My Cork father's role in Churchill's darkest hour

GROWING up in the bustling heart of Cork city in the 1950s, above Murray’s pub on the site of the current Bishop Lucey Park on the Grand Parade, Richard Mack had a happy upbringing.

The only child of John and Kathleen, he would watch them run the busy pub and interact with punters, with only a vague awareness of his father’s British Army service in World War II.

It was this tight community of punters and friends who provided comfort to Kathleen and her young son when John passed away of what was deemed to be old age in 1959. He was just 41.

It seems inconceivable now to think someone so young could die of ‘old age’. However, John Mack’s life was undoubtedly drastically curtailed by the horrific physical and mental traumas he had endured as a Prisoner of War (PoW) in Japan.

Before his capture, John had also played an active role in one of the most infamous events of World War II.

When the British surrendered Singapore to the Japanese, he had been a signaller who received a handwritten note from General Arthur Percival announcing defeat, and sent it on to other units.

That historic note is now in the possession of his son, Richard - a permanent reminder of one of the lowest points in Britain’s war; a day labelled “the worst disaster in British history” by none other than Winston Churchill.

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Originally from Blarney Street in Cork, John Mack’s family emigrated to Cheltenham and he worked as a confectioner until World War II broke out, when he and his brother Patrick enlisted.

John was initially a signaller, becoming proficient in Morse Code, then spent time as a motor mechanic, before being appointed a Bombardier in the Royal Artillery. It was while he was in Burma with them that he was captured by the Japanese during the Battle of Singapore.

The foremost UK military base and economic port in south-east Asia in 1942, Singapore had been of great importance to the Allies’ war strategy and was thus a key target for the Japanese.

General Percival’s orders from Churchill were to fight to the last man to hold it, but miscalculation and misjudgement of artillery and water supplies forced his capitulation, resulting in the largest British surrender in history.

On February 15, 1942, after a week of fighting on Singapore, it was clear the island was going to fall, and Percival held his final command conference. The Japanese insisted he march under a white flag to the old Ford Motor Factory in Bukit Timah to negotiate terms, and here it was agreed that the British Empire troops would lay down arms and cease resistance at 8.30pm.

Next day, February 16, Corkman John Mack was given the handwritten note signed ‘AE Percival, Lt Gen GOC Malaya Com’, explaining his reasons to his troops for surrendering. It was written in invisible ink, so would have been legible only when wet.

“It was definitely my father who tapped (in morse code) that message out to the world,” says Richard. It read:

“It has been necessary to give up the struggle but I want the reason to be known to all. The forward troops continued to hold their ground but other essentials have been short. Many types of ammunitions have been short and the water supplies upon which the civil population and all the fighting troops are dependent on have failed. The situation has been brought about partly by being driven off our dumps & partly by air & artillery action.

Without these essentials of war we cannot fight on. I thank all ranks for their efforts throughout the campaign.

Ed. A.E Percival lt Gen.

GOC Malaya Com

Sending the message was probably John’s final action of the war, as he and 80,000 comrades from Britain, India, Australia as well as local troops were captured.

John was among 4,350 sent to PoW camps in Taiwan, considered some of the worst in the Far East. Many held here slaved on the infamous ‘Death Railway’.

There was never enough food, prisoners were overworked and often beaten, and many died from starvation and disease, and from work accidents.

John spent what must have seemed an interminable three years, 245 days in Taihoku prison camp #6 (T6) Taiwan. “If Nagasaki hadn’t happened, he would still be at war,” says Richard.

John and his fellow survivors became known as ‘The Forgotten Army’ as, after Germany surrendered, and V-day celebrations took place the world over, they were still in T6 Camp and not freed until several weeks later.

“My father hardly spoke of the war, except on the odd occasion,” says Richard. “I was only eight when he died so I was too young to understand and he wasn’t very talkative.”

Most of the information he has accumulated about his father’s war has been gleaned from piecing together stories his mother recounted, his own recollections, and from extensive research of historical and military records.

Richard also has an incredible repository of mementoes that his father brought home, including John’s army service medals, a ‘Welcome Home’ letter from King George VI, the chilling letter sent to John’s mother informing her he was a PoW, his war record books, and the Red Cross bag each prisoner was given, complete with sewing kit and darning wool. And that historic handwritten note.

The horrors John had lived through left an indelible mark.

No longer the “blocky lad” he once was, but a mere six stone on his return, Richard says his father never fully recovered, and suffered for the remainder of his short life with the diseases beri beri and malaria.

He was described in his discharge record as “a thoroughly reliable, honest, and trustworthy NCO”, but Richard says: “When the war ended, he and his ilk were no longer required.

“His parents had passed away so he returned to Cork in 1947 and stayed with cousins in MacSweeney Villas. He met my mother and they married in 1949.”

As John had retired from active service, he was an army reservist until 1952, and often dropped into the British Legion premises on Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork for a pint and a game of snooker with other ex-servicemen.

“We lived over my gran-aunt’s pub, Murrays, in the Grand Parade (destroyed by fire on September 14, 1970),” adds Richard.

“My parents ran the business. When my father would go up to have a nap after work, you could hear a knocking downstairs and my mother explained that was the sound of my father shaking as he slept. The whole seat would shake as well.

“As he was no longer living in the UK, John wasn’t eligible for follow up medical treatment or access to psychologists.”

On his death, Richard’s mither applied for a burial allowance from the UK government. But “after a protracted process, we found out he was entitled to nothing - his widow also got no widow’s pension”.

A few years later, a chance encounter with an ex-serviceman in Murrays redressed the balance. At least, in part.

“If the British Navy were in town, a lot of servicemen would come to the pub. This guy was attached to Pall Mall, headquarters of the British Legion, and we got chatting about the support from the army,” recalls Richard.

‘We always look after our own, we bury our dead,’ the Navy man declared. Richard, then still a teenager, expressed his dismay at the shocking lack of support for his mother after the premature passing of his father.

“A couple of weeks later, we got a letter to say the man was looking into it,” says Richard.

Ultimately, Kathleen got a widow’s pension of 47p a week. This when an average widow’s pension was £2 10 shillings. It was never backdated. “It had increased to £5 or £6 by the time my mother died,” adds Richard.

Of the thousands of British soldiers captured by the Japanese in Burma, 30% died.

“They were fed rice once a day and drank from streams,” says Richard. “My father told me they even had to resort to drinking their own urine - you wouldn’t waste it. They worked daily, hard physical labour.”

As a result of their horrendous ordeals in the Japanese camps, many of the men became sterile. “Out of 80,000 men, there were very few children,” says Richard, “I am an only child and am one of the ‘miracle children’.”

Vanquished General despised in 1920s Cork for his brutality

WHEN Corkman John Mack was handed that surrender note written by Arthur Percival in 1942, was he aware that, back home, the General had made himself one of the most despised figures in Irish history?

In 1920, during the War of Independence, Percival had been a company commander and later the intelligence officer of the notorious 1st Battalion of the Essex Regiment, based in Kinsale.

He proved a thorn in the IRA’s side, noted for his aptitude for intelligence-gathering and for the establishment of bicycle-riding ‘Mobile Columns’.

Multiple accusations of brutality were directed at him. IRA commandant Tom Barry later stated he was “easily the most vicious anti-Irish of all serving British officers”.

After the IRA killed an RIC sergeant outside Bandon church in July, 1920, Percival captured Ballinadee-born Tom Hales, commander of the IRA’s 3rd Cork Brigade, and Patrick Harte, of Knocknacurra, brigade quartermaster.

Both later claimed they were beaten and tortured in custody. Hales alleged a pair of pliers had been used on his lower body and to extract his fingernails. Harte suffered a brain injury and died in a mental hospital in 1925.

The British denied the claims and Percival, for his part, was awarded an OBE for his role in Ireland.

In a series of lectures on his experiences in Ireland, he stressed the importance of surprise and offensive action, intelligence-gathering, and maintaining security and co-operation.

He derided the British policy of releasing IRA prisoners from 1916-20, as they “immediately returned to their homes and organised the murder of those members of the RIC instrumental in effecting their arrests”.

Percival’s legacy in Ireland has divided historians. American J.B.E. Hittle wrote that of all the British officers in Ireland he “stood out for his violent, sadistic behaviour towards IRA prisoners, suspects and innocent civilians... He also participated in reprisals, burning farms and businesses”.

But Clifford Kinvig, Percival’s biographer, considered him to have been unfairly vilified by Republican propaganda due to his “tireless in his attempts to destroy the spirit of the people and the organisation of the IRA”.

Percival met Winston Churchill in 1921, when he was called as an expert witness during an inquiry into the Anglo-Irish War.

When he went against Churchill’s wishes in 1942 and surrendered Singapore, the Prime Minister called it “the worst disaster in British history”.