War Veteran Slept On Dead Bodies To Stay Dry

A war veteran held captive by the Japanese has told Sky News how he slept on dead bodies to stay out of the mud during monsoons.

Fergus Anckorn was also forced to use basic magic tricks to entertain his captors and win scraps of food to stay alive while he and his fellow POWs starved.

As a 20-year-old conscript, he was on his way to fight in Africa when Pearl Harbour was attacked and his ship was redirected to Singapore.

It was the scene of one of the most devastating defeats in British history.

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"We were under fire coming down the gangway," he recalled.

"There's bombs, there's mortars, machine guns and you don't know where to go or what to do and that was our first baptism of fire."

Mr Anckorn saw five days of action and Singapore fell in seven days.

"We went there to be taken prisoner," he said.

"We were completely sacrificed."

He was driving an Army vehicle to Changi, in eastern Singapore, when he was hit by Japanese fighter planes.

"I was hit all over the place and the door was jammed," he said.

"I went to open it and found my hand hanging off by the skin and both my forearm bones poking up."

His lorry was on fire, he kicked the door open and jumped.

"I didn't know where I was going because there was still smoke and everything all over the place.

"So I just jumped. And in mid-air I was shot. So there I was with this artery gone.

"Like a bathroom tap I was bleeding and that's where my friend found me."

This was just the beginning.

In hospital, the surgeon had only got as far as putting a tourniquet on him when the enemy swarmed in.

"They came into the ward and killed everyone in their beds. Nurses, doctors, everybody. And I was the only survivor of all that."

Captured, Mr Anckorn was sent to work on the infamous death railway as a POW.

"We were sent up by train. Five days and nights in the truck with 38 of you in it.

"No room to sit or stand or anything. Everybody with dysentery. People dying in the truck.

"Five days later, you're out in Thailand and you were on the railway at what was called the bridge over the River Kwai."

There, he was starved, beaten and forced to work in midday sun at temperatures soaring to 120F (48C).

"You just put up with it and I always thought I was just like an animal.

"You see these farmers belting cows with a stick or something and that happened to us and we just took it.

"When we got beaten up it was no big deal.

"The only thing is when they were beating you up you had to try not to fall over because they would kick you to death."

Mr Anckorn spoke of how, in one camp, he volunteered to prepare the dead for burial because it meant having a hut where he could keep out of the monsoon.

"I had that job for eight months and there was not one minute of those eight months that I didn't have 10 or 12 corpses in there with me.

"And I used to sleep on top of them. It kept me out of the mud. Wonderful."

He added: "The fact they were dead had nothing to do with me. So death in action is nothing. You just accept it."

He explained: "To us, death was nothing at all. I mean, a friend of yours was dying and you're thinking he's probably going to be dead this afternoon.

"Someone would say 'I'll have his water bottle' or 'I want his blanket'."

By this time, his parents had been told he had been killed in action.

But Mr Anckorn was determined to stay alive, taking it one day at a time.

"Everything I did was with the purpose of surviving. I ate anything that moved: grass, leaves, cats, dogs, mice, rats, snakes, scorpions.

"If it moved, I ate it because I knew they were protein or vitamins so I had a real firm resolve in how I'm going to try and get through."

Spotted by a camp commander one day performing a sleight of hand magic trick, he was summoned to perform again in his hut.

He used the commandant's coin and tin of sardines for the vanishing trick.

"Routine stuff. But as soon as that was done he pushed the tin over to me, so I got those sardines with vitamins and protein and everything.

"I found out that they won't touch anything that we touched. We were verminous and horrible so if we touched it, they didn't.

"So every time I was called back there I would look… and if there was some food I would do a trick with it."

Mr Anckorn said he found out the war was over when he was in an area of Thailand, not far from Bangkok.

"In the evening, the Japanese officer stood on a soapbox... and told us the war was over and that we were soon going home.

"That's when we knew, or we thought we knew, we didn't believe it."

When he had been drafted, the young Fergus expected a stint at Woolwich Barracks of up to six months.

He thought that would be enough kill him. "I'll die," he feared when he got he got his notice letter.

In the end, he finally got out of the Army after seven years and three days.

Against all the odds, he survived to tell the incredible tale.