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Throughout October 1945 the Gazette was full of reports, stories, photographs and accounts of treatment of returning 137 Regiment Gunners. It was also reporting on the return of Troops via Liverpool. Maj Gill went to meet comrades on the ‘Boissevain’ and ‘Empire Pride’, along with those few who had already arrived home. The welcome was tumultuous as the ships pulled alongside.
Amongst the accounts of the fall of Singapore, one story recounted by Rawlins & Duncan in their 1972 book ‘And the Dawn Came Like Thunder’ recorded the dreadful experiences, conditions and hellish life of PoWs, including those of 137. It was based in part on the personal experiences of Bill Duncan. Flower (1996) questioned Duncan’s account and dismissed it as unfounded since ‘Duncan was never a PoW in the Far East’.
Others tell of the bayoneting of hospital staff, patients and doctors by Japanese Soldiers. Another account makes the case in favour of the dropping of the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima & Nagasaki in August of that year.
Some years later, the Gazette reported that the National FEPOW Conference held their annual dinner and Ball at the Norbreck Castle in, when the Ballroom entrance was dressed to look like a Japanese Guardhouse, complete with Guards in uniform. I can only hope that the revellers found the idea funny, if ironic.
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