FOSTER, Frank. Comrades in Bondage.

FOSTER, Frank. Comrades in Bondage.FOSTER, Frank. Comrades in Bondage. London: Skeffington and Son Ltd. [1946]. 8vo. Original cloth with illustrated dust wrapper (price clipped); pp. 144, portrait frontispiece and leaves of plates after photographs and drawings; the rarely preserved wrapper with marginal flaws and tears; a better than usually encountered copy of a very rare book. First edition, one victim's parent's copy with manuscript annotations and corrections together with a

FOSTER, Frank. Comrades in Bondage. London: Skeffington and Son Ltd. [1946].

8vo. Original cloth with illustrated dust-wrapper (price-clipped); pp. 144, portrait-frontispiece and leaves of plates after photographs and drawings; the rarely preserved wrapper with marginal flaws and tears; a better than usually encountered copy of a very rare book.

First edition, one victim's parent's copy with manuscript annotations and corrections together with a carbon copy of the typescript of BBC lecture by the author on the subject, broadcast in 1945.

This is a blood-curdling memoir by a POW in Japanese prison camps, alongside other British, Australian and US captives. He reports as well how the Dutch under occupation in Java tried to help the forced labourers, and of an unsuccessful attempt by a group of British prisoners to escape from the Island to Australia. One member of this group was the R.A.F. Pilot-Officer Paul Stewart Stephen (mis-spelled 'Stephens' in print), a young man with "bright personality and cheery optimism" (p. 53). Stephen fell ill and died before the escape was thwarted by the Japanese authorities. He was buried at sea.

One of his parents corrected the Stephen's name in the text, underlined and highlighted the passages reporting on him and his fate, and inscribed the half-title of this volume. The family also obtained Frank Foster's typed lecture on his POW experience broadcast by the BBC in 1945. On the front flap of the wrapper the date of this broadcast is given as November, 1945, whereas the typescript on five stapled leaves headed Railway of Death is dated February 1945. However, a pencil annotation doubts this date: "I cannot reconcile dates: Feb. 1945 we were still in camps in Siam until August 1945".

SKU: 2123938