A Doctor’s War, By Rowley Richards

A Doctor’s War, By Rowley Richards

After the end of the Second World War, Australia’s Directorate of War Graves SErvices 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 Railway Richards, who was just 23 when war broke out, witnessed the horror of camp life first hand and through his work treating fellow prisoners suffering in the harsh conditions

In a series of diaries he recorded the everyday brutality of the POW camps and also the courage, humour and mateship of his comrades

Based on the diary summary and of Richards’ other wartime writing, A Doctor’s War is an intensely compelling memoir of battle, imprisonment and survival; a poignant story of hope and optimism in the face of great inhumanity It is one of the last great stories to emerge from the Second World War