H.B. Browne - St Mary - Yaxley, Suffolk - Specific Veteran Memorials on Waymarking.com

Memorial to H.B Browne of the 84th Squadron RAF in St Mary's church, Yaxley.
A framed story of his time as a POW in Palembang, and small brass plaque:
'To the Glory of God and dedicated to
the memory of Harry Basil Browne
1920 - 1999'

"In Japanese Hands
•
H.B. Browne of 84th Squadron R.A.F. was only 21 when he was captured by the Japanese in 1942. He enlisted in 1941 and saw service in Iraq and the Western Desert.

On January 1st, 1942 his squadron was instructed that they were going to the Far East (Singapore) via Suez and Ceylon.

They landed just as it fell to the Japanese. They were then taken to Sumatra and eventually the Japanese caught up with them and they were taken prisoner in Batavia after the Dutch capitulated on March 17th, 1942.

In May 1942 they were taken to Surabaya where there was a fleet of ships (Japanese) waiting to take them Ambon. Their task there was to maintain Haruku airstrip. About 7,000 prisoners died there, either from Allied bombing, starvation, typhoid, beri-beri and pellagra.

They were then moved all round Java. In July they were taken to Pekanbaru. On the way, they were torpedoed by an American ship - 1,450 people drowned and only 300 survived. Basil was in the water for twelve hours (the ship was the Junyo Maru). Basil escaped because he waited until the panic was over and then slid down a rope into the sea. Other Japanese ships eventually picked them up and then pushed a lot of them overboard again to drown. On this occasion Basil hid behind a ventilator and so was forgotten.

They were then taken to Palembang, and there they worked on the railway till the end of the War.

Pekanbaru Railway work consisted of carrying sleepers and driving rivets into sleepers from 6 a.m. until 8p.m. with a short break during the day for a smoke of rice and leaves from the jungle.

Many cruel acts were carried out during this time and many more prisoners died and others got thinner and thinner.

On 15th September, 1945, after the 'Bomb' on Hiroshima, suddenly all the Japanese guards vanished and the prisoners were left on their own, weak, ill and some of them unable to stand.

When the Allies found them they stooped all over evacuating to get these men out.

Lady Mountbatten came to visit them, and Basil remembers her crawling over the beds containing smelly stinking bodies of prisoners to speak to them and shake their hands.

He has high praise for Lady 'Edwina'.

About a dozen paratroopers were dropped to help the prisoners to get ready to move from the camp. First questions prisoners asked were 'Who won the F.A. Cup?' and 'Who is the Prime Minister?'

The Allies dropped tins of food that first day and the prisoners opened them and ate until they were sick and the everyone was taken to hospital in Singapore.

After a recuperation period, they were put in a boat for home. At Liverpool they encountered a dock strike, but waiting relatives and friends helped to unload all their luggage. Basil recalls that as they came down St. George's Channel, one prisoner died; sadly he had not quite made it.

They were then taken to hospital in Wolverhampton."

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