Arneil, Stan 1920(?)-

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ARNEIL, Stan 1920(?)-
(S.F. Arneil, Stanley Foch Arneil)

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1920.

CAREER:

Writer. Formerly Australian government appointed organizer of credit unions; cofounder of the ABC Credit Union, Australia. Military service: Australian Army, sergeant, served during World War II.

WRITINGS:

One Man's Family: The Arneils in Australia, 1841-1988, Family Publications (Collaroy, New South Wales, Australia), 1987.

A Firm Foundation: The Story of Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey, Consulting Engineers 1928-1988, Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey (Railway Square, New South Wales, Australia), 1988.

Out Where the Dead Men Lie: The Augustinians in Australia, 1838-1992, Augustinian Historical Commission (Brookvale, New South Wales, Australia), 1992.

One Man's War (memoir), Pan Macmillan (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 2003.

AS S.F. ARNEIL

Where Are We Now? Where Should We Go?, Federation of Credit Union League (Collaroy, New South Wales, Australia), 1970.

Forming and Running a Credit Union, Rigby (Adelaide, Australia), 1971.

Secrets of the Board Room: The Credit Union Director in the Eighties, Alternative Publishing Cooperative (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1980.

Black Jack: The Life and Times of Brigadier Sir Frederick Galleghan, Macmillan (South Melbourne, Australia), 1983.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stan Arneil has written about credit unions and Australian history. He is also the author of One Man's War, which stems from a diary Arneil kept during World War II when he served as an Australian army sergeant. The book primarily recounts his time as a prisoner of war, starting with the fall of Singapore in 1941 when the author was about twenty-one years old and ending with his eventual repatriation to Australia in 1945. Arneil wrote the diary while in prisoner-of-war camps and had to use stolen scraps of paper. It describes his bouts of depression and illnesses, as well as his intense homesickness. Arneil also writes about working on the infamous Burma-Thailand railway while a prisoner and his time in the Changi prisoner-of-war camp, where more than one in three prisoners died during their incarceration. In addition to the author's diary, the book includes photographs taken by another prisoner of war, George "Changi" Aspinall. Both Arneil and Aspinall faced death if their captors had discovered that they were writing about or photographing their experiences.