Britain At War has this article with links to some of Searle's POW sketches. Returning from the war in 1945 Searle was profiled in Reynolds News and Sunday Citizen.
The Imperial War Museum, London has dozens of drawings viewable online here. It seems the entire sketchbook of Searle's convoluted passage to the Far East is included on the IWM website. It illuminates daily life during a prolonged voyage across the Atlantic from Scotland to Halifax, down to South America, around Africa en route to Singapore.
The Victoria State Library, Australia has put online the Lofty Cannon Collection. The Aussie POW was a great friend to Searle at his lowest ebb in the prison camp and he features in several of these drawings given to him after the war.
(Executed in Changi Gaol 1945 on reverse of a list of prisoners of war.)
This is Gloucestershire reports on Syd Tavender, a fellow former POW of Searle's.
'The pair met when working in the gardens of Singapore, Mr Tavender said, and were in terrible physical shape after enduring horrific conditions when forced to work on the Burma to Thailand railway.
Mr Tavender, who lives in Up Hatherley, said: "When we were working the gardens, having come down from Burma, we were wrecks. We were just skin and bone.
"He was still drawing then. I knew him reasonably well. I used to talk to him when we were doing the gardening. . . "
The Churchill College 2010 newsletter magazine carried this article on Canon Noel Duckworth- a much respected figure amongst the inmates of Changi.
"It is especially a tribute to two men--Padre Noel Duckworth and Major Kevin Pagan--who lived more
fearlessly and more gently than all others." -Russell Braddon
Lt Dann. Camp policeman in Changi Gaol POW Camp, Singapore, Sept 1944.
Further reading :
The Churchill College 2010 newsletter magazine carried this article on Canon Noel Duckworth- a much respected figure amongst the inmates of Changi.
The article quotes a letter from Searle and publishes a drawing of Duckworth by Searle, signed by other POWs.
"It is especially a tribute to two men--Padre Noel Duckworth and Major Kevin Pagan--who lived more
fearlessly and more gently than all others." -Russell Braddon
"The most outstanding personality in Pudu Gaol more outstanding than any of the soldiers with their
hair-raising tales of the last few months: more outstanding than any of our own leaders or than any of our Japanese guards: more outstanding even than the two eviltempered brigadierswas a rosy-cheeked little man who a few years before had been small enough to cox the Cambridge VIII all over Europe, and who at the battle of Batu Pahat had been big enough, though a non-combatant and ordered not to, to stay behind with the wounded who could not be evacuated, He stayed there and, when the Japanese swept down the road and would have slaugh tered the wounded, this little man flayed them with such a virulent tongue that they were sufficiently disconcerted to refrain. They beat him up very cruelly for days, because they did not care for being verbally flayed, even in a language they did not understand, but they did not kill the wounded men he had stayed behind to protect In the end, they allowed the little man, and the handful of R.A.M.C. orderlies who with equal heroism had faced certain capture, pos sibly murder, to look after their charges, to collect what food they could and provide for the helpless men. This little man with the rosy cheeks and the cheerful grin and his mop of hair like a small boy's eventually brought all his orderlies and his wounded to the comparative security of the gaol. His name is Padre Noel Duck worth. It is a name which tens of thousands of Australians, English men and Scots will always remember till the day they die."
-Russell Braddon
On the left Canon Noel Duckworth, principal subject of 'This Is Your Life' (12th January 1959) listens while Ronald Searle reminds him of an amusing incident of the past.
Further reading :
