Cited in Practical Christianity No 203, Mar-Apr 1960, pages 15-17, published by the Officers’ Christian Union, now the Armed Forces’ Christian Union.
Within three weeks of being in action on the Malayan peninsular, some 60,000 of us were captured by the Japanese on Singapore Island on 15 February 1942. At the time of capture, I had a New Testament in my possession, which my father had in the 1914-1918 war and given to me by my mother when I entered the Services. Little did I realise the impact this small book would have on my life during this term of internment.
After a few months the Japanese moved us to Thailand for a ‘rest cure’. We found we were to build a railway linking the existing lines from Bangkok to Rangoon through the thickest jungle where white men had not ventured. Our part in the railway was to build a bridge across the river Kwe Noi. After a number of months hundreds had lost hope and were dying daily from cholera, beriberi and other diseases. Within nine months the entire railway linked Burma with Thailand, but at the cost of 15,000 lives.
During all these months my only reading matter was my New Testament, which I found helpful and interesting as I read a few verses each day. It was taken away by the Japanese several times but always returned after censorship.
By 1945 my New Testament was beginning to look very tattered but on one particular day I was compelled to stop and read a verse over and over again. It was Luke 4:25, part of which runs “when the heaven was shut for three years and six months when great famine was throughout all the land.” The words shone out – but why should they? The Lord had directed me to this verse, and I soon realised that only a matter of two months remained before the expiry of 3½ years as a POW. In faith – I don’t know how – I took this simple word from the Lord, praying and trusting that we would in some way be free men when 3½ years had expired. Finally, the last day of that period came – 15 August 1945 – and with it a challenge, for a special party of several hundred men were called out in the morning to build another airstrip several miles away. This looked anything but hopeful. However, I held on in faith and during the afternoon the party returned unexpectedly, and at 5pm we dashed to the centre of the camp as we heard for the first time in 3½ years a British bugle-call. It was Freedom.
God had kept His promise to the actual day, and many of us thanked God that night for freedom. But how many today, thirteen years later, remember to praise the Lord for His deliverance?
*Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/@mkaynarfoto