Antiques of war
To mark VJ Day 80, Fiona Bruce focuses on some touching family treasures
Jonathan Ford
- Robin Parker
- , Sherna Noah
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For Fiona Bruce, who is presenting an Antiques Roadshow VJ Day special on BBC1 (Sunday), the personal artefacts on display are “like a lightning bolt through to the past”. They include a baby shoe carried as a good luck charm by a soldier through the jungle, and a chess set made by a prisoner of war.
It follows several AR war specials, including a VE Day edition in May. Why are these objects — belonging to the families of those who served in the Second World War — so poignant? As well as reminders of individual bravery, the items are often “humble and personal”, says Bruce. “When we think of conflict, it’s about hardware, death and destruction; you don’t think of a soldier carrying around one of his baby’s shoes in his ammunition pouch.”
Soldier Jack Jennings made a chess set from balsa wood while a PoW on the Thai-Burma Railway (known as “the Death Railway”). “Somewhere in all the cruelty and starvation, someone was trying to reclaim some of their individuality and humanity,” says Bruce. “We know what desperate privations those men suffered.”
She ends the programme with a moving message: “To all those who endured years of suffering and captivity, soldiers and civilians, and those who gave their lives — you are not forgotten.” It’s a powerful statement: “This is a period of the war many people know very little about. I hope this is our small way of paying tribute and sharing what we know about that time, so we don’t forget.” SHERNA NOAH
Chindit bush hat, training manuals and medals
BBC
Ernie Wainwright. Contributor: Anthony Wainwright (son)
The Chindits (a unit of British, Indian, Nepalese and Burmese troops in the Burmese jungle) endured what’s been described as some of the most intensive hand-to-hand combat ever faced by the British military. A gruelling six months left Ernie Wainwright three stone lighter, toothless, and with typhus.
Whenever his son Anthony asked about the war, Ernie would get out his bush hat — a sweat-stained memento more prized than any medal. “Dad was incredibly proud of the unit, and the hat had strong significance,” says Anthony. Ernie’s experiences had long-term effects, too. “He’d had to be very quiet in the jungle, so he crept around everywhere. He’d wake up at the click of a finger — if you overslept, the column would move on without you.”
Baby shoes
Stanley Spriggs. Contributor: James Spriggs (son)
In pride of place in the family museum in James Spriggs’s shed, assembled after the death of his father Stanley in 2002, sits a pair of baby shoes — one significantly more discoloured than the other.
James wasn’t even born when his dad went off to fight; while Stanley was waiting to go into Burma in 1944, his wife sent him one of their son’s shoes as a lucky charm. Miraculously intact, after surviving in an ammunitions bag through months of monsoons, the shoe was reunited with its partner when Stanley returned home in January 1946.
This is James’s earliest memory: “I was three, in a dingy blacked-out station full of steam engines and soldiers, and suddenly told, ‘This is your dad’. I later saw in a family photo that he’d lost five stone due to malaria and, unlike me and my mum, he had a suntan.”
Chess set
BBC
Made by Jack Jennings. Contributors: Carol and Paul Barrett (daughter and son-in-law)
Jack Jennings taught his daughter Carol to play chess using a set he’d crafted himself while he was a PoW in Thailand; their final game together was three years ago, when he was 102. “He loved to play — and he loved to win,” she says. But Jack was plagued by nightmares all his life and only began to confront his past after attending reunions and publishing his memoirs. “When my sister and I were growing up, he hid it all from us. We’d rifle through his drawers and read his wartime letters to Mum.”
When Jack died at 104, he was believed to be the last surviving PoW who’d worked on the Thai- Burma Railway. The previous year, BBC News reported from his 103rd party. Carol says: “By then, he’d got a lot of pleasure from being a bit of a celebrity!”
Rangoon gazette
Thomas Ruddle. Contributors: Pete and Andy Ruddle (sons)
When Pete and Andy Ruddle found a 1941 copy of the Rangoon Gazette among their late father Thomas’s belongings, they were struck by its bold declaration: “Japan at War with Britain & US”. Pete had it framed and hung it up. But the significance of its date, 8 December 1941 (one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor), eluded them until they brought it to Antiques Roadshow.
Thomas was based in Burma with the RAF Signal Corps and, as far as the brothers can piece together, was a wireless operator. “He was a 19-year-old boy in the middle of the war, then he came back and carried on as if nothing had happened,” says Andy. “He never spoke about the war at all. I wish I’d been able to talk to him about it.”
Japanese flag
BBC
Walter Taylor. Contributor: Mark Taylor (son)
On the advance into Burma and Mandalay, Walter Taylor, a gunner with the 19th Infantry Division — the “Dagger Division” — saw this Japanese flag tucked into the tunic of a dead soldier. Adorned with messages in Japanese by the village priest, including what are thought to be words of goodwill, to Walter the flag was poignant.
After he returned to civilian life, it became “a vehicle to express his feelings about the war, which he wouldn’t otherwise easily divulge”, says his son Mark, who treasures an account his father wrote about his time in Burma for his family.
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Walter joined the Army at 17 and wrote that he had seen “man’s actions at their worst and best”, and said, “My profound hope is that in your lifetime you may never know total war." Interviews by ROBIN PARKER
Authors
Robin Parker
Sherna Noah
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