Mess tins

These mess tins belonged to Henry McCreath of Berwick upon Tweed.  They were engraved with the badge and emblems of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers when he was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in the Second World War (1939-1945).   His Battalion was sent to Singapore just as it fell: they were prisoners of war for three years.  Put to work on the infamous Burma Railway, the prisoners suffered terribly.  These mess tins and their designs tell an extraordinary story.  Henry McCreath died in 2015, aged 99.