Four
I did not sleep a wink that night. I scrunched my eyes tight to block out the horrible visions but all I could see were images of us being taken away to be executed. I imagined us being led into a field and shot in the back, machine-gunned on a beach, bayoneted or beheaded on the deck of some Japanese warship.
The next morning I said my goodbyes to the boys. It felt like leaving my family all over again. None of them tried to stop me going, they knew that would have been fruitless, yet their eyes betrayed their fear and concern. As I went to leave, Freddie grasped my arm and with tears welling up in his eyes said, ‘See you later, mucker.’
I reported to the parade ground, trying as best I could to compose myself. Despite my anxiety I had to focus on what lay ahead. I was joined by twenty or thirty other Gordon Highlanders out of the five or six hundred stationed at Changi at that time. Cleverly the Japanese did not send a whole bunch of men from one battalion together. They always took care to split us up. None of the Malay Volunteers billeted at Selarang had been selected for this mysterious task, whatever it was.
The Japanese officer in charge began shouting in staccato and through his interpreter broke the ‘good’ news. He told us, ‘You have been selected as the best men for this duty. You will go to a holiday camp, where you will work for three days, have four days rest, have good food, good conditions and everyone will be happy if you work hard.’
Our officers had been told that we were moving to special ‘rest camps’ in which food would be more plentiful than in Singapore. In these hill camps we would be supplied with blankets, clothing, mosquito nets. Even gramophones would be issued at the new camp, along with medical supplies to equip a new hospital. There would be no marching except for short distances from the trains to nearby camps, transport being available for the sick and unfit, as well as our baggage. The ill men would have better prospects for recovery in a ‘pleasant hilly place with facilities for recreation’.
Thousands of miles away Japan’s European ally Nazi Germany was issuing similar rosy promises of ‘resettlement’ in the East to Jewish families.
But some of the men, desperate to believe that their luck was changing, actually believed it all and were excited at the prospect of filling their bellies and escaping slavery in the docks. There were cheers and shouts of ‘Let’s go!’ and ‘Sounds great!’
Firmly believing that we were about to be massacred I kept silent, my jaws locked with tension. I had seen with my own eyes the Japanese capacity for cruelty and I could not believe this cock and bull story about ‘holiday camps’. It was astonishing that so many did.
We were taken into Singapore on the back of lorries, the first time that I had been in the outside world since our capture seven months before. Notwithstanding the burned and bombed-out buildings, Singapore seemed back to normal. The Chinese seemed back to their usual activities, cooking, bartering loudly, playing mah-jong, gambling and dextrously pedalling rickety bicycles while balancing chickens in wire cages on the handlebars. Yet it passed in a blur of colour and noise. I was more interested in where we were being taken. Our officers knew but we did not that we were to travel by train.
By the time we arrived at the station, already hordes of British prisoners were standing about. I recognised the uniforms of men from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Royal Artillery. Seeing such a large number gave me comfort. Surely they would never massacre all of us. Hundreds of men milled around, slow in their movements, mindful of the Japanese machine guns. Some prisoners were being herded into tiny steel goods wagons in randomly selected groups of thirty-five to forty. The Japanese mixed everyone up, separating them from the herd-like safety and companionship of their regiments. You could see close friends drifting apart in the mêlée and all the while trying desperately to stick together.
The trucks had previously been used for transporting goods like rice, sugar and rubber. They looked like shipping containers but were smaller with large sliding doors. Those squashed inside the wagons were pleading with the Japanese not to force any more men in. Some trying to clamber aboard with kit bags had them chucked off by those already inside, who shouted, ‘No room for that. We can hardly stand!’
A young private, a Gordon Highlander alongside me in the truck from Changi, turned and said, ‘I hope we get a carriage with some seats.’
‘I doubt it,’ I mumbled.
Another Gordon piped up sarcastically, ‘Aye. One with a window. And maybe a drinks trolley. It must be ninety degrees already. God knows how hot it’s gonna be inside those wagons.’
We were taken from the back of the lorry to join the swarm of prisoners embarking on the trains. I felt sick with trepidation. There was an air of sheer terror. Men were almost dancing on the spot, hopping from foot to foot, unsure what to do with themselves. The Gordons who had earlier cheered that we were off to a holiday camp looked horrified.
‘They told us it would be like Butlins. This doesn’t look like a holiday to me. We’re going to die.’
As we neared the train I could hear banging and frantic cries from inside locked carriages: ‘Open the doors! Open the doors! We can’t breathe! Open Up! Open Up!’
A Japanese grabbed me, separating me from most of the other Gordons, and hauled me towards a carriage, slapping me around the head. I told him to bugger off. I got wedged into a container of around eighteen feet by ten feet with about thirty other men, near the door as I could get no further in. It was incredibly cramped with no room to sit down. The Japanese screamed and lunged at us with bayonets. We practically had to breathe in collectively to make enough space for the doors to close. When they clanged the doors shut I listened ruefully to the jangling of the chain and padlock being snapped into place across the handles, a sickening sound that became familiar to millions of ordinary men and women during the Second World War. What would have been a depressing sound in any circumstances felt like a death sentence in that stifling steel box.
Animals would not be transported like this, I thought. To make matters worse the sides of the steel carriage were searingly hot. They burned any bare skin that touched them, making life even more difficult because there was so little room as it was. I did not know anyone else in the carriage and it was so dark that you couldn’t make out faces, just shapes and general outlines. I felt completely isolated. All I had was the ragged uniform I was wearing, my Glengarry, mess tin and my beloved photographs from home tucked deep inside my back pocket.
We stood there for hours before the train started moving. The heat was appalling. Dehydration set in quickly and coupled with the malaria I was already suffering from I began to feel extremely ill. None of us knew how long we were going to be like this but I felt I couldn’t take another minute. My despair and depression added to the claustrophobia. It was like being buried alive.
Out of the blue the train lurched forward. It started clacking and clattering and soon picked up some speed. As soon as we were moving some men tried to prise open the doors. They heaved at them, wrenching them every which way, cursing the workmanship and sadistic efficiency of our captors. Where the steel doors met there was an inch gap from ceiling to floor and on either side a half-inch gap, which let in some light, and now that we were moving an ever so slight, life-saving breeze. Realising that being by the door was the prime position, we devised a plan of moving around a place every half an hour. Since the Japanese had stolen our watches we had no way of telling the time, especially in the darkness, but we did the best we could. The gaps in the doors provided a little welcome relief from the torment of the truck.
The smell inside the carriage became unbearably foul. Without toilets the men had to relieve themselves where they stood. Several were very ill with malaria, dysentery and diarrhoea. People vomited and fainted. Dust swirled around the wagon stinging our eyes and adding to our unbearable thirst.
At last after hours of shuffling around like a zombie, trying not to go mad, it was my turn for the gap. I stuck my nose outside the steel tomb in which we were slowly being cooked and breathed in deeply. It was heavenly, the air warm and scented with the pungent dampness of the jungle. It was fresh, and anxious to make the most of it I breathed in great lungfuls. Sadly the pleasure was short-lived and once my time was allegedly up I got shouldered away from the gap, back into the darkness and nauseating stink of a torture chamber on wheels.
We had no idea where we were headed but since Singapore island was at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, surrounded by water, I knew we were going north. That much I knew.
Men became weaker all the time. The lack of fluids especially afflicted those with malaria and dysentery. Prisoners who collapsed were given some precious space, while the rest of us had to bunch up even more. The train was forever stopping in sidings and without any breeze from the movement the temperature soared ever higher. No one spoke. We had nothing to say. Besides, I wanted to save my energy. Who knew what was ahead of us?
When night came the carriage slowly cooled to a more bearable temperature. But as we went on the temperature began to fall relentlessly and I spent most of the night shivering. It was at least thirty-six hours before we were allowed out of the wagon. Suddenly the train’s brakes screeched on the rails and we were all pushed forward in a mass. The men by the doors peered through the tiny gaps but could report seeing only jungle. When the doors opened the men closest to the exit tried to jump the three or four feet to the ground and collapsed in a heap at the bottom. I tried to walk forward towards the door but could hardly get my feet to follow my brain’s instructions. We had been standing so long that we had no control of our legs. When I jumped down I saw some men had suffered head cuts from the fall and were trying to stem the blood with their hands.
The Japanese were dishing out a cup of water and a serving of rice to each man. I joined the queue and looked around. Thick jungle surrounded us on all sides. The stopping point had been carefully selected. There was no escape. The guards did not bother with head counts and would never have noticed if I had dashed into the bush, but from my jungle training at Port Dickson I knew I would not have lasted long. The jungle was such an uninhabitable place, even for the locals, and you could not have trusted them to help you. For the most part they were terrified of the Japanese, who meted out draconian punishments for anyone caught helping us. They also offered substantial rewards to turn in escapees. A sandy-headed white boy like me stood no chance. I was safer staying put; better the devil you know.
When I got my water I gulped it down not knowing whether it had been boiled or not. By that stage I was past caring. If the water and rice, swimming in a noxious green liquid, had a positive impact on my health, it was short-lived. Many of us, me included, had already developed the ‘rice bellies’ characteristic of starvation and vitamin deficiency.
I sat down in the shade and tried to rest my legs. It felt like I had been still for only a minute, the ache from my feet and legs reverberating up my spine and neck, when the Japanese started shouting, ‘Hakko, hakko! Speedo, speedo!’ We had been there for less than an hour.
There was a terrible scrum trying to get the men back on the trucks. Men climbed into different carriages, hoping that conditions would be better, while others who had left kit bags in the wagons returned to find them gone. Accusations flew around and rows were settled only at the blunt end of a Japanese rifle or a kick from a hobnailed boot. Without much thought I returned to the same carriage, having earlier taken a mental note of its Malayan markings.
I clambered inside and recognised some of the faces from the earlier stint. Some of the sicker men required a leg-up to get back in. The doors thundered shut with an awful finality. We were just so helpless. I wondered how long it would be this time, unsure if I could survive another thirty-six hours confined in this oppressive oven.
There was an interminable wait before the train got underway. It was soon night, plunging us into complete darkness, but at least it was cooler and we could lean against the sides of the wagons for extra space and support.
We travelled all night, stopping in sidings frequently – every halt raising our hopes that the hellish journey might be coming to an end. We would stand still and silent for what seemed like ages but was probably less than ten minutes, hoping the doors would open. Then to our despair the train would trundle on again. It went on all night. By the next day I was getting very weak. We all tried to help each other, holding on to men who swayed uncontrollably. More of us couldn’t take any further standing up and collapsed to the floor. Eventually I became completely disorientated and had to sit down too.
After another thirty-six hours or so we came to a stop and could hear much activity outside. It sounded like we were getting off. Someone in the carriage said we were at Kuala Lumpur. How he knew that I didn’t know. Perhaps he had spotted a landmark through the slit in the doors. When the doors opened we could have been anywhere. It was a built-up area but the buildings were all warehouses and train sheds, with no sign of life other than the ring of Japanese guards, their machine guns trained on us. I jumped down on to the rocky ground, almost going over on my ankle. That would be the last thing I needed, I thought.
It was stupefyingly hot. It seemed that the further north we travelled, the hotter it became. I was permanently drenched in sweat and had a prickly rash covering my back. It itched madly but the pain was worse. It was akin to shingles, brought on by the heat, and simply added to my general woes. I began to question how much more I could take. Every time a man retched or spewed where he stood, covering his shirt and feet, I felt like doing the same. Often the gagging sound was enough to send bile leaping up from my own bloated belly. I never imagined life could get so bad or that I could feel so low.
Again we stopped for rice and water. While waiting for my portion I overheard some Englishmen chatting in hushed tones.
‘Thank Christ that’s over.’
‘Yes. This doesn’t look too bad. At least we’re not in the jungle. I hate that place, with its creepy crawlies and all.’
‘And snakes. Can’t be doing with that. No, this will be fine. Might even get some time off to go downtown and see some dancing girlies.’
I did not share their optimism and was proven correct. Within an hour the bawling started again and the Japanese beat and harassed us back into the steel ovens.
We waited for a long time again before departing. As we stood in the relative darkness I could hear a solitary mosquito buzzing around the carriage. Its endless whirring faded in and out, dive-bombing me but never landing. I stood with my arm raised, ready to wallop it when it came within range. On and on it went slicing through the stifling heat and cutting the silence like a machine gun. No one else seemed to mind its presence. I wondered why it was the only insect invader. It would almost have been better that the carriage be full of flies rather than this perverse sole purveyor of annoyance.
After a while I could take it no longer. I snapped, ‘Would someone kill that bloody mozzie!’
No one replied. I even wondered if I had said it out loud. Either the fly bugged only me or everyone else had lost the will to fight a battle in the dark.
Finally the train started moving again. I vaguely heard an ironic cheer go up in the next carriage. It brought a wry smile to my face. By the time we were back up to full pace I could no longer hear the buzzing of the mosquito and a while later I was surprised to find myself missing its presence. It had given me something to concentrate on, a target for what was left of my anger. It was back to the endless clackety-clack of the wheels on the track, the moaning and coughing of the sick men, the itching of my back and the humiliation of urinating in your trousers. On and on we went. Day became night. I leaned against the wagon sides once they had cooled down sufficiently and tried to sleep. It was hopeless. It sounds bizarre but I think I was too tired to sleep. Still no one spoke. It was just too much effort. I felt doomed and resigned myself to death. It would have been a blessing. I considered suicide and began to fantasise that the train would jump its tracks and that I would be killed swiftly without any more suffering. I was so delirious and out of my head that I willed the RAF to drop bombs on us and end our misery that way.
Again and again we stopped at sidings and would pray for the doors to open only to have our hopes crushed as the train picked up steam and rumbled on once more. On the fourth day of this living hell we stopped again in the middle of the jungle. It could have been the same place as our first stop for all we knew. The jungle looked the same to me. We took more water and rice, just a minuscule and mightily inadequate cup of each, and rested for an hour before being rushed back on to the train.
We travelled on through the night and into a fifth day. By now nobody stood. We lay slumped all over each other on the floor, trying to keep off the sizzling sides. I was at my absolute breaking point. Looking back now more than sixty years later I wonder how we possibly got through it. We were all out of our minds. Great hulking men keened and wept like mourning mothers. Others whispered private prayers over and over. I lay, my head resting on a stranger’s boot, ready to die.
Just before dusk on the fifth day we ground to a halt, the doors rolled back and the Japanese ordered us off. We had arrived at a village, which we were told was Ban Pong. We were in Thailand. Our nine-hundred-mile train journey was over.
Helping some of the sicker men off the train I noticed a young man in his teens, lying at the rear of the carriage. I remembered that earlier in the day he had had respiratory problems, wheezing uncontrollably. There had been nothing we could do to help him. One of the lads jumped back up and tapped the man’s foot.
‘Come on, son, we’re here – at the holiday camp. Let the games begin.’
The youngster remained still.
‘You lazy lout, get up,’ said the helper, a note of desperation in his voice. He crouched down over the stricken youth’s face. The teenager’s lifeless eyes stared back sending his helper recoiling, gasping in horror.
The dead man was lugged off the train. He had probably died of diphtheria, coupled with malaria, dengue fever or dysentery. Some of the prisoners kicked his body into the jungle to decompose alongside the fallen leaves – food for the rats and bugs. I turned my back and walked away. I did not want to see his face and carry that with me; anything that sapped the will to live had to be avoided.
The Japanese officer’s translator told us the train journey was finished. Before we could rejoice too much the interpreter quickly added that we had yet to reach our final destination.
We had a fifty-kilometre march ahead of us. Starting immediately. To be completed that night.
I swayed with shock at the announcement, as if I had been punched in the face.
I had no idea how far a kilometre was but supposed it was further than a mile. In my state I struggled to see how I could possibly make it through dense jungle. I was surprised that I had made it this far. It was a miracle it was not me decomposing in the jungle beside the train tracks.
The Japanese served up the usual meagre helping of rice and water, and gave us a further serving of unsalted, sugarless rice to take with us. I looked at the rice that barely covered the bottom of my mess tin, wondering how long it would be before I had the chance to eat it. It had already begun to ferment in the heat. All I wanted to do was to eat it, lie down and let death take me. The thought of a march through thick jungle, in darkness, was overwhelming and I sobbed quietly to myself as guards struck us with bamboo sticks and, shouting ‘Marchee, marchee!’, assembled us into a long column. During the six days that followed it would shorten considerably.
About six hundred prisoners – diseased, vermininfested and at our lowest ebb – began that march. A handful of Japanese guards and officers organised the line and led us into the jungle. Those prisoners who had brought with them all of their kit and clung to it so tenaciously during the train journey, now ditched all non-essentials. We hastily fashioned stretchers from bamboo poles and blankets or rice sacks, and loaded on them those unable to walk. We were entrusted with carrying the sick. It was a Herculean task. All of us were walking wounded really and in such a decrepit state that we decided to take turns carrying the invalids.
Trudging north from the railway, leaving behind our last glimpse of civilisation, we started our death march. In the bright moonlight we traipsed into the virgin jungle along a crudely cut path that swarmed thickly with mosquitoes. The Japanese must have prepared the trail for us beforehand but it was only about five feet in width and for the most part the soldiers in front had to hack away with machetes at the encroaching growth. Other guards carried sputtering bamboo flares that illuminated our path and threw up weird shadows against the jungle canopy. We walked three abreast with guards at the front and between us in intervals. Guards also walked alongside at points, encouraging us on with thwacks from bamboo canes and prods with bayonets. If we fell by the wayside, or stumbled and fell, they beat us. The blows landed swiftly and randomly, impossible to defend against.
We were a miserable lot. It was not a march, more of a stagger. I had to concentrate intently just to put one foot in front of the other, the undulating ground covered with treacherous tree roots that you had to be on the lookout for.
Depending on their mood, every two hours or so the Japanese would shout, ‘Yasume!’, and we would stop to rest for five minutes, collapsing on the side of the track, flopping where we were. If you were lucky you might fall asleep. The next thing you knew a Japanese boot would be on your neck, its owner screaming at you to rise.
At that first stop I ate the last of my rice. Just as I closed my eyes we were told to get a move on. Silently we rose, again forming into soulless columns, and began walking. It was better to be in the middle of the trio. Bamboo, while remarkable for its diverse qualities, adaptability and usefulness, cuts like razor wire. On the outside of the column you had little chance of dodging blows from the guards or avoiding scraping your arms against the overhanging vegetation. When the cuts went bad, 90 per cent of the time tropical ulcers formed.
It got to the point where I did not trust any plant. I treated them all as poisonous or dangerous, as many were. A lot of the things that we suffered from, including ringworm, scabies, rashes and itches, came as a direct result of plant contact. The only one I knew to be safe was the hibiscus, identifiable by its lovely silky green leaves. Whenever I saw one I would pick some leaves and stuff them in my pocket. They were packed with vitamins and could be added to rice or boiled to make a stew.
Tree snakes that hung above us from the tropical rainforest like lianas were another hazard. Roaming the Aberdeenshire countryside I occasionally saw adders and while I never exactly wanted to bring one home as a pet, I knew that they could not kill a man. I did not know just how venomous these slim green slitherers were and had no wish to find out. Yet they were so well camouflaged among the dense foliage that by the time I spotted them they were already hissing above my head, sending icy shivers down my sweaty back.
I also tried to ensure that I was near the front of the column. The stragglers faded to the rear, which ignited the idiotic wrath of the guards, who ruthlessly beat these poor souls and all of the men in their immediate vicinity. Another benefit of being near the front was that you saw fewer men surrendering to fatigue, illness and death. The less you saw the better. Death chipped away at your spirits like a jackhammer.
Nonetheless I did witness the pathetic and desperate sight of two men, both younger than me, being left behind. Anyone who collapsed, passed out or refused to go on was left to die. You would walk past and offer assistance, a hand up or a supporting arm under the armpits. Those too weak to be encouraged to come along were left, slipping down the onward column, which stretched for hundreds of yards. Theirs was either a slow, lingering and lonely death or the swift and brutal thrust of a Japanese bayonet.
Some men had noticeably ‘paired up’, latching on to friends from the same regiment. They helped each other over fallen logs, egged each other on, shared food and stories. They worked on the basis that two men were better than one, and the companionship must have given them strength. I knew no one and was wholly alone. Never had I felt so alone.
After two days of solid marching we came to a village. I heard that the clearing in the midst of the jungle, surrounded by trees on all sides and dotted with five or six bamboo huts, was called Kam Pong. The villagers were instructed to feed us and ran around at the behest of the Japanese, bowing to the guards’ every need, clearly petrified. Some of our chaps tried to quiz the natives for information – where were we, what was near us, could they hide us – but the villagers quickly turned away. Others tried to barter for food or water but met similar silence. I did not blame the locals for pandering to the Japanese; they had no choice.
The villagers served up rice, some boiled water and an extremely spicy vegetable stew. It was delicious but it played havoc with my bowels, instantly sending me running for the jungle. Luckily I managed to do my business without getting a beating and returned to my spot. Around me the POWs were scattered like the aftermath of a mass failed parachute jump. Men lay at all angles, some of them moaning softly, others already asleep. We were told that we would spend the night here so should conserve energy and sleep. I wondered how many ‘kilometres’ we had travelled and how far we had ahead of us. Those terrible thoughts somehow sent me gratefully into a deep sleep there in the dirt – not giving a second thought to the cobras, kraits and vipers we had been warned about in training.
Through the night I kept waking up with a start. The jungle had come alive. A whole new populace claimed the darkness. Around us echoed strange and terrible sounds – wolf-like howls and a clack-clack-clack that I took for a type of woodpecker. The din produced by crickets, bullfrogs, monkeys and all manner of creatures rose to such a crescendo that it was impossible to sleep soundly. I half expected a man-eating tiger to come and take me.
When I woke in the morning my body ached all over. I stood and almost yelped with pain and stiffness. I was covered in the rich jungle soil. It caked us all from head to toe. The Japanese had awoken with renewed vigour and demanded an even quicker pace today, screaming in our faces, ‘Speedo, speedo!’ and beating us on. I put my head down and trudged on, fixing my eyes on the back of the sad chap in front of me, not really taking anything in. My mind was switched firmly on to autopilot. I was so out of it that my brain had shut down and was reduced to survival mode. I wondered if it were possible to sleep with your eyes open.
We followed a river for most of the march. I would later learn it was the Mae Klong, which joined the river Kwai – a vast river that rises in the north-west of Thailand near the Burmese border and flows south for hundreds of miles to drain into the Gulf of Thailand. We kept to the right of its muddy brown expanse, shadowing its winding path. It was as wide as the mighty river Tay in my native Scotland. Even when the Mae Klong was out of sight I could hear its low rumbling. Much as we yearned to we never ventured near enough to sneak a drink from it. But the guards often waded in and bathed, taunting us by splashing each other, laughing and loudly enjoying the relief that the cool waters brought.
As the sun dropped below the horizon like a sinking stone the river left our view. Its distant sound disappeared with the emergence of the myriad of jungle noises. After marching in the dark for some distance the guards ordered us to a halt. We would camp on the path overnight. I ate what was left of the rice in my mess tin and fell asleep. It was to be a long, broken night. I felt sick with dread, wondering what was to come next. The question of a holiday camp was now well and truly ruled out. Even the most optimistic POW realised that we had been conned.
Vivid and disturbing nightmares of the surrender at Fort Canning disrupted what sleep I did manage to get. The raging face of the Japanese soldier who took me prisoner at bayonet point haunted my subconscious. I still have those nightmares to this day and the image of the man’s face is as clear as if it happened yesterday.
I never dared to take my boots and socks off overnight. They would almost certainly have gone missing. Lying there in my boots I remembered a scene from a Western I had seen at the Capital Theatre in Aberdeen, in which the cowboys were all sleeping on the ground, around a campfire. One chap, drunk on moonshine, was without a pair of boots and proceeded to steal a pair from the guy beside him. It was the way he did it that tickled me. He took an age to slip them off and was very careful not to wake the sleeper. The image stuck with me for some reason and I thought, I’m not going to let that happen to me.
On the fourth day we trooped on again. More and more men were dropping back and being left behind to die. It was noticeable now that the column was shrinking. No one tried to boost morale by song, banter or otherwise. Our spirits were broken. We just kept plodding along, praying it would end soon and that we would get better conditions. We all stank to high heaven. There was no escaping it but after a while we became used to it, like families who live beside fish markets. The Japanese probably did not smell as badly as us since they often bathed in the river. We tried not to get close enough to them to check. Our collective stench most likely increased their already ample disgust for us.
Allowing oneself to be relegated to the status of prisoner, to fall into the arms of the enemy, was highly dishonourable in the Japanese soldiers’ minds. In their distorted view of the world death was a more admirable option. The simple peasants who formed the backbone of the Japanese Army had been thoroughly indoctrinated by their fascist leaders. Like their German allies they were a chosen race, a superior people. They were ‘the sons of heaven’ and we were decadent and effeminate weaklings. Lacking the Wagnerian and Teutonic mythology that cloaked Nazi ideology, the Japanese militarists wrapped their aggressive bid for racial domination in the ancient code of bushido to legitimise it with the Japanese people. Under this samurai code Japanese soldiers committed hara-kiri when captured, undertook suicidal banzai charges and, as kamikaze pilots, crashed into enemy ships.
For us prisoners bushido, the so-called ‘Way of the Warrior’, gave the guards a licence to murder, maim and torture. The only thing more despicable to them than a prisoner was a sick prisoner, as we first discovered on our death march.
In the months to come many thousands of prisoners would follow in our footsteps and this jungle trail would claim hundreds more lives.
That night we stopped again at a village. We were fed rice, spicy stew and water, before sleeping where we sat. I slept much better, either becoming accustomed to the jungle sounds or just too dog-tired to care.
We went on our way again in the morning. We hauled our sick men along by their arms, their toes dragging in the dirt. My fears of being massacred had long subsided. If they were going to do it, they would have done so by now. I believed that we were being taken to work as slaves on something.
By now covered in scabies and lice, I had been struck down again by the dreaded malaria. As the protozoan parasites raged through my bloodstream, my spleen became tender and enlarged. Walking became ever more difficult and I stumbled more often than not. Some men, whom I had helped earlier on in the journey, gave me blankets to break the fever and to stop the rigors that shook my body like a man possessed.
We walked all day and through the next night, stopping only for brief respites beside the track. It was a final push by the Japanese to get us to our destination, whatever it was, inside six days. Whether there was a date we had to arrive by, I was unsure. It appeared that the soldiers wanted us moving at double-time, rush or not. In the late afternoon, after we had been trudging for around thirty-two hours, we arrived at our final destination – we had completed a 160-kilometre trek.
It took some time for us to comprehend that we had made it, that this small, sparse clearing in the middle of the jungle was ‘it’, the ultimate objective of our eleven-day journey. There was nothing here, not a single hut. On one side of the clearing lay an array of tools. Pickaxes, shovels, two-handed saws and scythe-like instruments. Seeing them made me wonder again what our purpose here was. An aerodrome perhaps? Were we at a strategic point for the Japanese to launch an air assault on India? The men were gathered, chattering about our future possibilities, when the guard in charge got our attention.
Through his interpreter he told us: ‘This is your camp. You make home here. Build own huts. All men work on railway.’
A railway! A railway, here in the middle of nowhere. It seemed mad and it certainly never occurred to me that this would be our task. How would they get the sleepers into the jungle? Not to mention the steel railway lines. The British had considered the construction of a railway to link Burma with Siam many years before but concluded it could not be done. Not without massive loss of life anyway.
Finally we had been told of our purpose but I do not think that it sank in properly. All we cared about was that the march was over. Surely things would start looking up. We could not envisage the enormity, misery or savagery of the challenges ahead. I just felt glad to stop walking.
The soldiers had arranged arc lamps in one corner of the clearing, which they led us to now and instructed us to start construction of our sleeping quarters. We all stared at each other blankly. One of the guards, noticing our bewilderment, pointed to the scattered tools and made an A-frame with his arms, yammering away in a language we did not comprehend.
‘What are we supposed to do? Build the ruddy Ritz?’
The plucky Londoner who had stepped forth to offer his cockney wit quickly retreated when a guard went for him with a pickaxe handle. It was our signal to get on with it. We snatched a tool each and tried to look busy. They wanted us to clear more trees but we were so knackered that it was totally fruitless. I took a scythe and started hacking at some trees. It was pretty hopeless. The blade bounced off the hard bamboo but at least I appeared industrious in the eyes of our masters.
The Japanese wanted us to build five huts for the POWs, forty men to each. They would build their own huts, while the first thing we were required to build was an awning for the cooks to operate under.
They stopped us after about two or three hours, perhaps realising that we were too shattered to make any progress. Allowed to stop I sat down on the spot and curled up. After thirty-six hours of constant activity I could finally rest. The tropical forest sounds didn’t interrupt my sleep that night and I wasn’t visited in my dreams. Tomorrow would be a new dawn.