Torpedoed, left clinging to wreckage, then a PoW ... my family didn't know I was alive until war ended

Marine tells Sophie life of bravery as she marks VJ Day

- BY RUSSELL MYERS Royal Editor

A WAR hero who survived more than three years in a Japanese prisoner camp has shared tales of bravery with the Duchess of Edinburgh ahead of the 80th anniversary of VJ Day.

Sophie, 60, yesterday sat down with a cup of tea and cake with ex Royal Marine Jim Wren, who at 105 is one of the oldest surviving veterans of the Second World War.

He told the patron of the Java Far East Prisoner of War Club 1942 he survived when HMS Repulse was torpedoed in December 1941, but was captured by the Japanese in Singapore in February 1942.

BRUTAL

He spent three and a half years captive and was still imprisoned in August 1945 when the war ended.

When Sophie asked if his family knew he had survived, Mr Wren said: “It was right until the end of the war until they knew I was alive.

“So they suffered all this time.”