The Forgotten Highlander: My Unbelievable True Story of Survival

During WWII, Urquhart managed to survive several near-death incidents. Serving in a battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, he was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and sent to Changi prison. From there, he and other prisoners were packed into "steel ovens" (train cars) for a five-day journey north, followed by a six-day forced march through the jungle. At the destination, he survived 750 days working as a slave laborer on the infamous Burma Railway, aka the Death Railway, a project that caused thousands of POW deaths. In 1944, he joined others in the hold of the Kachidoki Maru, where an "overpowering mixture of excrement, urine, vomit, sweaty bodies, weeping ulcers and rotting flesh clogged the atmosphere." When the ship was torpedoed and sank in the South China Sea, 244 of his comrades died, but he survived, drifting alone on the ocean until he was rescued by a Japanese whaling ship and deposited on an island with other shipwrecked POW survivors. Sailing away from the "atomic wasteland" of Nagasaki at the war's end, he went through a succession of military hospitals, eventually arriving home at Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had to deal with recurring nightmares and a difficult adjustment to civilian life. Dredging up painful memories, Urquhart documents the horrors of his war experiences. 24 b&w photos, map. (Oct.)