British veteran’s coffin to be draped in Republic of China flag, honouring 1942 rescue

Four officers from the Taiwanese military will drape the flag of the Republic of China over the coffin of a British officer who has died in Leeds, 77 years after Nationalist Chinese troops came to the aid of his beleaguered unit in Burma. 

Gerald Fitzpatrick, who served as a captain in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, died on August 27 at the age of 99. His funeral is due to be held in Leeds on Thursday. 

Mr Fitzpatrick wrote two books detailing his wartime experiences in the Far East - “Ditched Burma: No Mandalay, No Maymyo, 79 Survive” and “Chinese Save Brits - In Burma” - and had repeatedly expressed his desire to have his coffin draped in the flag of the Republic of China - the official name for Taiwan - at his funeral, the Taipei-based Central News Agency reported. 

Mr Fitzpatrick joined the British Army in October 1939, at the age of 20 and was initially trained as a sapper in the Royal Engineers.

In his memoirs, Mr Fitzpatrick recalled while training at Folkestone seeing massed German bombers approaching London in the summer of 1940 and being engaged by RAF fighter aircraft. 

Posted to Burma in November 1941, Mr Fitzpatrick endured the demoralising British retreat from south-east Asia in the face of determined attacks by troops of the Imperial Japanese Army - and wrote that he lost one-third of his body weight in the space of 11 weeks. 

By April 1942, some 7,000 British troops had been cut off in the oil fields of Yenangyaung, in central Burma, and were surrounded by Japanese units.

Senior British officers appealed to Nationalist Chinese forces for assistance and Major General Liu Fang-wu was ordered to lead a relief mission at the head of the 113th Regiment of the Chinese Expeditionary Force. 

After two days of intense fighting, the Nationalist forces broke through the Japanese lines and helped to evacuate the surviving British troops. 

During a visit to Taiwan in 2013, Mr Fitzpatrick told local media of his gratitude for the intervention of the Nationalist Chinese units and remained in contact with officers from the Ministry of National Defence for the rest of his life. 

After hearing of Mr Fitzpatrick’s death, Defence Minister Yen De-fa asked Taiwanese military officers presently studying in Britain to pass on his condolences to the family and sent a Republic of China flag to Mr Fitzpatrick’s wife, Patricia. 

Four of the officers are due to attend the funeral and will drape the flag over the coffin, CNA reported. 

The Republic of China has been the official name for Taiwan since the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government fled there from the mainland Communist regime immediately after WW2.

The current flag bears the nationalist KMT logo and is controversial in some quarters as other national flags have historically been flown on the island democracy.