Roll of Honour: Alfred Cox

Lieutenant A. E. Cox

6th Bn. Royal Norfolk Regiment

197120

Died in enemy hands, 21 September 1944, Philippines. Aged 23.

______________________________________________________

Alfred Edwin Cox was born in 1922. The son of William Hugh and Sarah Louisa Cox of Bisley, Surrey and the brother of Annie (known to her friends and family as ‘Nan’). Nan was married to Thomas ‘Boyk’ Johnson (q.v.).

Alfred attended the William Ellis Foundation School in Gospel Oak in north London before joining the County School in September 1937 to study for his Civil Service exams. He left school in June of the following year to work with Westminster Bank in Threadneedle Street.

On June 17 1940 Alfred volunteered with the Young Soldiers Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment and received his commission in July 1941. 

After two years of training 20 year old Fred left Glasgow with his regiment aboard an American troop ship at the end of October 1941. The long route to the Far East was taken via Nova Scotia, Trinidad, Cape Town and Mombassa and they arrived in Singapore on 9 January 1942. Unfortunately their heavy equipment sailed via Bombay and did not arrive in Singapore until 15 February, just in time for the surrender.

The Norfolk's were soon in the front line attempting to halt the Japanese advance along the Malayan peninsula. They took part in the rear guard action at the Battle of Maur some 120 miles north of Singapore. It was to be the final battle of the Malay Campaign which subsequently ended with the fall of Singapore.

It is unclear at which point Fred was taken prisoner. The Norfolk's retreated to Singapore and were present when it fell on 15 July. Their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Ian Lywood who was hospitalised at the Alexandra Barracks with malaria, was murdered by the Japanese together with some 200 patients and staff.

For the next two years Fred Cox was in Japanese hands at Camp No. 2 at Songkurai in Thailand. Whilst there he contracted typhoid.

On 4 July 1944 Fred Cox and 1,285 other men were transported to Singapore and marched to the quayside where the Hofuku Maru waited. The men were British prisoners captured in Singapore and Dutch prisoners from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Some of the survivors were to later claim they had been on board the ship in the harbour since February.

The Hofuku Maru was a 5,825 ton cargo ship built about 1918. She was also variously known as the Fuji Maru or the Toyofuku Maru. She measured about 385 feet long and 51 feet at her beam. She was one of the unmarked POW transport ships used to take prisoners and troops to Japan - these ships were later known as ‘hell ships’. Once at sea these unmarked ships were at the mercy of allied attacks.

                                           

The Hofuku Maura

(Copyright National Maritime Museum)

Once the men had been herded aboard and then down into the hold of the ship all the ladders leading to the upper decks were destroyed and the hatches were battened down. The Hofuku Maru sailed out of Singapore harbour as part of convoy SHIMI-05. The convoy consisted of ten ships, five of which carried a total of about 5,000 POW’s making this the largest shipment of prisoners by the Japanese in WW2. The destination was Formosa (now Taiwan) where the men were to provide slave labour in the copper mines of Takao. It was to be a journey of some 3,000 miles.

The convoy reached Miri in Borneo on 8 July. The Hofuku Maru then left the convoy and sailed on to the Philippines unescorted. She limped into Manilla harbour on 19 July with engine trouble. She was laid up in the harbour for over two months as the engines were repaired. The prisoners still kept below decks except when receiving rations, suffered terribly. Heat, hunger and thirst took its toll. Almost all caught beri-beri or dysentery. Those not expected to last the journey were put ashore to face an uncertain fate.

Some of the sick were operated on below decks. In his book, ‘Hell In Five’, Jack Symon a comrade of Fred’s in the Royal Norfolk Regiment describes such an incident,

    ‘In that time our doctor on board who was Welsh performed an operation on one of our soldiers, something had gone wrong with his inside. This was done by candlelight in the hold and we all watched this being done. What an experience that was, to see a man’s whole stomach just lying there. Fortunately he recovered and great praise was given to our doctor, unfortunately the doctor himself died on that ship’.

On 20 September the Hofuku Maru left Manilla as part of convoy MATA-27. Of the eleven ships in the convoy she was the largest and the only one carrying prisoners. The following day the convoy had made slow progress, hugging the coast for fear of an allied attack, they had made just 80 miles.

Fast Carrier Task Force TF 38 commanded by Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher was the main strike force of the United States Navy. Spotter planes from one of her carriers came across the Hofuku Maru convoy on the morning of 21 September and a full scale attack was soon launched. The Hofuku Maru presented a large target for the force of almost 100 torpedo bombers. At about 10.30 a.m. she received direct hits from two ariel torpedoes and three bombs. She split in two and sank within five minutes.

Alfred was one of 1,047 prisoners who drowned, trapped below decks. The planes then turned their attention to the rest of the convoy and sank the remaining ten ships. Some survivors were picked up by a US submarine but the remainder swam ashore only to be re-captured by the Japanese.

The Official Chronology of the US Navy in World War Two notes the Hofuku Maru (under its alternative name of Toyofuku Maru) as being an ‘army cargo ship’.

On 9 December 1946 it was gazetted that HM The King approved that Alfred be mentioned in dispatches in recognition of his ‘gallant and distinguished services whilst a prisoner of war’.

                                               

Fred Cox’s body was never recovered. He is remembered on the Singapore Memorial (column 47) and on the Woking County Grammar School roll of honour located in Christ Church, Woking. Fred was 23 years old.

______________________________________________________

Last updated 1 September 2009

Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Butterworth Collection

Special thanks to Nan Wareham for the photo of Alfred