AustLit

'An autobiography of David Brill, as as recoorded and edited by Tim Bowden.'

'With a reputation for frankness and sticking it up any sign of pomposity, Australian soldiers were a wild and irreverent lot, even in the worst of circumstances of World War II. From recruitment and training, and the battlegrounds of Palestine, North Africa, Thailand, Burma and beyond, here are the compelling and vivid stories of individual soldiers whose memoirs were mostly self-published and who told of their experiences with scant regard for literary pretensions and military niceties. These men had little tolerance for military order and discipline, and NCOs and officers who were hopeless in their jobs were made aware of it. They laughed their way through the worst of it by taking the micky out of one another and their superiors.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

''It made Changi seem like heaven.'

'There was a place far worse than Changi - Singapore's Outram Road Gaol. For the POWs who endured it, deprivation here was so extreme that there really was a fate worse than death.

'Stubborn Buggers is the little known story of twelve Australian POWs who fought and survived the action in Malaya before the fall of Singapore and endured captivity and slave labour, then the unimaginable hardships of Outram Road Gaol. It is a story of how they dealt with the brutality of the Japanese military police, the feared Kempeitai. And it is the story of how they found a way to go on living even when facing a future of no hope and slow death.

'But Stubborn Buggers is about more than suffering and brutality. It is also a story of grit, determination and larrikin humour. It is very much about the triumph of the human spirit.' (Publication summary)