Major, Royal Artillery: Army Service 1939-1946 and overseas service 1941-1945, Malaya (Japanese Prisoner of War)
Born: May 19th 1911
Died: July 7th 1946
Age at Death: 35
Medals / Honours: Military Cross
Harry was born on 19 May 1911 in Yorkshire to Harry Ford, a horse dealer, and his wife Ellen. In 1937 Harry, by this time a sales manager, married Doris Whiting, a former beauty queen of Louth in Scotland who was described in the local paper, in true fairy tale style, as ‘one of the most lovely young women in the county and famed for her beauty far afield’.
Ford was a man of great bravery, earning the Military Cross at Dunkirk in 1940. The following year he was captured by the Japanese during the Malaya campaign while serving with the 88th Regiment of the Royal Artillery, and held prisoner in terrible conditions while building the Burma Railway.
Ford had long been a mercurial character. However, his experience of life as a prisoner of the Japanese appears to have aggravated his condition. He separated from Doris and on 6 July 1946 he met with his wife to discuss divorce, but the discussion ended in a row. The following day he shot himself in a hotel in York. The coroner delivered a verdict that he killed himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed, probably because of his experiences as a prisoner of war. Ford’s remains are at the Nottingham Crematorium.