Don McLaren - Mates In Hell - The Secret Diary

You might remember on Postcards several weeks ago we went on the white gloves tour of the Mortlock Library Collection of South Australia. Among the treasures is a secret diary kept by a soldier during almost four years as a prisoner-of-war. First at Changi in Singapore, then the infamous Burma Railway and finally as a slave in a coal mine in Japan. This is the author - 75 year old Don McLaren. "I knew I'd get killed, I know they'd kill me straight away if they found my diary. I made sure they didn't find it. I told a British Officer I had it and he said "You bloody idiot", but we worked out a plan - they never searched my bed!" Don McLaren was a furniture maker from Prospect when he lied about his age to join the Army in 1940. His unit was captured in Singapore and the next years were spent in starvation, illness humiliation and brutality... but also in strength, survival, instinct and mateship. "The Australians were fantastic, the death rate for Japanese, Dutch, English was very high but not so high for the Australians. In the huts with the Pommies there would be vacant beds where people had died but in the Australian rooms we would all bunch up. If there was a chap I didn't know then he became my mate ... and so it went on." After such a long tunnel of deprivation, the light at the end came in the form of the atomic bombs. "Nagasaki was about 20 kilometres south of where I was. I knew something big had happened, this Japanese came and got me and took me to the camp as I could speak Japanese and I said it's over ... she was over." It was over but the war has never let Don go. "I never forget, not a night goes by I don't think about it but I know life is so much better for me now."

Don is one of four surviving members of his 8th Division unit and his tiny diary, written on pieces of rice paper, has survived with him. A friend convinced him to publish the diary and he's done so. This precious slice of history is honest, brutal and at times, hilarious. "Mates In Hell - The Secret Diary" is available at Dymocks and Angas and Robertson in the city. To see the original, contact the State Library for information on their White Gloves Tour. For more information you can email: info@postcards-sa.com.au