Horrors to Happiness for my Bachelor Uncle Charles Weston

"Bachelor Uncle" is the theme of this week’s “52 Ancestors” challenge.  I have chosen to write a profile of my Uncle Charles Weston before his marriage.  It is a story that spans horror to happiness.

Charles was my father's youngest brother in a family of four children, born to Albert Ernest Weston and Mary Barbara Matthews.    On official documents I discovered that  his name was  given as Eric Charles, but he was always referred to in the family as Charles. 

Young men around town c.1936! 
John and Charles Weston, with my father's first car  

 A good-looking Charles 

John and Charles  were close as brothers and had these nicknames for one another  -  "Ace"  and "Mel".  Unfortunately I failed to ask my father about the origin of the names and neither my cousin nor I  have been able to find out anything.   Were Mel and Ace popular radio characters, for instance?   I would love to know, if anyone out there has any idea?  

 My  father's best man at his wedding in 1938 was of course Charles.

In the1939 Register for England and Wales, Eric C. Weston was listed with his parents, at Leicester and described as a "hosiery warehouseman".  

But then war broke out and Charles joined  the  Royal Army Ordnance Corps.  

The continuing  wartime story of Uncle Charles is told in the poignant  words of my father who wrote down his family memories for me.  

"Uncle Charles was a Japanese POW on the Bridge of the River Kwai — at least it was a bridge when the hundreds of POWs had finished it.

Conditions were dreadful, 100s died through lack of food, mostly slops, no solids. Charles had beri-beri, dysentery, ulcers and malaria. 

In 1942 Mum and Dad got a card through the Red Cross — from the War Minister which read “Regret to inform you that your son has been posted missing”. Dad packed up work and the news broke him — he was never the same again.  They never expected to see him again.

It was at Christmas 1943 that Mum got a card from the Red Cross with a few words “I am safe and well” — “Safe” yes…..”Well” -  Certainly Not.

In August 45, lists of Japanese P.O.W.s  were coming out and I was looking for Charles'  name.   After the atomic bomb fell on Japan,  the POWs on the bridge were taken to Singapore and prisoners stayed in Changhai jail until shipped home.

Then I got this telegram dated 24th September 1945."

Found among my father's papers after  his death

  

Dad ended "I  was so sorry for Charles, as he arrived in Liverpool with no-one able to meet him. I was in Burma and my mother could not leave my Dad.   You were just a baby and Mum could not go.  It was lonely homecoming for a POW". 

Both Ancestry and FindMyPast have records of prisoners of war in World War Two  and I was pleased to find an entry for Charles - one in Japanese with a transcription.  These confirmed that   Charles was in the  Royal Army Ordnance Corps - service no. 7648160;  was captured February 1942 and freed September 1945 - over 3 years of living a horror.

Below a letter postmarked 6th November 1945  written by Charles to my father, who was still serving in the Far East.

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A Chance of Happiness  

A year after the war, it was  a happier time when Charles married Vera Botell in December 1946.

I am the shivering little bridesmaid,standing in front of my parents. 

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Postcript:  Charles and Vera had a daughter, but sadly Vera died of cancer in 1961.  Charles was able to see his daughter married and the birth of a granddaughter.  He died in 1999. 

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