VJ DAY: FORGOTTEN ARMIES

Eighty years ago, on 15 August 1945, the surrender of the Japanese marked the end of the Second World War. This was VJ Day. Here on the Slate Islands, we remember three men who fought in South East Asia.

   Gerald McCallum was with 2nd Battalion, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. They had already trained for jungle warfare when, in December 1941, they deployed three hundred and fifty miles deep into Malaya. Their mission was to delay the Japanese who were advancing towards Singapore.

   The Argylls fought for many weeks until ordered to withdraw, but they held a bridgehead north of the Johore Causeway, allowing British and Imperial troops of 3rd Corps to cross over to Singapore Island. Then, on the morning of 1 February 1942, the remaining Argylls marched smartly over the causeway, with bagpipes playing, before the demolitions were blown. The Japanese landed on Singapore Island a week later. Soon the defending force was overwhelmed and survivors were captured. Gerald McCallum died as a prisoner of war on 11 June 1943. He is remembered on the Kilbrandon War Memorial here on Seil.

Kenneth Bell was also there. In Leeds he had been with Post Office Telephones: in Malaya and Singapore he was with the Royal Corps of Signals. Years later he would tell how the Japanese climbed up telegraph poles in Malaya to eavesdrop on phone calls; so he would arrange that Glaswegians - or Yorkshiremen - were operators at either end of the line, so that the enemy might be confused by their accents.

   When Singapore fell in 1942 Kenneth became a prisoner of war. He was taken by rail to Ban Pong Camp in Thailand, marched eighty-three miles to Tarsao Camp, and from there he worked on the Death Railway. In 1944 he was moved to Japan, to the Iruka copper mine, for the remainder of the war. He began a notebook on 15 August 1945, unaware that the Japanese had just surrendered. His faded writing survives: he talks of food and the slow realization that the war was over. Years later he would tell how they managed to steal a chicken from the hen coop. It was shared meticulously between the prisoners after particularly careful carving. He survived malaria and three and a half years as a prisoner of war. Later he lived on Seil and died here in 1997 at the age of eighty.

Hugh Martin was little more than a boy when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force in December 1941: seventeen years of age, not quite five and a half feet tall - and colour blind. He trained in radio and morse code before boarding a troop ship from Liverpool to Bombay via Brazil. He would fight in Burma, as a Chindit.

   The Japanese had invaded Burma in 1942 but Allied attempts to drive them out had failed. Now Orde Wingate devised a new strategy: long range penetration groups. Infantry battalions would become Special Forces. Their mission: to disrupt enemy lines of communication. These Chindits - Wingate's ‘lions’ - would be inserted deep inside enemy territory by air and resupplied by air drops. This bold plan needed long-range radio communication. It also needed RAF men on the ground to coordinate air activity over the featureless monsoon jungle. Hugh Martin was part of the RAF radio detachment with the Cameronians, a Scottish battalion.

   They were flown in by glider on 10 March 1944, two hundred miles into northern Burma. They were to block the road near Hopin and then carry out raids against the enemy. Hugh rarely talked about the next four months of heat, torrential rain, inhospitable jungle, shortage of ammunition and food. But he spoke of a hawk which attacked the men's food: they captured it, named it Jock, and treated it as a pet. Hugh’s colour blindness became an asset when he took part in fighting patrols with the Cameronians. His eyes were less deceived by camouflage and he could often see what was behind it.

   In Edinburgh his mother received a telegram. He was missing in action, presumed dead. The Chindits suffered severe losses, from disease as much as from enemy action. But Hugh was neither missing nor dead. He survived Operation Thursday. He then survived malaria in India and subsequent tuberculosis. In May 1947, still serving in South East Asia, now six feet tall but undernourished, he was discharged at last. He was twenty-two years of age. When he returned to Edinburgh he took part in the Streptomycin trials for tuberculosis. In retirement he lived on Seil. He died in 2021 at the age of ninety-seven.

Copyright © 2025 Tim Sinclair for the Easdale Branch Royal British Legion Scotland and the Scottish Slate Islands Heritage Trust.

With grateful thanks to Drew Connelly, Alex Wright and Rose Wands for sharing memories and detail.