Nine
That night on board the USS Cape Gloucester I slept peacefully for the first time in years. It was the only time since our capture three and a half years earlier that I had gone to bed without the terrible sleep-depriving companion of fear.
The next morning I went to the galley for breakfast. When I arrived I thought I had taken a wrong turn while negotiating the maze of steel corridors that snaked through the innards of the massive ship – it felt like I had intruded on a wild party or stepped into a carnival. Men were whooping and hollering, clapping and singing like enraptured evangelists. The catalyst for the furore centred all too predictably around the long stainless-steel canteen. Men lined up impatiently in a long, disorderly queue to the serving area, where immaculately attired Americans (I still could not get over how clean and healthy they looked compared with us) were dishing out mountainous servings.
A bulky Afro-American cook greeted us all with a beaming broad smile and urged us to get stuck in.
‘Tuck in boys! It’s all you can eat.’
We felt like kids in a sweet shop. I had never seen so many boiled eggs in my life, piled high in vast rows of gleaming white pyramids that made me wonder if the ship was carrying the world’s entire supply. Men loaded handfuls on to their plates, adding liberal dashes of milky cereal, soft white bread and maple syrup. The smell of the cooked food sent my head spinning and I had to actually clamp my mouth shut to stop from drooling. The temptation was too much for most of the lads but I recalled Dr Mathieson’s earlier advice and steered clear of the most exotic and tantalising delights. Instead, with the greatest reluctance, I plumped for half an egg, a single slice of lightly toasted bread with a thick layer of margarine and a cup of tea. It required immense willpower not to eat more but once I had finished and sat for ten minutes I did feel full. I was telling guys around me to be careful, that their stomachs had shrunk to dangerously small proportions. The response was resoundingly and emphatically in the negative. No frugal and canny Scot was telling these starving boys to watch what they ate.
After my protestations were overruled I went searching for Dr Mathieson. I finally found him in the officers’ mess. I pleaded my case to the officer on the door and was allowed in to speak to the doctor. I told him what was happening in the galley and in his usual considered manner he replied, ‘I’ve already spoken to the Captain and explained the medical situation. Keep telling people though.’
I went back to the galley, which had not calmed down. Already some men were feeling sickly, their deprived stomachs at bursting point. I kept passing the message on but generally got told to bugger off and mind my own business. Sadly several men fell critically ill from over-indulging – not that anyone and certainly not me could blame them. But I felt a terrific sadness when I heard that a man had died from gorging and the subsequent damage it caused to his innards. Here we had survived three or four hellish years, undergoing some of the greatest atrocities and human sufferings of all time, and men were succumbing on the journey home. Those smiling American chefs and their huge hearts had inadvertently killed men with kindness.
After that they reduced the portions greatly and stopped the buffet altogether. I spent a lot of time on my bunk, composing in my mind a letter to my mother. It took some time and many miles before I could bring myself to put pen to paper. We soon arrived at Okinawa – site of the last pitched battle in the war just months earlier – where we transferred to a troop ship, the USS Tryon, and set sail at once for Manila in the Philippines.
Once back at sea the Army insisted that we each sign a document that stated that we would refrain from speaking about our wartime experiences. I was outraged and felt uncomfortable with the notion so I signed as ‘George Kynoch’, using my father’s Christian name and my mother’s maiden name. I employed the same backhand style that I had used during the Selarang Incident, knowing full well they could never produce it as evidence. I felt that the British government wanted to suppress the true horrors, hide the facts and appease the Japanese. I wanted nothing to do with a cover-up.
I finally penned a long and rambling letter to my mother that I hoped to mail from Manila. I was coming home, my thoughts ran away from my pen. Trying to condense three and a half years of hell into a bite-size chunk that was palatable for my family proved incredibly difficult. My mother kept my letter as a treasured possession and I have it still.
Hello folks, this is your old son, aged 26 years, coming to you by ‘courtesy of the once Imperial Japanese Army’. That’s what they told you if they ever gave you anything. Well, I hope you are all well and happy and I hope looking forward to my homecoming as eagerly as I. It has been a long troublesome and heartbreaking period those last six years but you and I have at last got a break and well deserved I think. There is little need to tell you as some of the stories are already in print, that we have been treated worse than pigs, but thanks to God, I am spared. At this point let us pause for a few moments in memory of so many of my fine pals who helped me through in those days of torture in Thailand, but who were lost at sea on the journey to Japan.
We left Nagasaki on the aircraft carrier ‘Cape Gloucester’ and were transferred on to the ship at Okinawa, where we are en route for Manila, where we should arrive on the 29/9/45. The experience of the last three and a half years has taught me many lessons and hard ones. The crowning joy will be my arrival at the station at Aberdeen.
Please give my kindest regards to my relations and if any to my friends of the pre-war years. Gee, it’s going to be embarrassing trying to pick up the threads again especially in my future job, whatever that may be.
Mother there is one person you have to thank more than anyone else in the world for my presence here now, and that is Hazel Watson. It appears that while I was lying in hospital at death’s door very ill with dysentery and beriberi, my pals had done everything they could do to make me buck my spirits up and make a fight for it, but I must have been in a coma, I cannot remember much of what happened. However, they raked out my photographs and as Hazel was the most prominent and most likely my girlfriend, they kept repeating her name and showing me her photograph. They said it was not till three hours later, that I seemed to recollect and began repeating her name over and over again, which was the turning point, as I gradually grew better day by day, weighing approximately five stone at that time. But, please mother keep this to ourselves as I do not wish her to know, as it puts her and myself in an awkward position. I believe she is married but am not sure. I have never managed to determine my feelings for Hazel, but it is sufficient that the thought of her pulled me together at the critical moment.
I only wish that the fellows who looked after me then and gave me what little supplies of milk and eggs they risked their lives to steal off the Japanese guards, had been spared for this day.
Well mother that is the terrible price of the war, and we can only hope there will never be another. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me. All the best, love to all at home, hoping to see you soon. Cheerio, your ever loving son, Alistair XXX.
Denis Southgate, who preferred to be called ‘Tiny’, even though he was larger than me, asked what I was writing. I told him but he just shrugged.
‘You should write home too,’ I said. ‘Your parents would be thrilled to hear from you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ the twenty-two-year-old marine replied, sounding defeated.
‘Nonsense man. Here.’ I shoved a pen and paper in his lap. I sat beside him on the camp bed. ‘I’ll help you.’
Maybe camp life had broken him or maybe he was illiterate but words failed to come. I basically dictated a simple letter home, addressed to his mother in St Austell in Cornwall, and he seemed to cheer up a little.
The days at sea went slowly and my mind kept returning to the haunting memories of our POW existence. Playing quoits on deck could preoccupy me for only so long. My recurring nightmare of surrender at Fort Canning continued and the Black Prince, the Mad Mongrel, Hellfire Pass and the sinking of the hellship also began to haunt me. They continue to disturb me to this day.
We arrived at the port of Manila on 25 September 1945. Trucks ferried us to a military hospital, which was run by Americans but we were cared for by Filipino nurses who treated us very well. The eyes of the nurses welled up and many were reduced to tears when they saw the state of us. Seeing so many pitiful walking skeletons and so many men robbed of their youth was too much for the nurses to bear. They were more openly disturbed by our appearance than the Americans had been and their unconcealed emotion brought home just how malnourished and ill we were.
For two weeks we lay confined to our hospital beds. Occasionally I would get up and walk around the ward but it was not encouraged. The one upside for many of us was that the Filipino nurses were extremely beautiful, as well as dutiful and kind. One about my age took a particular shine to me, which cheered me up no end. She was very attractive, with flowing black hair that glistened like coal, and asked for my home address, vowing to write to me. I was wary that she wanted a Western husband but maybe I was too harsh on her, for when I arrived home there was indeed a very sweet letter waiting, wishing me well and saying how much of a pleasure it was meeting me.
We bade farewell to the lovely nurses of Manila and clambered back on board the USS Tryon. Ten days later on 19 October we arrived at Honolulu, the capital of the far-flung US state of Hawaii. As the ship berthed in the now rebuilt Pearl Harbor, a tannoy announced that any men who wished to could go on deck, where on the starboard side a traditional welcoming ceremony would be performed for us.
I raced upstairs, bounding two at a time, elbowing others out of my way. This sounded too good to miss. It was a balmy evening bathed in moonlight that shimmered off the calm water in the harbour. We waited in an expectant silence that was broken by a jaunty ukulele tune that got louder and louder. As a fleet of small wooden canoes came into sight from the bow the sky filled with glorious female voices singing strange songs that I took for indigenous classics. As the occupants of the guitar-playing and angel-voiced canoes came into the light the men erupted into cheers and clapping. Buxom Hawaiian lassies with bright flowers around their necks and grass skirts wiggling were waving, smiling and still performing, putting on a real show. Seeing the women perform the hula-hula dance and hearing the upbeat music brought tears to many a hardened eye. We felt like returning heroes yet it would be the first and last time that I would have that feeling. I didn’t realise it at the time but this was the best homecoming I would receive.
We stayed overnight to refuel and I cabled home. I wrote in longhand, ‘Am well. Hope to be home soon. Safe in Hawaii. Love Alistair’, and gave the message to the ship’s purser who arranged for it to be wired.
Six days later on 26 October we arrived at San Francisco, sailing under the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge, completed just eight years before in a Herculean engineering feat. Setting foot on American soil was nearly as emotional as the Hawaiian welcoming party, just without the fanfare. The sensation of being safe was more tangible – being in a Western country where people looked and dressed the same, had much the same sensibilities and ate the same food just felt right. It was probably an unwarranted sensation but even so it was how I felt.
A lorry took us to another military hospital on the suburban outskirts of the hilly city. Now feeling slightly better with every day, the thought of lying in a hospital bed for another period of weeks sucked a lot of energy from me. I was becoming more and more frustrated that it was taking so long to get home. At first I had imagined that we would be taken to an air-base and flown home immediately, possibly first-class after what we had endured.
A British Red Cross telegram from my parents sat waiting for me at the San Francisco hospital. It read, ‘Cables received. All well. Hope see you soon – Urquhart.’ Hearing from the clan, knowing they were well and that they knew I was well, was enough to encourage a long and unbroken sleep. In the morning I felt as fresh as a Yankee soldier’s T-shirt and probably better than I had felt in years. Around mid-morning, while I was following one of the orderlies on his rounds, trying to pick up some tips, the head nurse came in with a visitor. She was introduced as ‘Miss Ash’, an elderly lady who ran a rehabilitation centre near by. The head nurse told us that Miss Ash wanted to know if any of us would like to join her for a day out of the hospital. The offer was met with virtual silence until I piped up, ‘I’ll go.’
Miss Ash reminded me of my mother; she looked similar and even shared the same ‘bun’ hairstyle. She was delighted that someone had taken up her offer. No doubt half of the other men would have agreed if she had been thirty years younger and blonde but I was simply keen to get out of the hospital. I had been cooped up too long.
She led me to her car, a bright blue land-whale so immense I could hardly believe she was about to get behind the wheel. Before we left the hospital car park, she turned to me and asked in her highly refined American manner, ‘Where would you like to go?’
I considered her question for a moment before realising that I had no clue what was near by. I didn’t even have any money, not a dime.
‘You choose,’ I said.
We went through the streets of San Francisco, a booming town full of sailors, soldiers and tramcars similar to those in Aberdeen but that went up and down steep hills later to become famous in Hollywood car chases. We bounced along in the huge Pontiac past rows of wooden two-storey houses gaily painted in pastels, and across the Bay Bridge into the spectacular Californian countryside. On that first day Miss Ash drove for hours, taking me to see the giant redwood forests, trees that reached into the heavens, dizzying my disbelieving head. She spoke incessantly, asking all about me. She was especially keen to hear all about the POW camps, the Death Railway and the hellships. Despite her tears and my sentences that tailed off like the tarmac in her rear-view mirror, she ploughed on. I had no qualms at that time talking about my experiences to her and relayed them as accurately as I could.
After driving around all day Miss Ash dropped me back at the hospital shortly before dusk. I thanked her and as I stepped out of the car she said, ‘See you tomorrow. We’ll go up the Big Sur. It’s beautiful this time of the year.’
‘You don’t have to, Miss Ash. I’ve had a lovely day, and you must be awfully busy.’
‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘I’ll pick you up after breakfast.’
And so began a most enjoyable stay. Miss Ash and I drove all over California – the Golden State stretches for 160,000 square miles, over five times the size of Scotland. She took me to parties with her friends at which I met several ex-patriots from Scotland. We went on long drives along the coast and enjoyed picnics in the woods. It was one of the most pleasant experiences I had ever had. She even took me to Los Angeles, paying for us to stay at a hotel just off Hollywood Boulevard. We took in the Walk of Fame, the Chinese Theatre, Venice Beach and everything in between. Miss Ash knew I had no money and she paid for everything without ever making a fuss. She was a life-long spinster and I became something of a son to her. It was the start of a close friendship that lasted for many years and involved her coming to visit me and my family back in Scotland, and a huge hamper sent across the Atlantic every Christmas.
Every night I when returned to the hospital the boys would be waiting to ask where I had been that day. I relished filling them in in great detail – they were hugely envious. I always came back bearing stacks of fruit, cake and sweets for general distribution that eased their envy somewhat. I just thanked my lucky stars that I had volunteered that day to go with this remarkable, kind and charismatic woman.
One evening Miss Ash invited me to a Halloween party at the convalescent home where she lived. In a grand mansion tucked away in acres of bushy shrubs, cultivated lawns, paved areas and waterfalls, Miss Ash gave me the honour of wheeling in a ninety-nine-year-old lady in a wheelchair for dinner, after ‘dooking for apples’ and ‘feeding the baby’ with the sick and recovering children. I met a lovely girl, who was about twenty-one, paralysed and in a wheelchair. I took an interest, wheeling her about, trying to help her, and make her evening a memorable one. Miss Ash commented that the girl’s eyes followed me around the room. At least it appeared that I had made somebody at the party as happy as I was.
Sadly the time came for us to leave San Fran and my new-found but short-lived life. On 2 November 1945 we were taken to the train station, where first-class Pullmans and dining cars awaited us, and a six-day journey to New York, spanning the three-thousand-mile girth of America. Miss Ash, thoughtful and generous as ever, showed up at the station with a large hamper brimming with goodies, including fruit, chocolate and cigarettes for the lads.
Another tearful farewell, and I waved goodbye to Miss Ash and went to find my seat. Before I sat down I noticed that an elderly couple were without a seat and I nudged a fellow Scot already sitting and staring out the window. Seeing the couple he got up without thinking and I ushered them over, offering our seats. To our great surprise they were extremely grateful for our generosity, exclaiming that they had never heard of such gentlemanly courtesy. Before long the whole cabin heard of our ‘remarkable good manners’ and we swelled with pride. At least some of our pride in our country and where we came from was still there.
The trip, although long, was not one I would have missed. The ushers treated us like royalty, pulling down our beds in the evening and waiting on us hand and foot. I spent most of the journey sipping tea and staring out of the window. The countryside changed so much, from the fertile coastal lands through to cactus-clad deserts, where I saw my first-ever ‘proper’ cowboys just like the ones from the silver screen, grisly gents on horseback wearing Stetsons and spurs. Arriving at Chicago train station was something spectacular even though we never got off and sat there for three hours – just taking in the sublime architecture of the station and its bustling inhabitants was enough for us ‘former’ POWs, who had suffered from sensory deprivation for so long.
Despite being at liberty we still needed telling what to do. None of us had money for food, beds or activities so when we got to New York City on 7 November we were still at the mercy of Army logistics. They put us into another hospital but this time allowed us out and about, with Army guides to show us the sights. Being a freshly liberated POW did as it happened have some benefits. When we arrived at the base of the mighty Empire State Building at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street, we found ourselves ushered to the front of the snaking queue. With several elevators freed exclusively for our use the rest of the building was cleared. We had the run of what was then the tallest building on the planet. Once at the top we giggled like schoolgirls as we clambered to the side to take in the scenery. Yellow taxis crawled like maggots down below and the rush-hour foot traffic appeared no more than a fumbling army of dots. Sadly it was rather smoggy and our vista was clouded out but we could still see as far as the Hudson River, the Statue of Liberty and Central Park, as well as take in the fresh air of freedom.
The next day we went to see the world-famous Norwegian ice skater Sonja Henie perform her show. As a keen dancer I was staggered by her speed, grace and showmanship and clapped rapturously, until my bony hands hurt. We had no time for shopping – and still didn’t possess a dime between us – but New York was a wonderful city to wander around. Inhaling its colourful mix of creeds, cultures and commerce temporarily relegated the horrors of the last few years to the back of my mind.
The respite was brief and after five pleasant days we were ready to sail back to the United Kingdom on 12 November on the Queen Mary, once a luxury liner, now converted into a less than luxurious troop ship. It had once carried British Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic for crunch talks with fellow allied forces officials. When we boarded at New York it was crammed with hundreds if not thousands of other soldiers all gleefully bound on the last leg across the Atlantic for home.
Five days at sea, sleeping on the floor of a former lounge, unable to move about because of the sheer volume of passengers, I was glad to enter Southampton harbour. We had been well looked after, with exceptional care taken to provide us with the best food. But I was probably one of the poorest eaters on board. I still couldn’t face eating anything substantial and stuck to bowls of cold custard or soup. To watch others gorge themselves made me nauseous.
I had been counting the hours. The thought of arriving home was mind-boggling to me. It felt like visiting a strange land for the first time, one I had only read about in books. It was like when you go on holiday to somewhere new and you know it won’t resemble the picture you’ve built up in your mind, but that is all you have to go with so you succumb to it. That is how I felt, and I tried to limit my expectations and shun thoughts of what I would do once I got back to Aberdeen. I banished thoughts of gaining new employment and readjusting to society.
Despite my low expectations nothing could have prepared me for the disappointment of arriving in dismal Southampton. No quayside band, no media or fanfare awaited us. And most importantly, no family. I had fully expected to see Mum and Dad, Auntie Dossie, maybe even Bill and Rhoda, but there was nobody, just a handful of industrious dockworkers. All of the men felt devastated, as if a light had been snuffed out in our souls.
Feelings of disappointment, irritation and dread of travelling to the north of Scotland by train outweighed any anger on my behalf. That would come later though, when I fully realised how disgracefully the British government was treating its returning heroes. Despite dying in our thousands, sacrificing honest, hard-working and ordinary lives for the greater good, liberty and justice, we found they shunned us, forgot about us, brushed us under the political carpet. I was sure that my threemonth journey home by the most circuitous route had been a deliberate political ploy by the government. I felt that they wanted us to recuperate on the way home to shield the British public from the state we were in and allow for the development of future good trading relations with Japan.
I sent a cable home from Southampton rail station saying, ‘Home tomorrow’, and obtained a rail warrant. I caught a commuter train to London, where I hopped off at Victoria Station. Disorientated and bewildered I bungled my way across London asking strangers for directions to King’s Cross, where my last train awaited.
At King’s Cross Station a couple of military police officers accosted me. ‘Are you going to Aberdeen, lad?’ one of them asked in a cockney accent. He must have heard me asking for my ticket.
‘Yes, why?’
‘Come with me.’
Wondering what I had done wrong this time, I followed him to an office. A ghostly-looking chap sat on a chair rocking back and forth in front of a paper-strewn desk. He looked up at me and said bleakly, ‘They’re out to get me.’
I looked at the Red Caps, who shrugged. Not caring that the poor chap could hear them they told me he was ‘away with the fairies’. He had been a regular in the Gordons and had been captured in Singapore. He was a complete wreck and had obviously suffered horrendously at the hands of the Japanese but all they could elicit from him was that his name was Hugh and he was from Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. Despite the fact that he was extremely depressed and mentally ill they put me in charge of him for the journey home, with strict instructions not to let him out of sight and to hand him over to some Red Caps at Aberdeen Station. I reluctantly agreed, thinking that it would at least keep my mind off other things.
We got a second-class seat and I plonked him by the window, hoping the passing countryside would placate him. He had a wild look in his eyes and jabbered nonsense constantly. I had the feeling that he could become aggressive at any time so I treated him good-naturedly and tried to calm him with soothing words.
The journey was a nightmare. Hugh was a handful and I spent most of my time apologising to others for his loud outbursts, which were frequent and disturbing. Seeing him in that state really got to me. I prayed that I wouldn’t descend back down the same dark path.
I tried to convince him that he was back in Britain and would be safe now. Nobody was coming to get him. As we pulled into Aberdeen Joint Station at 6 a.m. on 18 November 1945, I told him to look out the window, hoping he would recognise the view as we crossed the River Dee. I left him with the Red Caps in much the same state as when I first met him, bidding him farewell and wishing him luck, though I’m not sure he heard.
Once I knew Hugh was safely in their hands I ventured to the main entrance, where I knew the family would be waiting. I spotted Mum first, her distinctive hair and height gave her away. I walked up to Mum, Dad, Dossie, Rhoda and a young chap I didn’t recognise. I hugged Mum and I shall never forget the look in her eyes. She was so shocked and upset, probably by my skin-and-bone appearance and lack of hair. I hugged Dossie, Dad and Rhoda and the tears could no longer be held back. Both my mother and father had aged far beyond their years. My ordeal had taken a toll on them as well as myself.
I turned to the young chap and said, ‘Are you Rhoda’s boyfriend?’
Eyebrows raised, he said, ‘No, you bloody fool! I am your brother Bill.’
It just went to show what six years of war could do – to him and me. Also there was Doug’s new wife Cicely, from Oxfordshire, and she introduced me to their new baby boy born just a few months before. They had named him Alistair in my honour. Then it emerged that they had all thought I had been killed. None of the half-dozen cards or so that I had sent from the camps had ever arrived in Aberdeen. I was back from the dead.
On the tram journey home to Seafield Drive I asked where Douglas was. They told me that he was ‘abroad’ working for the Foreign Office but nobody had heard from him in months. He had been in the Army’s glider regiment. He had broken both of his ankles during a mission into occupied France and reinvented himself as a war correspondent in the Middle East. Before the war he could speak French and German from his school days and had subsequently learned four more languages, which suited the Foreign Office, and they had signed him up. I wouldn’t see him again until the following Christmas, when he returned as a shattered wreck, barely alive, looking as if he himself had been a POW and confined to the black hole for several months. He had disappeared on some cloak and dagger mission, abandoning his new wife and baby boy for more than a year. On his bizarre return he refused to tell anybody where he had been and was very nearly a broken man.
So by the time we reached home I was already feeling panicky. Everyone had so many questions; sometimes it felt as if they were all asking at once. This was not how I had thought I would feel on my homecoming. So much had changed. Mum had prepared a lavish breakfast for my return and the table was laid out when we got back home shortly after 7 a.m. We sat down for a family meal with everyone on their best behaviour – even Father was keen to dote on me. Mum served up tattie scones, sausages, eggs, the real works. But despite much encouragement and insistence I could only pick at my food. I asked about Hazel and without looking at me Mum said she had married during the war and moved to Canada. I was not upset; in fact I was glad that she had moved on and seemed happy.
Then Mum cleared her throat and told me nervously, ‘You should also know, Alistair, that your friend Eric didn’t make it.’
I felt ill. I could barely lift my head and the conversation buzzed around me. The words became jumbled and I could no longer make them out, as the kitchen walls seemed to close in. It was like a bout of cholera, the claustrophobia enhanced by the cramped kitchen and the desperate shows of love and affection my poor family poured on me.
‘He was killed on his first mission over Europe,’ Dad said. ‘He was a rear gunner, a real brave soul.’
It was all too much, yet another kick in the face. Even though I had been around so much death, lived it and breathed it, nothing prepared me for the loss of such a close friend. All I could think was, Why then am I still alive? By what miracle had I returned home? Suddenly I snapped. I slammed my fork down on Mum’s finest crockery plate and stood up, the chair screeching on the wooden floor. The room fell silent. It was so unlike me to make a scene, completely out of character. I knew they were trying to help but I just couldn’t stand it.
‘I’m going out,’ I announced. I was already half out the door when a chorus of ‘I’ll come with you’ and ‘Come back, Alistair’ rang out.
But I was off. I needed to be alone. My head felt like it was going to pop and fresh air seemed the only answer.
I walked and walked. Past the Co-op and up Auchinyell Brae, I hardly broke stride. Before long I was miles from home, walking with purpose but without forethought or direction. Aberdeen could not possibly have physically changed much during the war years but somehow I failed to recognise any of the surroundings. It all felt surreal and nothing seemed familiar. God knows where I walked but I kept on going, strolling without respite. Even when it got dark I kept on going and going, step after step, on my own enforced route march.
I did not return home until around five o’clock the next morning. My parents were still up, obviously worried sick. As I crawled up the stairs to find a bed to lie down in, utterly exhausted, they asked where I had been.
‘We’ve been out looking for you,’ Mum pleaded, begging for information.
‘And all night,’ Dad chimed in. ‘We even called the police. What have you to say for yourself, son? It’s freezing outside.’
I hated myself. I knew they were trying to be there for me but I just wanted to be on my own. I had lived a solitary and sorry life for so long that love only suffocated me. In many respects my family felt like strangers. How does one describe the feelings of a person who has been through something like we had, something no one could ever have envisaged? They could never comprehend the depths of man’s inhumanity to man or the awfulness of an existence that consisted of surviving one day at a time.
I flopped down on my old bed in the room that I had helped build with my father all those years ago and slept all day and the next night. The recurring nightmares of the railway came again, leaving me afraid to lie down.
When I went downstairs the next day I ate a quick and light breakfast before promptly disappearing again. For the next few months my daily routine consisted of long and pointless walks. After a while I started looking at people’s faces trying to spot anybody I knew from before the war but I never did. Not in the whole town. But I did purposely avoid my old haunts, especially the plumbers’ merchants, Duthie Park and the dance halls.
I created mayhem at home, where I was morose, rude and short on patience. My sister Rhoda, God bless her, was so supportive and in many ways eased the situation, although I cannot ever remember thanking her, such was the state of my mind. I was irrational and unable to control my actions. I wanted only to be on my own, outside the four walls, wandering aimlessly in and around the streets of Aberdeen.
After a few weeks pounding the strange streets of my home town my body began to fall apart. I started to suffer with pains from beriberi, which attacked my legs, back and arms, and the cold winter air did not help. When my bowels started playing up as well I decided it was time to visit my local GP, Dr Rice.
I told him that I had amoebic dysentery while incarcerated so he put me on a course of inter-muscular injections. He injected my left arm but the skin began to tighten and then swell and became incredibly painful, so he went for the other, which did the same thing. After that I couldn’t lie on my back or sides, couldn’t bear sheets or clothing to touch them. Life was pretty bad despite the relative luxury I was afforded.
I still could not eat properly. I left untouched all of my old favourites, which Mum loved preparing for me. Much to my surprise I craved rice, the lousy stuff that we had all hated so much. The aptly named Dr Rice arranged for me to attend Stracathro Hospital – a large country house near Brechin in the neighbouring county of Angus that had been converted into a military hospital.
They did all of their tests and suggested different foods but I was still unable to take anything except fluids. My health suffered accordingly and I became weaker by the day.
I stayed there for several weeks. I could go home at the weekends but I had little money and nobody in the family had a car, so it was not an option. Mum and Dossie started out one Saturday but got on the wrong bus and never arrived at the hospital.
One day a baffled doctor visited my bedside and said he couldn’t understand why I couldn’t take food. I told him, ‘If you had to survive on nothing else but rice and water for three and a half years, then maybe you could understand!’
‘Yes, perhaps you are right. We just don’t know what else to do for you,’ he said rather ashamedly.
‘Maybe my body is craving rice,’ I suggested in a less defensive tone.
‘We could try it.’
It seemed logical and perhaps not surprisingly it worked. My body responded to the rice and seemed to relax. My throat opened up and my bowels went from a stormy sea to a millpond. I ate rice pudding every day for several weeks – and relished it too! After a while I was put on to tripe, which did me the world of good, and then on to some white fish.
After three months and a final prognosis of having suffered from a duodenal ulcer, I came out of hospital armed with instructions for my mum on how to cook tripe, which she despised. She cooked fish, poached in milk, and servings of rice, as exotic as it got in those days. To this day I still have to eat rice two or three times a week, with some fish or chicken. Anything else causes havoc with my insides. One of my favourite dishes in Singapore had been a curry but never again. Even an onion is enough to set me off. The diet courtesy of the Emperor’s Imperial Army, along with years of dysentery, had destroyed the linings in my stomach and done irreparable damage.
Thanks to my new diet and more rest and recuperation at home – where I hardly had to lift a finger – my body, mind and soul began to recover. I wrote to the Royal Army Pay Corps headquarters, gave them my rank and number, and asked for payments because I was still unfit for work. They tallied up my pay for my time as a POW and after deductions for ‘subsistence’ I received the grand sum of £434.00 – for the period from 15 February 1942 to 18 November 1945.
The charge for ‘subsistence’ infuriated me – they were making us pay for those handfuls of maggoty rice. Yet it was standard practice and applied to all returning prisoners. It is a miracle that they did not charge me for the loss of my rifle, as they did some men.
Early in 1946 and still a de facto member of the British Army, I was summoned to appear in front of a medical board at Woodend Hospital, Aberdeen. The board comprised four well-fed and comfortable-looking officers sitting behind a desk. They told me that the conditions of my military discharge hinged on my producing my Army ‘records’ and that unless I could produce records of all the diseases that beset me in the POW camps, they were not able to consider my situation.
I was stunned. I sat in an awkward silence trying to compose my thoughts and control my rage, before speaking.
‘Sirs,’ I said. ‘Have you any conception of conditions in the Japanese prison camps?’
They did not reply so I went on. ‘There were no pencils, pens, paper, aye, no toilet paper, drugs, toiletries, soap or water to wash! Never mind keeping records of each POW in many, many camps, certainly not in Kanyu or the Hellfire Pass camps. Just how much recording the Japanese kept is very little, as my Japanese Record Card shows!’
The chairman broke the silence that followed, saying, ‘Then we are sorry, we are unable to help.’
This then was the sort of treatment meted out by the Army. It took another three or four meetings with various medical boards before they offered me demobilisation – but only if I agreed to pass myself as A1, which foolishly I did. I was so fed up of being downtrodden by the Army but I had let them off the hook of having to pay me any kind of disability war pension – it was a dirty trick played on many of the returning Far Eastern prisoners of war.
Two days later I went on my way down south for an official discharge and was issued with a brown-checked demobbing suit and hat, the usual Army fitting, and a pair of shoes. Hurrah, free of the Army at last.
By February 1946 I thought it was time to take a chance and try dancing again. I dusted off an old pair of dancing shoes with leather soles (my good pair had been abandoned back in Singapore) and shined them up. As I nuggeted them and buffed up a reasonable shine I was surprised at how unsteady my hands were. I was nervous. While dancing had always come very easily and naturally to me, it felt like starting afresh. It had been so long since I had allowed myself any luxurious thoughts of quicksteps or the tidal rise and fall of the waltz. But above all else, returning to social circles, dealing and talking with strangers, horrified me.
I decided to go to the Palais de Dance, the classier of the halls, on a quiet Wednesday night. I wore my uniform, which fitted only where it touched my still skeletal frame, and was pleased to see a lot of military people milling around outside. I recognised no faces, however. Inside the band started up and men at once crossed the floor, seemingly as fraught with danger as no man’s land or the mine-ridden seas of the Indian Ocean, and asked women to dance. I stood there for a long time, probably an hour, before I approached a girl. I had noticed she could dance and looked assured yet kind. I ‘tipped’ her dance partner, the polite way of ‘cutting in’, and got the chance for a quickstep double novelty dance. The first thing she said to me was, ‘So you can dance! Why did you stand for so long?’
I smiled and swung her around, delighted to be back in the saddle, so to speak. I only got halfway around the floor when I was tipped by a woman, who could also dance. Before I knew it I was back in my element. I tried to remember the female faces so I could get another dance with them later.
At the end of the night on my way out, with the smile still plastered on my face, one of the women collared me to say, ‘I hope you come back, as I enjoyed dancing with you.’
That broke the ice and I went back two days later for the big Friday night dance. My legs were still aching from all of the unexpected exercise, using different muscles, and muscles that still needed to be built up, but nothing would stop me now. Early in the evening I met a woman called Mary Milne who was wearing a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force uniform. She was a local lassie, three years younger than me, and a very good dancer. I had seen her earlier and she had caught my eye, so I made sure I tipped in later on and we got on well immediately.
‘Will you be going to the dance tomorrow?’ she asked, as we tapped out a slow fox-trot.
‘Most certainly,’ I said, hardly able to control my delight.
Dancing was the best rehabilitation I could have asked for, and it was also crucial to my reintegration to society. I slowly came out of my shell and thanks in no small part to Mary. She didn’t ask me any questions and I liked it that way. I told her I had been a prisoner of the Japanese but that was as much detail as I gave. It turned out that in previous years she had courted someone who had been a prisoner of the Germans – so she sure could pick ’em!
Before long we were ‘walking out’, and seeing each other as much as possible. One of our favourite things was a stroll along the beach. On one such occasion, memorable for its cloudless sky, I took an attack of malaria. It came on quickly, forcing me to sit on a bench, sending me into hot, sweaty shivers. Mary was terrified as she did not know what was happening, and when I went into a tense rigor she helped me to a taxi and we rushed home. Dr Rice came, with his quinine, and gave me a dose in bed, which sorted me out. But it took me a fortnight to recover because of an enlarged spleen. I considered it a minor setback and got back to the dancing straight away, though by now struggling to breathe through my nose properly – it had been broken so often during all of those beatings on the railway. I went in for an operation to have a hole bored through my nose bone, and while I was in I took another malaria attack, which laid me out again, this time for a month.
As a couple Mary and I soon made friends at the various dance places. One of Mary’s best friends and her boyfriend often joined us to make up a foursome. I enjoyed getting out but I must have been awkward and possibly miserable company. In reality I had little or no conversation. I did not wish to talk about my six and a half years in the Far East, especially as the others had not been abroad or on active service. If someone asked about my time in the war, I regurgitated my stock answer of, ‘It was so bad that I don’t want to talk about it.’ If the war came up in conversation, I would keep quiet or steer the topic elsewhere. At the outbreak of the war Mary and her pal had gone to Glasgow to enlist and got caught in the blitz on Clydeside. They had been in the thick of it and while physically unharmed, they were mentally shaken. We just wanted to move on from the war.
Still painfully thin and very unfit I was unable to keep up with my new-found friends, especially in the dance halls, which put me at a disadvantage as Mary was pursued by several rivals. One particularly keen would-be suitor, who had been in a reserved occupation in Aberdeen and had never suffered during the war, really annoyed me. I became defensive and jealous. I suppose that being very self-conscious about my frail appearance and the fact that I was not earning did not help either. However, Mary and I still went out together; perhaps she sensed there was an ember smouldering within and at some stage it would turn to flame – I really do not know. I felt happy in her company because only then did I find some peace of mind.
No one other than one of us POWs could imagine the turmoil of the recurring nightmares that so many of us suffered. It seemed that every time I shut my eyes I was back in the camps. It all came back to life so vividly that my body would suddenly pour with sweat and fear. I was always glad when the morning light came.
During that period I was very pleased to hear of justice being meted out to some of the worst Japanese war criminals. The Japanese press lionised General Yamashita as ‘The Tiger of Malaya’ but he should have been known as ‘The Butcher of Malaya’. He was hanged after a lengthy trial. Major General Shimpei Fukuye, the architect of the Selarang Incident, went on trial and was subsequently taken to the same spot where he had brutally executed the four escaped prisoners and shot. Disgracefully, General Takuma Nishimura, who had ordered the massacre of the Australian wounded at Parit Sulong, received only ten years imprisonment from the British. Later he would be arrested by the Australians in Hong Kong as he travelled home after completing his sentence. He was subsequently tried by an Australian military court and hanged.
As the trials went on it became obvious just how much bunkum all of the bushido code had been. The so-called ‘Way of the Warrior’ precluded capture yet so many of these ring leaders had been captured – the shame that to them had made us so despicable now seemed bearable and certainly preferable to the ordained hara-kiri.
Happily among the 256 Japanese war criminals to be executed were a loathsome duo from the Death Railway. The Black Prince had failed to fall on his samurai sword and revealed himself to be the coward that most swaggering bullies are. He was hanged, as was the Mad Mongrel.Inexplicably, Dr Death received only ten years.
One day in July 1946 there came a knock at the door and Dossie shouted on to me to get up and come down as I had visitors. I came downstairs, opened the door and almost fell over. Freddie Brind stood there, with his trademark grin and his ever-present buddy, brother Jim. It was just great to see them. I hadn’t heard of them since leaving Chungkai on the other side of the world. Until they had turned up I didn’t even know if they had made it.
We shook hands and embraced. In the finest British tradition I asked them in for a cup of tea. As Jim stayed silent Freddie recounted their story. After their father had been taken prisoner by the Japanese and taken to Changi at around the same time as us, they hadn’t seen him. He was kept in the prison where he had previously been a warden. Freddie remained stoutly calm as he said that his father died there in that jail. He had never spoken about the man much. His mother, who had escaped, was obviously much closer to the brothers.
I refilled the teapot and Freddie continued updating me in great detail. He was now working as a plumber’s mate. Jim had a job at the Selo film factory in Brentwood, which he would work at all his days.
After a while Freddie got around to why they were in Aberdeen. They had arrived for a reunion of the Gordon Highlanders. Once he raised that topic he wanted to talk only about the prison camps. No matter how I tried to divert the subject he would always bring it back, recalling his comical moments, the characters and the scams, but also the horrors and the unspeakable. It was as if he were trying to make sense of it. I got the impression that he was also struggling to readjust to civilian or British life. In the camps we all knew him as a man, or boy really, who could acquire things, get things done. But back in Blighty he was just another veteran despite being still in his teens. In his own eyes he wasn’t special any more.
I invited them to stay with the family while they were in Aberdeen but they insisted that they would not impose and had booked digs in Crown Street. The next day I went with them to the reunion at the Station Hotel in Aberdeen. It was an emotional affair but one that indeed was necessary. I relaxed finally in the company of others who had suffered as much as I had. They knew my pain. They didn’t ask awkward questions or stare at me as if I were a leper.
For the rest of his life Freddie would phone me every night, no matter what was happening in either of our lives. He just wanted to talk – always about the camps, which had left a fatal impression on him. He had to be checked in to Roehampton hospital several times, for a month or more at a time, and had even been granted a twenty-four-hour telephone line to a psychologist. Yet he preferred to phone me and chew my ear for an hour every night, sometimes two hours at a time.
He got married to an Essex girl, Nora, whom he met through his church. But Freddie never came out of the camps. And he drank heavily to forget. Given his experience and his character it should not have been a shock that he became an alcoholic. Despite the love he received from his wife, his family, and me and my family, he would die within ten years of returning to the UK of cirrhosis of the liver – still a young man.
The reunion had been a cathartic experience for me and by August 1946 I felt fitter both mentally and physically. My thoughts returned to work. I could still hear Mr Grassie in his inimitable tone saying he would always have a job for me, one of ‘his boys’. But I knew that I would never manage the physical job I had done before the war. I paid him a visit anyway.
At Lawson Turnbull & Co. Ltd’s reception desk a stranger was on duty. I asked to see Mr Grassie and she lifted the phone and dialled his room. Within seconds the old Great War veteran appeared from his office off the main reception area. He ushered me inside and closed the door behind us. I stood, waiting to be seated in front of his large desk that commanded the immaculately tidy room. Before he sat he eyed me up and down, taken aback by my appearance. Mr Grassie wasn’t one to show his feelings at all but I swear that in that instant, for just a fleeting moment, he shed a tear.
‘It’s grand to see you,’ he choked. ‘None of us thought we would ever see you again.’
He called for tea and biscuits to be sent in, as if trying to divert attention from his emotions. I explained to Mr Grassie that I needed to start work again, although my health was not good, which of course he could see for himself.
‘You can start back whenever you feel able, Alistair. We’ll find a job for you.’
Mr Grassie never asked about the war.
I reported for work in early September 1946 and Mr Grassie assigned me to the office section, where I got a job estimating, controlling contracts and customer services. I was back at work. But life could never get back to normal.
My experiences at the hands of the Japanese continued to haunt me both physically and mentally – as they still do all of these years later. Even after I married, life could be hell. To this day I suffer pain and the nightmares can be so bad that I fight sleep for fear of the dreams that come with it.
Yet I owed it to myself and to the others who never made it back to make the most of my life. I threw myself into a career and worked my way up to become managing director of another plumbing supplies business, making health and safety a priority for the staff – after what I had witnessed on the Death Railway. I enjoyed the work.
My two children grew and I took great pleasure from their success, as I did when my grandchildren came along – and when they went to university!
Life continued to throw up challenges. After my wife Mary suffered a stroke, losing the power of speech, I nursed her for twelve and a half years during which she was wheelchair-bound. I think that the experiences I had on the railway and the inspirational example of our medics helped me to cope during that difficult period.
At the age of seventy-five, after Mary’s death, I briefly emigrated to Canada to be close to my daughter, yet I found myself lonely and isolated in a strange country. I decided to return to Scotland. Through all of this my sufferings as a prisoner taught me to be resilient, to appreciate life and all it has to offer.
Back in Scotland I quickly made new friends in the world of my lifelong passion, ballroom dancing – and at ninety years of age I am still working on my slow fox-trot. I dance an average of five times a week and organise two weekly tea dances. I campaign for the residents of my sheltered housing complex and have managed to persuade the council to give us funds for computer, painting and t’ai chi classes to keep us active. I am pleased to say that the council also came off worse in my battle to have our grass and hedges cut. In recent years my charity fund-raising activities for the complex have raised hundreds of pounds to fund our activities.
I am a proud member of the Far East Prisoner of War Association (FEPOW) and regularly answer the queries of families anxious to know how their grandfathers and fathers were treated. On behalf of FEPOW I am very pleased to speak to schoolchildren about our experiences.
My life has been long, rich and rewarding but always, always, the ghosts of the river Kwai have remained with me. The cruel faces of the Black Prince, Dr Death and the Mad Mongrel have stalked my dreams for more than six decades now. And in my thoughts and prayers I will never forget the faces of all those young men who died looking like old men, those prisoners who endured terrible deaths in a distant land.