THREAD/ Yesterday was VJ Day, so I'm slightly late to the party and am also somewhat out of my comfort zone but I'd like to tell the story of a supporter of my local football club @CAFCofficial @CHATHMuseum who we discovered purely by chance last year via a thread on one of...

the supporters' messageboards @CharltonLife. The man's name was Vic Wilson (pictured) of Charlton, who served in 118 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery. Vic's name first came to light when he was quoted by a supporter as having been mentioned in a book called "Bamboo & Bushido"

written by a fellow southeast Londoner, Alfred Allbury from Greenwich, who served in the same regiment. 118 Field Regiment was a TA battery, based at Grove Park in southeast London, which upon mobilisation in 1939, moved to the main Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich.

Allbury first mentions Vic in the narrative as "...an unprincipled rogue with a delightful wry sense of humour and a healthy hatred of the war that kept him from his wife and young baby back in Charlton." At this point, the regiment was in England, having moved to Eastbourne in

January 1940 on coastal defence duties as part of the anti-invasion defences of the south coast. At this point, they were equipped with a mixture of 18 pdr field guns of 1914-18 vintage, as well as some 4.5" howitzers of similar vintage. In June 1940, a move to the Norfolk coast

saw them re-equipped with 75mm guns supplied from the USA, whilst yet another move in September 1940 to Worstead saw the regiment re-equipped yet again, this time with the iconic 25 pdr field guns. Yet another move followed in January 1941 to the Scottish Borders and it was at..

is at this time that the Regimental War Diary first mentions the possibility of a deployment to a tropical climate, with training being arranged accordingly. a further move to the Staffordshire area in April 1941 saw this training continue and it is interesting to note that...

these preparations were taking place in excess of eight months prior to Japan's entry into the war. The regiment sailed for the Far East well before Japan's entry into the war and left from the Clyde on 30 October 1941 for Singapore. The convoy CT 5 proceeded to Halifax, Nova

Scotia, where the men were transhipped to six large American troop transports under the guise of Convoy WS 12X, which took them via Cape Town to Bombay, where they completed their voyage to Singapore, arriving in mid-January 1941. By this time, the situation in the colony was..

probably already lost but the regiment were nonetheless heavily engaged. Alfred Allbury wrote of the final hours before the surrender on 15 February 1942 "My co-driver Vic Wilson and I sallied forth on nightly excursions to ammunition dumps scattered around the island."

"no transport could survive ten minutes on the road by day. Once our 15cwt was loaded, we had to deliver the shells to our guns. This called not so much for a knowledge of map reading as for the gift of clairvoyance. Jap planes and the unsuitability of the terrain for...."

"artillery positions kept our battery commanders roving the island in a desperate search for potential gun-sites. Those found and occupied were speedily made untenable by the sustained accuracy of the Japanese counterfire."On the morning of February 14th the first tentative..."

"shells landed among our supply-dumps. They quickly found the exact range + soon a searing bombardment developed that sent us scuttling into our fox-holes. The Japs were ranging on us from heights that overlooked the town. Bukit Timah was theirs after the bloodiest of struggles,"

"the reservoir was stained crimson with the blood of those who had fought so bitterly to hold it, and the little yellow men whom we had ridiculed and despised were in swarm across the island. It was already theirs. "Next morning Vic and I set off on a last mad jaunt taking..."

ammunition to ‘A’ Troop who were dug in behind a Chinese temple to the north of Racecourse Road. Vic drove like a maniac. He had, I found, been sampling a bottle of ‘John Haig’. We thundered along deserted roads, pitted and scarred with bomb craters. Wrecked and burnt vehicles.."

"lay everywhere, strewn at fantastic angles. The trolley-bus cables hung across the road in desolate festoons which shivered and whined as we raced over them. A few yards from the charred remains of an ambulance were a knot of troops gathered round a cook’s wagon. From them we.."

"scrounged a mug of hot tea and found out the guns of ‘A’ Troop were only a few hundred yards distant. We delivered our ammunition and an hour later rejoined Battery HQ close by the Raffles Hotel. But late that afternoon came the news that we had surrendered. There was to be a"

cease-fire at four o’clock. We had fought and lost. And the ashes of defeat tasted bitter. At three o’clock all but a few of the guns were silent. Ammunition had been expended. From the hills there still came the occasional bark of a Japanese gun followed by the whine and crash"

"of its shells. But by six o’clock, save for the spluttering of flames and the occasional explosion of ammunition, all was quiet over the island of Singapore. The carnage of the last ten days was quieted now, and in eerie silence our troops sat huddled together in puzzled but..."

"fatalistic expectancy. Vic and I returned to our lorry, ate some tinned bacon and biscuits and stretched ourselves luxuriously for our first uninterrupted sleep for many days. We took off our boots, smoked, talked and listened to the distant caterwauling of the Japanese."

"“They’ll probably,” said Vic “be crawling round us in the night, cutting off our ears." But we stretched out and slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted, while around us into the tropic rose a barbaric and discordant dirge: the victory song of the triumphant Japanese."

Apart from one small group of nineteen from 118 Field Regiment who managed to escape by small boat and arrived safely in India in April 1943, the vast majority of the regiment were at first imprisoned in Changi Jail. Amazingly, a nominal roll was kept and inspection of this..

reveals that of the 744 men who went into captivity, some 188 died whilst POWs. Many died from disease and malnutrition but many died from appalling treatment at the hands of their guards, who had zero regard for Allied POWs. One entry typifies this simply by the statement..

"Cause of death: Fractured skull caused by rifle butts". From Changi, most of the regiment were later shipped to Thailand to work on the infamous Burma Railway and it was here that Vic Wilson's story ends on 27 July 1943, with the cause of death in the Nominal Roll being recorded

as "Died of Beri-Beri" at Sonkrai. At the time of the initial enquiry on the Charlton Life messageboard, we didn't even know if Vic was an Addicks' fan, or whether he even liked football but after some initial digging, I discovered that Vic had a daughter called Valerie, who we

can see looking slightly grumpy in the photo taken with Vic in the back garden of the family home in Inverine Road, Charlton, which is clearly showing some signs of bomb damage. Valerie was still living in the local area, so I dropped her a line + a few days later, was delighted

to receive a phone call from her. A long chat revealed that Vic was indeed a football fan who had attended matches at The Valley before the war and furthermore, despite being very young when her Daddy was killed, she promised to send me some photographs, which came a few months

later, courtesy of her great grand daughter and her husband. In one of our phone conversations, Val had told me that her Mum, Violet had told her much about her late Dad and mentioned that Val had many of his characteristics and it was clear that although she was very young when

he went overseas for what proved to be the final time, Valerie often thought of her Dad. Vic Wilson was one of the many thousands who didn't live to see VJ Day and today rests at the CWGC cemetery at Thanbyuzat in Myanmar. His memory lives on with his family as well as his wider

other "family" of Charlton supporters, who will remember our own "unprincipled rogue" as well as all those who gave their all in the war against Japan./END