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The Jap in charge ordered all prisoners to write an account of the fighting leading up to their capture, and to finish up by saying who they thought would win the war and why. He probably thought he would learn more from us than from his Japanese one hundred percent propaganda newspapers. For my part, I enjoyed writing an entirely fictitious account of my part in the battle for Singapore.

A few days later, volunteer blood-donors were called for to help certain bad cases in the sick bay. I had a sample taken but mine was A2, whereas they required 04 blood. However, the next day a Pte. Butler, a consumption (TB) case, had a bad haemorrhage of the lungs, and I was called upon to give blood to him. Blood was not stored in bottles for use later, as in Britain, but I lay on a table above the patient, and a tube ran from a vein in my arm directly in to the recipient’s. The poor chap rallied for a week or so, but died before I left the camp.

A public highway ran through Chunkai, the Japs were unable to close it as there was no other thoroughfare in the area. Until now we had been allowed to walk on this road when going from one end of the camp to the other. The order was now given that prisoners might no longer approach it; we took this to mean that there must be good news about, and they did not want us to hear it from the Thais.

A rumour began to circulate at the same time, that fit men in the camp were to be shipped to Japan, and a few days later this was corroborated when a list of men scheduled to go was published. My name was not on it, so, as my ulcer was just about healed, I saw the R.S.M. and asked for my name to be added. He said I was too late, but put my name on reserve. (I did not know how lucky I was, as their ship was sunk by the Allies, as it was not marked with a Red Cross.)

Now that I was fit again, I went out with work-parties every day, mainly gathering bamboo for hut-building, and firewood for cooking. Some days I was on hut-building, and this was what the Japs called a ‘Speedo job’; we had to pull a hut down and try to rebuild it the same day, so we really had our work cut out, as each one was fifty meters long.

When I awoke on the morning of the first of March, I discovered that Jimmy had arrived in camp during the night with a couple of hundred men from Tak-a-Nun. During a very long chat I heard of all that had befallen him since we parted. It was only now, as I heard of the terror of those cholera camps for the first time at first hand, that I realized how fortunate I had been, safely back in dear old Tamarkan, while my friends suffered and died.

As Jimmy had our cash when we split up he insisted in giving me half his Thai money now; anyway, he said, he was going to Japan in a few days, and it would be of no use there. I gave him half my bedding, as he had lost all his.

Working long hours on the hut building party for the next few days, I saw little of Jimmy, but he was issued with new clothes to wear in Japan, and on the tenth of March they left Chunkai on the first stage of their long and hazardous journey.

I heard later that the ships on which they embarked carried no Red Cross either, or indeed, other distinctive markings, and many had guns mounted on the decks. They were bombed and torpedoed with our boys battened below deck. Jimmy was, however, one of the lucky ones to make the journey safely; his ship was sunk, and he was one of the few rescued.

Someone told the Japs that I had been a builder back in England, and they ordered me to draw plans for the huts we were building. All they provided was pencil and paper. So during the following days, using my tools I made myself an eighth inch scale rule, a protractor, two set squares, and a tee square. I bought a compass from a Pte. Jennings; he had carried it around unused since he was captured.

I quite enjoyed drawing the plans, and it made a nice change from the ‘Speedo’ hut-building party.

There was a Dutchman in our hut named Bruder. He asked me if I would draw him plans for a (pseudo) typical timbered English Tudor house, as he wanted to build one in Holland if he ever returned. It took me a month of evenings and Yasume days to complete the plans, and then only roughly. However Bruder seemed quite pleased with them, and assured me that he would convert them to bricks and mortar if the opportunity arose. He may, for all I know, have even survived and built it.

We were given a radio message form on the nineteenth, and told to write a short message each to be broadcast to England. None of us believed there was the slightest chance of it being sent, (neither were we wrong), but we all wrote that we were well and hoped those at home were also.

The Japs at this time became very scared of catching cholera, and we had to build them new huts further from the river. They also decided that the river water was only good enough for prisoners to wash in, and imported Chinese well-diggers; two of them started work on rising ground not far from the river.

Watching these men work during our lunch break, was, I found, an enlightening experience. Although I thought I knew quite a lot about excavation and the different methods of preventing earth falls, I was to learn a completely new technique. The only tools needed were two joss sticks! No timber whalings, simply joss sticks.

One man worked at a time, excavating round and round with a short-handled chunkel and basket, and as he went downwards the man on top pulled up the basket of earth with a rope. Most important of all he tended the smouldering joss sticks, as without the smoke to keep the demons away, the sides would be pushed in. With a simple faith like that, a Christian’s life would become so much more straightforward.

The well sides went down perfectly straight and circular without gauge or plumb bob, and water was struck about fifty feet down. Concrete rings were then cast between two rings of sheet metal, pieces of banana stalk being let into the concrete to rot later, and allow water to percolate in.

They did not seem to worry about germs from the surface water, perhaps the joss sticks took care of them also.Only three rings a day were cast so it was a long time before the well was ready to use. The men spent the rest of the day, that was when not making rings or lowering them down the hole, smoking opium in the canteen.

On the twenty-fifth of March we saw our first really heavy daylight air-raid, as literally dozens of aircraft flew over the camp.

A few days later I was shocked to hear that a British officer was engaged in a medicine racket. Together with some other men I was told, he stole the precious rare life-saving quinine from our hospital hut, and sold it to the Thais for money. Thirty pieces of silver for sure.

The next day, two Dutch sergeants, by name Pas and Lintman, were caught red-handed selling quinine, and they were interned in the Jap ‘cooler’. This consisted of bamboo cells built out in the sun, each one too short to lie down in and too low to stand up in. The inmates were kept short of water and beaten from time to time. It was more a form of torture than imprisonment.

Soon after this, I made friends with a Scot named Cpl. Willox. He was an excellent fellow of the old school, sincere, kind, and very proud of his nationality. He was also a piper and had managed to keep his pipes. Every evening he would unwrap and lovingly clean them. Then he would march up and down behind our huts near the camp boundary, piping old Scottish melodies. At times the pibroch would be slow and sad; at others Willox would be thinking of better times as he marched gaily to a jig or to a military air.

He told me that at one time he used to teach Highland dancing and asked if I would like to learn, to pass the time away. Having always loved to watch the Scottish dances, I was pleased to accept, and within a week or two I could do The Sheen Trews, Highland Fling, Schottische and The Sword Dance. He told me that I had taken to it like a duck to water, and should have been born a Scot.

I seemed to be more sensitive to bug and louse bites than most of my friends, probably due to my fair complexion, and fragile skin, and would often get my behind bitten when sitting on someone’s bed chatting, only to be told that I must be imagining it. There weren’t any bugs as they had killed them all! However, I had never seen so much vermin as here, and since the dry season was now upon us, I took to sleeping outside, as the nights in the hut were intolerable.

My black shorts wore out at this time, and I put the remains of them away to take home as a souvenir of the Chinese lady who gave them to me; later however, I got so short of rags that I had to use them.

When I finished drawing plans, I worked on making tools. From a piece of teak salvaged when the Jap quarters blew down, I made a plane, and this was the best of all my tools; with its blade cut from a cleaver it worked really well. I also made handles for my chisels, and bound them on with wire, as I had no ferrules. One of our men dug up an old axe head; it had been used as a hammer and the eye had been bashed in. During the next few evenings I managed to straighten it out, fit it with a handle, and sharpen it; it was to become my most useful tool.

A week or so later we were re-formed into a group, and told that we should be leaving shortly for Burma. Then we were told that the Burma trip was canceled, and that we were to be known as No. 35 Japan party.

This change suited me very well, or so I thought, as, not knowing how hazardous the voyage would be, at that time I felt that the nearer we were to civilization when the end of the war came, the better chance we would stand of escaping murder at the hands of our captors. I did not know, of course, that the Allies were to drop on Japan the weapons which were to start a chain reaction which might end civilization for the whole world.

We went to work as usual on the morning of the nineteenth of April, but were brought back post haste and given two hours notice to pack up our kits ready to leave for Japan. Then we were paraded, (they told us it was to receive warm clothing for the Japanese climate), but after hanging about for a long time we were dismissed, sans the warm clothes.

Looking back on events, I guess that the Japs were being forced to change plans almost daily, with reverses in Burma, and the ships which should have taken us away being either sunk, or needed for other purposes.

That night, instead of being on my way to more temperate climes, I went to a camp concert organized by a professional actor named Leo Britt, and entitled ‘Wonder Bar’.
Having just unpacked my kit and seated myself on the ground waiting for the show to begin, I was aroused from my reverie by the guards rushing round in a tizzy, calling us back on parade.

Stuffing all my gear into the various haversacks as quickly as I could, and very disorganized, I marched out past the cemetery with the others, we knew not whither. As far as we had been told, we were still No. 35 Japan party, but as we were still clothed in our thin rags it was unlikely the Japs would parade us in front of civilization looking like this.

As for Chunkai, I felt no regret at the parting; in fact, I was glad to see the back of it. At ten-thirty that night we marched into Kanburi camp, and I lay thankfully down in the bed-space I was allocated, and for the first time for months, slept until morning.

Chapter 32

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