Cover Young Sally Thompson (Author of 'Never a Medal') with her father, Dr Leslie Sheild (Photo: Sally Thompson)
Young Sally Thompson (Author of 'Never a Medal') with her father, Dr Leslie Sheild (Photo: Sally Thompson)
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Through diaries, letters and family memories, author Sally Thompson’s Never a Medal honours the ordinary people who endured the Japanese Occupation
When history remembers war, it often remembers generals, battles and political leaders. The quieter acts of courage rarely make it into the history books. In Never a Medal, author Sally Thompson traces her family’s experiences through the Japanese invasion of Malaya and the Fall of Singapore.
“In the bedroom of my aunt Pen’s old English cottage, I watched as she pulled a loose brick from the wall behind her dressing table and produced her diary,” Thompson recalls. Knowing her aunt had documented the war and her dramatic escape, the then 20-year-old Thompson eagerly devoured its pages, searching for insight into the silent scars carried by the Greatest Generation.
“I knew her as a person long before she ever showed me her diary,” Thompson says. “When I read it, I couldn’t believe that this normal, lovely, funny, brave widow and mother had endured so much. She never really talked about it.” The only hint of her wartime trauma came years earlier, when Thompson shared a room with her aunt at a family wedding and was woken by her screams as nightmares from the war resurfaced.
Above Sally Thompson, author of ‘Never a Medal’
Sally Thompson, author of ‘Never a Medal’
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What began with aunt Penelope Law Stevens’ hidden diary evolved into a much larger undertaking. Drawing on the diaries, letters and photographs of her aunt Pen and late uncle, Kenneth “Ken” Stevens who died tragically on the Death Railway in Burma, alongside years of meticulous historical research, Thompson reconstructs a story that had remained buried within her own family for decades. Published in 2025 with the support of book developer and publisher Joan Foo Mahony, Never a Medal is both an intimate family memoir and a tribute to the countless civilians whose quiet acts of courage were never formally recognised.
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The book’s title comes from a letter written by her uncle Ken while imprisoned in Changi Gaol in December 1942. “You will never get a medal for it, my darling,” he wrote to his wife Pen, a Queen Alexandra nurse who refused to evacuate to safety while patients remained under her care until military orders made evacuation compulsory. “After the war there will be so many loud and noisy people shouting about what they have done that the real people won’t even be heard.”
Thompson’s aunt and uncle, Penelope and Kenneth Stevens
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Ken’s words became the emotional foundation of Thompson’s book, which chronicles the extraordinary experiences of ordinary people caught in the chaos of war. Among those stories is how her aunt Pen jumped off the SS Kuala, an evacuation ship bombed and sunk by Japanese aircraft on February 14, 1942, near Pom Pong Island in the Dutch East Indies as it carried civilians and military personnel fleeing Singapore before its surrender. “My aunt jumped into the sea with two friends,” Thompson says. “I told her she must have been brave, but she said you either act or freeze. You just don’t know if you’re going to be brave until the moment comes.”
Thompson admits she initially thought the wartime experiences of her father, Dr Leslie Sheild, would take centre stage. “He was my unsung hero,” she says. A medical officer at Kuala Terengganu General Hospital when Japanese forces invaded northern Malaya in December 1941, Sheild also remained at his post until duty eventually forced him to flee south.
February 13/ Feb 14 Diary entries: An extract from Pen’s diary
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He was later captured and imprisoned in Changi. “Later my father simply could not cope with the cramped sleeping quarters and instead chose to sleep outside in his tent in the Changi Gaol courtyard, and then after the war sometimes on his bedroom verandah of our home in Malacca. This was a habit he could not rid himself of,” Thompson recalls. Unlike her aunt Pen, Sheild left no written account of his experiences. What Thompson did learn from second-hand accounts was that he was deeply committed to the people he served. Never a Medal came together through research, aided by the Imperial War Museum and the diary of Jamaican physician Dr Cicely Delphine Williams, most notable for her discovery and research into kwashiorkor.
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Accounts of what prisoners of war faced were sobering. “There would be 12 people in a narrow cell, forced to live cross-legged and seated upright. You didn’t know what you were heading towards. It wasn’t a matter of courage or resilience; one of the things that kept people going was a pure hatred of their captors,” Thompson says. For her, this determination to survive reflected the extraordinary strength of the human spirit. “It was an intense feeling: you’re not going to get one over me, I’m going to beat you and survive this.” It was a huge source of motivation, she believes.
Above Thompson’s parents
Above Thompson’s childhood home in Malacca
Thompson’s parents
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“We need a word bigger than courage.” Thompson finds herself exasperated by her inability to find the right adjective to describe how brave survivors really were. “How can one describe the fear and thoughts of those swimming in a sea filled with sharks while enemy planes flew so low their guns could shoot and kill innocent escapees as they struggled to keep their heads above the water?”
Returning to Malaysia for the book’s launch earlier this year, graced by royal guest of honour and head of the Red Crescent in Malaysia, YTM Tan Sri Dato Sri Di-Raja Tunku Puteri Intan Safinaz bt Almarhum Sultan Aabdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah Tunku Temenggong Kedah at the spectacular Sunway Library by Book Xcess, Thompson describes it as a crescendo. “It meant absolutely everything to me,” she says. “This is like coming home. My memories always seem to be clearer here.”
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Thompson also hopes the memoir encourages readers to examine colonial history with honesty. Reflecting on Britain’s preparedness before the invasion, she is candid: “The colonial belief [of being an undefeatable force] was wrong,” she says.
Above Thompson, Tunku Puteri Safinaz and Joan Mahony at the launch of ‘Never a Medal’
Thompson, Tunku Puteri Safinaz and Joan Mahony at the launch of ‘Never a Medal’
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Asked what she hopes readers walk away with, Thompson explains: “The book offers a reminder not to let wars happen again. I know it sounds a bit corny, but I would like readers to feel enjoyment and that they’ve learnt a little bit about history in a gentle, personal way, rather than reading it like a textbook.”
Never a Medal ultimately resists assigning simple heroes or villains. Instead, it asks readers to recognise humanity amid catastrophe. As conflicts continue to unfold around the world today, Thompson admits she struggles to watch history repeat itself: “How can they let this all happen again?”
