Ronald Searle, one of the ablest and most famous British cartoonists, and the creator of the girls of "St. Trinians" strip, was a prisoner of war of the Japanese from February 1942 to August 1945. With determination and courage he managed to keep a record in drawings of his years of suffering as a prisoner in Singapore and on the Burma-Siam Railway. He describes the sketches in this book as "the graffiti of a condemned man, intending to leave a rough witness of his passing through, but who found himself -- to his surprise and delight -- among the reprieved." These harrowing and moving drawings, selected from the originals that he succeeded in bringing home, are now part of the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London.
Searle's narrative is spare and restrained. The story begins with his joining the army as a volunteer in April 1939 as he realized that war with Nazi Germany was inevitable. He was a sapper in the engineers and remained a private to the end. His unit was sent to Singapore, where he arrived on Jan. 13, 1942. They were untrained and unequipped for jungle warfare. His unit was ordered forward to destroy everything in front of the advancing Japanese forces. It was, he said, "a scorched arse policy" and the Japanese "moved forward to chop into small pieces all the wounded that had to be left behind."
Singapore, which had suffered from "years of inept, incoherent and chaotic political and military mismanagement" by the British, lay at their mercy, but no mercy was shown. "It is estimated that 20,000 Chinese alone were shot or beheaded during the first few days after capitulation." Searle drew two gruesome sketches of severed heads on poles and on shelves.