VJ Day : 101 -year-old veteran of Far East celebrated at care home in Edinburgh
Medals polished, Burma veteran Tom Guild will mark VJ Day with both reflection and pride.
A veteran believed to be the last living Scot to hold the Burma Star will be honoured at his care home in Edinburgh today (Friday).
Stuart Guild, 101, a former Lieutenant Colonel, is a resident of Manor Care Home in the south west of the city where VJ Day commemorations will be held to mark the 80th anniversary of the Japanese surrender.
A piper and a standard bearer for the Royal Artillery Association, along with several fellow members, will join Mr Guild along with friends and family for the occasion.
Mr Guild, who remains in good health apart from deafness caused by ‘gunner’s ear’, was in Rangoon in then Burma when VE Day was declared in May 1945, but his return home to Scotland was to remain two years away as war and its aftermath held the Far East.
For Mr Guild, the VJ Day anniversary is a chance to remember the “forgotten war”.
He said: “There was a great emphasis on Europe , and they heard about everybody celebrating in London, but we had to just carry on ,which was quite hard. .
“Even now most people know about VE Day, but not so many about VJ Day.”
Mr Guild was still at school in Edinburgh when he signed up for war, putting his plans for university, a law degree and a place at his father’s law firm on hold.
He served in 37/47 Field Battery, later to become 93 ( Le Cateau) Battery, in the Far East from 1944.
He recalled the conditions in Burma, now Myanmar, as “very hot and humid” as they fought through jungle to halt the Japanese advance.
He added: “When men died , they were buried very quickly. The landscape was a mixture of jungle and rolling hills. You couldn’t go off the path in the jungle or you’d get lost. Also the Japanese could be well concealed. On the hills, the Japanese built tunnels."
“They were a sneaky enemy,” he said.
After VJ Day, he remained on active service in Malaya and French Indochina and was not demobbed until 1947, when he returned to Scotland and later worked as a lawyer.
Scottish regiments in Burma included the The 1st Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, who fought in the Arakan and the advance on Mandalay.
READ MORE: The Scotsman’s editorial on VE Day 1945
Meanwhile, the 1st Battalion of the Royal Scots lost 89 men, with more than 200 wounded, in the intense fighting around Kohima in India.
The names of those who fell will be read at a commemoration service for VJ Day at Lauriston Castle, Edinburgh, on Saturday.
Around 186 men from the regiment who were taken Prisoner of War died in the sinking of the Lisbon Maru as it sailed from Shanghai to Japan in September 1942.
Today, a 99-year-old Scottish veteran who helped to evacuate Prisoners of War after VJ Day said the horrors of war “should never be forgotten”.
Albert Lamond, who lives in McKellar House at Erskine Veterans Village in Renfrewshire, served in the Royal Navy in the Pacific in the lead up to August 15, 1945.
On HMS Rowley, his job was to evacuate allied POWS from remote islands and transport them to Australia. He was 19 at the time and recalled the men appearing like “living skeletons”.
He said: “The sight of them moved the entire crew. Those men had been through unimaginable suffering, but still managed the courage to smile, to shake our hands, and to thank us. It was a humbling experience that I remember clear as day.”
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.