Frank's bench

FB Blurb

Its Armistice Day, November 11, 1940.

The Blue-Funnel liner Automedon, lies 250 miles from the northwest cape of Sumatra heading for Penang.

The free world is at war with Germany and Italy.

Japan is fighting China and needs only a tiny push for it to join the fight against the free world allies and turn a European conflict into the Second World War.

Stand with 16-year-old deckboy, Frank Walker and ships carpenter Bill Diggle as they share a pair of binoculars and watch a smudge of smoke on the horizon turning into a ship heading directly for them.

Taste the dryness in their mouths as neither ship alters course to avoid what must inevitably end in collision. Hear their shouts of alarm when this ship hoists a Swastika battle ensign.

Heed the cry of Automedons captain:

COME ON LADS … WERE GOING TO FIGHT

Then share the pain, hunger, humiliation, despair and some self-made joys, as Frank and his shipmates serve out five long years in a German prison camp.

Then groan when you learn Automedon carried the instrument that gave Japan that final push … and brought on Pearl Harbour.

A bench stands in Mariners Park as a memorial to Frank.

So, who was Frank Walker?

Buy the book to live his life and therein to find the answer!