Sprod, George Napier (Gunner, POW Changi)

Collection related to NX34279 Gunner George Napier Sprod, who served with 2/15 Field Regiment and was a POW in Changi. These two issues of "Smoke-Oh" are all that remain of the series of camp magazines produced by Gunner George Sprod while a prisoner of the Japanese. It is his most elaborate, his final, and yet in not everything his best essay in camp journalism; the reason for the last statement being that in a big camp such as Changi, with nerves frayed by three years of monotonous hardship, it was not so easy to get away with satire and lampoons on the camp officials and the officers as it had been, say, two years before, so what it lacked in pointed satire it made up for in its colour, its cartoons and its literary "efforts".

The first POW publication produced by this artist appeared in September 1942 when he was a member of a working party which was building a war memorial to the Japanese dead at Bukit Timah on Singapore Island. Produced in collaboration with Gnr A D Ward of 2/15 Field Regiment who died the following year in Siam, it was called "The Narrowminded News" (a joke on Gnr Cliff Whitelocke, proprietor of the Narromine News NSW, who was also there at the time). It consisted of four handwritten sheets which were exhibited in a glass frame. It appeared every fortnight and was taken up with jokes, reports of amusing happenings on work parties, and camp gossip. These papers were presumed lost in Siam on the death of Gnr Ward.
Gnr Sprod's second publication was produced at Kanburi Hospital, Siam, where he worked as an orderly after coming down from the railroad gangs. He was working night shift at the time, and produced this single sheet "Nuts and Jolts" in his rest time during the day. it was done as a attempt to cheer the sick, and as many were unable to walk (through ulcers, weakness and lost limbs), it was passed round the wards on a board.

In September 1944 he founded and produced in collaboration with Ronald Searle, an English artist, the magazine "Exile" but after a few numbers he decided that he would like to produce a journal with Australian appeal, and "Smoke-Oh" is the result.

It ran for two issues only and then Gnr Sprod was taken by the Japanese to help in the digging of the defences of the Island and worked at this until the war finished in August 1945.

• Sprod, George N (Gunner, POW Changi)
• Sprod, George N (Gunner, POW Changi)