During the conflict in Malaya and Singapore his regiment lost two thirds of its men. More than three hundred patients and staff in the Alexandra Military Hospital were slaughtered by the Japanese - he was one of the few survivors still alive today. Twenty six percent of British soldiers slaving on the Burma Railway died. More than fifty men out of around six hundred died aboard the Asaka Maru and the Hakasan Maru. Many more did not manage to survive the harshest Japanese winter of 1944/45, the coldest in Japan since record began
