'A prisoner without a crime'

‘A prisoner without a crime’, is how Torquay’s WW2 veteran Jack Jennings described himself in his memoirs. 

Last week, the world bid farewell to the 104-year-old war hero, widely believed to be the last survivor of the infamous Siam–Burma ‘Death Railway’. 

Jack Jennings, captured in Singapore, was among 60,000 Allied prisoners forced by the Japanese to build a railway linking Thailand and Myanmar, then Burma, from 1942 to 1943. 

Although Jack waited until he was in his 70s to open up about his ordeal, the details of his life in the war camps tell a horrifying yet inspiring story of perseverance, even in the most horrendous of conditions. 

His life even caught the attention of global media outlets such as the Times and the New York Times. 

Born at Old Hill in Staffordshire on March 10, 1919, Jack Jennings began his life-long career in carpentry after getting a job in a joinery shop at the age of 14. A talented woodworker, Jack enrolled at Dudley Art College and had already made the majority of the furniture in his room by the age of 20. 

In June of 1939, Jack was called up for conscription into the Army as the threat of war became ever more apparent. Jack was allocated to the infantry battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, namely the first Battalion of the Cambridgeshire Regiment. 

In October 1941, Jack and his fellow comrades left the UK, and for many of them, it would be the last time they saw home.

From Liverpool, Jack’s battalion first crossed the Atlantic to Halifax, Nova Scotia. They then transferred to an American liner which took them to Trinidad, Cape Town and India before disembarking in Singapore at the start of 1942. 

Before even reaching Singapore, the situation was critical. Fighter planes attacked Jack’s convoy before it even disembarked and Singapore was already being heavily bombed.

After days of heavy fighting, it was clear which way the battle for Singapore was going. On February 15, Singapore fell, and Jack was ordered to down his weapons and submit to the Japanese. 

In his memoirs, Jack said: “We were tired out, mentally and physically, with no sleep for many days at a time. 

“We had trained for two years before embarkation, but not for the kind of action that was forced upon us. 

“Now on the island of Singapore, there was nowhere to hide or retreat to. We were trapped, civilians and soldiers. Those who did try to get away by boat were either machine-gunned or sunk by the Jap navy or air force.”

After they were captured, Jennings was put into a tennis court with 500 other soldiers, machine guns facing them from every corner. Jack recalled him and his company being “treated like animals”, left on the tennis court for five days with no clean water and almost no food. 

After leaving Singapore, the men were taken to Changi Prisoner of War Camp on the eastern side of the island. 

Jack and his company remained at Changi for 10 months, living on rice and vegetable water, sleeping on lice-infested bamboo beds and plagued by mosquitos. 

“Little did we know things were going to get much worse,” Jack remembered. In November of 1941, over 600 of the fittest prisosers were stuffed into cattle trucks to begin a journey of “unbearable suffering”. 

They were taken up to Thailand to work on the ‘Death Railway’, a brutal project that built a railway from Thailand to Burma (now Myanmar). Later immortalised in the book and film  The Bridge on the River Kwai, the construction project killed about 90,000 Southeast Asian civilians and over 12,000 allied prisoners of war. 

Jack spent time working at various camps, taking on a variety of dangerous and taxing construction jobs along the train line in the searing heat. Food consisted of rice, gruel and a teaspoon of sugar. The conditions were brutal, and Jack suffered from dysentery and malnutrition as well as malaria and appendicitis. 

At one point, cholera struck the camp. Jack wrote in his memoirs about the experience: “No matter what your state of health, if cholera struck anyone it was death in a day or two. It was a daily occurrence to see three funeral parties with five (bodies) each time going down to the cremation site.”

Health problems were never too far away from Jack either, had to get a skin graft from his thigh to his lower leg for a tropical ulcer, which was performed in squalid conditions with no anaesthetic. Around his 24th birthday, he remembered waking up in hospital to find his Australian friends dead beside him. 

Despite this, Jack thought that his long health problems may well have saved his life, as he missed what the Japanese called the ‘Speedo’ phase, a push for the completion of the railway where some of the most brutal treatment of the prisoners occurred.

Throughout the ordeal, Jack kept his head down and remained positive, using his carpentry skills to create a chess set to pass the time. 

His Daughter Hazel explained: “He made up his mind that there was no escape, that he'd just got to forget about his home, get on with it and accept that this was his life.”

After spending three and a half years in the camp, Jack learned of the War's end from leaflets dropped from an Allied plane and later from the camp officers. 

Three weeks after Victory over Japan Day, Jack began his long trip back to England, via Sri Lanka and through the Suez Canal. Jack remembered his arrival at Birmingham New Street Station as “one of the greatest moments of my life”. 

He said: “My mother cooked me rice pudding for my first dinner at home, which amused the rest of my family, knowing that rice had been, for the last three and a half years, our daily main food supply.”

He added: “The most important thing on my mind was to get married to my sweetheart who had so lovingly awaited my return.”

After marrying Lilian Millard in December 1945, he had two daughters, Carol Bennett and Hazel Heath. 

It was in these years that Jack’s love of Torbay and the Westcountry developed, taking his family down each year for a holiday. 

In 1995, Jack returned to Singapore and many of the sites where he’d been imprisoned across Thailand.

“I think it was a real therapeutic experience for him,” said Hazel. 

“The old memories just faded. We had a wonderful holiday and we were struck by how nice everyone was.”

Jack returned to the region a total of four times, with his last trip being in 2015 for an ITV news report on the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. Looking back, Jack said: “The prisoners who eventually got home were lucky, and I was determined to be one of the lucky ones.”

Jack’s survival in the camps afforded him a long and happy life. He never gave up on carpentry and played the harmonica throughout his life. 

Hazel said: “He was a real jack of all trades, he could fix anything and enjoyed doing it. But he was very good on his knowledge of plants and gardening.

“He was an adventurous man and he travelled all over the world.”

After spending 50 years in Wollaston, Stourbridge Jack moved to Torquay following the death of his wife. 

Hazel, Jack’s daughter, said: “He was lonely and not very well. I asked him if he wanted to move down and live in our holiday flat and he jumped at it.

She added: “We had a lovely time. I have many happy memories of taking him around Torbay, visiting different National Trust houses and resorts.”

As a keen gardener, one of Jack’s favourite haunts was Oldway Mansion, where he would play his harmonica in the tearooms. He even celebrated his 103rd birthday there. 

"He absolutely loved Torbay, it was the perfect place for him. He loved walking along Meadfoot and going to Oldway Mansions, playing his harmonica and chatting with the ladies who worked there.”

At the age of 104, Jack Jennings died on January 19, 2024 at a care home in Torquay.