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At this time, one of the Dutchmen gave me a small ball of home-made (or home-grown) dried yeast. He said I should crumble it into cooked rice, leave it for a few days, and remove a ball of it for future use. Sugar and water was to be added to the remainder, and I would then, after a few days have the Malayan dish known as ‘tappy’.

He let me taste some of his finished product, and I found it quite pleasant although rather acidic, and it smelled quite fruity. My effort was a failure, my rice just became sour and I had to throw the precious stuff away; so I went to see the expert, my friend the herbalist, Outje, (whose real name I had by now discovered to be von Braam).

He gave me another ball of yeast, and told me to multiply it first before making tappy. This I did, and from one of my six balls, produced the first successful dish of tappy. However the next time I tried, it went wrong again, but this time I had produced a very strong flavored rice vinegar; this ‘failure’ was a great success, and I found that a spoonful helped plain rice down very well; as I had made rather a lot, I found a ready sale for spoonsful of it among my friends, who were doing paid work.

Men stopped returning sick from up country at this time, so the number of funerals soon halved. As I had no money left by this time, I went to see Col. Toosey and asked if I could do the cemetery job half-time only, and do a paid job under the Japs for the rest of the day. He seemed quite shocked, as he did not know that I had been working for all that time without pay. He gave me some cash to be going on with and promised that I would in future receive fifty Stang every ten days.

He did keep his word, but I was only to remain there for another eighteen days. For the remainder of my Tamarkan days I spent about half my time working on jobs about the camp, including the task of building a pigsty, the Japs having promised our C.O. a pig for Christmas.

The enemy had completed the Ack/Ack gun emplacement on our small mountain, and they now fired a few practice rounds from their Bofors gun. It was only then that the truth dawned on us; that in the event of a low-level air attack, any shells missing the aircraft would hit the camp; Col. Toosey asked for permission to make a Red Cross flag to lay out during air-raids, but this was refused. Many of our men were later to die because of that refusal.

On the seventeenth of November I saw my first Allied plane since the time of our capture. It flew right over our camp, so high as to be barely visible, and certainly at more than three times the effective range of the Japs’ Bofors gun. However they let fly at it, effectively admitting to us that it was ‘one of ours’, and of course, giving their position away.

As the plane was so high, we realized that it must be on a reconnaissance flight, and we hoped that the pilot saw that this was a P.O.W. camp. The adjacent bridges were of course prime targets for air attack, and our camp was only a few hundred yards away from these. (This was the site where the fictional account of 'The Bridge Over The River Quy' was to be enacted.)

Now we were all ordered to stay in our huts out of sight during any future air-raids; any men seen outside would be shot on sight.

Out on the cemetery party, I also noticed a change in the attitude of our guards; I was watched more closely and was finding it increasingly difficult to contact my Thai friends in Tamarkan village. Outje ran out of turmeric again and asked me to get another lot; I ordered it by signs for collection the following day as I passed the village shop.

That day I was so closely supervised that I found it impossible to get away to collect the goods. At this time we were short of firewood for the cooks in the camp, so an extra duty for my grave-diggers was to carry back to camp any tree trunks from the jungle we had cleared during the day. On this occasion I asked the strongest of my men to assist me in carrying back a heavy log about eight feet long, and perhaps ten inches thick.

I was at the rear end of the log as we passed back through the village that evening; the shopkeeper’s husband was leaning against a tree with my parcel in his hand, and with a furtive glance around me I proffered the cash and was handed the turmeric.

However, the heavy log on my shoulder had prevented me from observing one of our guards lying in wait in the jungle opposite. As the Thai handed me the parcel, I saw a look of apprehension appear in his eyes and he tried to draw back at the last moment, but too late; a scream of rage filled the air as the Jap came rushing over. A teak two-handled practice sword was raised high over his head, and in his fury he sounded like a madman.

The heavy log on my shoulder made it impossible to dodge, as the heavy weapon came crashing down on my skull. Again and again it landed, half the blows missing my head and cutting pieces of bark off our log.

I felt little pain, but as each blow landed it felt as though my brain were soft, and was gently being pressed in while everything became momentarily dark. After about the third blow blood came squirting out of my double Aussie hat, which had remained jammed on my head throughout.

The Jap’s anger spent, he stopped hitting me and stepped back, dazed with the shock of not seeing me fall, though looking as though my head were bashed in. Blood by this time was everywhere, over my mate at the other end of the log, over the Jap and dripping off the log to begin to form a pool on the ground.

Strangely, I seemed to be able to survey the whole scene dispassionately; I suppose my brain was partly anaesthetized by what had befallen. The Thai women who had been standing around to watch us pass, covered their faces; my friends told me later that they thought I was like a chicken still standing after losing its head, and they were waiting to see me fall.

I am sure that when some of the Japanese lose their tempers they are quite beside themselves, and do-not know what they are doing; neither can they control their actions. This one slowly regained his composure, and instead of setting about me again, he curtly ordered my comrades to lift the heavy log off my shoulder and sent me back to camp ahead of the others.

By the time I entered the camp and approached the guardhouse, I must have looked like something from Madame Tussaud’s. Having continued to bleed profusely all the way back, I was covered thickly in congealed blood; I was also beginning to feel light-headed, and was unable to walk straight.

I was well known to the guards on duty, since, as already mentioned, I always passed out of camp with the funeral parties, and I think most of them liked me. The duty guard stopped me and called his friends out; they gathered round looking at me in disbelief, making their sympathetic clucking noises. For some strange reason I now for the first time felt sorry for myself, and an overwhelming desire to weep came over me.

It was nothing to do with the pain, but just the effect of a little sympathy. Not wanting them to see tears in my eyes, I turned and tried to run away across the open space to our lines, but could not control my direction. Luckily, by this time some of our men were coming over, and a couple of them helped me to Major Moon’s hut.

The doctor removed my hat and after a brief examination, sent an orderly to fetch a bucket of water. Between them they first of all cleaned up my head, and the worst of the wounds were bodged up. I was feeling better now, and they showed me my reinforced hat; in three places the sword had cut cleanly through both crowns.

‘Sergeant’, said Major Moon, ‘if your head isn’t solid bone it can’t be very far short of it, but you’re not half as bad as you looked; your hat saved you from a fractured skull.’ I knew also that had I fallen the Jap would probably have killed me on the ground. I was ordered to rest for three days, and then went back to work.

Strong rumours began to circulate that most of us were going to be moved to Chunkai, and on the twenty-third of November a load of sick men boarded barges and moved off down river. Two days later I spent my last day in the best camp in Thailand, having been informed that I was to move off with a party of men to Chunkai in the morning.

We held a ‘Farewell Tamarkan’ concert that evening; the Japs all turned up at the show and made it clear that they also were sad because they must leave with us. For the first and only time on one of those occasions, one of the Japs arose and volunteered to give a ‘turn’. He rose to his feet and went sedately up to the stage.

After bowing to us he began to perform a strange dance. We tittered at first, thinking that perhaps this was a comic turn; but we gradually began to be touched.

As he sang a plaintive song on very few notes, in strange rhythm, and to graceful hand and foot movements, the like of which we had never before seen. His sad expression as he sang told us without need of word understanding, of the nostalgia in his Japanese heart for his homeland.

It was at ten a.m. therefore, on the twenty-sixth of November, that we fell in, ready, we hoped, to board barge or train. There was a large crowd of us, all the fit men left in Tamarkan. My kit seemed heavier than ever as I struggled out on parade with it, but I think that was mainly because I had not yet made up all the blood I had recently lost.

To my dismay I found that it was to be ‘Shanks’s pony’ this time, as we moved out across the paddy fields. Luckily, Chunkai was not many miles away, and I made it without having to shed any of my gear.

I seemed to have been a very long time there, and left a little part of myself behind in Tamarkan; I even now think of the comradeship there with some nostalgia.

Chapter 30

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