"Don't forget the Merchant Navy."
Retired Dunedin seaman Charles Louis "Lou" Barron is passionate about those who served their countries aboard convoy ships during the Second World War, and he has every reason to be.
Mr Barron (85) will spend tomorrow remembering the friends he lost in German bomb attacks, comrades who helped him survive Japanese prisoner of war (POW) camps and all those he served with as a young lad in the British Merchant Navy.
Aged just 14, Mr Barron left his Birkenhead, Merseyside home (across the River Mersey from Liverpool) to follow in his father's footsteps as a seaman.
He first worked on former Polish ship Lech as she journeyed around the north of Scotland.
"It was very rough and I was very seasick," he said.
Lech was bombed by the German air force but managed to sail into London during air raids.
After returning to Liverpool, Mr Barron then boarded RMS Duchess of Bedford in December 1940, serving on the vessel as it made three trips carrying soldiers, including New Zealand troops, from England to Egypt.
"We evacuated Singapore before the Japs got there - we left February 2, 1942, and it fell on February 15. Little did I think I was going back to Singapore," he said.
In April 1942, Mr Barron left the Duchess and joined the crew on HMHS Gloucester Castle, which departed Liverpool on June 21 to journey across the south Atlantic, where she was shelled by German commerce raider Michel, disguised as a merchant ship.
Of the 152 people on board, only 51 survived.
Mr Barron's school friend and fellow seaman went down with the ship, while the teenage Lou was captured by German soldiers who handed him over to Japanese forces in Singapore after three months at sea.
Mr Barron, then aged 16, was Gloucester Castle's youngest survivor and POW.
He spent time at three different camps, including Seletar and Loyang, but it was the notoriously overcrowded Changi prison which he remembers only too well.
"That was the worst part of it.
"The Japanese did not treat us prisoners of war very well at all," he said.
Changi was built to accommodate 600, but housed 6000 POWs.
Cramped conditions meant six men shared single-person concrete cells measuring 2m by 3m.
Malnutrition and disease were rife.
"We all had lice, we couldn't keep clean and we had nothing but linen G-strings to wear. The squat toilet didn't work and we ate anything we could - snails, snakes, lizards - we were hungry all the time," Mr Barron said.
Prisoners were fed small amounts of rice and occasionally some form of stew, although they were made to work 14 hours a day building landing strips.
Mr Barron was missing, presumed dead, for more than two years and did not know whether his family in England had survived German air raids.
Pamphlets dropped from American aeroplanes signalled the war's end, but the Changi detainees were advised to stay in camp and wait to be freed.
"They dropped medical supplies and leaflets, told us not to eat too much because our stomachs wouldn't take it and not to wander out of the camp or retaliate against the Japs," he said.
Eventually, the prisoners were "sprayed down with DDT or something" and taken aboard HMS Sussex - the first post-war British ship landed in Singapore - for a proper meal.
"The first thing I saw was a big loaf of bread and a tin of plum jam. It was the first bread I had seen in three and a-half years.
"They tried to feed us steak, eggs and chips but we couldn't eat it," Mr Barron said.
After having tropical ringworm removed from his back, he was allowed to go home with 800 other POWs on New Zealand ship Manuwai, which sailed from Singapore to England in 29 days.
As Mr Barron and a fellow Merseyside seaman travelled up their home river, from where they had departed three and a-half years earlier, Mr Barron's friend remarked: "That was a bloody long trip".
"Another chap started to cry. There were crowds and flags and bands playing - what a welcome," Mr Barron said.
On land, he was given a civilian suit to wear and inspected by Red Cross members before being taken home.
"I can always remember there was a big sign across the street saying 'Welcome home Lou'. We had sent cablegrams from Gibraltar on the way home but I hadn't received an answer," Mr Barron said.
In February 1946, he returned to life at sea, eventually "jumping ship" in Dunedin the following year.
He married Stella "Peggy" Mills, of Invercargill, in November 1948 after meeting her at a town hall dance and they settled in Dunedin, having eight children.
"I could never settle down when I went back to England after the war. Things were really bad, and I loved the sea - I would go back to sea tomorrow if I could," he said.
The Merchant Navy never got the recognition it deserved during the war, Mr Barron said, although he has received five medals for his service since living in New Zealand.
"There are no winners in war.
"It's pretty hard to explain to younger people what it was really like in those days," he said.
