JOHN HAROLD HENRY COOMBES (My 1st Cousin 1 rem)

28 Dec 1906 - 18 Feb 1978

 

PRE WAR

John was born in Guernsey on 28 Dec 1906. He attended Elizabeth College in Guernsey walking

4 miles each day to and from school. At the school he was captain of athletics and also played for

the football and hockey teams. He also played cricket and took part in shooting besides being a

prefect and Sergeant in the Officers Training Corps.

 

John was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st Battalion Guernsey Light Infantry. There was conscription in Guernsey and he did 2 month yearly training during his vacations from Pembroke College at Oxford University.

 

In 1928 he suffered from pneumonia right at the time of his degree exams which he was unable to take. Instead of returning for a fifth year at Oxford he went to Sudan working as inspector at a cotton plantation. Whilst in Sudan he learnt to read and write Arabic and applied to join the Sudan Civil Service. He was turned down, so he became a prep school master at £90 a year.  He then went back to university to Oxford in 1935 and gained his BA. He got a job as a Geography & French Teacher at a private school whilst working for his MA, which he obtained by 1939.

During this time in 1936 he married Alice Wilkinson in Lambeth London and he was in the Army Reserve and a Lieutenant in the Supplementary Reserve.

 

WAR YEARS

When war broke out John was immediately mobilised and made Captain in the Royal Artillery Regiment and went to France with the advance party of the British Expeditionary Force. He was captured at Dunkirk but escaped to England.

 

In 1941 he was posted as a 2nd Lieutenant and sent to Malaysia. On 8th Dec 1941 he was Command of the 330 Artillery Battery of 137 Field Regiment to join the 11th Indian Division at Jitra Malaysia. On 11th December the Battle of Jitra started. The battle was between advancing Japanese forces and the allied forces which consisted of the 11th Indian Division, 15th Indian Infantry Brigade, 1st Battalion Leicester Regiment, 1st Battalion 14th Punjab Regiment, 2nd Battalion 9th Jats , 6th Indian Infantry Brigade and 2nd Battalion Guerka Rifles. Artillery support came from the 155th field regiment, 22nd Mountain regiment and the 80th Anti Tank regiment.

 

The British front line was 14 miles long. Columns sent out to try and delay the advancing Japanese were routed and on 11th December the Battle for Jitra commenced. It lasted until 13th December by which time the 11th Indian Division had suffered heavy losses. They had lost the equivalent of nearly three Battalions of infantry (a battalion was 845 men). The Japanese 5th Division captured Jitra and a large quantity of allied supplies.

 

After the war John wrote a book which was published titled “The Banpong Express” I will use some quotes from the book to highlight his thoughts and experiences.

 

Quote From Banpong Express

“Perhaps it would be well if the tragedy of the Malayan Campaign were never completely

written, the whole sequence of events was so incomprehensible to the fighting soldier,

that he gave up trying to reason why. Certainly a full explanation of what happened must

bring to light many blunders. It has been said that Malaysia was lost before the first shot

was fired. It is easy to suggest now that had we withdrawn to Johore and sacrificed Malaysia

and concentrated on the defence of Singapore the tale might have been vastly different”.

 

CAPTIVITY & CHANGI

By Feb 1942 John was in Singapore having been part of retreating troops from Jitra the year before. On the night of 15th February along with other personnel he was at the house of Professor Johns in Mandalay Road which served as the HQ and Mess.

 

Quote from Banpong Express

“In groups, the glow from a hundred cigarettes penetrated the dark and the low murmur of reminiscence and speculation rose on the warm night air. The atmosphere was very peaceful following days and nights of continuous bombardment.

Before noon next day the rumour was abroad of a staff car laden with “brass hats” moving swiftly up the Bukit Timah Road with a white flag from it’s radiator cap. Sure enough by 3pm came sickening confirmation in the form of a written order from Div HQ to cease fire at 4pm. The capitulation came as a complete shock to most of the regiment. That night we slept like the dead and awoke with realisation that although we had been prisoners for many hours, we had yet to see our captors. They arrived in the middle of the morning”

 

The captured British forces consisted of about 1600 men and they were taken to Changi POW Camp. Changi was one of the more notorious Japanese prisoner of war camps which was used to imprison Malayan civilians and Allied soldiers. The treatment of POW’s at Changi was harsh but fitted in with the belief held by the Japanese Imperial Army that those who had surrendered to it were guilty of dishonouring their country and family and, as such, deserved to be treated in no other way. In total 40,000 men were marched to the camp after the surrender of Singapore.

The Japanese made it clear that they had not signed the Geneva Convention and they ran the camp and prisoners as they saw fit.

 

Quote from Banpong Express

We settled down to a routine existence of parades, meals and leisure time. Our scanty meals popped up at the appropriate times by virtue of what miracles and resource and initiative the cookhouse staff alone could tell. Leisure hours were occupied by a variety of sports and recreational activities that would have made a model YMCA green with envy. Every meal included rice which caused one of the POW’s to write the following:

 

RICE (anonymous POW)

 

There’s an article of diet

That’s enough to cause a riot

You’d agree if you’d  just try it

It is Rice

 

It’s a culinary winner

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

And your tummy won’t get thinner

On this Rice

 

You can boil it, you can bake it

You can grind it, mould it, cake it

But no matter how you fake it

Still it’s Rice

 

You can fry it up with gammon

You can mix it with tinned salmon

Even lots of strawberry jam on

Won’t change Rice

 

When you wake up in the morning

You won’t do the usual yawning

As another day is dawning

On this Rice

 

Even if you’re Diabetic

It will make you quite athletic

It’s the perfect diuretic

Is this Rice

 

Ladies when the war is over

Bells will ring from York to Dover

If you want to be in clover

Don’t serve Rice

 

All your days can be quite palmy

When you’re man comes from the army

But three words will send him barmy

“Have some Rice”

 

Very soon at Changi one of the barracks was turned into a hospital and quickly filled up to overflowing. Men had been fighting for months and low bodily resistance soon caused disease to spread. Dysentery, Beri Beri (lack of vitamin B), Dengue fever,  Malaria, Ringworm, Septic Ulcers, & Diptheria were all common, but despite this the death toll in the first 6 months at Changi was surprisingly low at 400 out of the thousands taken there.

 

On 20th June John was amongst a party of 600 men including 50 officers who were put on a train to Bangkok.  This journey would take 100 hours in terrible conditions.

When they arrived they joined 600 other men who had arrived two days earlier and together they formed the first camp in Siam (now Thailand). They were allowed 5 bamboo huts to live in that had previously been occupied by 200 Japanese soldiers (40 per hut) but for the POW’s it meant 240 men per hut.

 

Quote from Banpong Express

Life at Banpong was pretty good hell. Every morning after roll call we had to march three and a half miles to our work. This consisted of clearing banana groves, levelling the ground and then building huts to make a Japanese barracks with a POW camp beside it. The whole area of the operation was about 2 miles square. As the camp grew, more POW’s were brought to Siam. From July 1942 to January 1945 the average camp strength was 2,500 varying from 1,200 to start up to over 7,000 at one short peak period. The POW’s consisted of British, Dutch, Australian and some Americans and at the peak period many had to sleep underneath the huts on the bare ground (the huts were raised above the ground on short stilts). Over a 125 week period admissions to hospital by most common diseases were: Malaria 9,605, various dysentery complaints 920, Colitis 772, other conditions included peptic ulcers, appendicitis, fevers & tonsillitis. The drugs and equipment provided by the Japanese were highly illuminating included 30 bandages a month, Iodine ½ a litre a month, tablets of various types about 50 – 100 each a month.

 

After building the POW camp the next work included building the new railway line.

The Burma – Siam railway became known as The Death Railway and is immortalised in the film “Bridge on The River Kwai”. It was a 258 mile railway running from Ban Pong in Thailand to Thanbyuzayat Burma. The line was closed in 1947.

 

Jungle camps were set up as the line progressed and conditions became worse and the number of deaths increased. At Thakenun in June there were 200 deaths from cholera. At Wanyai Camp the mud was 12 to 18 inches deep. The Japanese stated that the railway would be completed by August 1943 irrespective of the loss of life of POW’s.

 

Quote from Banpong Express

The sight was appalling, walking skeletons by the score, even a Japanese interpreter murmured “The Men from Hell”. Most of the original 1,200 were sent to jungle camps to work on the railway many would never return. One of the most frightful cases on record was a working party which included several men with dysentery marching several miles to their work. Some fell out for obvious reasons. The Japanese NCO halted the party and made them dig pits and buried the defaulters up their necks. There they were left in the sun, with ants to bite them above ground and goodness knows what irritation and torture below for twelve hours or more until the work party returned and they were allowed to haul out the survivors.

 

In the book Banpong Express there are many similar tales of hardship and torture as John and the other POW’s were held until the Japanese surrender in 1945.

 

On 5th December 1946 John was Mentioned in Dispatches for his conduct in the Malay campaign

 

AFTER THE WAR

After returning to the UK in 1947 he wanted to join the Royal Artillery as a regular soldier but was turned down due to his age. Instead he took up the post as Captain in the Royal Army Education Corps. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  In 1951 he obtained the rank of Colonel. In 1953 he received an ERD (Emergency Reserve Decoration) and in 1954 went back to Singapore as Chief Army Education Officer Far East. His area covered Borneo, Honk Kong, Korea, India, Nepal and Malaya. In 1956 his work was recognised when he was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately disaster struck in 1956 when he was involved in an accident in which he struck and killed a pedestrian with his car in Singapore. On 1st December 1956 he received a $500 fine but the Deputy Public Prosecutor appealed against the sentence as being too lenient and on 5th February 1957, John was given 6 month prison sentence. He resigned from the army on the same day as his prison sentence was announced.

 

On 28th March 1958, following his time in prison, he became the First Principal of the Petaro Cadet College in Pakistan where he remained until 1965. He is fondly remembered and highly regarded by ex cadets of the college

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He spoke to Mirza Ashfaq Baig one of his cadets in Pakistan and when asked about his experiences as a POW John Coombes said “A guest of the Japanese I worked as a coolie building railways and met Malays, Chinese, French, Americans, Dutch, and Indians who were also coolies and talked to them and liked some of them and had the equivalent of a second Oxford education. That was the compensation of my three and a half years in the “Shadow of Death”

 

FINAL YEARS

In 1968 he became the Deputy Director of the Diocesan Board of Education Southwark London where he looked after Church of England Schools in London & the Home Counties. In 1974 he suffered a stroke in Kent at his home which he called Petaro, that same year he married his second wife Elsie Annie Coombes.

 

John died of a heart attack on 18 Feb 1978 at Ashford Hospital.

 

This amazing man, my first cousin once removed, had lived such a full life, I just wish I had met him.

 

 

(My grateful thanks to the Petaro Cadet College Pakistan for some of this information especially the article by Mirza Ashfaq Baig)