Mr. Eric Walton of Clay Cross: Personal and Royal Air Force Service Papers

These papers represent Mr. Walton's time as: clerk to General Sir Frederick Browning, Chief of Staff to Lord Louis Mountbatten during the Lord's time in Burma, India, and Singapore; and Mr. Walton's service as confidential clerk to Lord Killearn. The papers relating to Mr. Walton's time as clerk to General Sir Frederick Brauning include minutes of a meeting to discuss the ceasefire with the Japanese forces.

Contents

D6022/1-2 Personal papers of Eric Walton

D6022/1 North Wingfield Boys' School

D6022/2 North Wingfield Council School

D6022/3-4 Eric Walton's World War II service papers

D6022/3 RAF service papers

D6022/4 Papers relating to the Japanese ceasefire at the end of World War II

D6022/5 Supreme Allied Command South East Asia

D6022/6 The visit to Bangkok, Thailand of Lord Killearn

D6022/7 The visit to The Philippines of Lord Killearn, the United Kingdom's representative at the Declaration of Independence of the Republic in July 1946

D6022/8 Miscellanea

D6022/9 Photographs

These papers and photographs were donated to Derbyshire Record Office in June 2003 and January 2004.

Eric Walton was born in 1920 in Hepthorne Lane, Clay Cross, into a coal mining family. He left school at 14. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force during World War 2, but was classed as a non-combatant because of injuries sustained in civilian life. His skill in shorthand enabled him to become a confidential clerk, stenographer and notetaker. After arrival in India in 1943, Eric Walton joined the Headquarters Secretariat of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia. Subsequently he worked in the private office of the Chief of General Staff, General Browning. It was the General who asked Mr. Walton to make a 'verbatim report of proceedings' of the negotiations in Rangoon in August 1945 for a ceasefire with Japanese forces.

After the ceasefire, administration was handed over to the civil power in the person of Lord Killearn, British Special Commissioner in South East Asia. Eric Walton continued to serve on the Commissioner's personal staff and accompanied him to the celebrations for the granting of independence to the Philippines in July 1946. Mr. Walton was demobbed in August 1946 and returned to the United Kingdom.