BILLSON, Jack William

Jack was born 1911 in Newport to George & Annie, who were living at Norton Green, Freshwater around the time of Jack’s death.

Jack was a regular soldier having joined the Army in 1931. Evacuated from Dunkirk, he also saw service in Malaya.

Jack was a Japanese prisoner of war at Chungkai, which was one of the base camps on the Burma-Siam railway & contained a hospital & church built by Allied prisoners of war. The war cemetery is the original burial ground started by the prisoners themselves, & the burials are mostly of men who died at the hospital.

So, it is more than likely that Jack, who died from malnutrition on the 3rd of November 1943, was a patient in this hospital. Jack is buried at the Chungkai War Cemetery in Thailand, with 1,691 of his comrades, beneath a Pedestal Marker bearing the inscription: “AT THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN AND IN THE MORNING, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM”.

Jack is also remembered on the Totland War Memorial.