SUPERB COURAGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 April 1946, Page 5

SUPERB COURAGE

JAPANESE TORTURES DEFIED

THREE POSTHUMOUS AWARDS fßec. 9 a.m.) LONDON, April 18.

Posthumous awards of the George Cross to three men, who with superb courage for months resisted starvation and torture while they were prisoners of the Japanese, were gazetted to-day. Two British officers concerned in an attempted escape were subjected to terrible ordeals. They refused to implicate any of their companions and retained their self-control to the last when they were beheaded. One Indian officer refused Japanese attempts to coerce him from allegiance and was finally beheaded after two long periods in which he was starved and tortured. The British officers were Colonel Lanceray Arthur Newnham ,and Captain Douglas Ford. Both were tortured for five months before they were executed.

The Indian was Captain Mateen Ahmed Ansari, a close relation of an Indian prince. He was imprisoned at Hong Kong in 1942 and released to hospital after five months because he was so mutilated that he was unable to walk. Captain Ansari, when he recovered sufficiently, organised an escaping system but was betrayed, re-imprisoned and starved and tortured for several more months. Finally he was beheaded without faltering in his courage, defiance and endurance.