Jack's War - One Man’s Return from the River Kwai

 Author: John Simpson

John Henry (Jack) Simpson was called up in late 1939 and found himself in the Royal Army Service Corps as a truck driver. After witnessing some of the Battle of Britain in Kent, he was put on a convoy to the Middle East, only to be redirected to Singapore en route. After only a matter of weeks he was one of the many British POWs taken at the fall of Singapore in February 1942.

 

Suffering from beriberi, dysentery and delirium, he was lucky to survive the Burma–Thailand Death Railway, coming very close to dying, before pulling through and volunteering to go on a draft to Japan at the recommendation of an Allied Doctor and knowing his mother would like to see him again.

 

In September 1944, as part of a draft of Allied POWs on their way to Japan for use as forced labour, his ship was mistakenly torpedoed by the US Navy in the South China Sea. After 36 hours in the sea, at first left to die by the Japanese, he was finally rescued, one of those few who survived. After a desperate journey in an ex-whaler in the hands of the Japanese, he finally made it to Moji in Japan for the next chapter in his incarceration.

 

Taken to Sakata in north-east in Japan, he was there when the two atomic bombs were dropped some 400 miles away, witnessing the hysteria and shock of what had happened further south.

 

Jack made it home to his home city of Nottingham in the middle of the night to be greeted by his mother with the words “where have you been, you naughty boy?” Against the odds, he lived into the 21st century. As a consequence, his personal war continued for the rest of his life owing to ill-health.

 

This modest man’s story is worthy of retelling to a wider audience. In 1991, he sat down with his nephew on camera to tell his story for posterity. Thirty-five years later, this has now been turned into a book by his nephew John, and deservedly so.

 

John Simpson first started to write books at the time of the Covid lockdowns. Jack’s War is his fifth book following a murder mystery novel and three volumes of the history of Lympne Airfield, near Hythe in Kent, the former site of aviation in his home village today.

​

TTP04 A5 portrait, 76 pages, 90 photos, RRP £10.00