Death Camps of the River Kwai

Death Camps of the River Kwai PDF Author: Thomas Pounder
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Death Camps of the River Kwai

Death Camps of the River Kwai PDF Author: Thomas Pounder
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description


1000 Days on the River Kwai

1000 Days on the River Kwai PDF Author: Cary Owtram
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1473897823
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
A British officer recounts his harrowing years as a POW in Thailand, including his time as the camp commandant, in this WWII memoir. Colonel Cary Owtram served with the 137th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, and the 11th Indian Infantry Division in Malaysia. After being captured by the Japanese in Singapore, he was transported to the infamous Burma railway. He went on to spend the next three and a half years in grueling captivity in Thailand, first in Ban Pong Camp and then Chungkai Camp—one of the largest POW camps in the region. Owtram was appointed the British Camp Commandant at Chungkai, making him responsible for his fellow prisoners—a heavy responsibility added to the general deprivation and hardship suffered by all. During that time, Owtram kept a secret diary in which he recorded the brutal experience of surviving day to day and attempting to deal with their harsh and unpredictable Japanese captors. It is not only the prisoners who suffered, but also their families at home. The postscript by Owtram’s daughters vividly demonstrates the agonies of doubt and worry that loved ones went through and the effect of the experience on all.

Death Camp on the River Kwai

Death Camp on the River Kwai PDF Author: Roger J. Owen
Publisher: Pergamon
ISBN: 9780080256436
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Death Camp on the River Kwai

Death Camp on the River Kwai PDF Author: Roger John Owen
Publisher: Pergamon
ISBN: 9780080256429
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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The Thailand-Burma Railway, 1942-1946: Voluntary accounts

The Thailand-Burma Railway, 1942-1946: Voluntary accounts PDF Author: Paul H. Kratoska
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415309516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Long Way Back to the River Kwai

Long Way Back to the River Kwai PDF Author: Loet Velmans
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 161145185X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
The astounding memoir of a World War II veteran who spent three and a half years in the slave labor camps made famous by The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Death Camp on the River Kwai

Death Camp on the River Kwai PDF Author: R.J. Owen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781851750139
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Long Way Back to the River Kwai

Long Way Back to the River Kwai PDF Author: Loet Velmans
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628721650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Loet Velmans was seventeen when the Germans invaded Holland. He and his family fled to London on the Dutch Coast Guard cutter Seaman’s Hope and then sailed to the Dutch East Indies—now Indonesia—where he joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago and made prisoners of the Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Velmans and his fellow POWs toiled in slave labor camps, building a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border so the Japanese could invade India. Some 200,000 POWs and slave laborers died building this Death Railway. Velmans, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable mistreatment, never gave up hope. Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend. From that emotional visit sprung this stunning memoir. Long Way Back to the River Kwai is a simply told but searing memoir of World War II—a testimonial to one man’s indomitable will to live that will take its place beside the Diary of Ann Frank, Bridge over the River Kwai, and Edith’s Story.

Survivor on the River Kwai

Survivor on the River Kwai PDF Author: Reg Twigg
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241965101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Survivor on the River Kwai is the heartbreaking story of Reg Twigg, one of the last men standing from a forgotten war. Called up in 1940, Reg expected to be fighting Germans. Instead, he found himself caught up in the worst military defeat in modern British history - the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. What followed were three years of hell, moving from one camp to another along the Kwai river, building the infamous Burma railway for the all-conquering Japanese Imperial Army. Some prisoners coped with the endless brutality of the code of Bushido by turning to God; others clung to whatever was left of the regimental structure. Reg made the deadly jungle, with its malaria, cholera, swollen rivers, lethal snakes and exhausting heat, work for him. With an ingenuity that is astonishing, he trapped and ate lizards, harvested pumpkins from the canteen rubbish heap and with his homemade razor became camp barber. That Reg survived is testimony to his own courage and determination, his will to beat the alien brutality of camp guards who had nothing but contempt for him and his fellow POWs. He was a risk taker whose survival strategies sometimes bordered on genius. Reg's story is unique. Reg Twigg was born at Wigston (Leicester) barracks on 16 December 1913. He was called up to the Leicestershire Regiment in 1940 but instead of fighting Hitler he was sent to the Far East, stationed at Singapore. When captured by the Japanese, he decided he would do everything to survive. After his repatriation from the Far East, Reg returned to Leicester. With his family he returned to Thailand in 2006, and revisited the sites of the POW camps. Reg died in 2013, at the age of ninety-nine, two weeks before the publication of this book.

Hellships Down

Hellships Down PDF Author: Michael Sturma
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476642192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
On 12 September 1944, a wolfpack of U.S. submarines attacked the Japanese convoy HI-72 in the South China Sea. Among the ships sunk were two carrying Allied prisoners of war. Men who had already endured the trials of Japanese captivity faced a renewed struggle for survival at sea. This book tells the broader story of the HI-72 convoy through the stories of two survivors: Arthur Bancroft, who was rescued by an American submarine, and Charles "Rowley" Richards, who was rescued by the Japanese. The story of these men represents the thousands of Allied POWs who suffered not only the atrocious conditions of these Japanese hellships, but also the terror of friendly fire from their own side's submarines. For the first time, the personal, political and legal aftermath of these men's experiences is fully detailed. At its heart, this is a story of survival. Charting the survivors' fates from rescue to their attempts at retribution, this book reveals the trauma that continued long after the war was over.