The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A Whaplode St Catherine woman has kept the promise to her dad by getting his memories of being a prisoner of war in Sumatra published in a book.
After John Geoffrey Lee (known as Geoff) failed to find a publisher for his novel in his lifetime, daughter Christine Bridges vowed to ensure her dad’s story lived on.
Taking his own writings and details of conversations with her husband Eddie started back in the 1970s, POW on the Sumatra Railway has been published by Pen and Sword Books, 20 years after Geoff’s death.
“He wrote his book in the 1990s with two fingers on a typewriter,” Christine said. “After many rejections he never saw it in print as he died in 2002 and I promised him I would have his book published and finally I have fulfilled that promise.”
Geoff lived in Nottingham all his life and joined the RAF on his 20th birthday in June 1941.
He left Liverpool on a troop ship in December 1941, with no idea where he was going.
He eventually arrived in Java with the RAF 84 Squadron, where he was captured by the Japanese, along with many others.
During his time in captivity, he survived several camps in Java, Ambon and Singapore and three hell ship journeys.
After being washed ashore in Sumatra (as a ferry he was being transported on blew up), he was then recaptured and suffered sheer hell as a slave on the Sumatra Railway. Enduring bouts of malaria, beri beri, tropical ulcers and a starvation diet was bad enough, but this was exacerbated by the searing heat and extreme cruelty meted out to the prisoners by the Japanese and Korean guards.
Geoff miraculously survived, weighing just six stone when he arrived back in Liverpool in December 1945.
After his release he found he had difficulty in convincing people where he had been as no one had heard of the Sumatra Railway, only the other one, thousands of miles away in Burma.
Letters to newspapers were returned as ‘just another Burma Railway story’.
The Ministry of Defence, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and The Imperial War Museum had no records of POWs building a railway in Sumatra.
Geoff took it on himself to persuade them it did happen, getting in touch with other prisoners and visiting Sumatra in the 1980s to gather proof.
Christine, who moved from Nottingham five years ago to be near her daughter Dawn and her family, said:
“It is truly amazing to get my dad’s book published. Since my dad died in 2002 myself and my husband Eddie were unsure how to proceed with the book, but two years ago I approached Pen and Sword and it was accepted.
“Seeing all his work and photographs, taken so long ago, turned into a book is beyond words and I’m so proud we have at last got it published.
“His amazing story needed to be told. My dad would be smiling too. It’s 20 years since he died and he would have been 101 on June 26 this year.”
