大象传媒

This is Michael Charnaud鈥檚 story: it has been added by Pauline Colcutt (on behalf of the Fernhurst Centre), with permission from the author who understands the terms and conditions of adding his story to the website.

An unusual and true story of a young boy who with his mother became a prisoner of both the Germans and the Japanese May 1942 - August 1945

CHAPTER 6 ALFIE ROUND鈥橲 STORY.(PART FOUR)

One young marine then came up to me, he was about my age and cautiously took my left wrist and led me off to the prison hold. He never took his eye off me but I could see genuine feelings of sympathy in them. He was one of us! As was also the tall lieutenant the next day who expressed a veiled disgust at the unnecessary slaughter of so many defenceless seamen. The access to our prison was down steep steps and then a steel grill was dropped into place. None of us grumbled now, or even murmured after all that we had been through. We were totally and utterly exhausted, cold and spent by all that had taken place. It was during these long days of confinement that I slowly and finally became for the rest of my life a committed Christian.鈥�
So you see Michael what my life has been like up until now when we are all still in the same boat together!鈥�

I was speechless and in awe at all that he had related and was thankful that our capture and action had not been so bloodcurdling or dramatic as it might well have been had the shell that hit us been a few yards further aft igniting the ammunition! The resulting explosion would have made the Kirkpool鈥檚 ordeal seem like a picnic. Such is the luck of War

CHAPTER - 7 FUKUSHIMA 1945 TO THE END OF THE WAR (PART ONE)

We now had to endure what we all knew would to be our last winter of the War. Fuel was now in extremely short supply and only occasionally did any coal arrive to maintain some limited heating for only the odd day during the really cold months of January and February. We knew the bitter news of the Red Cross ship being sunk en route to Vladivostock by an American submarine, and we all realised that the chances of any further food from that source were going to be negligible. The winter also was the harshest of all we had so far, with snow lying really deep for days on end, with little warm sun to thaw it out. Our daily rations consisted of two small buns per day but at least they did contain some added soya beans for protein. There was also a thin watery soup made from thin slices of frozen long radish which had virtually no nutrient value at all. But all Japan was starving with the American Naval Blockade and food everywhere was scarce. The cheer of regular parcels had now given way to a glum acceptance of just trying to survive on the most meagre rations until the war was over. It was during February that I was struck down with the most appalling flu and fever that I have ever had. It was compounded of course by weakness from a lack of food especially when I had been growing fast. I was now 5ft 8inches tall, long thin and gangly, and with my room-mate young Graham we kids were both badly affected by the intense cold. When the flu reached its peak I would just lie huddled up on my tatami mat in my GI sweater, covered in my quilt and US blanket and the lovely thick US army greatcoat trying to conserve as much body warmth and energy as possible. My friends amongst the Geordie seamen such as Alfie Round and Tim Melia were marvellous and all had a whip round for odd spare tins of Red Cross food such as K rations, bully beef, spam, dried milk etc. But my Guardian Angel who really assumed control over me was a rough man in his fifties, who had been an Chief Engineer on the Wellpark, and who lovingly nursed me back to health and saved my life. He was a scrawny grey haired Canadian who had worked for Ford鈥檚 in Detroit before being laid off during the Great Depression and had then become a bootlegger in Chicago during the Prohibition period, working for the various hoods that were doing a booming business in the 鈥渟peak-easys鈥� at that time. His name was Carl Drennan and he was like a Father figure in the way he looked after me, and rallied all the seamen for the odd tin of food saved from their meagre supplies. He had a job in the camp as a sweeper and cleaner to the Japanese guards in their quarters. Each morning when he went to work, he would 鈥渁cquire鈥� bread and other bits and pieces of food left over from their meals, and when no one was looking, would bring them back to feed me and help build up my strength. This was done at a tremendous risk to himself, because if caught, he would have received a merciless beating and undoubtedly other severe tortures as well. Mother too would send me some of the food that she had hoarded for just such an emergency, so that she herself when the winter ended, was just skin and bone at 6 陆 stone, and a shadow of her former self, with gaunt dark sunken eyes, hanging skin, and an all pervading greying weakness. To her, with her natural unstinting Maternal generosity, to Malcom Scott with his cheerfulness and David Millar and to all the ordinary humble Geordie seamen, and most especially to Carl Drennan for the terrible risks that he took, I offer my deepest thanks, as it is to them that I owe my life , for the help and support they all gave me during the whole of that terrible February in 1945. I would mention that we had in our camp about a dozen missionaries of both sexes, who would spend the day constantly praying and pontificating about Christian Charity and love. Not one of these people with their aching liberal consciences, constant prayer, holier than thou attitudes, forever talking about virtues, and constantly quoting from the Bible, ever even bothered to ask after me, or young Graham the youngest members of the men鈥檚 side whilst, I was in that critical state. Nor for that matter did any of the bankers, and wealthy middle class individuals, apart from Mr Stewart offer any material help whatsoever. I found out most vividly at that very young age that when the chips are down, there is a crucial point when one really discovers who ones true friends are. They are the ones that can rally round a weak soul mate in distress. Mother, when I had finally recovered and we could sit out in the warm March sun in the garden, under the camp wall, sheltering from the cold Siberian wind, with the bright blue speedwell flowers and daisies bursting all around us, summed it up most eloquently and right to the point in her usual direct succinct manner:

鈥� Never forget and always appreciate loyalty. Friendship is nothing until it has been tempered and tested by a severe trauma. It is when such a trial occurs that a window opens, and it is only then that you can see, and only then that you can realise who are your true friends. Are they going to be members of your family, your wife, your parents or your children? You cannot say beforehand. Will they be grand and wealthy people? Or maybe they are just rough necks and vagabonds? No one can say until you have put them to the test, and it is only then, when you are in real trouble for whatever reason, whether health, money, or family problems, that you will discover who wants to help, and who will turn their heads away when you are all alone. In other words one has to wait until the chips are down in a crisis to ascertain the real worth between a jolly acquaintance, any member of ones family, and a true honest loyal friend whose worth will then shine incandescently like a brilliant diamond or a lighthouse on a dark rocky coast. Those rare people, with a solidity and a backbone of steel to help support you in a crisis, must be cherished, ever honoured , and be sanctified in ones heart until the day you die. The rest are a mere riffraff, passers by, spineless inconsiderate weaklings and are an irrelevance not even worth the effort of having a feeling of disgust. Being ill and alone as you have been in such a crisis, has had its silver lining in helping you to understand and appreciate the true value of friendship and loyalty.鈥�

By the time spring came we were even more desperate for food and one would eat anything. Luckily I was still friendly with the old gardener, and he would let me eat the cabbage roots and also look around for edible weeds such as purslane and wild cress which were common and now were starting to grow in the bright warm sunshine. Then in March we received our last two parcels, which this time we knew we had to eat very sparingly, knowing there was nothing else to follow. Hunger is a most all embracing state of mind, and anyone who has not suffered from its severest symptoms, has little idea how it is forever gnawing at ones very soul continuously, all the time, at every moment of ones waking day.. My brain would be constantly thinking and for ever working out some new method of finding something around that was edible, leaves from the grape vine, raw potatoes, but they were terrible and poisonous as we had no means of cooking in our rooms. I discovered a sack of soya beans in a shed with Graham that had been forgotten under rubbish and we rationed them sparingly and made them edible by soaking and throwing away the water for a couple of days before finally eating them. One did what one could to alleviate the pain, and just lived from day to day, hoping that something else would turn up. At least with April the weather had now turned warm, and the cherry blossom was out with the yellow banksian roses in full bloom once again around our open window. During April we followed the final throes of the war against Hitler and Nazi Germany. Of course we had no knowledge yet of all the detail of relations between Britain, America and Russia. All we followed, and really all we cared about, was the battle lines advancing, the bulging and ever expanding Allied Fronts squeezing Germany, culminating in the surrender of the German Armies to Montgomery and Patton, and the Russians storming Berlin. Once the European War was over, we knew that all the Allies attention would now be paid to Japan that already was starving and falling apart, with no fuel, so that it was now a rarity to ever see any vehicle on the road or any Japanese plane in the sky. And all the time there was the relentless bombing campaign with B29 Superfotresses pounding their cities day and night with huge incendiary firestorms.

So at the beginning of May there was the end of the European War and VE - Day and we all gave a cheer. There was no toasting in either beer or champagne, but everyone was overjoyed, and our eyes only now had to concentrate on the pace of the Americans 鈥淚sland Hopping鈥� campaign.
In February following the terrible resistance met in trying to take Saipan, the next target nearer to Japan was the small island of Iwo Jima in the Bonins. Its value would be in the establishment of an airstrip for fighter planes to protect the B29s from Saipan attacking the next target , the Island of Okinawa just south of Japan proper. This island would then become the main base for the final assault on Japan. To reduce American casualties to a minimum, Admiral Spruance kept up a weeks long saturation shelling with 16guns from his battleships and pounded the volcanic island relentlessly with everything he could from his other naval vessels. In spite of this it took a month on Iwo Jima to overcome the Japanese tenacious resistance in caves built out of the rocky volcanic rock on an island only about 7 miles long , and 6,000 US servicemen were to tragically die in its capture with a further 28,000 seriously wounded..

Once acquired the next stage was the attack on Okinawa itself with a major seaborne invasion. To assist the Americans with their two enormous Task forces, the British now with two battleships and four fleet carriers
and escort carriers with 250 aircraft, five cruisers and attendant destroyers all arrived off Formosa to help in the battle. The landings at Okinawa started on the 23rd March and the task forces protecting the invasion were subjected to an unprecedented attack by Japanese Suicide (Kamikaze or 鈥榙ivine wind鈥�) bombers which flew 1,900 sorties into the combined fleets. In spite of an army of 450,000 men taking part, and all the Combined American and British fleets, it still took 3 months to subdue the island with hundreds of thousands of casualties all round. The cost in loss of life in landing in Japan proper was going to be a forbidding prospect.

I will mention here that a month after the war was finally over in September, a couple of our inmates Mr and Mrs Scott were out walking in the country, the day we were suddenly at two hours notice, told to depart from our camp. Instead of following us on, they returned to Australia via Okinawa where they spent a couple of days in transit. Four months after the area they were in had been fought over, there were still planes spraying the wrecked city with disinfectant, and the nauseous foetid smell of rotting flesh from the bodies in the hot humid summer air, still permeated through the ruins and rubble. I remember meeting up with them about a year later in the Vanderbilt Hotel In Gloucester Road, London and he said that no one could ever have imagined the stench and just what conditions were like in Okinawa 4 months after that bitter battle.

At the beginning of July we would watch the constant flights of carrier planes overhead from the fleet offshore. They were mostly Grumman Avenger bombers with their Hellcat escorts, flying in formation overhead to attack some distant target. One morning in mid July a guard came up to Mother in her room and ordered her with a firm summons to go down immediately to the Guards Common room. At first she thought that she had done something very wrong and was very apprehensive at the order, but when she entered the guards took little notice of her and were just casually lying around chatting . She was puzzled at first but then one rose and produced a registered parcel and a form for which she was told to sign for, after which she returned to her room puzzled, and proceeded to open it. Lo and behold the package was from the Naval Attache at the German Embassy, and there before her eyes was all the jewellery that she had entrusted to him for safe keeping in 1942. She put it away safely, and it all survived the war, the bombings, shellings etc. and I am glad to say that the whole lot, with its extraordinary story, is now safely in the hands of my daughter Janet!

One day in early July at about 10 o鈥檆lock in the morning whilst alone in the common room, I heard the shrill roar of a plane dive bombing. In a flash I threw myself under a large heavy table just before the explosion at a bridge nearby. The walls all shook with the impact and lumps of plaster from the ceiling cascaded down, all around the room but otherwise it was all right, and just one final test once more of my quick reaction to danger. Mother on the opposite end of the building was hardly affected at all. A few days later at about 2 o鈥檆lock in the afternoon, I took a book into the garden on the edge of the parade ground, and sat in an empty wooden sentry box to read quietly. All the time as I leant against its sides I could feel a steady intermittent vibration, as the walls and floor shook with a steady tremor. I remarked about it to someone else and soon a crowd had felt the pulsating effect that I had noticed and we all knew that to go on for so long so steadily could only mean fire from Naval Guns. It continued without stopping until I went in at 5 o鈥檆lock and a couple of days later day we learnt from the newspaper that the Northern Port of Sendai lying about 40 miles away had been wrecked by the US 6th Fleet pumping 16鈥� shells all that afternoon. During the last month of the war the fleet cruised off shore selecting targets at will, and any sizeable seaside conurbation or port was fair game for a hammering .

Cont/鈥︹�ee A Child鈥檚 War part Fifteen

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