Herbert Forbes Alley was the son of Annie (nee Andrews) and Henry Alley and was born in Christchurch in 1917. He was one of 12 siblings and one of six brothers who served overseas during World War Two. Before the war he was living with his mother Annie in Fitzroy, New Plymouth and had been working as a labourer.
He was serving with the 25th (Wellington) Battalion when he was captured in 1941. He was on board a POW ship, the Jantzen, when it was torpedoed by a British warship. His experience is captured in an account he gave in a radio documentary by the Spectrum Programme (see link below).
Bert then spent the next four years as a POW in Greece, Italy, Poland and Germany before he was forced to take part in a 900km march from the German/Poland boarder to Austria during the closing months of the war. He shared his account of the march with the Spectrum Programme in 1980 (see link below).
His brother, John Maxwell (Max), was also a POW during the war while brothers, Laurence, Ronald and Ralph served in the Pacific during the war with either the Army or the Airforce. Another brother, Donald, was a Methodist missionary working in the Solomon Islands with his wife and two small sons when war broke out. His family was evacuated but he remained, before being captured by the Japanese. He died at sea in 1942 when the ship he was being transported to Japan on was torpedoed.
Herbert and his brothers were cousins with Rewi Alley. After the war Herbert married Ethel Joyce and he died in Whakatane on 2 June 1997.
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