Oxfordshire’s VJ Day Stories: Sergeant Major Albert Benjamin Pritchet

By Joseph Vale

Oxfordshire’s VE Day Stories are our series of articles covering Second World War stories with county connections, celebrating the 80th anniversary of VE and VJ Day in 2025. Our commemorative exhibition is now open until 18 November 2025, but when we called out for your stories from the local area, we received more than we could fit into the exhibition alone!

Joseph Vale is a volunteer at the museum, contributing to many of the panels in From Conflict to Peace: Celebrating VE & VJ Day.

Albert Benjamin Pitchett

Benjamin Pritchett joined the Oxfordshire Yeomanry in May 1929 in Oxford, much to the frustration of his parents. At the time, the Yeomanry was a Territorial Army regiment of Royal Artillery, and Pritchet was a member of 251 ‘Banbury’ Battery. Over the next ten years, he worked for the Morris Motor Company until he was called up for active service when war with Germany was declared in 1939.

His father bought him a tobacco pipe, and the rest of his family gave him a hip flask as going-away presents. After a period of service in the British Isles, he set off from Stranraer in Scotland towards America before cutting south to East Africa. Eventually, Pritchett reached Durban, where he enjoyed the hospitality of a local man at his villa before setting off for Singapore.

The Banbury Battery became part of 85th Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery, within the hastily-assembled force sent to defend Singapore from the invading Japanese army.

Entry to Singapore was eventful, as his convoy was attacked by the Japanese Air Force, who sank the ship The Empress of Asia. However, his ship arrived safely in the port, and Pritchett’s battery joined the 9th Indian Army with the Gurkhas, who got only a short distance before having to retreat.

Pritchett was told ‘the whole of South East Asia had surrendered’ and that ‘the place was on fire’, as he and the rest of his men were taken as prisoners of war and marched to Changi.

From Changi, the POWs were marched to Singapore railway station, where he was packed into cattle trucks with between 40 and 60 other men. At Bangkok, Pritchett was marched to Bang Pong, where he began working along the river constructing the now-infamous Burma-Thailand railway.

Burma-Thailand Railway

The conditions were appalling, and Pritchett was malnourished. Often, the men would drown ducks and cook them in kerosene cans to supplement their meagre rations. Pritchett was sure he had ‘contracted every tropical disease going,’ including beriberi and dysentery, eventually weighing only six stone. It was only through the kindness of Lance Bombardier Smallburn, who got him food, that he survived.

The conditions were complicated by the American Air Force bombing the camps, so Pritchett set watches each night to provide a warning. Similar American action to sink Japanese ships transporting POWs to the mainland led Pritchett to rub white ash into his beard and hair to look older and avoid transportation.

Pritchett was never transported to Japan but was instead marched across Thailand, sleeping between rice fields and receiving salt packages from kindly locals to replenish the salts they sweated out. Eventually, Pritchett reached a camp and was called to a tent, where he was offered a chair as a light aircraft landed and a Japanese colonel emerged, declaring, ‘We are all friends again, and the war is over.’

Pritchett was sent by this Colonel to the nearest town, where the British were waiting for him to receive the Japanese surrender. In the town, the main street

POW Card (A B Pritchett)

had been laid out with tables of food and drink for his starved men. After this, he was evacuated to Rangoon, where he took a boat back to Britain.

When he reached home, his son, John, who was five or six, hid behind his wife’s skirt, having no memory of him from before he was taken as a POW.

Pritchett was soon reminded of his captivity when he had to attend the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, and The London Hospital for Tropical Diseases, but recovered and was back at his old job with Morris Motors the following April.