The magician known as the Conjuror on the River Kwai
At the age of 18, Fergus Fergus
Anckorn became the Anckorn
youngest member of the 1918-2018
Magic Circle; years later, he’d be known as the Conjuror on the River Kwai. As a Japanese POW for three years from 1942, he survived starvation, enslavement and the notorious Alexandra Hospital massacre. Sometimes it was luck that saved his life, but quick wits – and magic – also played their part.
Born in Kent in 1918, Anckorn, who has died aged 99, grew up in a happy, loving household. He was given his first magic set when he was four and, calling himself Wizardus, was elected to the Magic Circle in 1936. When war broke out he joined the Royal Artillery, and in February 1942 he was posted to Singapore, with the 118th Field Regiment. Two days after arriving, while working on the docks, he and his comrades were dive-bombed by the Japanese, said The Daily Telegraph. With no time to run for shelter, Anckorn jumped into the sea; on resurfacing, he found that five of his comrades had been blown to pieces. Days later, he was almost killed when a shell he was transporting blew up during an air raid. With one of his hands hanging from his arm by a piece of skin, he was taken to the Alexandra military hospital. There, a surgeon saved his hand, but 24 hours later, the hospital was overrun by enemy troops, who shot the staff and then turned on the patients. Anckorn recalled that there was no screaming; just a terrible thumping as they went from bed to bed, bayoneting their occupants. Still only semiconscious, he murmured “poor Mum” and put his head under his pillow to await death. Yet the Japanese passed him by: it seems he was so covered in blood they thought he was already dead.
Singapore fell the next day. Anckorn was taken prisoner and sent to Changi jail, where maggots “disinfected” his gangrenous flesh, and thence to Burma, to work on the railway on the banks of the River Kwai. Conditions were so barbarous 16,000 POWS died from dysentery, cholera or exhaustion. One afternoon, he was ordered to carry creosote up a 100ft wooden viaduct; at the top he was paralysed by vertigo – at which point a guard poured the bucket of creosote over him. This almost certainly saved his life: with his skin blistering, he was sent to the hospital camp at Chungkai; every other member of his working party died. Once he got his strength back, he began performing simple magic tricks at the camp to entertain his fellow inmates – which brought him to the attention of its commander. Osato Yoshio was a notorious sadist, but he loved magic and asked Anckorn to perform for him. Anckorn made a coin vanish and then plucked it out of a tin of fish on Osato’s desk. He was then given the fish (as “vermin” had touched it, Osato no longer wanted it). At that point, it dawned on him that if he used food as his props, he could get vital extra rations. Once, he was asked to perform for a visiting general. His trick required only one egg, but he brazenly asked the kitchen for 50 – and made a huge omelette that he shared with his fellow Pows. The next day, Osato summoned him to demand to know what had happened to the other 49 eggs. Wary of strict punishment, Anckorn replied: “Your show was so important, I was rehearsing all day.”
After being liberated, he spent three months being “fattened up” in Rangoon, yet when he finally got home, he still weighed only six stone and had nightmares for years. In 1946, he married his sweetheart, Lucille, and returned to Kent. They had two children and, when not performing, he worked as a teacher. Aged 97, he was invited to appear on Britain’s Got Talent alongside Richard Jones, a fellow magician and a serving soldier who’d cited him as his inspiration. “I am probably the luckiest man alive,” Anckorn said. “I’ve been blown up, I’ve been shot. I’ve survived a massacre and I got away with that egg trick. Every day is a wonder to me.”
“strictly policy-related”, said Kathryn Watson on CBS News. Yet Trump has himself claimed, “without any evidence”, that Amazon is using The Washington Post as a “lobbyist”. The company has no stake in the newspaper and its editor claims that Bezos has never influenced its coverage. It’s also a moot point whether the US Postal Service is losing money to Amazon. True, the company qualifies for “a bulk rate”. However, Amazon’s parcel business has been a boon at a time of plummeting mail volumes.
The president reportedly “wants the post office to increase Amazon’s shipping costs”, said Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair – but there’s more. It seems he’s also open to the idea of cancelling “Amazon’s pending multibillion contract with the Pentagon to provide cloud computing services” and of encouraging individual states to open investigations into its business practices. This feud could get a lot nastier.