
Obituary for Lieutenant Colonel WF Badcock MBE
Lt Col Walter (Wally) Badcock MBE, who died on 13 January 2010 after a short illness, was a man who was proud of the British Army and especially of the Cambridgeshire Regiment. He was a serving soldier during World War Two and his work and much of his leisure time thereafter was devoted to the volunteer Army forces.
Born in 1917, just a month after his father was killed in Ypres, his mother took on extra work to pay for his education at the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys. After school he worked at Pye telecommunications in Cambridge until volunteering for the Cambridgeshire Regiment, where he joined the 2nd Battalion in 1939.
Initially the 2nd Battalion HQ was in Wisbech and then moved to Norfolk to take up coastal defences between training duties. After further training in Scotland, Wales, Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Battalion began the process of mobilisation in October 1941. Its destination was to be Singapore, via Nova Scotia and Cape Town, arriving in January 1942. Wally was first deployed on the mainland of Malaya before the retreat to Singapore. He was then in action during the heavy fighting in Singapore before the surrender of British troops. There followed three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war working on the notorious Thai railway. This is a period of his life that he seldom spoke of except in the most general of terms. His family learnt of his retreat from Malaya before the Battle of Singapore when he travelled down the coast in a small boat with a makeshift sail and mast, sailing by night and resting by day in fishing huts. He spoke of his horrendous journey from Singapore up the mainland, by rail in covered metal wagons, overcrowded and with no fresh air, which lasted for five days in tropical temperatures, but left the listener to imagine the conditions the men endured.
His family had some insight when he travelled back with them on three occasions to visit the war graves and travel up country, through the jungle, on the River Kwai. He described the work, the bamboo huts crawling with maggots, the cholera and dysentery, lack of food, and the never ending hard labour when even the sick were carried on stretchers to the worksite. He told how he bit right through his bottom lip with the effort of force marching and on a lighter note how, because he was a good swimmer, he was lucky to be given a job swimming in the river to undo any log jams as the sleepers for the railway were sent downstream; it enabled him to keep cool in the oppressive heat of the jungle.
After three and a half years, during which time Wally’s brother, Bill, died of cholera in one of the camps, the Japanese surrendered and the troops were repatriated. He came home suffering from malnutrition and, in common with all the prisoners of war, having to learn to live with the memories of the camps.
On return, after a period of recuperation, he worked as the production manager at the flax factory in Exning before accepting the invitation to join the staff of County TAFA (now RFCA) in 1948 as the finance secretary and deputy secretary. For a period in the early 1950s he was also Captain and Adjutant of Newmarket Home Guard Battalion. In 1967 he became the Cadet Executive Officer of the Cambridgeshire Army Cadet Force and was awarded the MBE in 1974 in recognition of his services. During his time as CEO he instigated several notable initiatives, amongst which was the overseeing of a pilot scheme for the introduction of girls into the Cadet Force. He also oversaw a period of significant expansion of the Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely ACF. He was Staff Officer to the County Cadet Commandant and retired as CEO and Deputy Commandant in 1982.
From 1972 to 1986, he was chairman of the Cambridgeshire Regiment Old Comrades Association and was president from 1997 to 2003 when failing eyesight forced his resignation, but he was proud to continue as a patron.
Wally’s first wife died a few years after his return from the Far East but he had 55 years of happy marriage to Mary. He was a much loved and respected father of Diane, Suzanne and David and was proud of his grandchildren and great grandchildren. As his grandson said at his funeral: ‘The world is a better place for him having lived in it and we have lost a great man’.