“Thank God for the atomic bomb” said one Suffolk Regiment veteran in 1995. Certainly my own grandfather agreed with that statement for as he once said to me ‘by the summer of ‘45, I was pretty much done’ Let me tell you a little of his story...(1/20)

...My grandfather, Ron Forsdike was a member of the 4th Battalion, the Suffolk Regiment. He joined the TA in 1938 at the time of Munich, as he thought that war was inevitable and that he wanted to do something stop it...(2/20)

...Sadly however, his war was not be in Europe, but on the other side of the world where on 15th February 1942, he and the rest of the 18th (East Anglian) Division, were captured at Singapore...(3/20)

...What followed was three and a half years of captivity that saw he and his colleagues suffer brutal treatment at the hands of their Japanese captors...(4/20)

...The first few months he said were quite tolerable. Clearing the rubble from the bombed buildings in Singapore, then helping to build another runway on the airfield, before he was tasked to work on a memorial to the Japanese victory over the British...(5/20)

...Being a bricklayer by trade, his work was ‘enjoyable’ but after a hard day, they were marched back to their quarters in the old gaol at Changi. Here 18 men were crammed into to a cell designed for just 4...(6/20)

...It was hard work and sleeping was in shifts, with his pillow being the concrete hath around a steel pillar. Food was unusual...(7/20)

...his diet consisted of rice, interspersed with vegetables and if he was lucky, a little raw fish. A far cry from the British rations he come to know. These are his mess tins that he kept all throughout his captivity...(8/20)

...Later, in early 1943, the Japanese moved them up country to start building a railway through Thailand. Here was where it got tough, and here was the great black hole in his memory of which he didn’t talk much...(9/20)

...It must have been really bad time for him. The torture, the beatings and starvation, but he spoke little of it. He recalled his best mate Steve Girling being bayoneted through the forearm when he couldn’t get up one morning...(10/20)

...and of the time that he spent in the camp hospital, after his collarbone was broken by a Japanese rifle butt. The doctor had no plaster, so mud from the river was used instead with bamboo as support...(11/20)

...He also recalled carefully saving the maggots he taken out of the ulcer on Sgt Woolnough’s leg to be used by the next man who had an ulcer...(12/20)

...Then there were the highlights. The tin of peaches he and Steve found in Singapore in an abandoned officers bedroll, that they saved for 10 months and had as their Christmas dinner in Changi...(13/20)

...and the bribe of a brand new pair of white canvas tennis shoes from the Japanese if he’d join the draft to work in the coal mines in Formosa. No thanks was his reply...(14/20)

...All in all, grandad had a tough and not very glorious war, but he had that inbuilt strength that all Suffolk soldiers have, that kept him going through it all, even when all hope of liberation seemed to desert him...(15/20)

...Without the atom bomb being dropped, he probably not have survived, and maybe I would not be here today...(16/20)

...but today whilst commemorating all those who didn’t make it back, and all those who fought so hard in the Far East to defeat the Japanese, I will be celebrating my grandads war service and the spirit he had to keep fighting through and make it to the end...(17/20)

...I’ll open a bottle of brown ale later-his favourite drink, and I’ll sit down and remember him. Of days spent in his garden and helping him in his greenhouse. Of teaching me how to use a 3” mortar at the Suffolk Regt. Museum...(18/20)

...and most importantly of that magic spark he gave me to learn more about his old regiment and it’s history...(19/20)

...Thanks grandad, I miss you lots and there was much more I wished to ask you, but never had the courage to do so, but you are not forgotten today, nor any other day, and neither are any of your pals in the Suffolk Regiment.(20/20) #VJ75 #VJDay75 #notforgotten #FEPOW