Roy Cornford - Red cross parcels and letters from home

Transcript

Roy Cornford:
We used to get the news, and know that the war was going our way, and it was while we were at Saigon, we'd left Saigon, they brought us back up on the ferry, back up to Cambodia. And it was there in the camp that night we heard from the French people that Germany had surrendered. And of course Japan still took us from there back to Bangkok, brought us all the way down through Malaya back to Singapore. And they were still going to win the war on their own.

And when we were in Singapore waiting for a ship to go to Japan, they took us from there out to a small island where they used to take us ashore every day off this small island to work on some dry docks that the Japanese were building ready for their ships.

Then one day they just said, "All men pack." And they brought us back to Singapore and back to River Valley Road and we only spent one day there. And it was the next morning, they issued us with our first Red Cross parcel. But it was one parcel between five men. And it was there that they gave us our first mail. And a lot of people got a lot of letters and some got none. I got five and I got a fifth share of a Red Cross parcel.