After the capture of Singapore, he escaped to Java, and attempted to sail several thousand miles from Padang to Sri Lanka with a group of other British officers in a native fishing boat.

Gordon found his sense of self and spirituality while a prisoner and one of the participant soldiers who helped build The Bridge on the River Kwai.

[1]) He was treated there by two special soldiers in their late twenties, a Methodist named "Dusty Miller", a simple gardener from Newcastle upon Tyne; and "Dinty" Moore a devout Roman Catholic.

Gordon, an agnostic, was impressed by Dusty's simplicity and firm Christian faith in the face of the severe treatment the prisoners received at the hands of their captors.

Dinty, whom Gordon cared for and admired profoundly, died when the Allies sank his unmarked prisoner transport ship.