Blind ex-POW oldest veteran at Cenotaph
ABLIND 103-year-old former prisoner of war will be the oldest veteran to march at the Cenotaph as the nation marks the centenary of the armistice.
Former Army sergeant Ron Freer, from Devon, will lead more than 100 comrades who also lost their sight when he attends the memorial in London on Sunday.
Confirmed by the Royal British Legion as the oldest veteran due to attend, he will be representing the charity Blind Veterans UK.
He said this was a “huge honour” and the Remembrance commemorations held a “special significance” for him as he remembered his own father’s death in battle on September 4, 1918.
The former postmaster paid his respects at his father’s graveside earlier this year when he travelled to the Dernancourt Communal Cemetery in France with his family to lay a wreath.
Born in Teignmouth on October 21, 1915, Mr Freer was captured in the Second World War while serving as a soldier with the Royal Artillery.
He joined up in 1931, aged 15, initially with the Royal Horse Artillery. On the outbreak of war he was posted to defend Hong Kong.
In late 1941, the Japanese attacked the then British colony and Fort Stanley, where Mr Freer was based.
After 18 days of fighting, his garrison was forced to surrender and he remained a prisoner of war until the end of the conflict.
The malnutrition he endured at the camp during the four-year ordeal left him blind.
Mr Freer said: “The Japanese brought in a bag of rice for each unit but only enough for one meal a day per man. We cut an oil drum in half and used the bottom as a boiling pot for the rice.
“Each man was given a scoop of rice, but many were unable to eat it and, looking at the portion of rice, one could see mice droppings and insects. Disease soon broke out, resulting in many deaths.”
In 1943, he was among 2,000 prisoners taken by a ship called The Lisbon to Japan when diphtheria broke out.
His life was saved by the actions of two doctors. Mr Freer said: “Lying in the hut with all the others suffering, I heard a voice say, ‘Turn over, sergeant’, I was then injected with something and the voice said, ‘You are very lucky’. I knew then that it was our medical officer. He later told me that a Japanese civilian doctor had managed to smuggle in six phials of anti-diphtheria toxin, so the two of them had saved my life.”
He lost his sight completely a month later, as well as most of his hearing, and spent the rest of the war in the camp’s medical hut.
Blind Veterans UK, which was founded as St Dunstan’s after more than 3,000 veterans were blinded in the First World War, has supported Mr Freer since 1946.
After marrying, he and his wife Joan opened a post office, buying the property with the help of the organisation. Over the years they ran post offices in Ilfracombe, Devon, Grays in Essex and Gravesend in Kent.
He now lives with his daughter Patricia in Cliftonville, Kent.
Mr Freer said: “It is an extraordinary charity which makes an unbelievable difference to the lives of veterans like me, and our families, too.”