Obituary for BD Lines

On 30 September 2009 Bertram (Bertie) Douglas Lines died in the West Suffolk cottage that had been his home for nearly 87 years. He was 90 years of age and, in his own words, had “had a good innings”. It was Bertie’s great wish to die in the Upper Layham home where he grew up and which he later shared with his beloved wife, Gladys, and his independent nature, which was with him right to the end, made sure he got his wish. However, he did not die alone. Two of his greatest friends in life, Graham and Marilyn Green, had been nursing him since he had fallen ill four days before, and were with him when he passed away.

To many spectators Bertie lived a simple life, not straying too far or for too long from the county of Suffolk; working for the same farming family for nearly 40 years; visiting the same church every Sunday and spending most of his spare time in the garden growing vegetables he didn’t eat but loved to give away. He would often joke that he left Suffolk once when he was just 20 years old “and look what happened”.

At the age of 20, Bertie went to war and after a short but violent encounter with combat spent three and half years as a Prisoner Of War in the Far East (FEPOW). This horrific experience had a major impact on his life and his health but not on his spirit; or his great capacity to love those close to him and be kind to everyone he met. Bertie would say that he learnt kindness from his grandmother, Elizabeth Lines, who together with Grandfather Albert, raised Bertie and his three sisters, Vera, Violet and Zara, and had a most caring influence on Bertie right up until her death at the age of 100.

Bertie, born in Henstead, Blything on 19 June 1919, was the only son and fourth child of Albert (Jnr) and May Lines. He moved to ‘The Cottage’ at Upper Layham with his grandparents when he was three and went to school at Hadleigh, walking across a meadow to St Andrew’s Church in Lower Layham where a horse-drawn cart met children from local villages. He was a boy scout and a keen cyclist, enjoying long rides most weekends during his teens, including one memorable overnight journey to the south coast of England. He also cycled to Stoke-by-Nayland to attend a church fete where he met Gladys Grimsey, starting a romance that lasted beyond her death in April 2008. Bertie continued to grow Glad’s favourite flower, a blue morning glory, keeping a daily tally of the blooms through spring, summer and autumn, right up until the day before he died.

Bertie left school in 1934 and one of his earliest jobs was with a local market gardener taking produce to Ipswich by lorry. He later went to work as a mechanic with F Holbrow of Hadleigh. Both of these jobs proved of value to Bertie during the war years.

In May 1939, Bertie was among the first to enlist in the Territorial Army at Hadleigh, joining C Company, 5th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment (now part of The Royal Anglian Regiment). He accompanied his Battalion to a training camp in Fulmer in July and was then called to the Colours when Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The response of Suffolk men to the call to enlist was described as outstanding, with more than 2000 men from East and West Suffolk volunteering within the first two months. Bertie was stationed in Hadleigh and then Stalham before the 5th Battalion became responsible for guarding a stretch of Norfolk coastline near Horsey. Then they moved to North Walsham, the Cambridge area, Hawick (Scotland), Knowsley Park (Lancashire) and Leominster (Herefordshire), where they helped local farmers with the harvest. During this period, Bertie became known as an ‘experienced driver’ and took on the role of driving his ranking officers.

In October 1941, the 5th Battalion was finally deployed overseas. Like most men of his age, Bertie said he felt like he was heading on a great adventure when he boarded the SS Reina del Pacifico bound for Nova Scotia and then the USS Wakefield, as one of 4000 troops en route for the Port of Spain in Trinidad. He was back at sea when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and, after spending 13 days at Cape Town, he was part of a convoy which set sail on 13 December 1941 for Bombay. Hong Kong had fallen shortly before Bertie’s Battalion arrived. They travelled by train to a training camp at Ahmednagar. When Manila fell to Japanese forces they were ordered back to Bombay to rejoin the Wakefield and sail to Singapore. This journey proved to be the first of many lucky escapes for Bertie – a familiar story for the survivors of war – as the convoy was attacked by Japanese bombers but managed to escape damage.

Bertie and his Battalion immediately found themselves right in the thick of the war at Singapore, taking up a defensive position responsible for Pungol Peninsula on the north-east of the Island. The fighting continued for 17 days, pushing the British soldiers slowly back, when on 15 February 1942, men of the Suffolk Regiment became prisoners of the Japanese Imperial Army. Bertie was lying in a hospital ward at this time, with a shrapnel wound received during the fighting.

Bertie didn’t talk a lot about his days as a FEPOW. When he did, he mainly talked about other people – their bravery, their suffering and their endurance. But he was one of the men at the notorious prison camp, Changi, where disease and brutality killed thousands. He was marched to other labour camps, through the jungle for days on end, with barely any food or water. In October 1942 he and hundreds of his POW mates were shipped like cattle by train from Singapore to Thailand and then by truck and on foot to Chongkai, a camp on the Mee Khlong River. The construction of the ‘Death Railway’ between Thailand and Burma and the conditions endured by the soldiers who had become the ‘slave labour’ became infamous history. Bertie was part of that history but he used to say that he was one of the ‘lucky ones’. As a mechanic he was often involved with fixing machinery and vehicles. He didn’t always have to work ‘quite as hard as the others’, he would say.

As one of the ‘fit men’ (ie still managing to cling to life), Bertie was moved from work party to work party and camp to camp, always starving, often suffering from dysentery and forever surrounded by death. When the war finally ended he was working on the construction of an airfield on the Indochina border. Bertie returned to England and his home county of Suffolk with physical and emotional scars, but even those closest to him couldn’t account for them all. He was deaf in one ear, he suffered long term stomach and digestive problems caused by starvation and chemically treated rice, he had a shrapnel wound in one leg and whip marks on his back. But he would be more likely to tell you, with a wry smile on his face, that he definitely hated rice.

There is no doubt that Bertie made the most of post war life. His beloved sister Zara and long term girlfriend Gladys met him off the train at Ipswich. He married Gladys at Stoke-by-Nayland on 8 April 1950 and they lived a very contented life together, giving as much as they could to the community and caring for the people around them. Bertie worked for nearly 40 years on the Craske family property, Barrards Hall at Whatfield, as a mechanic. He gave many hours to St Andrew’s Church as a warden and active member of the congregation.

Right to the end, Bertie Lines was a humble, modest man who stood on his own two feet and asked for very little – from the world or anyone in it. Those who had the privilege of being able to be of some service or show some kindness were rewarded with a rare kind of gratitude. He is survived by two sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends who feel that the world would be a better place if true gentlemen like Bertie still existed.

Today, there’s a young cherry tree growing in the grounds of St Andrew’s Church. It grows in honour of Gladys Lines. The task of securing appropriate permission, obtaining the seedling, planting the tree and making sure it got a good start in life was what drove Bertie every day of the 18 months he survived Glad. And so it also grows as a symbol of the man – Bertram Douglas Lines.

J O’B