Description
Object description
Informative ms diary (80pp), kept intermittently from April 1942 - May 1945 by a Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) Corporal serving in the 197th Field Ambulance, beginning with retrospective entries covering his troopship voyage out to the Far East (November 1941 - February 1942) and describing how he was wounded when the EMPRESS OF ASIA was bombed off Singapore and was a patient in the Alexandra Military Hospital when some staff and patients were massacred by Japanese troops just before the fighting ended (5 - 15 February 1942) and giving a contemporary record of his experiences as a prisoner of war in Singapore when he was employed as a nursing orderly in the camp hospitals in Changi (March 1942 - May 1944) and Kranji (May 1944 - May 1945) including interesting references to his duties, their diet and the increasing shortage of food and drugs, the state of his and his fellow prisoners' morale, camp entertainments and sports, the arrival of mail from home (March 1943 onwards), the physical condition of prisoners of war returning to Changi from Outram Road gaol (July - September 1943) and the Burma-Siam railway (January 1944) and the attitude of prisoners of war towards photographs of their families (1 June 1943); together with other documents including: his soldier's service pay book (AB 64); release book and RAMC Association card; two postcards written home during his captivity (1943 and 1945); tickets used in Changi camp to collect meals, attend the preview of a concert and show that their billet had been searched by the Japanese; pages from three issues of 'The Sportsmans Weekly' published in Changi (September - October 1942); the souvenir programme for the production of 'Gentlemen Only' at the Palladium Theatre, Changi (December 1942); ts and ms extracts (2pp) from the War Diary of the Alexandra Military Hospital at the time of the massacre; and a small number of presscuttings and other printed items relating to his captivity.
Content description
Informative ms diary (80pp), kept intermittently from April 1942 - May 1945 by a Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) Corporal serving in the 197th Field Ambulance, beginning with retrospective entries covering his troopship voyage out to the Far East (November 1941 - February 1942) and describing how he was wounded when the EMPRESS OF ASIA was bombed off Singapore and was a patient in the Alexandra Military Hospital when some staff and patients were massacred by Japanese troops just before the fighting ended (5 - 15 February 1942) and giving a contemporary record of his experiences as a prisoner of war in Singapore when he was employed as a nursing orderly in the camp hospitals in Changi (March 1942 - May 1944) and Kranji (May 1944 - May 1945) including interesting references to his duties, their diet and the increasing shortage of food and drugs, the state of his and his fellow prisoners' morale, camp entertainments and sports, the arrival of mail from home (March 1943 onwards), the physical condition of prisoners of war returning to Changi from Outram Road gaol (July - September 1943) and the Burma-Siam railway (January 1944) and the attitude of prisoners of war towards photographs of their families (1 June 1943); together with other documents including: his soldier's service pay book (AB 64); release book and RAMC Association card; two postcards written home during his captivity (1943 and 1945); tickets used in Changi camp to collect meals, attend the preview of a concert and show that their billet had been searched by the Japanese; pages from three issues of 'The Sportsmans Weekly' published in Changi (September - October 1942); the souvenir programme for the production of 'Gentlemen Only' at the Palladium Theatre, Changi (December 1942); ts and ms extracts (2pp) from the War Diary of the Alexandra Military Hospital at the time of the massacre; and a small number of presscuttings and other printed items relating to his captivity.
History note
Cataloguer RWAS
History note
Catalogue date 2004-03