The Naked Island, by Russell Braddon

 

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THE NAKED ISLAND is a war narrative of appalling suffering, but also of indomitable courage and endurance on the part of British and Australian soldiers. Russell Braddon arrived in Malaya in 1941. After sketchy training the troops were plunged into battle against an enemy well trained and overwhelming in numbers. Defeat was inevitable. On his twenty-first birthday he was captured and seated in a ditch to be shot—but the Japanese changed their minds. Then followed over three years of captivity—in Kuala Lumpur, in Changi gaol at Singapore, in Thailand (Siam) building the notorious 'railway of death'. The Japanese knew every trick of humiliating and breaking their prisoners. Yet the captives showed that the human spirit can surmount the extremes of physical agony and stay unconquered; and a few men of exceptional bravery emerged, like Padre Noel Duckworth and the medical officer Major Kevin Fagan. Russell Braddon tells the tale with simplicity and with a cynical wit. He does not disguise his view that thousands suffered for the mistakes of the pre-War planners. Readers are warned, too, that he does not gloss over the grim, details of the prisoners' ordeal. This PAN edition has a new Foreword and is specially illustrated with photographs that did not appear in the original edition.

    Russell Braddon, son of a brilliant lawyer and great-grandson of Sir Edward Braddon, Premier of Tasmania, took his degree at Sydney University and joined the Australian Army just in time to sail with the ill-fated 8th Australian Division to Malaya. After the War he re-entered the university to study law. Ordered to rest for a year, he came to England and met his ex-P.O.W. friend Sydney Piddington, who, with his wife, was becoming famous for the 'thought-reading' act which he and Braddon had first perfected in Changi prison-camp. Braddon became the Piddingtons' manager, toured with them, and wrote a book about them. Then he began work on The Naked Island and after its successful publication started lecturing. He is a champion of the idea of the British Commonwealth and is a vigorous crusader for human rights. He has written one novel, Those in Peril, and a popular life-story of the famous airman Group Captain Cheshire, V.C.

I'll write more about this book soon, and explain why it's one of my favurite books since childhood.