At the end of WWII, 2,000 Dutch civilian captives from a Japanese prison camp in Sumatra marched to freedom — with Joan Bamford Fletcher in the lead! When the war broke out, Fletcher traveled to England and joined the first aid nursing Yeomanry, an all-women volunteer uniformed organization, where she worked as a driver for the exiled Polish army. In 1945, she was sent to help move prisoners of war to safety, which required traveling through territory patrolled by hostile members of the Indonesian independence movement. To do so, she realized she would need help from the surrendered (but still armed) Japanese soldiers. As she reported, she simply marched into the local army detachment, spoke to the officer in charge, and left with trucks and a detachment of 70 soldiers for protection. Her feat captured the imagination of media, and she was named a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire — and the captain of the Japanese soldiers so impressed by her that he gave her a 300-year-old samurai sword belonging to his family.
Copyright © Times Women © 2021