Jack Sharkey

Jan 15 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

HE WAS only a little chap, the boy soldier, who blew the sweetest cornet in town, but to those who loved him, and they were many, he was the bravest man in the world.

To his son, Ronnie, and daughters, Joan and Val, he was just Dad, the kind but quiet man, who, on Christmas Eve, stuffed chocolates, nuts, tangerines and toys into the big white socks that he had worn as a fireman.

“Press on,” he said in times of trouble, and there were a few of those down the years that he rarely mentioned.

Jack Sharkey was one of nine children born to Sarah and Daniel, an engine driver.

There was never really enough money in their terraced home in Conway Street, Everton, but they managed. Jack, quick-witted and good at sports, left Penrhyn Street School to play the cornet or trumpet for 12 shillings a night in jazz bands, such as the Modernaires, in halls, where couples jitterbugged beneath spinning, silver orbs.

But the Army offered a steady future and, as a boy soldier, he grew from 4ft 11in to 5ft 6in. He saw action on the North West Frontier and then France during World War II, also becoming a Services’ boxing champion. Skill with radio, coding and cryptology, had taken him into the Signals Corps, with whom he was serving when Singapore fell in February, 1942.

So, Sergeant Sharkey, his fists as fast as two wasps in a jar, became a Japanese prisoner, labouring for the “divine” Emperor Hirohito in copper mines and on the Burma Railway.

His weight fell to five stone, but the guards couldn’t break the little fellow with the hard stare. They hung him by his wrists and by his thumbs. They left him to roast in a black box with only a slit for air, but when they opened it two days later, Jack was still alive. He didn’t like the Japanese.

And one morning, he felt the ground tremble. The bomb had dropped on Hiroshima.

Jack returned to Everton, working in various factories, with a spell as a fireman at Liverpool Airport, bringing up the children with his wife, Edith, who died in 2000. Two years later, he had stomach cancer. The doctors said that an operation could kill him. “Press on,” said Jack.

Jack Sharkey, soldier, musician, father; born January 19, 1914, died January 10, 2008.