Tom McKie

Died: March 24, 2015

Tom McKie, who has died aged 94 years, was a former soldier and prisoner of war of the Japanese who survived the terror of the Death Railway built between Thailand and Burma.

Born in a small village near Dumfries where his father worked on the railway, he and his family moved to a small railway house at Closeburn, near Thornhill, when he was very young. He was second in a family of six children and things became difficult when his father died.

Leaving school at 15, he began work in the forests which surrounded the area and at 19, volunteered for the Lanarkshire Yeomanry, the local territorial regiment. The Yeomanry was a volunteer cavalry unit which recruited from Lanarkshire and Dumfriesshire.

On the outbreak of war, he was mobilised and joined his regiment at Lanark. However, within a short period, he was part of a detachment of the Yeomanry sent to France to assist the British Expeditionary Force. His role was on the Maginot Line, a series of fortifications on the French - German Border, where he remained until June the following year when the German Wehrmacht swept through the Low Countries.

Ordered to make his own way home, he and some others hitched their way across France until reaching the Channel coast where they persuaded a French fisherman to ferry them across the English Channel. But no sooner was he safely on British soil than he was sent back to sea, this time as part of the escort aboard the SS Arandora Star which was conveying Italian internees and German POWs to Canada.

They were only one day out from Liverpool and in the Atlantic north of Ireland, when they were spotted and sunk by a German U Boat, the same U Boat which had sneaked into Scapa Flow the year before and sunk the HMS Royal Oak. He was among the lucky survivors and returned to his regiment to find that it was now part of the Royal Artillery.

In March 1941, he and his regiment, the 155th [Lanarkshire Yeomanry] Field Regiment, RA, were sent to India to prepare for action in the North African Desert against Rommel's Afrika Korps but the increasingly belligerent attitude of the Japanese resulted in two batteries of the regiment being ordered to Malaya and Mr McKie went with them.

He fought with his regiment from Jitra in the north of Malaya all the way down the peninsula. They were never out of action and in January 1942 they found themselves on the so-called impregnable fortress of Singapore.

The end came on 15 February 1942 when Singapore fell to the Japanese and Mr McKie was among the tens of thousands of Allied servicemen who, as prisoners of war, trudged their way to Changi.

Later sent up country to Siam in crammed metal cattle trucks, Mr McKie and thousands of other POWs slaved on the Death Railway. He was always at pains to maintain that he and his friends who were with the track laying groups had it easy compared to those cutting the traces or making the embankments but it was still hellish work. Half-starved and continually abused by brutal and evil guards, the men laboured as slaves.

He counted himself lucky that he managed to avoid chronic sickness and disease.He was frequently a volunteer on burial parties- except that they did not bury the unfortunate cholera victims- they burned them on funeral pyres. 'It was a scene from hell that I will never forget,' he said.

Once the railway was completed, he and the others were returned down line to the large clearing camp at Non Pladuk in Thailand. Towards the end of the war, the railway that had taken so many lives to build was virtually unusable owing to Allied bombing attacks and, as an alternative, the Japanese began to build a road from Mergui in the west of Siam to Burma. If possible, this was to be an even greater hell than the building of the railway and Mr McKie was among those selected as labour. Food was non-existent and more than half the POWs died from disease and malnutrition. Even the Japanese troops making their way up to Burma were in a sorry state.

Eventually the terror was to end. The first Mr McKie knew was when the Japanese guards simply disappeared - one minute they were there, the next they were gone.

Making his way on foot down the muddy track of the so called Mergui Road along with the other pitiful survivors, Mr McKie experienced many scenes of horror. That he survived, he maintains, was down to his sheer bloody mindedness.

Once repatriated, he was one of the first of the Thornhill contingent of POWs to arrive back home but each day was a nightmare with relatives of others of the 155th seeking information on their loved ones. Knowing that many would not be coming home, he could barely endure it and was relieved to be sent to Glasgow where he was discharged as medically unfit for further army service.

Sent to a resettlement centre in Wolverhampton, he initially tried to join the Police Service but was unsuccessful. Walking along the street one day he saw a notice about careers in the prison service and within days was once more behind bars.

He had a long and successful career spending most of his service at Winston Green Prison in Birmingham where he got to know the Russian spy, Konon Molody, better known as Gordon Lonsdale, mastermind of the Portland Spy Ring. In 1964, just before being exchanged for the British businessman, Greville Wynne, who had been arrested by the Russians for espionage, Molody confided in Mr McKie that he did not expect to have a long life. In this he was correct, dying in mysterious circumstances not long after he had been returned to Russia.

After his retiral, Mr McKie concentrated his efforts in the work of the Far East POW organisations which looked after the interests of former prisoners and their families. He was a well - known and popular figure, most prominently as Standard Bearer of the Birmingham Branch of the FEPOW Group.

In recent years, despite his increasing age, he featured prominently in a number of FEPOW related events. Only last year he was a guest of honour at the London premiere of the film, the Railway Man where he greatly impressed actor Colin Firth who played the part of Eric Lomax.

Mr McKie's wife Jean died four years ago and although they had no children of their own, their god-daughter, Wendy, filled that place for them.

CAMPBELL THOMSON