Treasured tok in the horrors
Relatives of wartime pals get in touch as hero’s ID tag is finally handed over
2ND LT ERIC ADIE
After another day of living hell toiling on the “Death Railway”, Eric Adie and Peter Ramm were herded towards waiting trucks, about to be moved up country.
The two young officers had become the very best of pals after joining the Royal Norfolk Regiment together at the start of the Second World War.
Their friendship deepened when they were shipped to the Far East and taken prisoner during the fall of Singapore.
Starved and brutalised by their Japanese captors, they helped each other survive the horrific Burma Railway.
That evening, in August 1943, as the men were being moved to a new jungle camp, Eric helped an exhausted Peter clamber into a truck.
But, as he tried to join him, a guard yanked Eric back, ordering him to wait for the next transport.
Eric protested and was floored by a rifle butt, watching in dismay as the truck pulled away.
It was the last time the 23-year-old second lieutenants ever saw each other.
For when Eric eventually made it to the camp, he learned Peter had died from a heart attack and beriberi, a disease caused by vitamin B
2ND LT PETER RAMM
deficiency. He was one of 13,000 Allied soldiers and 100,000 Asian labourers who died while working on the BurmaThailand railway, which included the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai.
Eric was given Peter’s identity “dog tags” by another prisoner and vowed to one day return them to his parents.
“Sadly, he never got round to doing so,” says Eric’s son Robert Adie, 68.
“Perhaps he found it hard to part with them or he worried it would upset Peter’s parents at the time.
“Then, as the years passed, people didn’t want reminding of the war, and he felt he’d missed the moment.” Eric died in 2016 aged 96.
But, now, thanks to his son’s remarkable detective work, the dog tags have been returned to Peter’s family, in time for the 75th anniversary of VJ Day on Saturday.
Lockdown gave Robert, from Bromley, South East London, time to track down Peter’s nephew, Robin Green.
Now the mementos of a bond forged in war are sparking a new friendship between the soldiers’ relatives.
Robin, 71, from Norwich, was stunned when Robert rang him earlier this year.
“Uncle Peter was my mother’s brother and I knew he’d died as a Japanese PoW,” he says. “When I was 13 I wanted to buy a Jap God
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