From 1942 to 1945 some 22,000 Australian service personnel became prisoners-of-war of the Japanese. Only 14,000 survived those three and a half years and this is the authoritative and moving story of a number of the survivors.
One of Hank Nelson's earliest schoolboy memories is of waiting at a small country railway station to meet a returning prisoner-of-war. The ex-prisoner, a frail figure in a voluminous army uniform hesitated in front of the line of children who gave three cheers and waved flags. Uncertain of what was expected of him, the ex-prisoner looked around, perhaps thought about making a speech, then walked away. The man was one of those 14,000 survivors who had experiences he could never share fully with anyone who was not there.
