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Harry Silman joined the British army in 1939. As a medicalofficer under bombardment on the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940, he was one of the last soldiers to be shipped out during the mass retreat.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, his division was assigned to assist in the defence
of Singapore; they arrived just before the island fell to Japanese forces in 1942. Harry spent the rest of the war in the notorious Changi POW camp and upcountry at Hellfire Pass, where he tended to the wounded and dying men who were forced to labour on the Burma Railway.Throughout, Harry kept diaries – highly secret, illegal, and dangerous for a POW. He managed to write a detailed account of his harrowing experiences in the camps when he himself was weakened and exhausted, caring as best he could for hundreds of desperately ill men. Articulate, graphic, compassionate, and lit with good humour, this is Harry’s war in his own words.
His diaries, arguably one of the most comprehensive surviving contemporaneous accounts of this period of World War Two, have been edited with great care and illuminating commentary by his daughter, Jacqueline Passman.
Harry Silman (1910–2005) served with the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers during World War Two, attaining the rank of Captain. He was en route to Africa in 1942 when his division was diverted to Singapore to help defend the island. The boat arrived just ten days before the surrender, and he spent the rest of the war as a POW, tending to ill and dying men. Despite punishing conditions, he managed to keep a diary of unprecedented detail. His postwar years in England were spent in general practice as a beloved physician in Leeds.
Jacqueline Passman taught in both mainstream and deaf education. She acted as an Independent Person in adjudication for children in care, and as an expert witness regarding deaf issues. The discovery of her father Harry Silman’s wartime diary sparked her recent interest in the experiences of POWs in the Far East, and she gives regular illustrated talks on this subject.
A Note on Language
Editor’s Note
Introduction
1 What a Night! … Bombed, Machine-Gunned and Shelled
2 Arrived at Singapore After an Exciting Morning
3 Very Momentous Day
4 My Days Are Settling Down
5 The Food Question Is Rather Important
6 I Had the Largest Sick Parade Ever
7 Men Have Turned to Religion for Mental Comfort
8 Idleness Is a Curse
9 An Incident Unparalleled in Military History
10 Interlude
11 Hell in the Jungle
12 You Couldn’t Eat a Cigarette Case
13 The Event We Have Been Looking Forward to So Eagerly
Epilogue
Abbreviations and Glossary
Sources
Credits