DRAWINGS made by a soldier while he was a Japanese prisoner of war are part of an “amazing” exhibition in the town’s museum.

Will Wilder, of Crowmarsh Gifford near Wallingford, did the sketches in Singapore and Thailand while building the Thai-Burma railway – part of which crossed over the river Kwai – between 1942 and 1945.

Near the end of the war the Japanese ordered diaries, drawings or anything that might be used as evidence against them to be destroyed.

Mr Wilder rolled up his drawings, hid them in bamboo sticks and buried them beneath a hut.

When he returned from the war to marry his fiancée Joan, he brought the drawings with him.

Mr Wilder died in 1998, aged 83, and now the couple’s son has lent the unique collection of drawings to the museum.

Curator Judy Dewey said: “This is an amazing story of survival and a fascinating glimpse of what life was really like for prisoners of war.”

Mr Wilder was called up on August 8, 1940. He was attached as a signaller to the 135th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, and on October 30, 1941, his unit boarded a ship to Singapore.

They arrived on January 13, 1942, and for a month helped fight in the Malay peninsula, but were forced to retreat to Singapore.

Herald Series:

A drawing of fellow captive Alec Edward from Banbury

After two weeks of heavy bombardment the “island fortress” surrendered to the Japanese on February 15, 1942 and he was one of 14,000 civilians and soldiers taken prisoner.

He said conditions at first were reasonable, but food was limited to maggot-filled rice with a little meat.

He said he was constantly hungry.

In May 1942 the regiment was moved to a camp at Bukit Timah, where his artistic abilities were recognised.

A Japanese commander ordered him to record the building of a Shinto Shrine on the Royal Singapore Golf Course.

He was given a pass allowing him to leave the camp to draw and buy art materials and he bought more than he needed for the project. He and other PoWs were moved around a series of increasingly unpleasant camps and set to work building the Bangkok-Rangoon railway.

About 15,000 allied prisoners and 100,000 Asians died working on the project.

On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and three days later the second fell on Nagasaki.

Mr Wilder left Ubon on September 24, 1945, and returned by ship to Liverpool.

He was reunited with his family and fiancée on November 10 at Reading Station.

Will Wilder’s full story, as told in his diary, will be published this week in a 64-page colour book including more than 30 of his drawings.

It will be available for £7 from Wallingford Museum and Wallingford Bookshop.

The exhibition of his drawings and memorabilia is on display at Wallingford Museum until Saturday, November 29.

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