In the jail cells of Sandakan and Outram Rd, Tatura prisoner of war Rod Wells swore he wouldn’t break.
He set aside a part of his mind only he could enter, withstanding torture, solitary confinement and more at the hands of the Japanese in World War II.
His life and experiences have been immortalised in a memoir written by his wife, Pam, from stories he told across nearly 30 years of marriage.
Rod and Pam met in South Yarra in 1972 and were married two years later despite a 20-year age gap, and Mrs Wells said her husband-to-be never shied away from talking about his experience at war.
Mr Wells was a radio operator for the army during the war, and was captured by the Japanese and sent to the infamous Sandakan camp, where thousands of Australian and New Zealand prisoners of war died.
He was sentenced to jail rather than execution at Sandakan; instead, transported to Singapore where he would be held at Outram Rd.
He had been tried for espionage, and sentenced to 12 years’ penal work and solitary confinement despite his colleague being executed.
Rod was put in a crate in the hull of a ship and sent to Singapore, meaning he escaped the death marches in Borneo, which Mrs Wells said probably would have killed him.
When he returned to Australia after the end of the war he weighed just 20kg, Mrs Wells said.
“His story needed to be told,” Mrs Wells said.
“I couldn’t ever get him to sit down for long enough to make a decent story of it.
“He could never write it because he was so busy.”
He grew up near Tatura and spent large periods of his life living in Tatura and Rushworth, where British spy-turned-author John le Carre visited him just before he died in 2003.
He was married just before going to war, but that marriage and his second didn’t work out.
“He was very nervous and apprehensive, could talk about his experiences but returned soldiers didn’t have any counselling,” Mrs Wells said.
“He was incredibly strong-minded to mentally survive what he did.”
She had it in her head for decades to write a book, recording his experiences all the way up to arriving in Singapore, before the project fell by the wayside.
“Four years ago I thought I need to get this out there, I’m not getting any younger,” Mrs Wells said.
She used transcripts of interviews Mr Wells had done with journalist Tim Bowden for a TV program on the life of prisoners under the Japanese to fill out much of his wartime experience.
While it had been difficult listening back to old tapes and reliving the horrors her husband faced, Mrs Wells said it had “brought him back to me in a little way”.
“I'm so pleased to get it out there because I've known for years and it's been almost a unique record of a prisoner who went through what Rod did who survived and lived a very full life,” she said.
Mrs Wells is speaking about her book, The Tiger has Many Lives: The Story of Rod Wells, at the Tatura library from 7.30pm on Tuesday, June 21.
If you would like to attend, contact Goulburn Valley Libraries on 1300 374 765 or email tatura@gvrlc.vic.gov.au