“You’ll Die in Singapore”

by Charles McCormac

Robert Hale, 1954, [First Edition], photographic frontispiece, fold-out map at rear, lightly illustrated with maps, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, previous owners’ details stamped on front endpaper, previous owners bookplate attached to front endpaper, clipped dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing, bumping and chipping to edges and corners (See photographs)

“In January 1942, when the Japanese were sweeping south through Malaya, McCormac was stationed at an R.A.F. aerodrome at Seletar in the north of Singapore Island.  Living with him was his twenty-one-year-old wife Patricia who was expecting their first baby.  Patricia was evacuated by ship with the other R.A.F. families, and McCormac stayed behind to link up with the island’s military defenders.
The Japs overran Singapore and McCormac was caught by a Jap patrol – but not before he had accounted for three of their number with his tommy-gun.  He was thrown into a foetid prison camp at Pasir Panjang, interrogated and tortured.  Weakened by hunger and thirst, he knew that if he did not escape, he would die, and he resolved to get away and to chance death in doing so.  With sixteen others he broke out of camp by short-circuiting the floodlighting system and overpowering the guards.”