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#1
06-08-16, 01:25 PM
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Homemade Norfolk Regiment cap badge....
(EPH 684)
http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib...5033/large.jpg (EPH 3103) This watch has a square face with a chrome-steel case. This wrist watch worn by Captain Dudley Apthorp, http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib...6275/large.jpg This homemade Norfolk Regiment cap badge was used by Captain Apthorp who was the Senior British Officer of the ‘British Sumatra Battalion’ nicknamed ‘Appy’s locusts’. The battalion consisted of 20 officers and 480 men from all three services captured in Sumatra a month after the Fall of Singapore. It went on to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway. It was fashioned out of an Australian penny piece. Senior Allied officers often had the difficult task of working with their medical officers to find enough men fit to join work parties demanded by the Japanese. Quote from Bob Grafton who was in the battalion: ‘Captain Dudley Apthorp was a regular officer – a “proper officer” – in the eyes of the men. Dudley would appear on the twice daily rollcalls (tenkos) properly dressed; regulation cap, with his cap badge…of Britannia filed from an Australian penny, and wrist watch on white web strap (EPH 3103). The fact that his shirt and shorts were rotting in the sweltering climate mattered not. To the men who paraded naked except for a ‘G’ string he was a ‘proper officer’. The men loved his unruffled dignity. The Japs hated it. He was a disciplinarian but scrupulously fair. His stands against the Japanese demands for work from his emaciated group (150 died in the first twelve months) earned him many vicious beating which angered the men, but these he took with crushing dignity. In his quiet way he continued his fight against the Japanese in the POW camps, cleverly showing just enough of his deeply felt contempt for them, which fired his spirit and made them feel uncomfortable.’
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"There truly exists but one perfect order: that of cemeteries. The dead never complain and they enjoy their equality in silence." - “There are things we know that we know,” “There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.” Donald Rumsfeld, before the Iraqi Invasion,2003. Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese. Last edited by Voltigeur; 06-08-16 at 01:34 PM. 
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#2
06-08-16, 10:42 PM
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Homemade Norfolk
In the world today the word 'hero' is all too frequently used to describe'stars', 'sports personalities, and other assorted useless leeches. Capt Apthorp appears to personify what the word really means.
Stephen.
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#3
06-08-16, 10:45 PM
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"There truly exists but one perfect order: that of cemeteries. The dead never complain and they enjoy their equality in silence." - “There are things we know that we know,” “There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.” Donald Rumsfeld, before the Iraqi Invasion,2003. Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese.
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#4
07-08-16, 07:21 AM
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"Manui dat cognitio vires - Knowledge gives strength to the arm" "Better to know it but not need it than to need it and not know it!" "Have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest."
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