It was the moment of magic that won Britain’s Got Talent as soldier turned conjurer Richard Jones welcomed war veteran Fergus Anckorn onstage after telling his story through a card trick.
But Fergus’s real life story of suffering and survival is more incredible than any illusion.
Fergus was blown up while fighting in Singapore during the Second World War and cheated death during the sickening massacre at the Royal Alexandra military hospital, where dozens of wounded soldiers were stabbed to death by invaded Japanese troops.
He was then taken prisoner along with 10,000 other soldiers from the 118th Field Regiment Royal Artillery and forced help build the infamous Burma Railroad, also known as the Death Railway.
Fergus and his friends only survived while thousands starved to death around them in appalling squalor, because he entertained the guards with his magic tricks – and tricked them into giving him food.
His magic earned him the nickname ‘the conjurer on the River Kwai’.
Fergus, from Sussex, said: “One day the Japanese camp commandant said he had the generals coming to visit and he wanted me to do some magic.
"He asked what I would need for a trick.
“I requested an egg. The cook asked me how many I wanted, so I asked for 50.
"I went straight back to the hut and we had a 49-egg omelette, saving just one egg for the trick.
“That night I did the trick for the generals and it all went very well.
"But the next day I was summoned to the commandant’s hut. He said: “You do magic one egg. Where 49 eggs?”
“I thought, in 10 seconds my head will rolling across that floor. But out of my mouth came the words, ‘Your trick was so important to me, I was rehearsing all day’.
“He nodded and let me go. I couldn’t perform that trick again for 40 years. My knees would knock together even thinking about it.”
Fergus learned magic growing up in Kent between the wars and became the youngest member of the Magic Circle at the time when he was 18.
He is now its oldest member, aged 97, having joined its elite inner circle.
He met his sweetheart Lucille as a hospital patient, chatting to her as she cleaned the bedpans, and they married in 1941.
But shortly afterward he was shipped to Singapore with the British Army.
He endured a baptism of fire. No sooner had the ship landed than they were dive-bombed by the Japanese.
Fergus dived into the dock and emerged to find five of his friends blown to bits.
Worse was to come. Weeks later Fergus was caught by a bomb blast that made the live shell and the can of beetroot he was carrying explode.
He was found lying in a ditch so badly wounded that his dog-tags had already been taken and handed it by a fellow soldier who assumed he was dead.
Recovering in the Alexandra Military Hospital in Singapore he feared his right hand would be amputated but persuaded the surgeons to save it with the help of a hospital orderly who had seen him perform in England.
Fergus was still in hospital in February 1942 when the Japanese soldiers arrived and massacred more than 150 staff and patients, bayoneting wounded soldiers in their beds.
This time an unintended illusion saved his life.
He was covered in blood after suffering a hemorrhage and when he hid his face under his pillow and waited to die, the Japanese raced straight past him.
Fergus said: “There was so much blood pouring from me on to the bed and the floor that they must have thought they had already done it.
“When I came round everyone was dead except for me. I never told Lucille or my mother about that day.”
Despite his miraculous escape Fergus was captured and put to work on the Burma Railroad.
The food was so scarce the soldiers resorted to eating anything they could find including maggots, mice, and scorpions.
One day Fergus grew so weak while carrying a vat of hot creosote he could not move and an angry guard poured the scalding liquid over his back.
While in the hospital recovering from the burns, Fergus began practicing left-handed card tricks as his right hand was still unusable after the explosion.
He was so impressed he let Fergus stage concert parties, spared him the toughest jobs, and gave him and his friends extra food.
Fergus even topped up their rations by using food in his magic tricks wherever possible.
He said: “They gave us the food afterward because they wouldn’t touch anything we touched – to them, we were verminous and infectious.
"Magic helped me no end because it made some of the guards quite like me.”
But Fergus thought his luck had run out when Japanese guards took him out into the jungle with four fellow soldiers to shoot them for fun.
He said: “They stood us against some trees and got a machine gun out and put it on a tripod and aimed it at us.
"We didn’t have blindfolds on or anything. And we waited for the bullets for 10 minutes.
“Then they thought better of it. They put the gun away and took us back to the camp.
"When we got there we found out the war had been over for three days.”
Fergus was not allowed to return home for three months until he had put on weight, as the army feared his starved, skeletal body would be too shocking for his family.
But by the time he arrived home he still weighed just six stone. After so many terrifying ordeals, Fergus resolved to live the rest of his life without fear.
He said: “I am probably the luckiest man alive. I’ve been blown up. I’ve been shot at.
"I’ve survived a massacre. And I also got away with that egg trick. Every day is a wonder to me.”
Source from Mirror
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