A wet but poignant day.

A special day at Rocks by Rail Museum even though we were fighting the weather and the resultant drainage problems.

Today is the 80th anniversary of Singapore falling to the Japanese during World War 2. As a result 80,000 Allied service personnel were captured and taken as Prisoners of War. My Uncle was one of those. The stories of the brutality and hardship that those service personnel went through are countless. One in four did not survive the three and a half years they were held to tell those stories. 

Rocks by Rail is the home of steam engine Singapore which is a registered war memorial. It was captured by thr Japanese and put to work in the docks at Singapore and even to this day still has bullet holes in it from when the Japanese first landed. There are further details of the locomotive on the Rocks by Rail website located here.

I attended a short remembrance today at the Museum where the locomotive took its place as a war memorial to all those involved in the Singapore campaign. I was priviledged that my Uncle's son, my cousin and his wife were able to attend and we could remember together what my Uncle and all those with him went through. WE laid orchids on the locomotive which apparently is the alternative poppy as those do not grow in the Singapore area but orchids do.

My Uncle was lucky and came home but the experience of those three and a half years no doubt affected his and his comrades lives for ever. I have the greatest respect and gratitude for them all. Let us hope we never again experience such wars which given current issues in Ukraine is something that is even more pertinent today.