Foreword
by
Major (Retd) Alastair Campbell, Argyll & Sutherland Highland Regiment

The story of Atholl Duncan, and his fiancée and later wife Elizabeth Glassey, is assembled here from their own and other contemporary records. Sadly I never met Atholl, who was clearly a remarkable man. That he survived captivity by the Japanese is a testament in itself to his strength of mind and body, probably aided by, in relative terms, some good fortune. His daughter, Meg Parkes, shows that Elizabeth and other members of his family also endured imprisonment, of a different but no less painful kind, as they waited for news of him.

Atholl Duncan had an extraordinary war, in that as a member of the British Expeditionary Force he was evacuated not once, but twice, from France in 1940. He had fortunately left Singapore before it fell to the Japanese in early 1942, only to be captured in Java later in the same year.

The exploits of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Malaya and Singapore are well documented and known both within and beyond the Regimental family. This book clearly shows the human tale behind one member of that brave Battalion. We can all reflect, as Meg states in her Introduction, on the sacrifices of hundreds and thousands of such men and women, and in so doing hope and pray that such events shall never happen again. 

Alastair Campbell
Stirling Castle
13th December 2001