Jim Wren, last survivor of the sinking of the Repulse in the Far East in 1941

Jim Wren, who has died aged 105, was one of the last surviving Royal Marines of the Second World War; he was also one of the last survivors of the battlecruiser Repulse, and of the Far East Prisoners of War association.

On the morning of December 10 1941, Repulse and the battleship Prince of Wales – with their destroyer escorts but no air cover – formed part of Force Z, the British naval force in the South China Sea sent to defend Singapore by deterring Japanese aggression.

Force Z was found by a flotilla of Japanese high-level bombers and torpedo bombers. The first bomb struck Repulse’s port hangar at 11:22 and burst on the armoured deck below the marines’ mess deck. There, Wren heard an aircraft alarm as he was enjoying a cup of tea: “I dropped my cup and as I left the mess deck the first bomb dropped right behind me. Fortunately, it didn’t explode but went down two or three decks before it exploded.”

Repulse was hit in rapid succession by four or five torpedoes and sank at 12:35 with the loss of 513 men. “There was such a confusion going on,” Wren recalled. “The noise and the rattle of gunfire was terrific, it was one big noisy battle. Gun crews of all descriptions involved. There was no panic though, we’d been through the routines so regularly that we just got on it. Everyone knew their role and we had such a good crew. We all had faith in each other. But all of a sudden she just rolled over and was gone.All of a sudden she just rolled over and was gone.” 

From the order ABANDON SHIP she had taken a matter of minutes to go under.

Wren was rescued from the oily sea by the destroyer Electra and landed in Singapore. When that fortress-city fell to the Japanese army in February 1942, Wren helped to evacuate civilian men, women and children into boats. He attempted his escape under the cover of darkness, but on February 15 his boat was illuminated by the searchlight of a Japanese destroyer:

“I won’t ever forget seeing them. Nobody could speak Japanese, and the Japanese sailors came onboard, tearing around the ship, shouting, and hitting and striking people, and the children were absolutely frightened to death. I can see the fear on their faces even today. They separated the military personnel from the civilians, and he was held on Sumatra Jim was held in an abandoned building without water or sanitation, stripped of every valuable thing they had, left only with a small amount of clothing.”

There, the conditions were brutal and uncertain: “We didn’t know where our next meal was coming from or where our next drink was coming from,” he recalled. “They had no idea how to deal with prisoners of war, the Japanese – no idea. The guards would cut you down if you failed to salute them or bow to them... you expect to die if you’re fighting a war but not to perish under those circumstances. They were comrades of mine. I’ll never forget them.”

The end of the war came quickly: in August 1945 working parties were stopped, and at a roll call the Japanese camp commander announced that the war was over and fled. Wren recalled: “I shed a few tears, I can tell you that. It was an emotional reaction through my whole body. At that stage, we had almost got to a point of no return.” He owed his survival to his own resilience and to the camaraderie and training of the Royal Marines. 

Wren returned to England in the troopship Antenor , arriving in Liverpool on October 27 1945.  There he was astonished to be met by his parents and his childhood sweetheart who had sent letters throughout the war but had all been returned marked “unknown”.

James Wren was born on April 22 1920 and brought up in Sussex. He initially sought to join the RAF or the Army but was turned down by both services before successfully enlisting in the Royal Marines aged 19. He trained at RM barracks Stonehouse in Plymouth and joined Repulse in Autumn 1940. 

The ship spent that winter and the following spring on protecting Arctic and Atlantic convoys and took part in in the hunt for the battleship Bismarck. Wren recalled: “This was a dangerous job; it was gruelling, especially up in the Arctic. The small ships we were with had a particularly tough time of it. But it was all part of the job. HMS Repulse was a very well-organised ship. We had a great captain [the future Admiral Sir William Tennant] and everything ran quite smoothly. The camaraderie was marvellous. I met some really super men in those days.” 

Postwar, Wren settled in Salisbury, where after leaving the Marines in 1953 he joined the Salisbury parks department before becoming the gardener and groundsman at Westwood St Thomas school.

Later Wren was a patron of the Force Z, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse Survivors’ Association. Major-General Patrick Cordingley, who met Wren through the survivors’ association, described him as “a real example” and “an inspiration”, highlighting his remarkable leadership qualities, shaped by extraordinary experience.

Worried that the wreck of Repulse, a designated war grave, was being plundered for scrap metal, Cordingley said, Wren “was determined that the desecration of the ships should be remembered in some meaningful way. He was moved by it. He was philosophical about what had happened.”

On his 105th birthday, Wren received nearly 200 cards from well-wishers, schools and football teams, and a telegram from the King. On the 80th anniversary of VJ-Day he was honoured by meeting the Duchess of Edinburgh at Old Sarum Manor Care Home. Prince Charles, as he was then, commissioned a portrait of Wren by Eileen Hogan from the Royal Drawing School.

Wren married Margaret Bell in 1946; she died in 2020, and he is survived by four generations of his family.

Wren told the BBC in August 2025: “I lost a lot of friends. I still see them now every night. I go to bed, and I seem to lay there and just view them as if it were yesterday.”

Jim Wren, born April 22 1920, died February 1 2026

[Source: Daily Telegraph]