War Story

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War Story: My father's autobiographical experiences during World War II

In May 2003 my now late father, Philip Newbury, wrote an autobiographical account of his experiences during World War II. These include, in particular, his capture when Tobruk, in North Africa, was captured from the Allies on June 21, 1941, and his subsequent life as a P.O.W.

To my knowledge, this was my father's first literary project of any size, but it provides a lively, and sometimes disturbing, read, revealing many aspects that are not brought out in films about the period. His writing was particularly remarkable, not just because of his generally failing heath at age 88, but because he used one-finger typing on an old typewriter that he bought for the purpose, as his eyesight was then extremely poor due to the effects of earlier glaucoma and cataracts.

My sister, Sue Hurst, then transcribed the text and various contemporary photographs into Word, and had a few bound copies printed for interested friends and relations. We still get requests for copies from people who have seen a copy or just heard about it. So, as a tribute to my father, I have decided to make it available online, in PDF (474 KB) and Microsoft Word (2.5 MB) formats. [Free viewers can be downloaded for PDF and Word. Annoyingly and perversely, one of the pictures is sometimes inverted by Word.] For this edition I have made some minor clerical revisions. I would be interested in any comments; for example, by email.