Dr Charles Rowland Bromley Richards has provided us with two books articulating his perspective. Charles Groves Wright Anderson has left us with no comprehensive and coherent account of his life on the ‘Burma Railway’. We have some comments about his experiences preserved for us in Hansard. There are his forwards to R.F. Oakes’ memoirs and those of ‘Cornel Lumiere’. And, we have a few scattered notes from various other sources.
There is one other source of information provided us by the Honorable Charles G. W. Anderson. We have the comments, all too brief, found in the four hours of audio recordings and their transcript which were gathered for the Parliamentary oral history project. These are available through the National Library of Australia. The materials provide us with an invaluable look at the man, his life and his times.
However, they do not linger for long on the prisoner of war years.
Perhaps our most comprehensive and compelling testimony of the character of Colonel Anderson’s leadership as a prisoner of the Japanese derives from Kura! by ‘Cornel Lumiere’. It is an inestimable resource. Or, better, it may well be such a resource. However, there are some difficulties to be sorted out first. In doing this, will I be able to have a care for Cornel’s reputation? I worry about just that.
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