Return from the River Kwai. Joan and Clay Blair. 1979.

Return from the River Kwai outlines the ordeals faced by a select group of British and Australian POWs who, having built the Burma-Thailand railway, were recruited in March 1944 for forced labour in Japan. As the 2,000 prisoners, jammed into the forward holds of two Japanese ships, were being transported across the South China Sea, American submarines struck.

The events of the next few days form the central core of the book. Initial exultation at being ‘free’ at last - afloat in an oil-slicked sea - soon gave way to a desperate struggle for survival as the POWs fought their guards for raft-space, and thirst, hunger, hysteria and sharks took their toll. Some of the men were picked up by the Japanese vessels and sent to POWs camps in Japan, where few of them survived. Only on the fourth day at sea - after terrible agonies - did the American submarines learn that the dwindling body of survivors were largely Australian and British: only then was a rescue mission launched.