And The Dawn Came Up Like Thunder. Autobiography of an Artist at War and What Came After

Rawlings, Leo. With supporting account by Bill Duncan, Foreword by Lord Mountbatten of Burma, Admiral of the Fleet

ISBN 10: 0903488000 / ISBN 13: 9780903488006

Published by Rawlings Chapman Publications, London, 1972

About this Item

Stated first edition, first impression. Some slight edge wear, chipping and rubbing to top and bottom of fab orange 'Rising Sun' jacket and spine, corners slightly rubbed and bruised, folds slightly rubbed, not price clipped (£3.00), no inscriptions, internally clean tight and square, overall a vg+ copy. 160pp, lavishly illustrated. 'And the Dawn Came Up Like Thunder' is the experience of an ordinary soldier captured by the Japanese at Singapore in February 1942. Artist Leo Rawlings' (1918-90), story is told in his own pictures and his own words, a world that is uncompromising, vivid and raw. He pulls no punches. For the first time the cruelty inflicted on the prisoners of war by their own officers is depicted as well as shocking images of POW life. As the Japanese began their last offensive in northern Burma and into India further south the building of the Burma-Thailand railway was nearing completion. More men would die in this last push as they were forced into even greater labours to lay the track. The Japanese urgently wanted the railway in order to support their invasion army. Suffering from a huge open 'jungle sore' that had eaten two inches into his left foot, Leo Rawlings had been transferred into a convalescent camp. Men in this camp were spared the hard labour but very little else of the horrors of the 'Death Railway'. In addition to injuries everyone was suffering from malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies, easily treatable conditions that left untended, caused terrible diseases like Beri Beri, often leading to death. Rawlings was doing his best to record it all. An artist before the war, he risked his life to make what sketches he could of the conditions men lived under. Rawlings came to the notice of Lt. Gen. Sir Louis Heath who commissioned him to keep an accurate record of his experiences and those of his fellow POWs. Rawlings had no paints, paper or brushes so was forced to use plant and clay pigments, scavenged paper and his own hair in the execution of his works. During captivity he stored works in an old stove pipe buried beneath his bed, as their discovery would have been fatal. After the war he worked for the 'Victor' and 'Hornet' boy's comics.

Seller Inventory # 008095

Bibliographic Details

• Title: And The Dawn Came Up Like Thunder. Autobiography of an Artist at War and What Came After
• Publisher: Rawlings Chapman Publications, London
• Publication Date: 1972
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0903488000
• ISBN 13: 9780903488006
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Jacket and illustrations by the author
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

"And the dawn came up like thunder"

About the Author

Leo Rawlings (1918-1990) was a private in the 137th Field Regiment Royal Artillery. A budding artist living in Blackpool, his life was changed forever by the war. Fighting from December 1941 to February 1942 as part of the headlong British retreat eventually leading to defeat in Singapore, he chronicled in pictures and words the campaign and the events that followed from 1941-1945. He drew what he witnessed around him, leading him to be unofficially commissioned to keep a visual record of the prisoners of war s lives.