Medal man now searching for family of tragic POW
A MAN who returned a medal to a POW’s family is now looking for descendants in the Rossendale area.
Charlie Bell managed to track down the nephew of POW John Carley who died in the Second World War to return a sports medal from 1935.
And now he is hoping to track down any descendants from the Valley, as John’s wife Anne was from Newchurch.
An old school friend of Charlie’s asked him to research an old sports medal that he had bought at a market for £2.
Charlie, who lives in Stretford, Manchester, said: “When [Carley] was given the medal in 1935 he was a sergeant and when he died in 1942 he was a sergeantmajor, those things added up as I was ex-forces myself.”
Charlie, 51, then discovered more about John’s unusual death in 1942.
John Carley, known as Jack to his family, died on board the Japanese prisoner of war ship the
Lisbon Maru. The ship was enroute from Hong Kong to Japan when it was torpedoed by an American submarine.
As the ship began to sink the Japanese soldiers locked the prisoners in the hold of the ship. While some managed to escape, John and most of his colleagues in the Royal Artillery drowned along with over 800 other prisoners.
Charlie said:
“Unfortunately for John Carley a lot of the guys from the artillery were in a particular hold where they couldn’t escape.
“Eyewitnesses said they could hear them in the hold singing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, which is quite staggering really.
“It was a terrible loss of life.”
But the link to Hong Kong was how Charlie was put in contact with John’s nephew Dennis, who lives in Montreal.
“I put something up about it on Facebook and a friend of a friend of a friend got in touch to say they dropped a line to someone in Hong Kong who wrote a book about the Lisbon Maru and that he had some connections to put us in touch with the Carley family,” said Charlie.
“On Boxing Day or the day after I got an email from Dennis Carley, who was John’s nephew. He referred to him as Uncle Jack as that was what the family knew him as.”
Charlie also discovered that John’s wife Anne Shaw was from and lived in the Newchurch area before moving to Australia.
The medal ended up in the market as John’s sister lived in Manchester.
Charlie is now hoping to track down any more descendants of the Carley family in the valley, after sending the medal on to Dennis in Canada.
If you have any information about the medal email freepressnews@ menmedia.co.uk .