The power of total contempt

As plans gather pace to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war, there are certain to be renewed calls to record the reminiscences of ex-servicemen in this conflict ‘before it is too late’. Most of these efforts, however well intentioned, are useless from a historical point of view. The Imperial War Museum ran an admirable programme of recording second world war experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, thereafter acknowledging the decreasing value of oral history as memories fade.

The experience of those who survived captivity at the hands of the Japanese is a case in point. Evidence of a ‘collective memory’ becomes increasingly apparent in books and articles by former prisoners of war and in their contributions to news- papers and scripts. Ian Denys Peek makes clear in a note that his descriptions of events were not ‘dredged up’ after 50 years but were contemporary or near contemporary accounts of what happened to him. Herein lies the value of his narrative — one of the most compelling accounts of life on the Burma-Thailand railway.

Peek celebrated his 21st birthday in 1942 as a prisoner of war in Singapore. Born in England and educated at a public school, holidays were spent in Shanghai where his parents lived before moving to Singapore. At the time of the surrender Peek and his brother were private soldiers in the 1st Straits Settlements Volunteer Force (SSVF) in the company of many other professional people who regarded the Force in peacetime more as an agreeable club than an opportunity to gain promotion.

For two and a half years Peek survived in the jungle camps along the Burma-Thailand railway. (Here he calculated his logging capacity to be one fourteenth of an elephant’s.) His narrative is a valuable record of life in ‘the ranks’, though his priorities, interests and intellectual resources are a cut above those of the average British soldier.