Description
Object description
Photocopy of his Second World War memoirs (128pp ts) recording his experiences whilst serving as a signalman with 18th Divisional Signals in the Far East and as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, commencing with his departure from the UK in October 1941 and the voyage to the Far East via Canada in the troopship SS ORCADES and the USS WEST POINT, including a prolonged stopover at Ahmednagar in India, arrival in Singapore and an impressionistic account of conditions there in the shadow of invasion, the circumstances of his capture at the fall of the colony to the Japanese and initial confinement in Changi barracks (referred to by the author as his 'phoney captivity'), with vignettes of POW life in the camp including turning his hand to the making of musical instruments and playing the fiddle in a band, the 'Selarang incident' and his departure for the Burma-Thailand Railway in October 1942, his experiences at Banpong, Kanchanaburi, Tarsao, Wampo, Tonchan, Rintin and Tamuang until March 1945 when he was moved to Nakom Nyok, digging out underground ammunition stores, where he was at the end of the war when the camp was abandoned by its Japanese personnel, and his repatriation to the UK, arriving in Liverpool in October 1945 [Murdo (Murdoch) MacAskill is noted as a Scottish Highland bard, following in the footsteps of his father, the bard Donald MacAskill].
Content description
Photocopy of his Second World War memoirs (128pp ts) recording his experiences whilst serving as a signalman with 18th Divisional Signals in the Far East and as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, commencing with his departure from the UK in October 1941 and the voyage to the Far East via Canada in the troopship SS ORCADES and the USS WEST POINT, including a prolonged stopover at Ahmednagar in India, arrival in Singapore and an impressionistic account of conditions there in the shadow of invasion, the circumstances of his capture at the fall of the colony to the Japanese and initial confinement in Changi barracks (referred to by the author as his 'phoney captivity'), with vignettes of POW life in the camp including turning his hand to the making of musical instruments and playing the fiddle in a band, the 'Selarang incident' and his departure for the Burma-Thailand Railway in October 1942, his experiences at Banpong, Kanchanaburi, Tarsao, Wampo, Tonchan, Rintin and Tamuang until March 1945 when he was moved to Nakom Nyok, digging out underground ammunition stores, where he was at the end of the war when the camp was abandoned by its Japanese personnel, and his repatriation to the UK, arriving in Liverpool in October 1945 [Murdo (Murdoch) MacAskill is noted as a Scottish Highland bard, following in the footsteps of his father, the bard Donald MacAskill].
History note
Cataloguer SWW