Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
My hero dad risked beheading to escape from the Japanese
Daughter’s discovery
A BRAVE British soldier risked being beheaded or buried alive as he fled a Japanese prisoner of war camp, his daughter has discovered after finding his diaries.
Major John Monro’s daring escape involved crossing the sea on a makeshift raft and spending two months battling through dense jungle in China. He broke free after two months in Sham Shui Po prison camp in Hong Kong, the commandant of which was known to behead, bayonet or bury alive prisoners caught escaping.
Maj Monro’s heart-pounding bid for freedom has finally come to light after his daughter, Mary Monro, discovered his diaries and letters, which were tucked away in a drawer for seven decades. Osteopath Mary, 55, has now published his correspondence in a gripping book called Stranger In My Heart.
Ms Monro, from Bath, said: “Like many people of his generation he didn’t like to talk about the war and I realised then how little I knew about such an important part of my father’s life.”
Maj Monro was a member of the 8th Heavy Brigade, Royal Artillery. Along with 6,000 Allied soldiers, he was captured after the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941 and locked up.
One night, he sneaked through a hole in the barbed wire of the water-locked camp. After an hour at sea – in a raft built from materials he gathered in the camp – he reached land.
For two months, he hacked through thick jungle. Maj Monro reached China’s wartime capital, Chongqing, in April 1942.
From 1944 till the war ended, he fought in Burma. He met wife Betty back in Britain in 1950 and later worked as a farmer in Shropshire. He died in 1981.