be beheaded instead of hung.’
This Japanese officer was however his saviour. He had already picked up two other wounded airmen and now he cut Finning loose and put him in the car. All three were driven to a local POW camp full of Dutch prisoners. Finning eventually recovered. There was only one other survivor of this massacre, another RAF corporal, who had managed to escape unobserved from the hut before the murderous soldiers reached him.

Dear David

I've just spent two hours scanning and cherry-picking articles from the book. It's brilliant. Every page has excitement and the use of those great artists Wootton, Shepherd,Taylor and McGill is wonderful. I read from the introduction to the acknowledgments and was struck by all the various coincidences. You've done a wonderful job and you deserve success with it, not least for all the memories that it will provide for all readers.

My son had suggested I write in my blog about my experiences of the London Blitz - I was 5 at the time so my memories as I recalled them couldn't beat those that I read here. So even I can refer to this book for past experiences, well told. Continued success with it, David.

Best of luck.

PAT AND PETE BETTS, LAGUNA NUGUEL, CALIFORNIA

* Pat and Pete Betts moved to California from London early in 2009. While out there they suggested that a friend of theirs, Marshall Goldberg, a Beverly Hills stamp dealer, should submit his memories of serving with George S Patton's US Third Army as it advanced through France to the German border in 1944. The result is the story "The Third Man" that appears on pages 311 and 312 of Seventy Years On.

‘A unique take on an evocative time’

Dear David

I wanted to say how much I have enjoyed your book. I think the format is great. I have particularly liked reading the many personal accounts and observations / articles that were written at the time.

The chronological war diary is very clever and I have found the historical content fascinating. I love the artwork too and the overall style and layout. It’s certainly a unique take on such an evocative time in our history. Thank you.

Letters to the Author

The surrender in Java, 1942

Three-pronged invasion fleet

British in terrible quandary

Bestial behaviour towards POWs

see new material about Dennis ...

ALAN HUXLEY, UCKFIELD, EAST SUSSEX

Dear David

PAT AND PETE BETTS, LAGUNA NUGUEL, CALIFORNIA

‘A unique take on an evocative time’

Dear David

STEVE WARD, SUSSEX

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