Following the surrender of Japan after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war in the pacific finally came to an end and prisoners of war who had suffered so much were finally liberated. Te American Marines who arrived on Formosa, modern Taiwan, wept openly at the site of the scarecrow figures who tottered towards them. One of them was Motherwell man John McEwan. Ages 24, he had endured over three years of slavery since being captured with his mates at the fall of Singapore in February 1942. And now the story of those men in being told in Death Was Our Bed-Mate: the 155th (Lanarkshire Yeomanry) Field Regiment and the Japanese 1941-45. Co-author Campbell Thomas, who wrote the book with John's daughter Agnes, said "in the years following the Second World War, the veterans of the Lanarkshire Yeomanry, many from the Wishaw area, became the county's forgotten heroes. Despite their valour during the ill fated Malayan Campaign of 1941-42, they were forever consigned to history as the men who had surrendered at Singapore. "Little was known of the suffering they had endured as prisoners of the Japanese and it is only now, with the publication of the book that the full story of those amazing men has been told." Wishaw Press