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2324023
Signalman
William Devlin
Royal Corps of Signals
Service History
Served in Hong Kong. Bill was intercepting enemy transmissions, decoding, re-coding and sending them on from a radio shack on the Peak.
Captured 25th December 1941 when Hong Kong fell to the Japanese.
Sent to Shamshuipo PoW Camp.
While in Shamshuipo, he was in constant fear that the code books, equipment, etc had been discovered by the Japanese, not having had time to destroy the radio shack before his capture. Only later, did Bill discover that the radio shack had been destroyed by Canadian troops before the Japanese could find it. In the rush to evacuate the radio shack Bill had lost his New Testament fortunately a Canadian soldier found and kept it with him in captivity for the remainder of the war, deriving great comfort from it. Finally, using the army number printed edge-on on the New Testament pages, it was restored to Bill many years later at a special POW reunion at the School of Signals in Blandford, Dorset.
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