The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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214753 Sgm. Valiant Bond British Army Royal Corps of Signals sflynn Add to this record.  Additional Information: Never was a man so aptly named. At just 20 years old Valiant was captured at the fall of Singapore. After a brief spell in Changi he was transported overland in letter party X on 25.10.42. He slaved as part of work group 2 on the Thai Burma Railway until he was returned to Singapore on 8.6.44. On 4.7.44 he sailed aboard the Hofuku Maru bound for Japan. The ship developed engine trouble and put into Manila for repairs. The ship remained there for a month but the POWs were compelled to stay aboard. Conditions were terrible and many died. The ship sailed again but was torpedoed and sunk off Bataan on 21.9.44. 950 POWs were lost but Valiant survived and eventually arrived in Japan on 11.2.45 aboard the Enoshima Maru. His final camp was Fukuoka 17b at Omuta. This was a coal mine where the work was hard and the conditions terrible. Valiant was liberated on 15.9.45. He travelled on an unknown ship to Manila where he boarded HMS Implacable bound for Esquimalt in Vancouver. Arriving 11.10. 45 Valiant then crossed Canada by train to Nova Scotia to catch the Ile de France bound for Southampton. He finally reached home on 31.10.45. What a remarkable young man he must have been to survive such terrible events. Glenda Godfrey Reply Related Content: Fukuoka 17 Prisoner of War Camp Royal Signals Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.