One Fourteenth Of An Elephant: Life & Death On The Burma-Thailand Railway [Paperback] Peek Ian Denys

Ian Denys Peek was a twenty-year-old British soldier when he was captured by the Japanese in Singapore in 1942. What followed was three and a half years of hell — forced labor on the Burma-Thailand Railway, the "Death Railway," where one in four prisoners died. Peek survived on a fourteenth of an elephant's daily ration, hence the title, a darkly sardonic nod to the absurdity of captivity. This is a firsthand account of starvation, disease, brutality, and the sheer will to endure. Peek writes with unflinching detail and surprising humor, never self-pitying but never sugar-coating the horror either. He captures the bonds between men in impossible circumstances and the small acts of defiance that kept them human. For readers of WWII memoirs and military history who want the unvarnished truth — raw, resilient, and impossible to forget.