Starved and left to drown by Japanese
David Hogg
JOHN Etiemble was shelled, starved and left to drown by the Japanese 60 years ago.
Wide-eyed and keen to see more of the world, he had joined the Royal Artillery in 1937 as a bugler straight from school and was posted to Hong Kong when he was only 15.
As war broke out in Europe Hong Kong was put on battle stations. The Japanese were "expected to be trouble" because of their ruthless behaviour in China, which they had invaded in 1937.
When the inevitable Japanese attack on Hong Kong arrived in December 1941 the 12,000 British and Commonwealth defenders, armed with little more than rifles and machine guns and with no air support, faced a total Japanese force of more than 60,000.
Mr Etiemble was by then trained as an artillery battery planning room operator. As the Japanese advanced the coastal defence guns he directed were swivelled 180 degrees to face the infantry onslaught. The British infantry pulled back and the enemy was so close that the artillery barrels were lowered parallel with the ground.
"To be honest I never panicked," said Mr Etiemble, of Market Weighton, East Yorkshire.
"I always had a feeling that I was going to survive. But they knew our gun positions and they shelled us as they drew nearer. We got a bit of a pasting."
With true British understatement he added: "There were casualties.To see some friends killed was a bit heart-breaking."
The Japanese rampaged through Hong Kong, raping nurses and even shooting injured men as they lay in their hospital beds.
Mr Etiemble only came face-to-face with the Japanese when his unit surrendered. He blew Retreat and the Last Post on his bugle and then stamped it flat into the ground in frustration at the British capitulation.
The survivors were marched to a detention camp at Sham Shui Po. There the food was basic and the prisoners were fed only rice. When officers complained that their men were not receiving enough vitamins the Japanese brought in a bus-load of chrysanthemums and the British were told to eat them instead.
"Not very good," said Mr Etieble, "but a bit of a change."
The death rate was high among the prisoners as dysentery took hold. A Brit-ish bugler who had blown the Last Post every time someone died in the camp was told to stop because it became too depressing.
Eventually on September 25, 1942 a total of 1,816 PoWs, including Mr Etiemble, were loaded into the troop ship Lisbon Maru ready for the journey to mainland Japan. They were kept in three separate holds in dark, humid conditions.
Worse was to come. At 7am on October 1 a large explosion tore through the ship's hull. It had been struck by a torpedo launched from an American submarine.
The Japanese handed down three candles and a four-man pump to the British in their hold and said: "If you want to live - you pump."
The hatches were locked behind them.
But the weakened men could not pump for too long and the Lisbon Maru began to sink. Thankfully an officer managed to get one of the hatches open and the prisoners began to spill from the heavily listing ship.
He added: "I was lying on the deck as the ladder to the hold broke. I was the last one out. I heard an Irish gunner in the hold shout 'We can't get out; let's give them a song'. That was the entire regiment gone."
The trapped PoWs sang It's a Long way to Tipperary as the vessel sank. In total 846 men herded on to the Lisbon Maru perished.
The Japanese shot many soldiers in the water and had hoped that all the PoWs would die. But luckily a number of Chinese ships arrived and began to pick up some of the survivors.
When the Japanese saw this they knew their cover story would not be believed and decided to reverse their course of action and assist the men in the water.
Mr Etiemble was picked up after six hours by the Japanese and taken to Shanghai docks, where he was told he and his men were supposed to have "died like rats in a trap".
He was transferred to a prisoner of war camp in Osaka, where he remained until freed by the Americans at the end of the war.
Now 82, he bears no ill feeling towards modern Japan.
"I can reconcile with the Japanese now," he said. "The passage of time helps. I know that the Japanese were terrified of their government and I think blame lies with their Emperor."
©2005 Johnston Press New Media