The Forgotten Highlander

Re: The Forgotten Highlander, My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East, by Alistair Urquhart, Little Brown, 2010, library # D805 .J3 U77 2010

I just finished an extraordinary book written by a surviving former private in the Scottish Gordon Highlander battalion in WWII. It is a simple narrative of a solider who watched the fall of Singapore; who was a Japanese POW slave laborer on the Burma railway construction; who was shipped to Japan, but sunk by a US sub; and finally worked at a Japanese coal mine near Nagasaki when we dropped the Atomic bomb.

There are few accounts of the 120,000 British soldiers captured at Singapore and in the Malaysian Campaign because many English survivors were obligated to sign an agreement not to discuss their three years of brutal captivity. His description of the fall of Singapore is short and to the point. Singapore December 8^th was bombed. Dec 10 the pride of the British Navy, the brand new ship HMS Prince of Wales, and the older HMS Repulse, were sunk. Hong Kong fell. The Japanese forces, several thousand infantry and 300 tanks landed in neutral Thailand, unopposed, and fought their way to Singapore. In Pegang they slaughtered Chinese; they shot the wounded Australians on Jan 22 at Parit Sulong in Johore; and on Jan 31 the British army withdrew to Singapore from the Mainland. The British blew up their important Keppel Naval Base. On Feb 8 the Japanese landed on the Island. They massacred all the doctors and patients at Alexander Hospital. On Feb 15 General Percival surrendered to a much smaller Japanese force. One critical issue was all the water for Singapore came from the Mainland and the Japanese had cut off the water. Troops cannot survive without water. In total about 120,000 British troops in the Malaysian Campaign became Japanese POWs. About 30,000 Sikhs, former Indian army soldiers, joined the Japanese army and were not POWs. The indescribable story of suffering, high percentage of deaths of these 120,000 POWs has never been fully disclosed.

He was sent as a slave laborer to build the jungle railroad connecting Thailand to Burma, the “Railroad of Death.” At lest 16,000 Allied POWs died and over 100,000 native slave laborers died. He was 750 days in the jungle, worked like a salve — starved, beaten, and ravished by numerous diseases. Later when he was shipped to Japan, his transport, unmarked with any Red Cross signs, was sunk by a US sub. He floated for days on a one man raft and was rescued by the Japanese. Over 22,000 Allied POWs were killed being shipped to Japan in unmarked transports. He eventually was transported to the Nagasaki area to work in a coal mine.

After the Japanese surrender, he was finally returned to Scotland slowly to regain his health and sanity. His pay was 434 Pounds for his three years as a POW, minus subsistence fees. His Army discharge was to be based on his medical records of all his diseases while a POW. Without such an official medical record, the Discharge Board refused medical disabilities.

This is a survivor’s story. It is a tribute to the human spirit to survive. He does give the greatest credit to the British Medical doctors who saved the lives of countless fellow soldiers under the harshest conditions. As a result of Alistair Urquhart’s POW experience, his life long mission has been to help as many other human beings as much as possible.