Andrew Carnegie - Have only just found this site and am new to research of this kind. I am looking for information on my father (Patrick James Carnegie). I know he was in the Indian Army (possibly Assam Valley Light Horse, if that outfit was still in existence in 1942?), was definitely in Changi and worked on the Burma railway. We know nothing else except we have his POW neck tag.
Where does one begin?
Mike Nancollas - nancollas.mike@btinternet.com
Andrew Carnegie & Assam Valley Light Horse
Certainly there is a picture (1939) of a group of officers (about 20) in the AVLH in the Library of Centre of South East Asia Studies at Cambridge University. - I think it is in the "Collins" collection by this time they had become an armoured corps and in 1941 were sent to protect the Kohima Road. and were in 1947 transferred into the Indian Army. I have been researching AVLH around 1914 - 1920 but have more information if you are interested. I am trying to pull together definitive information to corroborate all of this information which in the main has come from word of mouth and some other written sources
Janet Jacobs - Andrew, I had no idea the POW's had neck tags, my Dad wasn't still in possesion of one and had never mentioned it.
Does anyone have any other info on the tags please ?
Kevin Menzies - My father's was a metal one with a long number on it.
Janet Jacobs - Dear Kevin & Andrew, thank you both for your replies. As much as my old chap has told me, I gather that was perhaps one thing he rather would forget, although it now makes alot of sense why he DESPISED men wearing neclaces of any sort ( Medalion Man etc ), perhaps something too painfull.
Andrew, I do hope you have some luck with your research, all the best, Janet.
This site is wonderfull isn't it, have you joined COFEPOW yet ? I think it's one of the best things I have ever done. I have found such alot of support from knowing so many other people share the same common denominator, namely the Japanese, my old chap always refered to them as the Japanese never Japs, I don't know why, it's as though calling them Japs deflected from their spitefullness ( amounst other faults ).
Capt. George W. Duffy - Shortly after the Germans turned me and my shipmates over to the Japs - as I prefer to call them (although it is Politically Incorrect - PI) - we were individually issued bits of cloth printed with our nationality, rank (in the case of merchant seaman - civilian) and our POW number. We attached these items to our shirts or shorts with what we call in the USofA a "safety pin".
In a brief time, these numbers became tattered and faded, so we went about making more durable tags. On a work party in the vicinity of the Tandjoeng Priok docks one day, I came across the wreckage of a Brewster "Buffalo" and salvaged a few pieces of its windscreen. One I cut into the regulation size, inscribed my particulars and filled the etchings with carbon black. Others used aluminum and/or wood. I do not have the ability to scan what remains of my plastic tag, which I still possess, but I do have a color print of it.
