Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Six: Battery Sergeant Major W. A. F. Deas, Royal Artillery, who was taken Prisoner of War on 17 February 1942 following the Fall of Singapore; much of his subsequent captivity was spent at Tamarkan, where the Senior British Officer was Lieutenant-Colonel P. Toosey, D.S.O., O.B.E., of ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’ fame - as a consequence he must have endured the abysmal treatment meted out by his captors in the construction of the bridge and notorious Burma-Siam railway

India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, North West Frontier 1930-31 (1424417 Bmbr. W. Deas. R.A.); 1939-45 Star; Pacific Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, the Second War awards all privately engraved ‘1424417 W.O. Cl.II W. A. F. Deas. R.A.’; Army L.S. & G.C., G.VI.R., 1st issue, Regular Army (1424417 W.O. Cl.III W. A. F. Deas. R.A.) very fine and better (6) £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to Second World War Casualties.

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William Allen Frederick Deas was born in South Norwood, Surrey, on 5 October 1899, and attested for the Royal Artillery on 14 December 1922. Having served on the North West Frontier in the early 1930s, he served during the Second World War as Battery Sergeant Major in the Singapore Garrison, Royal Artillery. He was taken Prisoner of War on 17 February 1942, following the fall of Singapore two days earlier on 15 February 1942.

In his subsequent years of captivity, Deas was incarcerated at an assortment of camps, most notably at Tarmakan in the period October 1942 to February 1943, where the Senior British Officer was Lieutenant-Colonel Toosey, D.S.O., of ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’ fame. In completing his Prisoner of War debrief, after being liberated in August 1945, Deas referred to the fact he had undertaken some sabotage work, for ‘occasionally it was possible to spike petrol drums’ while employed in working parties at Nong Pladuk in 1944. However, it was his time at Tarmakan that prompted him to make a more extensive entry:

‘Four O/Rs of British Battalion escaped from Thamarkhan [Tarmakan] in January 1943. After about 8 days’ freedom they were caught by the Thai Police and handed over to nippon. They were taken out of camp and shot. Captain Pomeroy, an American, and a son of Lord Howard [Lieutenant Eric Howard], escaped at the same time and were away for 40 odd days, but were eventually re-captured and brought back to Thamarkhan [Tarmakan]. Later these two officers were said to have been bayonetted to death.’

The brutal murder of these gallant men - they were in fact beheaded - is rarely omitted from accounts of Japanese atrocities. No less harrowing are the accounts of the appalling conditions at Tarmakan, where 300 men - including Deas - were packed into each bamboo hut, with an allocation of about 18 inches in space. Their task was to construct two bridges over the Kwai, one in wood, the other steel and concrete. As the equally gallant Toosey later observed, ‘Every form of cruelty that an uncivilised mind could invent was used on the prisoners.’ For the record, Toosey described some of the treatment and punishments meted out to these men:

Beatings up in the face with the open hand or closed fist.
Beatings up on any part of the body with any form of implement available, including iron crowbars and great branches of wood.
Kicks on the head, in the private parts and the stomach and legs.
Being made to stand to attention in front of the guard room or anywhere else for hours on end, sometimes holding lumps of wood and other weighty objects above the head.
Kneeling in front of the guard room on two bamboos.
Two prisoners being made to beat one another up.
Doing hand presses for an indefinite period under the eyes of a guard, who would strike the offender if he showed any signs of relaxing.
Solitary confinement in tiny cells of earth and bamboo for weeks at a a time.

Deas survived his period of captivity, and returned after the War to Sandown, Isle of Wight. He died in Portsmouth in March 1967.