John Mount and his wife Mary at the unveiling of the war memorial in September 2012

Our annual prisoners of war remembrance event continues to grow and grow, with new faces attending every year and also from far-flung corners of the country.

It is heartwarming to see the success of a project funded by New Journal readers.

And yet I could not help feeling a pang of regret this year that one man was missing in Mornington Crescent on Saturday.

Ernest John Mount was a life-long resident of Camden, most recently in Kendal block of Regent’s Park estate. He attended the events since it was launched back in 2012, then aged 92, often standing at the back and blending in among the crowd.

Anti-war, he revealed how for 65 years he kept “stored away” his appalling wartime memories that began when he was captured among a group of 35 soldiers in Java in 1942.

I remember John, who was posted from his family home in Camden High Street to Singapore at the tender age of 21, telling me how he could still remember the names and faces of 17 dead friends he had to help throw into the South Pacific while on board a boat to a camp in Singapore.

“It was survival, you couldn’t do anything,” he had said. “You either lived or you died. You couldn’t help your friends, you had nothing to give. There was malaria and dysentery.

“There were ulcers bigger than a human hand on my body. The doctor looked at it, cut it out, then said to me, ‘clean and bandage yourself up’.”

At the PoW camp, he recalled: “We got a bowl of rice in the morning, a bowl in the evening and perhaps seaweed soup – and for 65 years, I haven’t been close to a grain of rice.

“I did develop quite a taste for the seaweed soup, but I didn’t know if I could face eating it again. That taste never left me.”

He recalled how after being moved to Japan he was with 300 other captured soldiers ordered “to start goose-stepping down the beach”.

One, a Sergeant Glassbrook, was singled out as an agitator and was brought forward for a public decapitation. “The guard put his head on a chopping block and held the sword over him.

“He cried out to all of us, ‘Take no notice of these bloody bastards! Stick to it, lads!’.

“He didn’t decapitate him, who knows if he would have. After that, Glassbrook became our representative, the guards called him number one for all the time after that.”

Mr Mount had added: “When I finally got back to England I was about 27. There was no free NHS counselling. You just had to get on with it. The best way to do that was not open it up, store it away, and I have for 65 years.”

John died in June 2020, aged 99, and his wife died a few months later, also aged 99.

There is, I believe, something beautiful in that – through a memorial being funded by the kind generosity of CNJ readers – Mr Mount did not have to store it all away for the whole of his life.

And we will get John’s name inscribed on the memorial so future generations can remember him.