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RIVER VALLEY ROAD CAMP

My first impression of this camp was one of filth and disorder, after the comparative cleanliness and discipline of Changi. The huts we were to occupy still had the rubbish of the previous tenants strewn about, and the camp itself was a sea of mud.

There flowed past one side of the camp a sluggish, dirty and oily river. This was tidal, and our camp was very little above sea-level at high tide. Consequently the water table was too high to dig deep boreholes, so that instead of our clean Changi latrines we had shallow trenches, which writhed with maggots. The wet edges were constantly disintegrating; one of our number fell in during the first few hours, and another one within the first twenty-four. What better way of finding out who is a good Samaritan than by calling for help when lying in that mucky mess?

There were no effective means of washing there, yet someone always came to the help of the victims, day or night. POW life brought out the best, as well as the worst in us.

While our cooks prepared a meal, the rest of us did our best to clear the mud and refuse out of the huts, and by six-thirty p.m., when the main party arrived from Changi, the rice was ready, and the huts were at least habitable.

These wooden huts had been built before the fall of Singapore to house refugees arriving from Malaya. They were good huts with a gangway up the center, a platform each side well up off the ground, and another similar one about four feet above that. We had about three feet of floor-space each, some on the top and some on the bottom platform;I was on the top.

The rice we were now issued with was contaminated with lime, and we were only able to eat a few mouthfuls at a time. After the first day or so we learned to sift most of the lime out by shaking it in a mosquito net, but it never made good eating.

The next day, the Japs called us all out on parade, and divided us into various trades, namely bricklayers (denga), carpenters (dicu), painters and labourers. Why, I do not know, as we never did any work needing these trades.

Our company, the bricklayers, was numbered 2B4, and we were instructed to forget our regiments, and in future always think of ourselves as 2B4 company. I was put in charge and told that I would be responsible for the behavior of my company of bricklayers.

A little Jap came up and told us that we should always parade under him. He would be kind to us if we were good obedient boys, etc. As he knew only three or four words of English, it took him half an hour to get this message across to us, mostly by signs. Then he produced a needle and thread, together with a pile of numbered cloth tags, which he commenced with deftness and great speed to sew on the breasts of our shirts. As he sewed ‘101’ on my shirt, I saw how to tie a knot with one hand, and never forgot the lesson.

With our new numbers, we were then lined up for a Jap officer to address us, and speaking in quite good English, he said, ‘You will all be well treated, in the warrior spirit, if you do as you are told. Do not try to get out of the camp, as any POWs found outside the wire will be shot.’

Through it all, it rained, and rained, and rained, so that by nightfall there were over six inches of mud over the whole site. It rained throughout the night, and by morning the latrines had overflowed.

There were several thousand of us in the camp, but only one tap for water; this was allocated to the cooks for two thirds of the day, and for those who wanted a wash it meant queuing up for most of our spare time to get it.

Therefore many remained dirty, or washed in second or third-hand mess tins of water. I had already been without a shave for two days for the first time since leaving the tennis court, and, seeing that most of the earlier residents in this camp were growing beards, I decided to grow one myself.

At Changi we held inspection parades daily, to ensure that we all kept ourselves clean and tidy, but there was nothing like that here. I now saw for the first time the results of too little discipline, as opposed to the other extreme, too much ‘bull’.

The earlier tenants of this camp were mostly Australians, and as individuals I found them to be the nicest fellows in the world, generous, loyal to their ‘cobbers’ and tough as nails. In a crowd, however, they often became an unreasoning, unruly mob, quite uncontrollable and sinking to the level of the lowest types among them.

Our first two nights in the camp had been disturbed into the small hours by shouts and curses emanating from the Aussie huts, where they spent most of the night playing cards. Their N.C.O.s were as bad as the rest, and made no attempt to quell the noisy ones, in order that the rest of us could get some sleep.

As none of them would obey orders, their part of the camp was never tidied up, so after a few days our officers tried to improve matters. Duty officers were appointed each day, and parties of men organized to make an effort to clean up the whole camp. Fresh latrines were dug every other day so that the old ones could be filled in before they became too bad.

On a particular night during that, our first week, a young British duty officer stepped into the din of the Aussie hut next to us at about midnight, and timidly attempted to persuade the men to quieten down; but he was completely ignored, so went off to fetch his superior officer, Major Wilde, and he in turn was ignored.

So in a loud voice he shouted, ‘I am Major Wilde, ....’ He could get no further, as fifty voices screamed abuse at him. I heard some of the phrases; ‘Who made yer wild . . .’, ‘Get stuffed Sonny . . .’; ‘Go and chase yer bloody pommes . . .’ He gave up, and this was the last attempt to bring them into line, so we paddled our own canoe after that.

Chapter 14

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