star's tears
Line of Duty star breaks down in tears after hearing ‘horrific’ family history on Who Do You Think You Are
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LINE of Duty star Vicky McClure was left feeling emotional after learning about her family history on Who Do You Think You Are?
Vicky, 41, travelled for 17 hours to Taiwan to learn more about her great-grandfather's experiences in a prisoner of war camp.
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Her mother Carol's grandfather Harry Millership had been mistreated after his capture in Singapore with 130,000 others in 1942.
Vicky was moved to tears as she learned how Harry had spent 70 days travelling to Singapore by sea, but was involved in one of the Allies' greatest defeats of the Second World War.
After eight months, her great-grandfather was transported to Taiwan on a so-called "hell ship", alongside men suffering from starvation and dysentery.
A visibly emotional Vicky said: "The reason I’m an actor, it’s because I’ve got a very vivid imagination and sometimes I battle with that and I think I’m battling with it here.
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"My head is all over the shop and I’m learning information that is just horrific. He is my great-grandad, it’s my mum’s grandad.”
She added: "I want my family with me, I feel really on my own in this.
"It's so much to take in but I feel terrible because he was alone and he didn't make it home.
"I just weirdly feel connected, which is bonkers because I never met him."
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Before being conscripted, Harry worked as a coal miner in Yorkshire, which he had done from the age of 14.
He had been responsible for moving the supports that secured the tunnels.
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Later in the programme, Vicky was shown an account on what the camp would have been like.
Bursting into tears, the Line of Duty actress said: “It’s horrible, horrible, horrible.”
Viewers of the BBC show shared their reactions to the heartbreaking discoveries.
One wrote on X: "Tears shed for the poor prisoners of war held in Japanese camps in WWII - an emotional watch."
Another remarked: "Blown away by @Vicky_McClure’s family story.
"Poor Harry to have escaped the darkness of the Yorkshire coalfield, only to die in a mine thousands of miles from home."
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While a third shared: "One of the saddest episodes I’ve ever watched but how proud is Vicky McClure of her Great Grandad. RIP Harry Millership.";
Who Do You Think You Are? airs on BBC One and BBC iPlayer
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