Name Dusty Miller Role Martyr | Died 1945, Thailand | |
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The chieftains the dusty miller
"Dusty" Miller was a British P.O.W. in Thailand on the Burma Railway during Second World War. His life and death is attested to in Ernest Gordon's autobiographical work Through the Valley of the Kwai (also published under the titles To End All Wars and Miracle on the River Kwai).
Contents
- The chieftains the dusty miller
- Dusty miller
- Background
- Internment
- Death
- Contemporaries of note
- References
Dusty miller
Background
Miller was a gardener from Newcastle upon Tyne and a Methodist. He was (like Gordon) in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, but was conscripted into the Military Police or "Red Caps".
Internment
He became known to Ernest Gordon during a period early on in their three and a half year incarceration under the Japanese. Gordon was dying and was daily attended to by Miller, and "Dinty" Moore, a Roman Catholic P.O.W. In their care Gordon, very unexpectedly, recovered.
Through the examples of Miller and Moore, the recovery of Gordon, and the self-sacrificing examples of numerous others, both faith and hope were restored to many soldiers in the death camps.
Death
At the war's end Gordon was the sole survivor of the three. Upon liberation as he sought news of his friends he found that two weeks before the war's end Miller had been crucified as a result of his faith by a Japanese guard.