Odd Man Out, The Story of the Singapore Traitor (Signed by former Japanese POW)

The story of Captain Patrick Heenan, signed by British soldier Charles Marriott (Suffolk Regiment), captured at Singapore and held at Camp 4D

Author

Peter Elphick, and Michael Smith

Publisher

Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1993

Odd Man Out, The Story of the Singapore Traitor (Signed by former Japanese POW)

Printing Details

First edition, first printing. Hardback in dustwrapper. 24 × 16cm, 265pp.

This copy belonged to a former Japanese POW. Signed to the ffep by C Marriott "C Marriott, 5th Suffolk Regt, Captured Singapore 1942", this was Charles George Marriott, born in 1919. He was a private (army number 5828266) in the 5th Battalion, The Suffolk Regiment and was captured at Singapore in February 1942. He was held at Camp 4D (Thailand) at Kanburi (Kanchanburi), a 'Death Railway' camp, where the prisoners who were forced labour on the Burma-Thailand Railway were held. He additionally put a small handwritten piece in the book which reads "When I am dead and in my grave / And all my bones are rotten / In this book my name you'll find / While I am long forgotten. CM" [The index doesn't mention everyone mentioned in the book, so I haven't been able to confirm this].

A meticulous investigative history unravelling the case of Captain Patrick Stanley Vaughan Heenan, an officer in the British Indian Army who acted as a clandestine agent for Imperial Japan during the 1941 Malayan Campaign. Drawing on suppressed military archives, intelligence reports, and eyewitness accounts, the authors detail how Heenan passed critical British air defence signals and military positions from northern Malayan airfields, directly enabling Japanese air superiority and accelerating the fall of Singapore. The authors explore Heenan’s complex psychological motivations and personal background alongside the official British wartime cover-up and his eventual summary execution by military guards as Singapore capitulated in February 1942.