Footballing POW who beat Japan’s death camps
Hear a voice from the dead bring alive one of the horror stories of the war. one that will make you grit your teeth in order to read on.
Johnny sherwood survived the death camps on the Burma-siam railway, which was built alongside the notorious river Kwai. he was dubbed ‘lucky Johnny’ by his mother — and over every kind of danger of death his luck held.
he was restored to his beloved wife and children, but suffered from appalling nightmares that took him back to the Kwai and the sadistic Japanese, who inflicted inhuman behaviour on their prisoners. every night, he would wake up shouting.
Doctors and sedatives did not help, so he decided to write it all down. Day after day for years he retreated to his small room to confront the painful past.
It worked. his nightmares grew fewer. By the time he signed off the last chapter in 1984, the events were 40 years in the past. he still remembered them in every detail as if it were yesterday.
he died of a heart attack the following year. his manuscript and all his souvenirs were stored in his mother’s attic and only recently rediscovered during a house move. his grandson, Michael, discovered the text, realised its value and has got it published, as Johnny wanted it to be.
What is so remarkable about his tale — for the story of the river Kwai has been told in other prisoners’ memoirs — is Johnny’s heart-warming humanity, which persists through the blackest times.
‘lucky Johnny’ was one of 11 children. his luck began on the day he was spotted kicking a football in a reading park by a scout from the local football club. Invited to train, he was bought his first pair of proper boots. he became the star centre-forward of reading FC, ‘The royals’.
In 1938, he was invited to tour the world with the Corinthians team, a hugely successful side in which he was top scorer — 70 goals in 70 matches. An england career was mooted for him.
But the war came, he joined the royal Artillery as a sergeant pe instructor, and was one of the reinforcements rounded up, far too late, to defend singapore. After many days of air bombardment, the island governor capitulated.
Then followed three-and-a-half years of captivity, mostly spent driving the railway from Burma to siam through virgin jungle under the merciless hands of Japanese and Korean guards. Their only english was ‘ speedo- speedo’ accompanied by a beating with rifle butts.
I have read about it before, but this time I felt I was living it. Johnny is such a straightforward,
decent bloke, transparently honest, so you know there’s no exaggeration. And he is a writer of vivid simple English.
Johnny was in his late 20s, sturdy and fit from years of pro football, yet he nearly died of malaria. ‘We had the rice sack ready to put you in,’ a medical orderly told him.
He was also helped by his sunny, hopeful temperament. I grew to like as well as admire Johnny very much. He reproduces a lot of the chat or banter between the prisoners and it is clear that when they were in despair it was to him they turned for comfort. He assured them they had only to stick to it and they would see their loved ones again — not that he always believed it.
He diverted their thoughts with tales of his own marriage and of the exotic places he had been on his world football tour. He even organised singsongs and quizzes.
One of Johnny’s mental escapes was to dream of the wife he had known for only three years and married only months before the war. Christine was a former Miss Reading, a beauty queen, and he worshipped her. He tried to imagine what she and their toddler were doing. ‘I’d been away now for half the time we knew each other. Did she still keep a place in her heart for me?’ Johnny quickly realised the pleasure the guards took in humiliating their captives: ‘The more they make us suffer, the more they enjoy it, the fanatical bastards.’ Every man stole or bartered for extra food, naturally enough. But if caught . . . one man he saw made to kneel with his arms tied day after day in the blazing sun with tins of food and water placed just outside his reach. Men who could hardly stand were made to hold weights above their head and beaten if they lowered them.
Curiously, the one thing that brought any mercy from the guards was football. Hearing Johnny was a professional, they asked him and his friends to clear a pitch and make up a team for games of Guards v Prisoners. ‘These devils, so cruel to us by day, could smile and kick around with us in the evening. It was hard for us not to beat them every game but they took it well.
‘Not many of us had any footwear left
27%
of prisoners of war held by Japan died in captivity
at this stage. I was worried about my feet. But the Japs gave us pairs of plimsolls to put on. From then on, we often played a sort of football with them in the evenings.’
One evening, Johnny started juggling with the football. A guard, who owned the ball, asked him to teach him some tricks. ‘I give food,’ he said. ‘I taught him a few fancy things and, for the first time I remember, a Jap kept his promise. We kept getting extra food for playing.’
In the evenings, Johnny sought peace by sitting on the hillside beside the cemetery contemplating the crosses of the men he had known. ‘Yes, I cried for them, more than I have ever cried in my life. If only the guards had been more human and treated us as prisoners should be, thousands who died would have survived.’
Liberation came at last. Johnny’s return home had been the dream that kept his morale from crumbling. When at last he returned home, it was to a tremendous hero’s welcome.
But people were shocked at his appearance. The well-built footballer they remembered was now ‘stick-thin’. But he did go on to play for Reading again, before chancing his luck by becoming a bookie.