Surviving the Red Chapatti

Where to turn, and where to look

Help & Resources

Bill set this account down more than forty years after the war, at the encouragement of the carers at a Combat Stress home. He had carried it, mostly in silence, until then.

This page lists the organisations that help veterans and their families today, and the archives that hold the papers of the men who were taken prisoner in the Far East. If one of them is your father or grandfather, the records here are where his name will be.

If you need support

These lines are answered by people, not machines. Most are open to families as well as to those who served.

  • Combat Stress

    0800 138 1619 24 hours a day, every day

    helpline@combatstress.org.uk by email

    07537 173 683 by text

    Please note that standard text message rates may apply.

    The UK's charity for veterans' mental health, and the charity that helped Bill.

    Combat Stress operates a free, confidential Helpline that can be reached at any time, from anywhere, by phone or text, whether you're currently serving, have served or are a family member or loved one. If you're a veteran struggling with your mental health — experiencing flashbacks, difficulty sleeping, feeling on edge, emotionally numb, or avoiding certain situations — these could be signs of PTSD. You are not alone.

    Our free, confidential Helpline is available 24/7 and can be used by all those in the Armed Forces community including veterans, serving personnel and their families. Please reach out, we're here to listen and help.

  • Samaritans

    116 123 24 hours a day, every day; free from any phone

    For anyone in distress, whether or not they have any connection to the armed forces.

  • SSAFA Forcesline

    0800 260 6780 Monday to Thursday, 9am to 5pm; Friday, 9am to 4pm

    Confidential advice and welfare support for the armed forces community, including families.

  • The Royal British Legion

    0808 802 8080 8am to 8pm, every day

    Welfare, financial, housing and care support for serving and ex-serving personnel and their families.

  • Op COURAGE

    The NHS veterans' mental health and wellbeing service. You can refer yourself, or be referred by your GP, your family or a charity. Each region has its own team; the service covers England.

  • Directory of veteran support organisations

    The government's searchable list of organisations that support veterans and their families, filtered by nation and by the kind of help you need.

For the families of Far East prisoners

Most of Bill's generation of prisoners did not speak about what had happened to them. The organisations below were founded by, and largely for, the families who came afterwards and wanted to know.

  • COFEPOW

    The Children (Families and Friends) of the Far East Prisoners of War. Founded in 1997 by descendants of Far East prisoners, and the charity behind the Far East Prisoners of War Memorial Building at the National Memorial Arboretum.

  • The COFEPOW research database

    Free and searchable. It holds thousands of liberation questionnaires, casualty lists, war cemetery records and medical information. For most families this is the first place to look.

  • Researching FEPOW History Group

    A research group and community covering Far East captivity and the mark it left on the generations that followed.

  • The Java FEPOW Club 1942

    The last remaining UK-wide Far East prisoner of war club, now open to all former Far East prisoners and to their wives and widows. Offers welfare advice and help with research.

    This site is served over an unsecured connection, so your browser may warn you before it opens.

  • Captive Memories

    The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine's project on the medical and personal history of British Far East prisoners, drawing on the Imperial War Museum sound archive. It includes oral histories recorded with men who came home.

Tracing a prisoner of war

If you are looking for one particular man — including any of the names on The Men — these are the places his record will be kept.

  • Service records — The National Archives

    Records of those who served after 1918 and were born before 1940 are held by The National Archives. A standard request costs £42.25; a full record check costs £48.87, plus £1.04 for each page copied.

  • Prisoner of war records

    WO 344 holds the liberation questionnaires that returning prisoners filled in during 1945, describing their capture, their camps and what they saw, in their own words. WO 345 holds the Japanese index cards, WO 361 the records of prisoner deaths, and WO 392 the camp lists.

  • Discovery

    The National Archives catalogue. Free to search, and worth trying a name in before paying for anything.

  • Commonwealth War Graves Commission

    The free record of the Commonwealth war dead, and of where each man is buried or commemorated. The men Bill marked as dead can be looked for here.

  • York Army Museum

    Holds the collection of the West Yorkshire Regiment and answers research enquiries for a fee of £35. The museum does not hold service records, but it does hold the regimental archives and war diaries.

  • International Committee of the Red Cross

    The ICRC holds millions of index cards recording prisoners of the Second World War. Its tracing service takes requests only in limited periods, so check the page for when it is next open.

Reading and research

For anyone coming to this subject new, including students.

  • Far East Prisoners of War — The Royal British Legion

    A short, readable account of Far East captivity. About 140,000 Allied service personnel were captured by the Japanese and about 30,000 of them died: a death rate of over twenty per cent, around seven times that in German camps.

  • Imperial War Museums

    Photographs, film, documents and one of the largest oral history collections in the world, including recordings made with Far East prisoners. Free to search online.

  • The National Archives — education

    Free lessons and document collections built around original records, for school and college work.

  • WW2 People's War

    An archive of 47,000 wartime memories and 15,000 images, contributed by the public between 2003 and 2006.

    The BBC closed the archive to new contributions in 2006 and no longer updates it. It remains readable.

  • National Memorial Arboretum

    The Far East Prisoners of War Memorial Building and the FEPOW Grove stand here, in Staffordshire. Entry is free.

  • The Burma Star Memorial Fund

    For those who served in the Burma Campaign. It holds the archives of the former Burma Star Association, which closed in 2020.

Every link on this page was checked in August 2026. If you find one that has moved or closed, please tell us.

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