After the fall of Singapore many Allied POWs were sent to work on airfield construction in Borneo, endured frequent beatings and were subjected to other, more diabolical punishment. 

    Sustained only by an inadequate and ever-diminishing rice-ration and with little medical attention, many died of malnutrition, maltreatment and disease.

      In 1945, in response to an order from the Japanese High Command that no prisoners were to survive the war, those still able to walk were sent on a series of death marches into the interior. Anyone unable to keep up was ruthlessly murdered. Those left behind were systematically starved to death, or massacred.

      In late 1944 the Allies, aware that POWs were being 'eliminated', had evolved a plan for their rescue -a rescue which, after months of bungling, was finally cancelled in April 1945, in the erroneous belief that the camp had been evacuated.

      Gross incompetence and faulty intelligence were to blame for the failed rescue attempt. When it was realised that mistakes and stupidity were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of men, those at the highest level shifted the blame to others, before embarking upon a policy of wilful and deliberate suppression.

    In the closing weeks of the Pacific War, deep in the jungles of British North Borneo a small number of surviving Australian and British prisoners of war were massacred. Of the 2434 prisoners incarcerated by the Japanese at the Sandakan POW camp, only six, all escapees, have survived.

      Desperate to obtain information, grieving relatives wrote to newspapers, begging for information and asking the reason for the secrecy. 'The story of the greatest tragedy in Australian military history remains to be written', wrote one, in 1946. 'Who will undertake the task?'

      Silver, through painstaking research and interviews with survivors, as well as a study of Japanese records, has pieced together a detailed and highly readable account of the lives and ultimate fate of Sandakan's POWs. She tells a totally gripping and horrifying tale, not only of the prisoners, but the reasons why they, and their story, became World War Two's most deadly secret.

Available from the same author:

THE BRIDGE AT PARIT SULONG [To be listed shortly]

THE BATTLE OF VINEGAR HILL

THE HEROES OF RIMAU

MARCEL CAUX

THE RIVERINA BATTALION [Now being written]

THE BRIDGE AT PARIT SULONG [To be listed shortly]

AUTHOR'S HISTORY TOURS: www.sandakan-deathmarch.com