Private Brian Hardy CARSON (5369)
3rd (Penang and Province Wellesley Volunteer Corps) Battalion, Straits Settlement Volunteer Force

Date of birth: 19th June 1903
Date of death: 4th February 1944

Died aged 40
Buried at Chungkai War Cemetery Plot 1 Row D Grave 6
He was born at East Bank, Frodsham in Cheshire on the 19th of June 1903 the son of Cyril Hardy Carson, civil engineer, and Anne Sutherland (nee Taylor) of Hough Green House, Chester.

He was educated at Colet House, Rhyl, at the Junior King's School from January 1916 and at the King's School Canterbury from May 1917 to July 1922. He was a member of the Rowing VIII and received his Sports Colours in 1922.

He matriculated for St John?s College Cambridge in 1922 where he read Mathematics and his tutor was Mr E. Cunningham. He gained the Parker Exhibition and moved to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he achieved a BA in 1925.

On leaving university he embarked at London on board the passenger ship SS Malwa on the 16th of July 1926 bound for Singapore where he joined Paterson, Simons and Co Ltd as a mercantile assistant. He was married to Gloria (nee Humphreys) at the Singapore Registry Office on the 18th of June 1936; they honeymooned in the Cameron Highlands.

On the outbreak of war, he joined the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force and was captured on the 15th of February 1942 following the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. He was initially imprisoned at Changi Barracks and was later sent to No. 2 Camp at Songkurai in Thailand where he was forced to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway. He died from avitaminosis.

A survivor of the camp recalled: -

"We arrived, 1,680 strong at No.2 Camp, Songkurai, Thailand, which will stand out as the horror hell of Prison Camps. From this 1680 less than 250 survive today to tell its tale. Our accommodation consisted of bamboo huts without roofs. The monsoon had begun, and the rain beat down. Work - slave work - piling earth and stones in little skips on to a railway embankment began immediately. It began at 5 o'clock in the morning and finished at 9 o'clock at night and even later than that. Exhausted, starved and benumbed in spirit we toiled because if we did not, we and our sick would starve. As it was, the sick had half rations because the Japanese said - ?No work, no food."

He is commemorated on the war memorial at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
 

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