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During WW2, Mossley man Jim McCall was a Royal Navy wireless telegraphist who served aboard HMS Prince of Wales during its legendary engagement with the German battleship Bismarck.

Attacked by Japanese torpedo planes and dive bombers in the Far East, the Prince of Wales was sunk and Jim eventually captured by the Japanese. Jim was put to work on the notorious Burma ‘Death Railway’, where thousands of allied soldiers were starved and worked to death by the Japanese.

The Thailand–Burma Railway was a 415 kilometres (258 mile) railway between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), built by the Japanese Empire during World War II, to support its forces in the Burma campaign.

The story of his survival is quite remarkable.

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