A radio programme, my uncle and a story still too difficult to retell despite the passage of 72 years

Roger Hall 1938

The death of my uncle in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in 1943 was rarely talked about in our family.

Nor is it something I have been keen to explore.

It happened on the other side of the world to a man who was just 21 years old and who had already been close enough to the Manchester  Blitz to observe the glare in the sky from the burning buildings, had escaped the Fall of Greece and been at the wrong end of German bombs in the Middle East.

I knew of course the main outline of the story, how from Basra his squadron had been sent to the Far East only to be captured by the Japanese pretty much as they landed.

My grandparents never referred to the incident and mother said little but remained bitter at what she thought was a betrayal by Churchill who she held responsible for sending them out there knowing the situation.

And now as I write this I am a full twelve years older than my mother when she died, just ten years younger than my grandmother when she died and have grown up sons who are older than my uncle when he died, all of which should offer some perspective.

Added to which I have many of my uncle’s letters, some of his pictures and a large amount of official documents from the first telegram announcing that he was missing to the letter of condolence from the King and much more including letters written by other POWs to my grandmother.

Air raid, Greece 1941

But despite all that documentation, the passage of more than 70 years, and my daily preoccupation with researching and writing about the past this is a story I don’t seem to be able to go near.

It is as if the very act of writing about his life and especially that period in a POW camp is too intrusive and so it remains undone.

Not that his story ever really goes away and yesterday it all came bubbling back to the surface with the repeat of a radio programme on the experiences of four men who were also captured by the Japanese.

They were taking part in that excellent radio series The Reunion where a group of people are reunited to talk about a shared event.*

84 Squadron, date unknown

In a sense it made me confront the issue and unlike TV documentaries I have tried to watch brought me closer to my uncle and what he had to endure.

But I am no nearer wanting to write the story which in one sense is a little odd, given that I have tried to bring many of the family out of the shadows and celebrate their lives.

Perhaps this is one that will stay unrecorded.

Such can be the events that happened a full seventy-two years ago.

Pictures Roger Hall, 1938, Greece Roger Hall,1941 and 84 Squadron date unknown, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Far East Prisoners of War, The Reunion, BBC Radio, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b05rl3j8