SORTING sadly through my brother’s papers after his death, we came across letters written by our father to our mother during his three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in the Far East. My father, Eric Cordingly, was a Cotswolds rector who joined up as a padre during the war, and was taken captive in Singapore in February 1942.
How extraordinary to hold a letter in my dad’s hand, written from Changi, on 16 August 1945, just one day after the Japanese announced their surrender!
He writes: “Last Friday we first heard through a secret radio we have maintained that Japan might topple and since then we have lived on the edge of a precipice wondering whether negotiations would go through. . . No British troops have arrived. We wait and wonder with such impatience.
“We are still living in the gaol here in Singapore and have been for 15 months. Food is just impossible, rice and coarse green vegetables — but, Mary, I am very fit, very thin and at present have no energy but a few weeks of proper feeding and I’ll be terrific. I am wearing a patched pair of khaki shorts and wooden clogs and that has been our only dress for over two years.
“At 4 o’clock I go to give my final talk on Confirmation to a group of 30 officers I’ve prepared. I wonder how long it will be before we see the Union Jack flying instead of the hateful Jap flag.”
HIS letters are very vivid, with assurances that, despite the privations, he is fit and well, and, above all, longing to return home. “I don’t think I could have kept going if you were not at home waiting for me — prayers do work don’t they darling!”
He tells my mother that he was able to work flat out as a padre with never less than three or four thousand to look after, both officers and men. “I have built five different churches here and have, except for a few exceptions, had a daily celebration of Holy Communion and this has been a terrific help. I have never had such a busy time as these past three-and-a-half years — all the time doing padre’s work in a way that was never possible before — so I have not gone to seed.
“Life has been pretty grim in patches, especially the year I spent in Thailand in the Jungle camps building the railway.” In his war diary, he records that he buried over 600 young men who died from the brutal conditions working on the construction of the Thai-Burma railway.
THEN, from Singapore on 6 Sept 1945, he writes his first letter as a free person, now safely in British hands and hoping shortly to be on his way home. His departure was chaotic, but, with an hour’s notice, he was told he could fly to Rangoon, where he joined thousands of other POWs from Thailand. To his enormous disappointment, he wasn’t able to take a flight back home immediately, but instead embarked on MV Empire Pride, bound for Liverpool.
As he drew closer to home, he began to plan for his return. “I have no kit, all was lost in 1942 except my haversack with my prayer book, robes, and communion kit. My watch was sold in order to keep alive in these last months; my ring was lost trudging through the Jungle in Thailand.” And he asks my mother if she could get his cassock and surplice cleaned “because I expect I shall appear in church on the first Sunday after I return”.
“I’m longing for the Rectory and you — the simple things — vegetables from the garden I’ve been dreaming about for years — and an egg — it’s years since I had one. Rationing won’t bother me much. I hope the apple trees have produced some fruit — I’m just longing to taste an apple again and some good simple dishes that I used to love.”
IN A final letter written on 28 September, he reports that the little ship he is on is dashing along because the captain wants to beat the other ships to reach England first. “I don’t think I’ll get a chance to write so the next thing you’ll hear is my voice and better still I shall hear yours. . .”
They docked in Liverpool on 12 October. He met my mother at Birmingham railway station, and they took the train home to Cheltenham together.
And so began the return to “normal” life for thousands of ex-Far East POWs. Many of them were so traumatised by their experiences that they suffered from PTSD and nightmares for the rest of their lives. That is why we, the relatives of the FEPOWs ask for them, and the almost one third of their number who died, not to be forgotten.
Eric Cordingly was consecrated Bishop of Thetford in 1963.
A two-minute silence will be held on Friday 15 August to mark the 80th anniversary of VJ Day and the end of the Second World War. cofepow.org.uk
