Walter was born in 1908 in Blackwood, Monmouthshire to Walter Ernest and Mary Ann Young. He was the third eldest of 12 children. He trained as a hairdresser and cycled to Oxford in search of work. There he met and married his wife, Doris.
In 1939 Walter signed up for National Service and joined the 35 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment RA becoming Lance Sergeant 1483240.
Walter’s last letter to Doris is dated 28 November 1941. He wrote it was the first Christmas they had spent apart in their married life (then 9 years). The port stop mentioned could be Durban, South Africa, given the references to a captain’s daughter – Captain Sir Thomas Sheppard was a WWII admiral.
Did the letter reach Doris in 1942? On 15 February Walter was taken prisoner of war in Singapore. In October, 600 British prisoners of war there were loaded on to a ship said bound for a prison camp in Japan. The POWs headed instead south of the equator to Rabaul, New Britain in Papua New Guinea. In November the 517 fittest men were shipped to Ballalae Island to build a secret runway.
Many prisoners died from overwork and disease or were killed by allied air raids. A raid on 12 March 1943 may have killed 300 when their encampment was bombed. In June 1945 another heavy US raid convinced the Japanese the island was about to be invaded and they executed all surviving prisoners.
5 March 1943 is Walter’s official death. His sons, Morris, Trevor and Kenneth were 6, 8 and 10 years old.
After the war ended a mass grave was discovered by Australia and the remains of over 400 men were removed and buried at the Bomana Commonwealth War Cemetery in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Walter is commemorated at the Singapore Memorial and at The National Arboretum.
Doris never remarried. As records were official secrets for 50 years, she died knowing little of Walter’s fate. Her sons found the letter in her home years after her death. The last picture of them together also remained on her bedroom wall until 2020.
