‘The British POW Guard, Which Guards The Jap Guard, Which Guards The British POW’s! Towner Road POW Camp (1942) ‘

Towner Road POW Camp 1942

‘The Japs have decided that we must be ‘wired in’, so it has been done by our own soldiers in our own way and in our own time under our own supervision’

Source: Down To Bedrock (the diary & secret notes of a Far East prisoner of war Chaplain) by Eric Cordingly, Pg43; permission by Louis Reynolds, daughter.

‘In order to cope, I believe, most men surrounded themselves in their own personal and protective armour. Mine, as I have already written, was work, an almost obsessive sense of duty; for others it was humour or religious faith; and for nearly all of us, it was the setting of a deadline: ‘home by Christmas’ or ‘home for my wife’s birthday, or some other date of personal significance. In establishing a mental goal to work towards we were focussing on a future life which we could anticipate living and, in the process, attempt to reject the reality of what we were experiencing, deferring our disappointment. Keeping an ‘end point’ in mind, even though deep down we know it was artificial, gave us hope – one of the most powerful weapons in the limited armoury of defence we could own. If we were to not only survive but also remain sane, it was all we could do. ‘

Source: A Doctors War, by Dr Rowley Richards, pg 157, Harper Collins Publishers, 2006.