Damned
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2010
- Category
- Canada, World War II
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9781554682195
- Publish Date
- Oct 2010
- List Price
- $34.99
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Description
2011 Governor General’s Literary Awards Finalist - Non-Fiction
The Damned tells the largely unknown saga of Canada’s first land battle of the Second World War -- fought in the hills and valleys of Hong Kong in December 1941 -- and the terrible years the survivors of the battle spent as slave labourers for the Empire of Japan.
Their story begins in the fall of 1941, when almost 2,000 members of the Royal Rifles and Winnipeg Grenadiers were sent to bolster the British garrison at Hong Kong. In the seventeen day battle for the colony following the attack on December 8, the Canadians suffered grievous losses: 927 men were either killed or wounded and, by the end of the battle, 1,185 soldiers and two nursing sisters had been captured -- a casualty rate of 100 percent, the very definition of a military catastrophe. The second part of their story -- of how the Canadians survived the horrid conditions of Japanese POW camps -- lasts three and a half years. Many prisoners died, some from malnutrition or disease, some as a result of torture, and others from the effects of brutal slave labour in factories, shipyards and coal mines.
But despite the circumstances, the young Canadian soldiers remained unbowed and unbroken. Theirs is a story of determination and valour, of resilience and faith.
About the author
NATHAN M. GREENFIELD, PhD, is the Canadian correspondent for The Times Educational Supplement and is a contributor to Maclean’s, Canadian Geographic and The Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of The Damned, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction; Baptism Of Fire, which was a finalist for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction; and the widely praised The Battle Of The St. Lawrence. Greenfield lives in Ottawa.
FACEBOOK: Nathan M. Greenfield Author
TWITTER: @HongKong Battle
Other titles by
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Murders in a Nazi Prisoner-of-War Camp, and the Disturbing True Story of Canada’s Last Mass Execution
The Reckoning
Canadian Prisoners of War in the Great War
The Forgotten
Canadian Pows, Escapers And Evaders In Europe, 193, The
The Forgotten
Canadian POWs, Escapers and Evaders In Europe, 1939-1945
The Damned
The Damned
The Canadians at the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW Experience, 1941-45
Baptism Of Fire
The Second Battle of Ypres and the Forging of Canada, April 1915
Battle Of The St. Lawrence
The Second World War in Canada
