504218 Surg. Lt. Deryck R. Syred Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve HMS Encounter My father, Surgeon Lieutenant Deryck R Syred RNVR, qualified as a medical practitioner in April 1940. He joined the Navy as soon as he was allowed to in July 1941 as Surgeon Lieutenant RNVR. He joined his ship, the Destroyer HMS Encounter, in January 1942 at Singapore.
His ship survived the First Battle of the Java Sea on 27th February 1942, but along with the famous cruiser HMS Exeter and the US destroyer USS Pope was sunk on the morning of 1st March 1942 in what I believe was called the Second Battle of the Java Sea. The ships had been trying to escape the Japanese, who far outnumbered them. Encounter's crew were ordered to abandon ship after she had run out of ammunition and had been disabled. After spending the rest of the day and all the following night clinging to a makeshift raft with eleven companions (one of whom was a Spaniel dog), my father was rescued by a Japanese destroyer. Most of Encounter's crew survived and were taken prisoner.
He was at first imprisoned at Macassar in the Celebes, but was transferred to Fukuoka No 2 POW camp in Nagasaki Harbour in October 1942, where he remained until the end of the war. He spent most of his time there caring for sick and injured allied prisoners, most of whom had to work in the nearby Mitsubishi shipyard under harsh conditions.
My father was listed as missing until March 1943, from which time he was in correspondence with his family, very intermittently, some letters taking over two years to reach their destination. He eventually arrived in England in November 1945 and was demobbed in September 1946. He died of a brain haemorrhage in 1954, shortly after his forty-first birthday.
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