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Col. Toosey told us to sit on our kits while he put us in the picture. ‘This is Tamarkan camp,’ he told us, ‘and it’s about the cleanest in Thailand; I’m going to rely on you to help me to keep it this way.’ This was the first and only time that I was welcomed to a camp; but then, Toosey was a quite exceptional officer.

He introduced us to his second in command, Capt. Boyle, who, he told us, spoke Japanese. He was the only Britisher I met with this ability, and it made a very considerable difference to the way we worked with the Japs.

After our pep talk, we were each allocated a space in a nice clean hut, and at five o’clock given our first meal. As soon as we had eaten we were called out again, and taken down the river to wash. The Colonel had no intention of letting us remain in our dirt for any longer than was necessary.

When I got the chance to look around, I had to admit that it really was clean and tidy. Col. Toosey proved to be the best officer I was ever to find running a camp. The river was about two hundred yards from the nearest huts, and was shallow at this point; unlike other camps, here there was a gently sloping shingle beach instead of the usual steep bank or cliff.

Nearby I saw the railway crossing the river via a bridge consisting of steel spans resting on concrete piers. I heard later that these spans were British, and had been brought up from Malaya. A little way further upstream I could see a wooden bridge. This, we discovered, had been built first, and was now being kept in reserve. What we saw was what was later to become renowned by a piece of fiction called ‘The Bridge Over The River Quai’.

The next day we were allowed to have as our rest day, so I made a tour of all the huts, and was delighted to find several men from our regiment. I heard that a rumour was circulating to the effect that a batch of letters from home had arrived in the camp. This materialized into what was a rara avis those days, a rumour that proved to be correct.

Few working parties were sent out from Tamarkan, which was officially a hospital camp. The Japs worked closely with our Colonel and interfered little with the camp administration.

A high hill overlooked the camp, one of the few in this otherwise relatively flat part of Thailand, and the river was much wider and more sluggish here than we had been used to higher up country. Col. Toosey had stamped out all the rackets, and the atmosphere was very pleasant when compared with most other camps.

I got out my razor the second day and was soon doing a roaring trade at five Stang a time. However I was soon told that I was not allowed to charge for this spare-time service.

Looking back, I find it difficult to believe that I could have been mean enough to discontinue my barbering just because I was not being paid for it, but I fear that this is what happened.

Although this was designated a ‘hospital’ camp, we had only one doctor; he was Australian, a Major Moon. Not only was he a doctor, a good surgeon, but also a very fine man; and he was well loved, as he carried out his duties with very little respite.

Most days limbs had to be amputated, and cutting the proud flesh from ulcers with no anaesthetic, and useing a sharpened spoon, was a constant and dreadful task.

After a few days of better food, in better surroundings, the doctor pronounced me fit enough to return up country with the next party to be called for. It was a strange coincidence that none were to be called for a week or two.

Quite a high proportion of the sick here were Dutch, with Indonesian blood. Most of the sick Europeans recovered quickly under the better conditions. Most of these Dutch however, seemed to give up and lie on their ‘tampacha’ all day as soon as they became ill. Most of them died, and the funeral parties that left each day were about four Dutch to one British.

I have not said very much about the killer diseases in these camps, so a resumé might not be out of place at this point, as vitamin deficiency, undernourishment and unhealthy climate were by now combining to cause deaths daily in all camps.

The first disease to strike was usually malaria; as Europeans have no resistance to this, the results could be devastating, and lower the victims’ resistance to other diseases.

Malaria is caused by a parasite which multiplies in the blood by dividing into three or four (according to type), at specific time intervals, thus causing the uncontrollable shivering fits or ‘rigors’, and very high temperatures. (Mine reached 107°f at one time.)

After the rigor there is usually vomiting for several hours, followed by lack of appetite for a couple of days. The parasites live and multiply by destroying blood cells, and this in turn causes anemia and damage to the spleen, the main purpose of which is the removal of dead or worn red blood cells.

There are several varieties of this parasite, some also cause the dreaded ‘black water fever’ when the kidneys break down, and destroyed blood cells are passed out with the urine. Yellow fever, often fatal also, results from the liver being unable to cope with the huge number of damaged red blood cells.

Lastly I will mention the virtually always fatal, cerebral malaria. Here the patient would suddenly begin to act strangely, perhaps accuse a neighbour of some impossible treachery. Many cases were not unlike delirium tremens, with the sufferer becoming violent, and perhaps being held down in terror by his mates while screaming.

The three main types of malaria we contracted were: B.T. or ‘benign tertian’. The last word denotes that the parasite divides every third day. Benign, because with this variety it is usually necessary to be re-bitten by the carrier mosquito to have a recurrence. S.T. stands for ‘sub-tertian’, indicating that the parasite multiplies in less than three days. Therefore the fever is almost constant, and the patient does not get the two days clear of rigors as with B.T.

S.T. was the more serious, and two men died next to me with S.T.induced black water fever.

M.T. or ‘malign tertian’ was the worst of all. It followed the same pattern as B.T. but remained dormant in the blood after quinine had apparently cured it. Recurring every few weeks, it caused the patient to become more and more debilitated and therefore prone to other diseases.

The first result of debilitation was usually the vitamin ‘B’ deficiency disease, beri-beri, and this could manifest itself in one of the two forms, one the so-called ‘dry’, the other,‘wet’.

With the latter, a man would today be so undernourished that he was not much more than a bag of bones. Then as the disease began to take hold, he would start to drink more, and his body tissue would fill with fluid. Fingers pressed into the flesh produced the typical indentations of oedema.

Scrotum, ear lobes, cheeks, any piece of loose flesh blew out like a balloon, and the body would double and treble in weight until the patient could not rise from his bed. The side of his body underneath him would become as flat as his bed-boards, so that he could not even turn over without help.

Finally he would become unable to see, as his eyelids ballooned out over his eyes. Yet even at this stage, if bran, rice polishings, yeast, Marmite or any other form of the vitamin ‘B’ complex were administered, the patient could literally begin to pass water by the bucketful, and within a day or so he would resume his former skeleton-like shape.

Dry beri-beri manifested itself in a very different way, the first symptoms usually being pins and needles in the feet, which gradually became numb. This effect gradually spread upwards through the body as the nervous system deteriorated, and when it reached the region of the chest, the heart generally became affected, causing the commonly fatal ‘cardiac beri-beri’. Without the administration of vitamin ‘B’ death followed quickly, and quite a high percentage deaths were due to this.

Dysentery was another important taker of life, and when combined with malaria usually proved fatal without medication. It also came in more than one form. Bacilliary dysentery was very violent while it lasted, and it could prove fatal to those already debilitated by malaria. However, once overcome, it left no resident bugs to reopen the offensive at a later date.

Amoebic dysentery was quite the opposite, the first attack often being quite mild and even unobserved. However without administering the drug ‘immetin’ the infection remained ever present, and an affected person was also a carrier. Amoebic dysentery gradually advanced, and as the weeks and months passed, the system became unable to digest food, which would pass through the alimentary canal almost unchanged in a few minutes. This stage reached, death was inevitable.

The most terrifying and hideous of all our diseases in those days, were the ghastly tropical ulcers. When resistance became reduced to a low ebb, the flesh would often commence to rot away.

Sometimes the commencement could be attributed to a scratch, bite, or other wound, but often the ulcer would start spontaneously with a spot or blemish on the skin.

Once started, they would sometimes enlarge at an amazing speed, and the foul stench of putrefying flesh kept away all but the Good Samaritans, and our ever-faithful medical orderlies. An active ulcer looked much like a lunar crater, and our only medicine was brine.

The screams coming from the ulcer hut each day told us that the orderlies were trying to squeeze out the pus that advanced between muscle and sinew, as, once in the bloodstream that caused rapid death. When the critical stage of the ulcer passed, it would sometimes start to heal faster than one would have believed possible, muscle, sinew and bone tissue being re-generated in an incredible way.

Skin could not advance quickly enough from the edges of the wound, so at this stage Major Moon would perform the skin-graft operation. These were performed with home-made instruments such as needles stuck in corks, but a surprising number were successful.

If the ulcer would not pass the critical state, as a last resort to avoid amputation the wound would be scraped out with a sharpened table-spoon, the patient held down the while by three or four orderlies.

Finally, the last option; I watched Major Moon through the unglazed window of his operating hut cut through a man’s thighbone with what looked like a carpenters’ saw. The small amount of anesthetic left in the camp was retained for these cases.

Bamboo ‘peg legs’ were made in the camp for the legless, and eventually we had dozens of men strolling about very effectively on these legs. (Now, each time we hear of refugees starving on the other side of the world, we may safely assume that they will be enduring those same dreadful diseases, pain and misery, that we knew so well.)

The dry season now began to break, and there were showers every evening. My working shorts disintegrated, and as I was saving my other pair to wear on our faithfully anticipated ‘victory parade’, I decided to make myself a ‘Jap Happy’ or ‘G’ string. This was simply a loin cloth made from a piece of string and a strip of cloth about nine inches wide by two feet long. Once made, I found it was much pleasanter to work in than my shorts, in the tropical heat, and much easier to wash.

After two weeks in Tamarkan I began to feel really fit again, and recommenced giving haircuts and shaves in my spare time, and this time with the emphasis on ‘give’.

Then on the thirty-first of May,1943, Col. Toosey asked me if I would care to take on the responsibility of burials, quite a big job in this hospital camp. Needless to say I was delighted to accept this opportunity of working for our own people instead of the Japs.

The Colonel explained that until now no one person had been in charge of this operation, and consequently the cemetery had not been laid out to any pre-conceived plan. Three or four men were dying every day, so it was becoming important to work in a more orderly fashion, in order to facilitate the work of the War Graves Commission after the war ended.

Another problem was that with different people doing the job every day, many of the graves had not been dug deeply enough, and wild animals were getting at the bodies. Because of these things, after much persuasion the Japs had at last agreed to allocate a full-time N.C.O. to the job.

I soon discovered that the cemetery fatigue was very unpopular among the men, as the Jap in charge was a bullying devil known as ‘Pig’s Eyes’. He beat up any who did not appeal to him, often without any apparent reason.

The ritual of grave digging, ropes, un-boxed bodies and the service, soon became all too familiar to me, as three or more times a day, seven days a week, we marched with our load the half-mile or so from camp to cemetery.

The only minister of religion in the camp was the Dutch ‘Padre’, and he is one of my fondest memories of the otherwise depressing job of burying our dead.

He was, I believe, a Lutheran, a little man in stature, but great of heart. He was one of the most lovable and tolerant men I have known. His English was quite good and he conducted every service, whatever the denomination.

Many of the Dutch were Roman Catholics, and ‘Dominee’, as he was called, had acquired a Catholic service book, and meticulously carried our every jot and tittle of their ritual, although some of it was against the teachings of his own church.

He told me that he was not really allowed to bury them, but that as it seemed to make the other surviving Catholics happy, he hoped the Pope would forgive him, if he ever found out. I soon got to know the burial service off by heart, both in English and Dutch. Also the Lord's Prayer in Dutch, which I still remember.

The camp authorities now issued the instruction that no-one was to wash or bathe in the river; there was a cholera epidemic up country, and infected bodies had come floating downstream. It was most probable that the water was carrying cholera germs, so all drinking water must be boiled, although some of the germs even survived that.

Every day my work-party of about ten men went out to clear more jungle and to dig more graves. Our route lay through the village of Tamarkan, the first real village I had come across.

There were about twenty dwellings, an earth road running through, and a village shop. This was run by a buxom Thai lady, one of the few I had seen without teeth blackened by betel-nut. I only met her husband twice, so I assumed that he worked in the surrounding fields.

Often our guard would absent himself, and I would slip back and spend a few minutes in this shop. The lady was sweet and kind, always greeting me with a motherly smile and some little tit-bit or other. The naked baby boy sitting on the floor became used to my visits, and seemed to look forward to seeing me. I would purchase tinned food and other goods for both myself and for those left behind in camp.

This shop, unlike the Kampongs, was not built on stilts, but had an earth floor. The Thai mum did not use nappies (diapers), but when the little boy performed on the floor, she skillfully flicked the result out of the door with her bare big toe.

Thai children seem only to need feeding, and, unlike most of ours, passed firm dry stools. It is true that the little girls did wear one garment of modesty; a little chain-mail apron about three inches square, slung round the waist on a thin chain.

Girls’ heads were shaven, but boys retained a pigtail growing from the crown. Boys with two crowns and therefore with two pigtails were regarded as lucky.

As crowns do not usually grow in the centre of the head, their asymmetrical pigtails gave them the appearance of what an old countryman friend of mine would have called ‘A pig wi’ one ear!’ Thai elder sisters look after their baby brothers and sisters, and it was quite common to see little girls of five or six years old playing together while carrying a baby on their hip.

Although the Thai housewife may not have had to do much washing or housework, besides working in the fields there was much food preparation to carry out. Every day the home-grown rice grains had to be husked by passing them through a pair of bamboo ‘mill-stones’, or by pounding them for a long while in a large mortar. Then the winnowing was carried out by putting the grist on a large wicker tray, and skillfully throwing it up in the air and catching the grains again, letting the air movement carry off the husks.

Rice needed much hand cultivation; the seed was broadcast in the small flooded nursery paddies towards the end of the dry season. When the rains came and the higher paddies flooded, the women and girls, working ankle-deep in the mud that had been stirred up by oxen drawing under-water ploughs, pricked out the rice plants one at a time.

I tried to imagine what English farmers’ wives and daughters would have to say if they were called upon to plant out fields of corn, one plant at a time, twice a year.

The rice crop is heavy compared with wheat, and the straw is over four feet long. It is hand cut, a handful at a time, and tied into sheaves weighing about twenty-eight pounds each. These are tied on each end of a bamboo pole, and carried on the shoulder back to the kampong, where they are tied, head inwards, to a large bamboo pole standing upright in the ground.

This eventually makes a stack about nine feet in diameter, and the cattle are allowed to eat the straw on the outside; but as soon as they get near the rice this is removed, allowing another lot to drop down. I never saw any draught horses, carts were pulled, and plowing done by hump-backed oxen, and the long horned grey water-buffaloes.

The Japs now started building an Ack/Ack post on the hill overlooking the camp. Our men were required to carry sand and cement up from the river to make concrete, and water every day for the guards to consume and to bathe.

A party of men was also detailed to dig slit-trenches for the gun-crew to shelter in. (These were to be needed before the end came.) The Japs emplaced a Bofors gun on the hilltop, which had been captured earlier from the British, and now pointed skywards, awaiting our planes.

After my first five weeks sojourn in Tamarkan, Col. Toosey one day accompanied my work party to the cemetery, and he showed me exactly how he would like me to lay the graves out in future. We were by now burying on average six men a day, and planning had become very necessary.

On June the twenty-third a large party of sick men arrived in the camp from up country, and searching their ranks for friends, I found three of our regiment, Cpl. Scales, and Pte’s. Dusty Miller and Whitby; they told me that they came from Tak-a-Nun camp, where nineteen of our boys, including Sgt. Jolly, had died from cholera; they looked in poor shape themselves, and it was clear they had been through a rough time since I saw them last.

I had received no wages while working on the cemetery, so apart from what I was keeping for a rainy day, I now ran out of cash. On the night of the twenty-sixth of June therefore, I broke into the Jap store and helped myself to six tins of food and a bar of soap.

Although all of it had been made in England, and filched from Red Cross shipments intended for us, I felt very guilty about what I had done, as should the theft have been discovered the whole camp might have suffered. I shared the proceeds with my neighbors, and never again did anything like that.

A few days later I was to get beaten up for the first time in that camp. ‘Pig’s Eyes’ was in charge of my grave-digging party, and was shouting his usual stream of incomprehensible orders.

I started my men off digging the first batch of graves in the spot where Col. Toosey had directed, but the Jap then ordered me to start in a totally different place. I tried to explain that I was digging to an agreed plan, but he pretended not to understand.

For my part I refused to move the men, and as Pig’s Eyes got madder and madder, I finally turned my back on him and told the men to dig where I had told them. The next thing I saw was the stars generated by a rifle butt hitting me over the head; but my faithful double-crowned hat saved me from being knocked unconscious, and I turned before the next blow landed to face my attacker.

He threw his rifle to the ground and punched me about the head in blind rage, but as I found no difficulty in standing my ground and looking him in the face, he soon calmed down. I fell my men in, and ignoring the Jap, marched them back to camp without digging one grave. I had no more trouble from ‘Pig’s Eyes’, and was in future allowed to run the work party without interference.

On the first of July another hundred sick men arrived in the camp, from Kinsio this time, including six-feet-seven ‘Tiny’ Lee from our regiment. (As he was too tall to parade in the ranks he had been put in Joe’s Pioneer Platoon when we were in England. Another man who was well under five feet had also been sent there for a similar reason. We were stationed at Weeting Hall, near Brandon at the time, where our latrines were of the bucket type. Tiny and his short colleague had the job of emptying these buckets, and the sight of the two of them trying to carry one of these buckets without spilling the contents should have been filmed and preserved for future generations.)

Out at the cemetery, one of my men was caught by a guard trying to sell his shoes to a Thai. It was Pig’s Eyes day off and we had another guard in charge of us; I heard the yell of rage and looking across saw our boy about to be belted. I called to the guard and ran over as quickly as I could, and then joined in shouting and gesticulating at the terrified man.

I made the Jap understand that if he would leave it all to me I would ensure that the villain received adequate punishment for his crime. This was of course done in order to avoid the usual beating up that was the punishment for such offences, sometimes leading to severe consequencies.

On returning to camp, I was surprised to discover that our guard was far from satisfied with leaving the punishment to unsupervised British justice. He asked our officer to let him know when the ‘trial’ was to be held, as he proposed to attend it himself.

Thus we had to go through the motions of charging the man with ‘Conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline’, and he was awarded four days on rice and water, and fourteen days detention. We were all getting little else than rice and water, and we were all being detained, so his sentence made little difference to him. A beating however could have left him on the road to despondency, and the Jap ‘cooler’ could lead to death.

Chapter 28

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