The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East

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We all worked so hard at trying to survive that each person became more and more insular as it became more difficult. It required a superhuman effort to keep going.” On the one hand, he asked: “How does one describe the feelings of a person who has been through something like we had, something no one could ever have envisaged? This is the first time I read a first-hand account of a POW involved in the Malayan Campaign. I am greatly affected by it, despite being brought up on a diet of Japanese atrocities in Asia in World War 2. Much is said about the killing, maiming, raping and torture, but a reader is usually left to imagine the magnitude of these atrocities through the statistics; this book describes in graphic details the actual behaviours of the Japanese and their equally brutal Korean subjects and the horrible conditions the POWs were subjected to.

These slightly older men in their thirties and forties seemed to survive in much greater numbers. Surprisingly it was the young men who died first on the railway. Perhaps the older ones were stronger emotionally. Perhaps with families they had more to live for.” The captured allied soldiers from Britain, Scotland, Australia were put to work in building this railway and the treatment and cruelty that befell upon these soldiers fell nothing short of inhumanity. Do you think it's possible to survive having malaria, dysentery, beri-beri and tropical infected skin ulcers all at the same time while being worked to death during WW2 in a Japanese prison camp building a railroad in Burma? I was recommended to read this book by Alistair's niece whilst I was promoting my father's account of his time as a POW in Upper Silesia.I’ve heard many stories about the Infamous death railway before reading this book, but oh my, was I unprepared to learn the truth or what... I struggled to carry on reading at times, as his treatment at the hands of his Japanese captors was unbelievably sadistic and cruel. I am absolutely amazed he survived his terrible treatment. I also feel awful to be thinking that compared to Alistair's experience, my Dad's experience seemed like a walk in the park. Of course, it wasn't, but my Dad appeared to hang on to his dignity, and was not treated as sub-human.

It took me a while to become engaged with this memoir. I've read so many personal POW accounts that it's only when I start spotting the differences that I really get interested. Urquhart's account is probably the loneliest I've read. Where Wade's account in Prisoner of the Japanese was extremely clinical, factual, and emotionally distant, he touched on some of the relationships he had with other prisoners and there was a sense of camaraderie with his fellow prisoners. Urquhart had a few people that he engaged with in certain camps, but mostly he was left alone. That was the catalyst for him to write a book – The Forgotten Highlander– at the age of 92 in 2011. The Ultimate Battle is the full story of the last great clash of World War II as it has never before been told. This was the young Aberdeen-born Gordon Highlander, who was among the tens of thousands of Allied troops taken prisoner by the Japanese after the Fall of Singapore, still regarded as one of the greatest catastrophes of the whole conflict.No wonder his experiences during the Second World War in the Far East would have been dismissed as unbelievable by most Hollywood film-makers. Now I feel no sense of guilt about using the bomb. The Japanese broke all the rules of the Geneva Convention and their no surrender ethic would have resulted in many more POW and civilian deaths for months or years. Young Alistair was enjoying his army enlistment in Singapore until the Japanese army broke through and conquered the "impregnable" colony. I only say this since I do seem to like stories about nasty things happening to people and some people may just find this story a little too extreme for their own enjoyment. I was part of Britain’s greatest-ever military disaster – just like some 120,000 others of us who were captured in the Battle of Malaya.

I was also terribly saddened and outraged to read that his return home was practically hidden from the British public. During the Cold War those of us who survived became an embarrassment to the British and American governments, which turned a blind eye to Japanese war crimes in their desire to forge alliances against China and Russia. This is the extraordinary story of a young man, conscripted at nineteen, who survived not just one but three separate encounters with death—encounters which killed nearly all his comrades. Silent for over fifty years, this is Alistair Urquhart’s extraordinary, moving, and inspirational tale of survival against the odds. I won't spoil the story except to say that the small amount of anger that he shows towards his so-called superiors both during the war and afterwards seems to entirely understate the extent of his suffering. I can't imagine being so sanguine in his position. Urquhart was born in Aberdeen in 1919. He was conscripted into the British Army in 1939, at the age of 19, and served with the Gordon Highlanders stationed at Fort Canning in Singapore. [2] [3] He was taken prisoner when the Japanese invaded the island during the Battle of Singapore, which lasted from December 1941 to February 1942. He was sent to work on the Burma Railway, [4] built by the Empire of Japan to support its forces in the Burma campaign and referred to as "Death Railway" because of the tens of thousands of forced labourers who died during its construction. While working on the railway Urquhart suffered malnutrition, cholera and torture at the hands of his captors. [3]of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East by Alistair Urquhart 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 man, conscripted at nineteen and whose father was a Somme Veteran, who survived not just one, but three very close separate encounters with death – encounters which killed nearly all his comrades. The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East by Alistair Urquhart – eBook Details a b c Seeing Pampanito, 64 years after a near death. Carl Nolte, 17 September 2008. San Francisco Chronicle

Whereas many men took solace in each other's company or survived by playing the system, Urquhart retreated into a dream world of music and songs. Before being called up he had enjoyed dancing and popular ballroom tunes populated his imagination. Often he was too weak to sing, but within his head he crooned the hits of earlier years when happiness was a foxtrot and a pretty girl in his arms. The men survived on a few handfuls of rice a day. Many succumbed to disease - cholera, beriberi, tropical ulcers. Their weight fell to five or six stone. Beatings were routine. I have just finished reading this book. Any words I write will not do justice to this book or his suffering. I read the book with horror, sadness and rage.The writing itself is lucid and engaging and the narrative flows fairly well despite a big gap during 1941 which you miss unless you read carefully. These stylistic points aren't really the point but it does make an easy read. The death railway was one of the most horrendous crimes against humanity in the 20th century. It was the unimaginable task undertaken by the Japanese imperial army in building a railway connecting Thailand to Burma. Across the South China Sea in Hong Kong it was anything but a perfect day. After a seventeen-day siege the British surrendered to the Japanese. Hours earlier Japanese troops had entered the city and celebrated Christmas in their own special way – by torturing and massacring sixty wounded patients and doctors in St Stephen’s College Hospital.” He ended up in a camp in mainland Japan. He was there when the war ended. But his prison camp was a few miles from the city of Nagasaki.