Description
Title: Pounding along to Singapore
Author: Gaden, Caroline
Condition: Mint
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 2012
ISBN: 9781876344849
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 320 pages
Comments: The facsinating story of the 2/20th Battalion, includes letters of Captain E.W. Gaden of D Force who was a Prisoner of War of the Japanese from 1940 to 1945.
After finding letters written by her father-in-law Captain Bill Gaden to his family during World War II, Caroline Gaden was intrigued. As the mother of two serving officers, she understands the raw emotions involved when a family member is overseas “in harms way”. As Caroline pieced together the story around Bill’s eloquent and descriptive letters, a unique perspective of the 2/20 Battalion AIF emerged.
Here is a heartfelt insight into the lives of the men during their initial training in Australia, through their preparation in Malaya and their fierce and bloody battles with the Japanese – the reader is on the battlefield with them. Caroline cleverly weaves extracts from the Battalion’s Routine Orders and War Diary with Bill’s letters to describe events and put them in context with personal stories and the emotional connection to the families back home. Interviews with survivors add to the gripping account of the reality of fighting and subsequent incarceration with humour, ‘family’ and mateship shining through the darkest times.
Even the title Pounding Along to Singapore transports the reader into the story just as the big engines of the troopship Queen Mary transported the men of the 2/20 Battalion to be part of this thoroughly researched and indexed history. The fate of most of the 500 names mentioned in it is also recorded. A military history, a social history and a family history wrapped together, this book provides a compelling glimpse into the life of a soldier at war.
