Description
Title: Staff Wallah – At the Fall of Singapore
Author: Wyett, John
Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1996
ISBN: 1863739211
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 225 pages
Comments: The true story of the Australian 8th Division told by the senior surviving officer of the General Staff.
After three rejections for enlistment in the A.I.F., John Wyett became the first Australian Militia Officer to be trained at the prestigious Indian Army Command and Staff College at Quetta. His story then traces the events which led to his involvement with the 8th Division, his journeyings to Singapore and through India and Burma, before his participation in the Malaya Campaign.
As a senior member of General Gordon Bennett’s staff, his account of the Campaign and the fall of Singapore sheds new light on that dark episode in Australia’s military account of the Campaign and the fall of Singapore sheds new light on that dark episode in Australia’s military history. He was able to observe a flawed commander at close quarters
He tells the story of defeat and captivity in an intriguing way.
Captivity meant the struggle against great odds – torture, starvation, a battle of wits with the Kempetai, solitary confinement, and a sentence of death.
Today, half a century later, John Wyett writes to inform but also to amuse. The ‘Staff Wallah’ leaves the reader with a rewarding experience of triumph over adversity.
After returning from captivity, John Wyett resumed his business carer in Tasmania.
John Wyett served in the 8th Australian Division, Aif in Malaya. In 1988 he was made a member of the Order of Australia.
