As featured in.

CoFEPoW Quarterly Oct 2022

Competition as featured in

The Armourer

A really good read, very informative but I should say a very sad read too. The book was a quick read but I took a lot away from it and it really does give you an idea into what the men were suffering out in the Far East. I would definitely recommend this book to others.

Read the full review here

The History Fella

Last October, I reviewed another Pen & Sword / PoW acount of endurance on the Sumatra railway and now here we have another. Sadly the veterans from the Second World War are fast fading away, but thanks to the likes of Christine and Eddie Bridges, the testimonies of some of these remarkable men survive.

Christine is the daughter of the late John Lee, and she and her husband, Eddie Bridges, have done a great job in bringing to life his story during and after the war. This is an important testimony which deserves to be read.

5 out of 5

Amazon Customer, Paul Nixon

This is a cracking book, well written, well edited and full of information, much of it very sad. However, I am glad that Mr. Lee wrote it, and his daughter and son-in-law edited and published it.

5/5

Army Rumour Service (ARRSE)

As featured in the article: 'Daughter fulfills POW dad's wish'

The Voice (Spalding and South Holland)

A fascinating story of prisoner of war of the Japanese. Working on a railway that officially didn't exist and his travels
to Sumatra to find traces of the railway and overgrown burial plots of his fellow prisoners. It's a three parter describing is capture when the Singapore garrison, surrendered in 1942. Beaten and starved in Changi Prison, He was shipped to Sumatra to build a railway. When the Japanese surrender in 1945' he arrived home unexpected, and discovered the family believed him dead. He writes of post-war conditions and coping with coupons, rations and of dead man walking and his attempts to prove to officialdom that the railway did exist.

The book is an easy read and a page turner.

Richard Gough - Historian, writer, author of the Escape from Singapore, The jungle was Red, Outpost of the Empire, SOE Singapore 1941-42. Waiting publication Tony Poe, CIA Paramilitary in SE Asia.

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling true story of the horrific treatment these young men went through to serve their country

I’ve been waiting to read this book and have got to chapter 9 so far. It has not disappointed. The detail that Geoff remembers is just unbelievable. There’s no wonder he felt the need to tell his story, from his own memories. It’s horrific to think this was only 80 years ago. How anyone survived, what can only be described as inhumane, Hellish treatment, I’ll never know. And to think he had to keep quiet for 50 year, as if it all existed in his own head…

Dawn Denman, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 July 2022

5.0 out of 5 stars. An exceptional book about one brave man's firsthand experience during World War II as a prisoner of the Japanese, forced to work in appalling conditions on the Sumatra Railway. By the time the war was over, many POWs had died from starvation, disease, and mistreatment. Geoff survived to tell his story and the story of the forgotten Sumatra railway. This is a compelling and well written book.

Elisabeth Iris Ames

Dawn
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling true story of the horrific treatment these young men went through to serve their country
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 July 2022
I’ve been waiting to read this book and have got to chapter 9 so far. It has not disappointed. The detail that Geoff remembers is just unbelievable. There’s no wonder he felt the need to tell his story, from his own memories. It’s horrific to think this was only 80 years ago. How anyone survived, what can only be described as inhumane, Hellish treatment, I’ll never know. And to think he had to keep quiet for 50 year, as if it all existed in his own head…

Christine Bridges

Dawn
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling true story of the horrific treatment these young men went through to serve their country
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 July 2022
I’ve been waiting to read this book and have got to chapter 9 so far. It has not disappointed. The detail that Geoff remembers is just unbelievable. There’s no wonder he felt the need to tell his story, from his own memories. It’s horrific to think this was only 80 years ago. How anyone survived, what can only be described as inhumane, Hellish treatment, I’ll never know. And to think he had to keep quiet for 50 year, as if it all existed in his own head…

Christine Bridges