Flt.Sgt. Edward Thomas Durtnall
Royal Air Force 99 Squadron
from:Plymstock, Devon
Having only recently been posted to Dhubalia, on his second mission in the Gulf of Siam, attacking enemy shipping two miles south west of Changklam on Samui Island, F/Sgt Ted Durtnall was the air bomber. The plane, a Liberator (KG878), was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The Navigator, Pilot Officer John Thomas Adair, attempted to bale out and F/Sgt Durtnall tried to stop him. Unsuccessful, he and Adair got caught in the slipstream and literally fell out of the plane, which later crashed at Mingaladon in Rangoon. The pilot, Pilot Officer Jack Parkin, was killed. In a letter of 12 Sep 1945 from Bombay, F/Sgt Durtnall said he thought Adair had not survived as his chute had not opened. The second pilot survived the crash landing.
After being washed up on the shore F/Sgt Durtnall was initially held prisoner in the police station on Koh Samui, Siam (now Thailand). Apparently the local people found them a source of entertainment and would come to watch them eat. He was then transferred to a POW & civilian internment camp in Bangkok. From an article in the Plymouth Evening Herald after his return home he reported that the Japanese needed for economic reasons to co-operate with Siam and were never allowed near the POW camp. Meals were not too bad, being partly European and partly native, and were prepared by internees with money given to them by the Swiss Consul.
On VJ day he and a small number of others were smuggled out of the camp and flown away by a Siamese aircraft, being seen off by the camp commandant himself . He travelled from Rangoon on the aircraft carrier H.M.S. Searcher to Madras and thence to Bombay by train. He returned to England in a flying boat, arriving in Poole, Dorset. No-one from the British Government was there to greet them.
