He joined the British Army in 1914 and served in the Royal Irish Regiment in France and Belgium during World War I.
A German gas attack in March 1918 ended his active career, and after the war he returned as part of an exhumation unit to re-inter battlefield dead in military cemeteries.
[1][2] After a short period as a ship's surgeon, O’Connor decided to join the Colonial Medical Service in British Malaya.
After their release the O’Connors returned to Ireland where Michael published novels and short stories and became well known through his regular broadcasts to children on Radio Éireann in the 1950s and early 1960s.
He went on to write two historical novels concerning the fall of Singapore and the war in the Far East in conjunction with Granville Pratt Willis, a fellow internee at Batu Lintang.