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We were at this time allowed to organize an official canteen in the camp, and once or twice a week a party of officers went off to the local shops accompanied by a guard. One of these shopping parties was offered some baby ducks by a Chinese man, so when they returned to camp a message was circulated to see if any of us wanted to take up the offer.

I was the only one among our section to show an interest, and ordered four, which was all my meager cash would run to. During the time that elapsed before the ducklings arrived, I scoured the camp for materials with which to build my duck run; wire netting, trodden into the mud of the coconut grove, odd bits of attap and bamboo retrieved from a hut undergoing repair, before the cooks got their hands on them; and it was with much pride that I was able to survey my task, completed on time. As there was usually little new to talk about, the news soon passed from mouth to mouth around the camp, and a steady stream of visitors came along to see it.

The captain who had received a bullet wound in his neck when lost, and was in my trench during the fighting, now called to see my duck run. ‘That’s much too big for your four,’ he said. ‘I’ve ordered twenty-six, and don’t know what to do with them.’ The offer he then made was so generous that I could scarcely believe my ears. He said that if I would feed and look after all thirty ducklings, we would share equally in the end products of eggs and fat ducks.

Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity. Shortly afterward his batman arrived with a sack of poultry food that he had managed to acquire. I had also gathered a lot of potential fodder, including some limed rice which the cooks had decided was too bad for human consumption.

Our ducklings arrived on August the twenty-sixth, but when I went over to collect them, I found that it was a part consignment of fifteen, and carried them back to their new home in a cardboard box. That night I scarcely slept, thinking of my dear little ducks, and planning their future! So exciting was it to have something constructive to do, and to have little lives dependent on me.

The following day, as I surveyed my small domain, I realized that with fifteen more to come, my little flock would quickly outgrow its accommodation. I had kept a few ducks back home, and knowing how quickly they grow, I rebuilt the run, doubling the size of both run and sleeping quarters. I had not sufficient attap for the roof of their little shed, so I thatched it with grass.

Four days later the other fifteen babies arrived, and quickly settled in with the others. How different life seemed now, with my little charges. I built my working day around them, and even dreamed about them at night; they were my substitute family. To my friends and acquaintances I must have been behaving in a ridiculous manner, and they continuously pulled my leg.

I had difficulty in holding back a tear on the third day, when I found a little corpse in the run. One more disappeared during the ‘Black Hole of Selarang’ incident, which is recorded later.

The captain who shared the ducks came round to look at them, and offered to purchase another twenty, to share on the same basis; as those we had were doing so well, I naturally agreed.

A few days later, while I was helping to re-build some of the cookhouse fireplaces, my captain partner sent his batman over to collect the six biggest ducks while my back was turned. I was very upset when someone came along to tell me of this flagrant breach of our fifty/fifty gentleman’s agreement, but due to the difference in our ranks I was helpless as far as taking any action was concerned.

Some of the ducks grew faster than others, and after a few more weeks twelve of them were twice the size of their fellows, and would soon be ready to eat, if that was to be their destiny. I was, however, very fond of them, and began to worry over any plans my partner might have for their future.

Then, one evening when I had to leave the vicinity of our quarters, my run was robbed, and the twelve biggest were absent when I held roll call. Very nearly broken-hearted, I ran into the nearby sergeants’ hut and asked if anyone had seen an intruder, only to be told that my friend the captain had again sent his batman to take them while I was out of sight.

This time I stalked over to the officers’ mess with murder in my heart. Our officers had more cash than they knew what to do with, since they received a regular sum from our captors, which, in theory, they were to repay at the end of the war. So that the arrangement whereby I did all the work while our tall captain provided most of the cash was very fair.

I found him sitting in the mess, and when I tackled him, staring up at the roof to avoid looking me in the eye, he blandly said he did not remember making any firm arrangement with me. Determined not to take this lying down, and knowing that in spite of his six feet odd in height, that he was a coward, I told him in the loudest voice I could muster, the kind of gentleman I now considered him to be. In order to get rid of me before the other officers heard what was going on, he promised to return two of the ducks, and I had perforce to put up with that.

My remaining ducks grew and grew, as I caught frogs and creepy-crawlies to chop up for them. As they fledged, they became too big for the run during the daytime, and I had to open it each morning before I left for work, so they could forage for themselves, shepherding them in again at nightfall.

One night, after a busy day collecting firewood, as we were having a mess meeting I went straight into the sergeants’ mess without first shutting the ducks in. Suddenly a deluge dropped out of the sky, it was so heavy that one could only see a few yards through it. I watched unheedingly for a short time before remembering the ducks.

There was already an inch or two of water lying on the ground as I rushed through the deluge to find my little family; they had all disappeared. An anti-malarial drain ran near the run, and I now remembered with horror that they had recently taken to swimming in it. I ran downstream alongside it until it disappeared underground into a culvert after a hundred yards or so.

I arrived there just in time to see the last of my wards disappear down the drain. I would never see any of them again. Morning the loss of my little flock, I almost wished the captain had told his batman to take the lot. Life seemed very empty for the next few days.

On the nineteenth of August, all fit men were ordered to parade for a talk by a Jap General. It was our own adjutant who was in charge of us; his bullying tactics had endeared him to none, so it was with great pleasure that we heard him give the unheard of order to ‘Right About Wheel!’, and we spread ourselves unevenly over the parade ground until he was forced to call on our Warrant Officer to marshal us into order again.

The General eventually arrived and having evidently learned the words by heart announced simply; ‘You are now under the rules of the Japanese Empire, and must obey all our rules’.

Ken Ireman was in charge of the cookhouse at this time, and being a friend of mine it was he who had given me the limy rice for the ducks. He had, in private life, been a carpet weaver, and during the evenings he took me through the long process of wool, from the time it arrived at the factory in bales, to the beautiful end-product of either Axminster or Wilton.

In later life I was therefore always to look at carpets with a more expert eye. We had really got to know one another when stationed in the small Scottish border town of Galashiels, during the year preceding our capture.

[While in the Commandos, I had been taught the use of explosives, so when I returned to my regiment I had been appointed bomb disposal officer. Since we had no dummy two-inch mortar bombs with which to train my platoon at that time, I brought a ‘dud’ bomb back from the firing range where I had been sent to blow up all the unexploded bombs.

Sgt.Ireman was the only other occupant of the sergeants’ sleeping quarters that evening as I patiently and stupidly dug out the yellow baratol explosive with a screwdriver, and then dropped the bomb on the floor to try to ensure that the bomb was safe for my platoon to practice with.

There was was a blinding flash as it hit the floor, and proved that it certainly had not been safe. I was lifted in the air and landed on about the sixth bed along. These bombs had an extra large fulminate of mercury detonator, which had exploded.

Ken, who had been sitting on the next bed, had disappeared; the nearby toilet door was off its hinges and inside I saw Ken struggling to his feet. I tried to stand up but one leg was out of action, and as warm fluid poured down my leg I thought I had become incontinent. On looking down though, I saw a pool of blood on the floor and realized for the first time that I had been hurt.

After hopping down that long first-floor room by holding on to the row of bed heads, I eventually reached the staircase, having been passed on the way by Ken. I more or less slid down the stairs, and tried to hop across the parade ground to our medical room. Our medical sergeant, Lionel, and his assistant ‘Skin’ had heard the bang and seeing us struggling across, helped Ken and me over.

Ken’s main injury was a piece of shrapnel which had penetrated his knee joint. I had shrapnel in both legs, in my groin (that’s still there), abdomen, nose and eyeball. The crutch had been completely torn out from my trousers as had also the under-arms of my tunic. In fact when they showed me my tattered clothes later it was incredible to think that no vital part of me had been hit.

The explosion had made a hole in the floor, and one in the roof of the sergeants’ hut, and one of the sergeants later gave me the tail of the bomb for a souvenir. He had picked it up where it fell after sailing skywards through the roof to land over two hundred yards away outside the sergeants' mess.

We were both taken by ambulance to Peel House Hospital, Peebles, where we were operated on immediately. As it is necessary to grub up unexploded bombs carefully with the fingers, my nails were still full of mud.

I remember so clearly coming out of the anesthetic and finding a sweet little nurse cleaning my fingernails distastefully. Seeing that I had awakened, in her lovely singing Scottish brogue she told me that she did not think much of boys who went around with dirty nails. I had never had a girlfriend and was too tongue-tied to tell her that my fingernails did not usually look like that.

For the next few days my adoring eyes would follow her around the ward in silent devotion. The nurses were a lovely lot, and the ward sister came up to me, and in a whisper asked me if I would like her to tell the sweet little nurse that I had fallen in love with her. Although I vehemently protested a ‘no’, the surreptitious glances I subsequently received let me know that I had been ignored.]

Ken’s bed was next to mine, and a picture of his beautiful wife was on the cupboard beside his bed. He would often talk of her, longing for the days to come when they could be together for ever. Those days never came, Ken died as a prisoner; he contracted diphtheria in Thailand, and that was usually fatal there in those days.

Together with Ken, I was discharged within a few weeks, ‘kept’ through my first real danger, as I was to be through all that was to befall. When I returned home after the war ended, I discovered that my mother had prayed for me almost constantly, and that our little village church had prayed for me each week. I carried the New Testament which had been my church’s parting gift, right through until the end.

A few days after the Jap General’s parade, we heard that a Red Cross ship was discharging a cargo of supplies for us in Singapore, and for the next few days excitement ran high, as we conjured up thoughts of ‘lovely grub’.

In the event, at a grand share-out we received nineteen sweets apiece, and had to conclude that the Japs had helped themselves to the rest. It had been assumed that there would at least be plenty of cigarettes, so that it was perhaps the smokers who were most disappointed. I had given up smoking when I left River Valley, though I had never smoked heavily.

By this time several hundred men had died from disease and malnutrition; many also had died from wounds received during battle.

A cemetery had been made not far away from our regimental area, and a party of volunteers used to keep it tidy, and planted with flowers. When one of our regiment died we would nearly all attend the funeral service. The cemetery was the one beautiful spot out there.

We had now been prisoners for six months, and we seemed to be getting more and more parades and general ‘bull’. Far more indeed than were the other regiments that surrounded us, and our men were becoming restive and uncooperative.

They sent a delegation to the sergeants’ mess asking for a complaint to be passed on to our Commanding Officer. The mess held a meeting and we came to the conclusion that the complaint was justified, but how to bring it to the C.O.’s attention?

There were no volunteers, so lots were cast. (I subsequently discovered that the operation was rigged, as I was thought the only one naive enough to undertake the ‘impossible’ mission.) I was apprehensive, and pointing out that I was one of the youngest there, tried to pass the job on to one of the older ones, but without success.

As a sergeant is not allowed to approach his C.O. directly, even as POW, I had first to see the duty officer, Capt. Skinner. He asked me what I wanted to see the C.O. about and told me I was wasting my time. However, when I insisted, he did see the Old Man, who refused even to grant me an interview.

Life in Changi was at this time a long battle between the rank and file and our senior officers. The latter were determined not to let the men under them become undisciplined with all that entailed. The men for their part, thought that now they were prisoners, if the Japs were prepared to leave them alone why could not our own officers?

There was, of course, much to be said from both points of view, the difficulty was striking the happy medium. The C.O. contended that the slightest relaxation in discipline would produce a snowball effect. Once a hold over the men had been lost, it would be almost impossible to regain.

Chapter 19

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