FAMILY and friends raised their glasses to celebrate the 100th birthday of one of the prisoners of war who worked on building the bridge over the River Kwai.

Ronald Fahey, from Allostock, was on the troopship RMS Empress of Asia when it was bombed by Japanese aircraft on February 5, 1942 as it headed for Singapore.

Miraculously few of those on board died in the attack, and Private Fahey was one of those rescued from the burning ship by HMAS Yarra.

However 10 days later, after arriving in Singapore, Private Fahey was among 100,000 British, Australian and Dutch soldiers and civilians taken prisoner when the British colony fell to the Japanese.

Knutsford Guardian:

Andrew Fahey, left, and friends at the celebration

Over the following three and a half years Private Fahey was among the thousands of POWs who were held in Changi Prison and worked on building the bridge over the River Kwai.

The bridge was part of the creation by the Japanese of the 258-mile Burma Railway, which was built by forced labour of between 180,000 and 250,000 Asian civilians and 61,000 Allied POWs, of which 90,000 civilians and 12,000 POWs died.

Following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the Japanese surrender the guards disappeared, and Private Fahey and his fellow prisoners made their way to the coast before being airlifted to Rangoon for eventual return to the UK.

Following the war Ronald married Joyce, who is five years his junior at 95, and had a successful butchery business and a subsequent poultry farm.

Knutsford Guardian:

Ronald chats with family friend Keith Tickle

Ronald celebrated his 100th birthday on Thursday with 30 friends and relations at the Crown of Peover.

“He received congratulatory cards from The Queen, The Department of Work and pensions, his old regiment and a personal note from The Countess of Wessex, who is patron of the Java Far East Prisoners of War Club,” said his son Andrew, who runs Cheshire Chickens from the family farm at Allostock.

He said his father had been a poultry farmer into his 90s, and enjoyed his favourite hobby, golf, until the same age.

Those who attended the birthday celebration learned of Ronald’s wartime service and post-war life from details put together by his friend Stan Rothwell and Julian Beavan, whose father was also a POW in the same camp.