The Forgotten Highlander
My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East
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4.3 • 18 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders captured by the Japanese in Singapore. He not only survived working on the notorious Bridge on the River Kwai , but he was subsequently taken on one of the Japanese 'hellships' which was torpedoed. Nearly everyone else on board died and Urquhart spent 5 days alone on a raft in the South China Sea before being rescued by a whaling ship. He was taken to Japan and then forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months later a nuclear bomb dropped just ten miles away . . .
This is the extraordinary story of a young men, conscripted at nineteen and whose father was a Somme Veteran, survived not just one, but three close encounters with death - encounters which killed nearly all his comrades.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
During WWII, Urquhart managed to survive several near-death incidents. Serving in a battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, he was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and sent to Changi prison. From there, he and other prisoners were packed into "steel ovens" (train cars) for a five-day journey north, followed by a six-day forced march through the jungle. At the destination, he survived 750 days working as a slave laborer on the infamous Burma Railway, aka the Death Railway, a project that caused thousands of POW deaths. In 1944, he joined others in the hold of the Kachidoki Maru, where an "overpowering mixture of excrement, urine, vomit, sweaty bodies, weeping ulcers and rotting flesh clogged the atmosphere." When the ship was torpedoed and sank in the South China Sea, 244 of his comrades died, but he survived, drifting alone on the ocean until he was rescued by a Japanese whaling ship and deposited on an island with other shipwrecked POW survivors. Sailing away from the "atomic wasteland" of Nagasaki at the war's end, he went through a succession of military hospitals, eventually arriving home at Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had to deal with recurring nightmares and a difficult adjustment to civilian life. Dredging up painful memories, Urquhart documents the horrors of his war experiences. 24 b&w photos, map.
Customer Reviews
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Read this war story if you are any kind of war historian or a sometimes interested reader of powerful non-fiction.... A true hero
Powerful Insight Into WWII Hell.
One of the greatest war stories that i've read. I take my hat off to the strength and courage of these amazing men who survived such torturous times.
Without recounting these personal journeys, the history is forgotten amongst my younger generation.
Thank you Alistair for being brave enough to recount such horrifying memories.