Date of birth:

July 17th, 1910 (Liverpool, United Kingdom)

Date of death:

August 19th, 2005

Nationality:

British

John Firth departed from Southampton aboard HMT Etterick and sailed via Gibraltar to Port Said in Egypt and thence to Aden, Bombay, Ceylon and on to Singapore.On the afternoon of the 15th of February 1942, General Percival, the Commander of Forces in Malaya, was obliged to surrender to the Japanese

Jack Firth became a Japanese prisoner on the 15th of February, along with the rest of his company. By October of 1942 Jack and many of the other prisoners of war from Singapore and elsewhere were being used as forced labour by the Japanese in dozens of camps in Burma and Thailand on the infamous Siam to Burma Railway. In August of 1945 the Japanese surrendered and the prisoners in Jack’s camp were liberated. He was transported to Bangkok and then was flown to Rangoon by the Royal New Zealand Air Force. He then proceeded to Colombo, Ceylon where he arrived on the 25th of September 1945. The final leg of the voyage home was made from Ceylon to Liverpool aboard a Dutch ship.

7 February 1933:
Enlisted in the Royal Engineers as a Sapper.
17 January 1936:
Promoted Lance Corporal.
4 February 1938:
Promoted Corporal.
1941:
Promoted Lance Sergeant.
30 June 1941:
Promoted Staff Sergeant
8 April 1949:
Appointed Unpaid Warrant Officer Class II.
29 April 1949:
Appointed Acting Warrant Officer Class II.
26 August 1949:
Promoted (Substantive) Warrant Officer Class II (Clerk of Works Quartermaster Sergeant).
30 December 1953:
Appointed Acting Warrant Officer Class I (Mechanist).

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• - 1870074 Warrant Officer Class I John Firth, Royal Engineers