Physical description

Illustrated book with dustjacket. Book has a light green cover, with an image of a compass embossed in gold. on the front. The tile author's surname and publisher's name are embossed in gold on the spine. Dust jacket has multicoloured illustration by J.P.L Kickhefer on front and spine: group of women, some with head scarves walking behind a ?prison guard, barbed wire topped fence in front of and behind group. In the background is a hut and tropical plants. Title (white print) and authors name (red print) appear on a black background at base of front of dustjacket. Title, author's and publisher's names are printed in black on spine

Publication type

non-fiction

Inscriptions & markings

At the bottom right of the front end-page is a printed black and white donation sticker: black Maltese cross in circle, "This book was donated to Alfred Archival Association Nursing Division by" Marjorie Connor (handwritten in black ink) Also previous catalogue number handwritten in black ink on this label. On the title page is a dedication handwritten in blue ink "Marjorie Connor with best wishes Betty Jeffrey 12th March 1954


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Summary

In 1942 a group of sixty-five Australian Army nursing sisters was evacuated from Malaya aboard the Vyner Brooke, a few days before the fall of Singapore. Two days later their ship was bombed and sunk by the Japanese. Of the fifty-three survivors who scrambled ashore, twenty-one were murdered and the remaining thirty-two were taken prisoner. The book is the engrossing record kept by one of the sisters, Betty Jeffrey, during the three grueling years of imprisonment that followed. It is an amazing story of survival and deprivation in the harshest of conditions.