NAM.1995-05-121-1

Handmade flag, 1/5th Bn Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), made in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, 1944 (c). Associated with Sgt Dennis Lewis. Associated with World War Two, POWs Far East (1941-1945). The 1/5th (Derbyshire) Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters was part of the British Expeditionary Force that fought in Belgium and France in 1940. With the fall of France, the unit evacuated back to England from Dunkirk. It was then sent to the Malaya where it again found itself involved in a major defeat, this time at the hands of Japanese forces, assaulting Singapore in 1942. After the surrender of Singapore, the soldiers of the Sherwood Foresters, those that survived, endured four years of hardship as prisoners of war, many working on the infamous Burma Railway.

Singapore, Fall of, 1942 (World War Two, Far East 1941-1945)