Last Man Out

Last Man Out PDF Author: H. Robert Charles
Publisher: Motorbooks
ISBN: 9780760328200
Category : Burma-Siam Railway
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai." One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, including a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author.

Last Man Out

Last Man Out PDF Author: H. Robert Charles
Publisher: Motorbooks
ISBN: 9780760328200
Category : Burma-Siam Railway
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai." One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, including a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author.

Last Man Out

Last Man Out PDF Author: H. Robert Charles
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA
ISBN: 1616737603
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
An American Marine recounts his ordeal as a World War II POW forced by the Japanese to build the railway immortalized in The Bridge on the River Kwai. From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, such as a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author. Praise for Last Man Out “A remarkable story, long overdue, of the treatment of POW’s captured by Japan.” —Arthur L. Maher, USN, Senior officer to survive sinking of the USS Houston, POW of the Japanese in World War II “In World War II, to move materials and troops from Japan to Burma by avoiding the perilous sea route around the Malay Peninsula, the Japanese military built a railroad through the jungles of Thailand and Burma at great human cost to its prisoner laborers. Last Man Out is an effective addition to the history of this tragedy.” —Library Journal

Surviving the Burma/Death Railway

Surviving the Burma/Death Railway PDF Author: Guus Fonteijn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780648568292
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Diary of a Dutch, Jewish prisoner on the Thai-Burma railway during WWII. This is a harrowing account of forced labour in the jungle under horrific conditions of privation and disease.

Building the Death Railway

Building the Death Railway PDF Author: Robert Sherman La Forte
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780842024280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Generosity amid the greatest cruelty, Building the Death Railway gives the American perspective on events that shocked the world.

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.

Surviving the Death Railway

Surviving the Death Railway PDF Author: Barry Custance Baker
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781473870000
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The ordeals of the POWs put to slave labor by their Japanese masters on the 'Burma Railway' have been well documented yet never cease to shock. It is impossible not to be horrified and moved by their stoic courage in the face of inhuman brutality, appalling hardship and ever-present death. While Barry Custance Baker was enduring his 1000 days of captivity, his young wife Phyllis was attempting to correspond with him and the families of Barry's unit. Fortunately these moving letters have been preserved and appear, edited by their daughter Hilary, in this book along with Barry's graphic memoir written after the War. Surviving the Death Railway's combination of first-hand account, correspondence and comment provide a unique insight into the long nightmare experienced by those in the Far East and at home. The result is a powerful and inspiring account of one of the most shameful chapters in the history of mankind which makes for compelling reading.

Last Man Out

Last Man Out PDF Author: H. Robert Charles
Publisher: Motorbooks
ISBN: 9780760328200
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai." One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, including a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author.

Burma Railway Medicine

Burma Railway Medicine PDF Author: Geoffrey V. Gill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910837092
Category : Prisoners of war
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The 'Death Railway' was very well named. More correctly called the Burma or Thai-Burma Railway, it was a major project during Allied Far East imprisonment under the Japanese. Over 60,000 prisoners worked on its construction, the majority of whom were British, and some 20 per cent died before release in 1945. Working conditions were appalling, the climate inhospitable, and food supplies grossly inadequate, making the POWs terribly vulnerable to a plethora of tropical infections and syndromes of malnutrition. No medical care was given by their Japanese captors, and it fell to the Allied POW doctors and medical orderlies to treat the sick, which they did with little in the way of medical equipment or drugs.

Surviving the Death Railway

Surviving the Death Railway PDF Author: Hilary Custance Green
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 147387002X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
The ordeals of the POWs put to slave labour by their Japanese masters on the Burma Railway have been well documented yet never cease to shock. It is impossible not to be horrified and moved by their stoic courage in the face of inhuman brutality, appalling hardship and ever-present death.While Barry Custance Baker was enduring his 1000 days of captivity, his young wife Phyllis was attempting to correspond with him and the families of Barrys unit. Fortunately these moving letters have been preserved and appear, edited by their daughter Hilary, in this book along with Barrys graphic memoir written after the War. Surviving the Death Railways combination of first-hand account, correspondence and comment provide a unique insight into the long nightmare experienced by those in the Far East and at home. The result is a powerful and inspiring account of one of the most shameful chapters in the history of mankind which makes for compelling reading.

Hell under the Rising Sun

Hell under the Rising Sun PDF Author: Kelly E. Crager
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585446353
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Late in 1940, the young men of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment stepped off the trucks at Camp Bowie in Brownwood, Texas, ready to complete the training they would need for active duty in World War II. Many of them had grown up together in Jacksboro, Texas, and almost all of them were eager to face any challenge. Just over a year later, these carefree young Texans would be confronted by horrors they could never have imagined. The battalion was en route to bolster the Allied defense of the Philippines when they received news of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon, they found themselves ashore on Java, with orders to assist the Dutch, British, and Australian defense of the island against imminent Japanese invasion. When war came to Java in March 1942, the Japanese forces overwhelmed the numerically inferior Allied defenders in little more than a week. For more than three years, the Texans, along with the sailors and marines who survived the sinking of the USS Houston, were prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning in late 1942, these prisoners-of-war were shipped to Burma to accelerate completion of the Burma-Thailand railway. These men labored alongside other Allied prisoners and Asian conscript laborers to build more than 260 miles of railroad for their Japanese taskmasters. They suffered abscessed wounds, near-starvation, daily beatings, and debilitating disease, and 89 of the original 534 Texans taken prisoner died in the infested, malarial jungles. The survivors received a hero’s welcome from Gov. Coke Stevenson, who declared October 29, 1945, as “Lost Battalion Day” when they finally returned to Texas. Kelly E. Crager consulted official documentary sources of the National Archives and the U.S. Army and mined the personal memoirs and oral history interviews of the “Lost Battalion” members. He focuses on the treatment the men received in their captivity and surmises that a main factor in the battalion’s comparatively high survival rate (84 percent of the 2nd Battalion) was the comraderie of the Texans and their commitment to care for each other. This narrative is grueling, yet ultimately inspiring. Hell under the Rising Sun will be a valuable addition to the collections of World War II historians and interested general readers alike.