SORTING sadly through my brother’s papers after his death, we got here across letters written by our father to our mother during his three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war within the Far East. My father, Eric Cordingly, was a Cotswolds rector who joined up as a padre in the course of the war, and was taken captive in Singapore in February 1942.
How extraordinary to carry a letter in my dad’s hand, written from Changi, on 16 August 1945, just in the future after the Japanese announced their give up!
He writes: “Last Friday we first heard through a secret radio we now have maintained that Japan might topple and since then we now have lived on the sting of a precipice wondering whether negotiations would undergo. . . No British troops have arrived. We wait and wonder with such impatience.
“We are still living within the gaol here in Singapore and have been for 15 months. Food is just not possible, rice and coarse green vegetables — but, Mary, I’m very fit, very thin and at present don’t have any energy but a couple of weeks of proper feeding and I’ll be terrific. I’m wearing a patched pair of khaki shorts and picket clogs and that has been our only dress for over two years.
“At 4 o’clock I am going to provide my final talk on Confirmation to a gaggle of 30 officers I’ve prepared. I’m wondering how long it’ll be before we see the Union Jack flying as an alternative of the hateful Jap flag.”
HIS letters are very vivid, with assurances that, despite the privations, he’s fit and well, and, above all, longing to return home. “I don’t think I could have kept going for those who weren’t at home waiting for me — prayers do work don’t they darling!”
He tells my mother that he was capable of work flat out as a padre with never lower than three or 4 thousand to take care of, each officers and men. “I even have built five different churches here and have, apart from a couple of exceptions, had a every day celebration of Holy Communion and this has been a terrific help. I even have never had such a busy time as these past three-and-a-half years — on a regular basis doing padre’s work in a way that was never possible before — so I even have not gone to seed.
“Life has been pretty grim in patches, especially the yr I spent in Thailand within the Jungle camps constructing the railway.” In his war diary, he records that he buried over 600 young men who died from the brutal conditions working on the development 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 hundreds of other POWs from Thailand. To his enormous disappointment, he wasn’t capable of take a flight back home immediately, but as an alternative launched into MV Empire Pride, sure for Liverpool.
As he drew closer to home, he began to plan for his return. “I don’t have any kit, all was lost in 1942 except my haversack with my prayer book, robes, and communion kit. My watch was sold with a view 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 primary Sunday after I return”.
“I’m eager for the Rectory and also you — the straightforward 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 hassle me much. I hope the apple trees have produced some fruit — I’m just longing to taste an apple again and a few good easy dishes that I used to like.”
IN A final letter written on 28 September, he reports that the little ship he’s on is dashing along since the captain desires to beat the opposite ships to achieve England first. “I don’t think I’ll get a probability to write down so the following thing you’ll hear is my voice and higher still I shall hear yours. . .”
They docked in Liverpool on 12 October. He met my mother at Birmingham railway station, they usually took the train home to Cheltenham together.
And so began the return to “normal” life for hundreds of ex-Far East POWs. Many of them were so traumatised by their experiences that they suffered from PTSD and nightmares for the remainder of their lives. That is why we, the relatives of the FEPOWs ask for them, and the just about one third of their number who died, to not be forgotten.
Eric Cordingly was consecrated Bishop of Thetford in 1963.
A two-minute silence will probably be held on Friday 15 August to mark the eightieth anniversary of VJ Day and the top of the Second World War. cofepow.org.uk
