Alistair Urquhart was nineteen in 1939, living with his ‘parents, auntie, sister and two brothers in a newly built granite bungalow on the western fringes of Aberdeen’, and working as an apprentice in a firm of plumbers, merchants and electrical wholesalers. Within weeks of the outbreak of war he was called up, and joined his home regiment, the Gordon Highlanders. After a few months he found himself stationed in Singapore, where he was taken prisoner when the city surrendered to the Japanese. This is the story of his survival.

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