Physical description

Book with a red dustjacket, had a photograph of a seated older man on cover and white text on cover and spine

Publication type

non-fiction

Inscriptions & markings

'Book No 2. 10.5.89' [Inside front cover near top, blue ink]
'Merry Christmas 1986 / Love Marg' [top right hand corner first page in blue ink]
'B18a' [pencil top right of first page]
'RETURNED NURSES CLUB OF VICTORIA / SUB BRANCH R.S.L.' [stamp on first page]
'RETURNED NURSES CLUB OF VICTORIA / SUB BRANCH R.S.L.' [stamp on title page]
'This book has been donated / to the Returned & Services Nurses' Club / of Victoria Sub Branch of the R. S. L. / in memory of our sister and anunt - The late Isabel Blanche / Whittenbury. A.A.N.S / May you all enjoy it. / 1994' [Handwritten with blue ink on title page]

Summary

'More than forty years ago Sir Edward Dunlop, then a lieutenant-colonel, began these diaries at the start of his imprisonment by the Japanese in Java and on the Burma-Thailand Railway. His meticulous observations of prison camp life were concealed all through the war; by the time peace cam in 1945, he carried with him a unique record of the lives of prisoners-of-war.
As a commanding officer and a surgeon, 'Weary' became a hero and a legend to thousands of Australian and allied prisoners, whose lives were saved with meagre medical supplies and the instruments the medical officers carried on their backs through Java and Thai jungles. He says himself: 'Of some 22,000 who entered captivity, more than 7,000 died or were killed. Of their sufferings... only those who were present can fully comprehend the seeming hopelessness of it all as their bodies wasted and their friends died.'
Sir Edward describes how the cmps were organised; he records deaths, cholera epidemics, operations, and torture; his own - rare - despair; the movement of prisoners up and down the line; and his constant struggle to protect the sick from being drafted into Japanese work parties.
From February 1942 he was in the following Japanese prison camps; Bandoeng, Tjimahi, Makasura, Changi, Konyu, Hintok, Tarsau, Chungkai and Nakom Patom.' [From inside front dust jacket]