Captured at Singapore

Captured at Singapore written by Jill Robertson & Jan Slimming and

published by Pen & Sword Books - £25 - Hardback - Pages 296

What would it be like to leave your loved ones behind knowing you may never see

them again? Then depart on a ship in the dead of night heading for an unknown

destination and find yourself in the heat of a battle which concludes in enemy

conditions so terrible that your survival in captivity is still under threat?

Cultivated from a small, faded, address book secretly written by a young soldier in the Royal Army Service Corps, Captured at Singapore, is a POW story of adventure, courage resilience and luck.

In 1940, Londoner Stanley Moore became Driver T/170638 and trained for desert warfare along with many others in the British Army’s 18th Division. Their mission, they thought, was to fight against Hitler and fascism in the Middle East. But in a change of plan and destination, he and his fellow servicemen became sacrificial lambs on a continent much further from home.

Using extensive research and personal documents, the authors’ account - via their father’s small, faded, diary and his 1990 tape recording - tells of Stan’s journey and arrival in Keppel Harbour under shellfire; the horrific 17 day battle to defend the island, the Japanese Admonition and the harrowing forced labour conditions after capitulation.

Only a small percentage of the 85,000 British troops returned after the war. Captivity and years of trauma ultimately stole years of the young soldiers’ lives, which they were later ordered to forget by the British Government. The aim of this work is to provide information for future generations to understand how ordinary men died under horrific conditions of war, and how the lucky survived.

From the basic of sources of information evidence, the authors Robertson and Slimming have discovered the small diary and an interview from their late father Stanley Moore. Stanley, a driver in the 18th Division served out in the Far East fighting the Japanese, although it should be said the 18th were rather under-prepared in many aspects. 

Robertson and Slimming present a book and a story of their father showing the worry, hardship and harsh conditions their father was forced to endure under an oppressive regime. All this from the rarest of information, their father's diary and an interview. But they have presented an excellent story which really does show the suffering of the fellow soldiers and others around them. A really well-written book and works very well to make an excellent account of having to be a Japanese prisoner of war.