Physical description

Book with a black dustjacket, has a painted portrait of an older man in uniform on cover and white and blue text on cover and spine

Publication type

non-fiction

Inscriptions & markings

'178 B13' [pencil top of first page]
'Presented to the Returned Nurses / Club by Committee Member, also / ex Secretary of the Edith Cavell Trust / Fund. She had a very high / regard for Sir Albert Coates, whose / interest in nurses never abated. / Beryl Tuqelles[?]-Smith.' [Handwritten in blue ink on first page]
'RETURNED NURSES CLUB OF VICTORIA / SUB BRANCH R.S.L.' [stamp on title page]

Summary

'The Albert Coates story is one of heroism, of courage, endurance and service. he is a great civilian as well as a great soldier and the book tells of his contributions to the development of medical studies and services in Melbourne-but the core of the book is his description of three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of the Japanese in Sumatra, Burma and Thailand. Written on scraps of paper of all kinds, toilet paper, anything, in rare moments of solitude between improvising medicines, amputating legs, appealing to the Japanese authorities and administering hospital camps, Albert Coates describes on of history's great feats of medicine.
The first and last sections of the book have been written by Newman Rosenthal who also edited the prisoner of war section-so there is continuity of narrative.' [From front dust jacket]