Mr Anckorn was blown up in his lorry, shot, starved and forced to work 18 hours a day building the bridge over the River Kwai. His weight fell from 11 stone to just five. He said: “We were more or less skeletons. They didn’t want to glorify us – no-one saw me come home.”
Maurice Naylor, 90, survived malaria and dysentery while forced to work building railways. He said: “We didn’t have much of a welcome. The story of the prisoners who suffered so badly, and many died, is not well known.”
Patrick Toosey, 77, who as a boy saw his father, the officer Sir Philip, return on the Orbita, said: “They were very much the forgotten army”.
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