Author: Loet Velmans
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628721650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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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.
Author: Loet Velmans
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 161145185X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
"He survived brutality, sickness, and war, but he refused to give up hope. Loet Velmans was seventeen when Germany invaded his native Holland in 1940. He and his family escaped to London just before the Dutch army surrendered and German U-boats began their deadly patrol of the North Sea. Deciding they would be safer in the Far East, the Velmans family sailed to the Dutch East Indies--now Indonesia--where Loet joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded, conquered the colony in a week without firing a shot, and imprisoned all Dutch soldiers. For three and a half years, Loet toiled in slave-labor camps building the railway made famous by The Bridge on the River Kwai, which would supply the Japanese invasion of India. Some 200,000 POW's and laborers died building this Railway of Death. Loet suffered malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable abuse, but never gave up hope. Almost sixty years later he returned to the place where he nearly died and where he buried his best friend in a burlap sack. From that emotional visit comes this stunning memoir" -- Back cover.
Author: Gale, Cengage Learning
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN: 1410342069
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 33
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Book Description
A Study Guide for Pierre Boulle's "The Bridge over River Kwai," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
Author: Marina MacKay
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019255851X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Before his masterpiece The Rise of the Novel made him one of the most influential post-war British literary critics, Ian Watt was a soldier, a prisoner of war of the Japanese, and a forced labourer on the notorious Burma-Thailand Railway. Both an intellectual biography and an intellectual history of the mid-century, this book reconstructs Watt's wartime world: these were harrowing years of mass death, deprivation, and terror, but also ones in which communities and institutions were improvised under the starkest of emergency conditions. Ian Watt: The Novel and the Wartime Critic argues that many of our foundational stories about the novel—about the novel's origins and development, and about the social, moral, and psychological work that the novel accomplishes—can be traced to the crises of the Second World War and its aftermath.
Author: Gerald W. Fry
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 081087525X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 712
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Book Description
Throughout its history, Thailand has shown remarkable resiliency, adaptability, and creativity in responding to serious threats and crises, and this since much earlier times when it was known as Siam. This book, while focusing on the modern period, does reach back to ancient kingdoms but also shows the impressive rise to a modern democracy, although still endowed with a king, and even more impressively, an economic “tiger.” Moreover, it has become a prime tourist destination and is thus known to vast numbers of foreigners as a sort of “instant Asia.” The Historical Dictionary of Thailand, now in its third edition, covers this amazing story in various ways. First, the chronology traces the most significant events from year to year. The introduction then provides a good overview of the land and people, the history and traditions, and where it now seems to be heading. The dictionary, which by now has hundreds of detailed and cross-referenced entries, looks more closely at important persons, places, institutions and events as well as more generally its politics, economy, society, culture and religion. So this is an excellent reference work not only for scholars but many others who have visited the country and were fascinated by it.
Author: John A Rodgaard
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
ISBN: 1036112373
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
Here is the exhaustive and exhilarating story of HMS Venomous, one of sixty-seven V&W destroyers built at the end of the Great War that were to play a key role in the struggle to keep the sea lanes open in the Atlantic, Home Waters and the Mediterranean during the following war. Her story was perhaps the most memorable of all her class. When war broke out she was to find herself in the front line as the German blitzkrieg swept across Europe in 1940 and the V&Ws made high speed dashes across the Channel to bring troops and civilians back from Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk, and prepared for the expected invasion. Later that year she and her sister-ships escorted the Atlantic convoys which supplied our Russian allies with the weapons to halt the German advance. She returned to the Mediterranean and took part in Operation Pedestal to save Malta, and as the allies prepared for the landings in North Africa she was ordered to escort the destroyer depot ship, HMS Hecla to the invasion beaches. When Hecla was torpedoed off the coast off Morocco Venomous fought the attacking U-boat and rescued 500 survivors. She escorted convoys along the coast of North Africa including the first-through convoy from Gibraltar to Alexandria. and she joined the invasion force to Sicily during Operation Husky. In October 1943 she returned to Britain for a major refit at Falmouth when she was converted to an air target ship for training Barracuda torpedo bombers based at Douglas, Isle of Man, and then, after being transferred to the east coast, she was nearly lost in a hurricane before being sent to Kristiansand to accept the surrender of German naval forces. Venomous and her sister-ships were all scrapped after the War, but her extraordinary career, during which she fought without cessation, is brought to life in this rousing and beautifully told ship biography, a fitting memorial to the V&Ws and the men who served in them. ‘I would rate this as being in the same class as The Cruel Sea for a picture of small ship life in World War Two.’ The Naval Review ‘A portrayal of life on a wartime destroyer with a depth and insight that is possible unequalled by any previously published work.’ Warship Annual This book is outstanding for its detailed insight into the life on not just a single destroyer but, by extension, life at sea aboard and Royal Navy destroyer.’ The Northern Mariner ‘A Hard Fought Ship is a vivid portrait of a fighting vessel and the men who operated her.’ Warships International Fleet Review ‘Highly recommended to both naval historians and the general public.’ Mariner’s Mirror ‘It is an exemplary ship biography where a detailed narrative of the destroyer’s exploits are brought to life by a wealth of first-hand accounts.’ Navy News ‘This book is a detailed and thrilling account of the life of a typical V&W class destroyer.’ Sea Breezes
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004190171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 738
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Book Description
An obvious hiatus amidst the abundance of Pacific War studies is the story of Indonesia during that period. The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War, edited under the aegis of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, now fills that gap. This state of the art work reflects the different experiences and historiographic traditions of Indonesians, Japanese, and Dutch. The aim is to present the developments in the Indonesian archipelago in as much a rational and dispassionate way as possible, taking into account regional and social variations and interpreting them within the international context of pre- and post-war trends. With due acknowledgement of different perspectives, ambiguities, unresolved issues and conflicting views, it sets out to enhance mutual understanding and academic dialogue.
Author: Portland Jones
Publisher: Fremantle Press
ISBN: 1760990272
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
This is the story of Arthur Watkins, blacksmith, who leaves his beloved young wife Helen to serve with the 10th Light Horse Battalion in the Middle East in World War I. He returns without his horse, a man forever changed by what he has seen and suffered. Years later, Arthur's children Ruth and Tom are still feeling the effects of the first war when Tom is sent by his father to work in Sumatra. Tom Watkins is there in 1942 when the Japanese invade and is taken prisoner. This is the story of two wars that divide and unite a father and son, and all the years that lie in between.
Author: Kevin Blackburn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134092237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
Using archival, oral and literary sources, Blackburn and Hack, along with an impressive team of international contributors, rectify the obscured picture of the Japanese captive by bringing together, for the first time, a collection of essays covering an extremely broad range of forgotten captives.
Author: Keir Reeves
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317478991
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
Battlefield Events: Landscape, Commemoration and Heritage is an investigative and analytical study into the way in which significant landscapes of war have been constructed and imagined through events over time to articulate specific narratives and denote consequence and identity. The book charts the ways in which a number of landscapes of war have been created and managed from an events perspective, and how the processes of remembering (along with silencing and forgetting) at these places has influenced the management of these warscapes in the present day. With chapters from authors based in seven different countries on three continents and comparative case studies, this book has a truly international perspective. This timely longitudinal analysis of war commemoration events, the associated landscapes, travel to these destinations and management strategies will be valuable reading for all those interested in war landscapes and events.
