Jock Ferrie WX5217 wrote to ‘Borehole Bulletin’ April 1972 from 16 Thompson Street, Belmont.
to Secretary, Percy Tompkins –
‘I enjoy reading the Borehole and often have to shake the memory box on various names, places, etc.
You will remember the time I hit the Jap guard with a shovel at the golf course, Singapore. We were a good crowd and comrades at the Burma Railway camps and early days at Changi.
One thing I will never forget was a few days after we entered Changi, two fellows, I don’t know if they were 2/4th or othersiders. Two Jap guards came along, ordered the chaps over to them, they did not want me, they wanted the other two because one had beautiful red hair, the other was blonde.
The Japs made them drop their pants and walk around them, looking at their hair. Our boys must have felt awful, hands up in the air and two of our Lee-Enfields pointing at them!
I have been retired for some time and take things quietly, fill in a bit of time playing an organ, a great way of passing time.
As time goest by, many of our mates pass on.
Yours,
Jock Ferrie’
We don’t know what the outcome of Jock Ferrie hitting the Japanese guard. Was he punished? Or did the POWs push the guard into the hole they were cementing?
We do know of an incident where some 2/4th were with a work party in Singapore and a similar incident occurred – a POWs assaulted a Japanese guard – the group quickly pushed his body into the area they were cementing and the guard was never seen again. When other Japanese asked after him, the POWs responded they did not know and pleaded ignorance – hinting perhaps he had gone off to find a woman which was not uncommon at that time.
Was Ferrie’s story the one and the same story as above?????
We may never know.