After the end of the Second World War, Australia’s Directorate of War Graves Serivces uncovered an extraordinary document hidden in a bottle buried in a grave in Singapore. It was a summary of the secret diary of Dr. Rowley Richards, a POW and medical officer on the notorious Burma-Siam (Thailand) Railway. Richards, was just 23 when war broke out, and in a series of diaries he recorded the everyday brutality of the POW camps and also the courage, humour and mateship of his comrades…Rowley Richards was a young doctor and officer in the army reserve when war broke out. He embarked for Singapore in 1941, a year before the Allies capitulated to invading Japanese forces. This is his account of the horrors of battle, imprisonment and survival.Dr Rowley Richards MBE, AO, has had a distinguished career in medicine. In 1969 Rowley was awarded an MBE for his services in war and peace, and in 1993 he received an Order of Australia for services to sports medicine and the annual City to Surf fun run.

• Richards, Rowley
• Physicians — Australia — Biography
• World War, 1939-1945 — Prisoners and prisons, Japanese
• World War, 1939-1945 — Personal narratives, Australian
• Prisoners of war — Australia
• Prisoners of war — Japan

• xx, 348 p., [16] p. of plates : ills., map, ports., facsims., ; 20 cm.

# R/0418/0419R/081221/290124