Chaplain Noel Duckworth (1912-1980) loved rowing – and the sport would go on to save his life.
At 5ft 2in (1.6m), the vicar’s son from Yorkshire coxed for his college at the University of Cambridge, for the university boat club – and for Great Britain during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, said Mr Jackson.
By the outbreak of World War Two he was a Church of England priest and he joined the 2nd Battalion as its padre – the name given to Army chaplains.
As Singapore fell, field hospitals were being overrun and the injured were being executed, so the order went out that it was every man for himself.
“Amazingly, Royal Army Medical Corps personnel elect to stay behind and look after the wounded and Noel Duckworth sees it as his duty to do the same,” said Mr Jackson, co-founder of the Cambridgeshire Regiment Research Trust.
The group he was with was captured and the order to kill was about to be given.