Last Post Over the River Kwai The 2nd East Surreys in the Far East 1938-1945

Last Post Over the River Kwai is the carefully researched account of the experiences of the officers and men of 2nd Battalion The East Surreys during the Second World War.Stationed in Shanghai in the early 1940s, the Battalion was deployed to Malaya and fought gallantly to slow the Japanese advance. After heavy losses the survivors found themselves POWs in Singapore in February 1942 after the humiliating surrender which Churchill described as Britain’s worst ever military disaster.The next three and a half years saw members of the Battalion suffering appalling hardship at the hands of their brutal Japanese captors, whether in Singapore, on the Death Railway, Malaya or Japan itself, as wells as on hellships. Many died but remarkably the majority survived to tell their story. Their prolonged captivity with unbelievable hardship, deprivation and cruelty makes for distressing but inspiring reading.

Born in Northern Ireland two and a half years after the end of the war with Japan, Cecil Lowry is the son of Hugh Lowry, who was a private in the East Surrey Regiment and a Far East Prisoner of war from February 1942 until August 1945.

Cecil spent his career in Sports management before retiring from his post as Assistant Director of Sport at the University of Manchester in 2002 to concentrate on writing. This is his third book, following successes with No Mercy from the Japanese, A Survivor’s account of the Thai/Burma Railway and the Hellships in 2008 and Two Years of Tenko, Life as a 16 year old in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp in 2015.

Cecil lives in Stockport and has two sons and two grandchildren. His two grandchildren are unique in that they have two great grandfathers who were Far East Prisoners of War.