Veteran, 105, tells Sophie of torpedo attack

ONE of the oldest surviving veterans of the Second World War has told the Duchess of Edinburgh over a cup of tea how his Royal Navy ship was torpedoed by the Japanese before he was held as a prisoner of war for more than three years.

- MATHILDE GRANDJEAN Press Association

Sophie met 105-year-old Royal Marines veteran James "Jim" Wren in Salisbury on Tuesday ahead of the 80th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day (VJ Day), which marks the surrender of Japan to the Allied Forces on August 15 and the end of the Second World War.

Mr Wren survived the sinking of HMS Repulse in December 1941 but was captured by the Japanese in Singapore in February 1942.

He spent the next three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war and was still in captivity in August 1945 when the war ended.

When the duchess, who is patron of The Java Far East Prisoner of War Club 1942, 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."