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The fifteenth of June saw clouds of smoke drifting up from the direction of Singapore harbour. Great excitement and rumours of Allied landings. Then the Japs told us that Chinese fifth-columnists had set fire to a ship in the harbor. Four days later we saw ack-ack fire, and thought that our planes must have arrived at last, but this time it transpired that the Japs were only trying out captured guns.

That same evening a Major Swanson spent the evening in our hut relating cricketing anecdotes. In civilian life he was a cricketing commentator and journalist. His talk was very interesting and much appreciated by us all. This was the last of a series of talks, debates, quizzes and impromptu concerts which we held to pass away the long dark evenings, and to keep our spirits up.

On the eighteenth of June, the Japs ordered that no more entertainment was to be held by the prisoners, and that we were not to gather together in large groups. They had been surprised to find our morale remained high, and the purpose of the latest imposition was probably to impair this.

If so the result was the very opposite, as we thought they must be expecting an attack, and daily half expected parachutes to fall down from the sky. If only we had known the truth of what the future held for us, many of us would have given up hope

Passing over that part of our hut where I slept ran an electric cable which fed the Jap quarters. Each night for some time, I had been climbing on to the roof to pull on this cable to stretch it, so that every day it sagged closer and closer to the roof. At last came the night when it touched; I had a black-market bulb, wire and insulation tape ready, and now had to await the next power cut, and as these were not infrequent one came two nights later.

Slitting the insulation in the dark and inserting my two wires was a tricky job, especially as I did not know when the juice would come on again. I had no bulb-holder, so I had to attach the wires to the bulb with insulation tape. Neither did I have a switch, so an insulation tape arrangement had to be made for that too; thus switching the light on and off was a rather involved affair; but now we did have electric light, and we were I think the only prisoners ever to have this amenity.

However it was a mixed blessing. To make the ‘nook’ light-proof and prevent our captors from discovering what I had done, it was also nearly air-tight, and in the tropical climate the heat became unbearable after a short while; so our electric light was not used very much.

Padding through the germ-laden mud every day, my injured toe was not progressing very well, and when our doctor saw it he said I would lose my foot if I did not return to Changi.

I was mad to heal this wound, and did not want to leave all my friends behind; anyway, however bad the camp might be, River Valley was now ‘home’. Prison camp atmosphere is impossible to describe. It took a long time to learn whom one could trust and rely upon; which guards were friendly and the ones with whom no liberties could be taken.

All the narrow squeaks one had in the camp made it seem like a friend when the time came to part. River Valley was a pretty bad camp, so it seems strange therefore, that even now I can look back upon it with a degree of nostalgia. It is probably that through the muck and pain there shines the glow of comrades I knew I could safely trust with my life.

Men at River Valley had given me the pleasant task of bringing messages and presents to friends left behind in Changi. First I called on dear old Sgt. Clarry Pellet. Coming from a small Cambridgeshire village, he had worked with farm horses all his life, and called all his friends ‘Me ole beauty’. Len Dudley had given me a roll of tobacco to give to him, and Clarry could not have been more pleased had I told him he was free to go home. He was alas, never to see his beloved horses again. His name is now preserved for posterity with several others on a brass plaque in a tiny church, not far from my home.

My father had a silver ‘Omega’ pocket watch which he carried all through the first world war, and it was still going strong. When I was mobilized in August 1939 he bought me a similar pocket watch. It was now the only thing from home I treasured; during my first night in hospital, I dropped it on the floor and irreparably damaged it.

When I awoke the next morning, I found I had been bitten all over by bed-bugs, horrible things nearly a quarter of an inch long, and the ones I found were bloated by my blood. After biting they gave off a horrible sickly smell, and it soon became a familiar accompaniment to the remainder of our POW days.

Although food was no better here than in our last camp, conditions were clean and dry, so after five days my toe improved to the extent that I was allowed to walk on it for a short time each day. The first thing I did was my washing. Everything except my towel dried quickly, so I decided to return half an hour later for that. Alas, when I came back it had gone.

The fifth of July was a red letter day, as we were issued with the first cards to 'write' home. They were printed thus:

Your mails and (.....) are received with thanks
My health is(good, unwell, poor)
I am ill in hospital
I am working for pay (I am paid a monthly salary)
My best regards to........
Please see that .......is taken care

The interpreter had left the preposition out altogether rather than end a sentence with it. We were told to print our cards, and I printed mine in lower case letters. I was very upset when my card was returned to me with the message that I should have used capitals, and that I could not have another card, so must miss my turn. I need not have worried as none of the cards got through. It was Sunday, and I was solaced by going to a church service conducted by the Australian padre.

While I had been away, a first class concert party had been formed, and was now able to present shows of a very high standard. Female clothing and make-up had been acquired or made, so the concerts were not without heroines, many of them indistinguishable from the real thing, on the stage.

The current production was called ‘Camp Pie’, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was a fair orchestra comprising mostly home-made instruments, and many songs written in the camp were sung. These were either nostalgic pieces reminding us of home, optimistic songs foretelling rapid release, or comic pieces, mainly about food.

We never lost our sense of humour thank goodness, and it carried most of us through our darkest days. We were to share camps with other nationalities who had lost their sense of humour, and watched them die of complaints that most of us were able to shrug off.

There was something to do most evenings in Changi; church, quizzes, debates, competitions and lectures; there was never to be another camp like it. Had we been allowed to stay there, many would have returned who now lie under far away soil.

The following Sunday, after going to see Clarry, who was far from well, I attended Church again. The sermon was so effective that I went straight back and shared out with the sick the two tins of fish I had brought back from River Valley.

I was discharged from hospital on the seventeenth of July, and returned to the sergeants’ hut in our regimental area, handing the remaining tinned food and sugar I had into the mess. I was pleasantly surprised later when Cyril Flatt handed me one dollar, thirty cents from passing the hat round.

I was put on light duty, which then consisted of making ‘Attap’ or palm thatch, for repairing our huts. Although very effective roofing, attap makes very good fodder for termites and other insects, so it constantly needed renewing. Also in the tropical storms pieces would often blow away. All the roofs in Changi were made of attap, so a lot of repairs were always needed.

Some men collected palm leaves, some split bamboo, and others actually wove these materials into the ‘tiles’ which were fixed on the roof with ties which themselves were split from another cane called ‘Rhotan’.

The ‘tiles’ are made by taking a piece of split bamboo three feet long, bending the spear-shaped palm leaves over and along it, then weaving a thin sliver of green bamboo in and out every folded leaf to hold it in place.

As I recovered, so I became hungry, and our rations were very small. There was a clump of fruitless banana ‘trees’ behind the sergeants’ hut, and dozens of pointed snails as big as whelks were feeding on them. Pondering on the fact that we were getting no meat ration, I remembered that the French ate snails, so felt sure that these whelk-like creatures would be edible. I gathered a mess-tin half full, washed them and put them on to boil. As I tried to cook them so the water turned to very thick slime; in spite of changing the water several times I had to scrape each one in the end.

A more unappetizing dish would be hard to imagine. I tried to eat one and found it so tough that my teeth slipped off it. I swallowed some of them whole in rice until I retched, and then threw the remainder away.

Changi had now been a POW camp for four months. Becoming prisoner does not change a man’s underlying nature, but rather accentuates it. By now the types who would have been layabouts or criminals at home, had got together; gangs roamed the camp at night, stealing from their comrades, and they sold their swag to natives outside the camp perimeter.

Therefore each regiment organized a guard to patrol the area at night to try to keep these vermin away. After serving my turn for the first time, and walking the camp all night without the protection of my mosquito net, I went down with a temperature of one-hundred and four degrees, and was told that I had dengue (pronounced ‘dengi’), which is a mosquito carried disease. Although it can be severe, it usually only lasts for about ten days, and unlike some forms of malaria it is not recurrent.

As I recovered from the fever, I did some sketches of the camp. Unfortunately these were not easy to conceal from the Japs and I had to destroy them when we left Changi.

I had only commenced writing my diary when we were captured, so I had no record of dates and events up to that time. Sgt. Huey Moy had always kept a diary, and now let me borrow it. I was thus able to write up the chronology of events leading up to the fall of Singapore, adding my own comments while the events were still fresh in my mind. Huey later destroyed his diary, so I believe mine was the only one to survive.

In order to instill a competitive spirit, we again organized ourselves into platoons. It was decided to run a platoon garden, and our officers managed to obtain some vegetable seeds. I put Pte. Naitin in charge and he took great pride in it. We grew what we called ‘Singapore Spinach’, a quick-growing, tasteless convolvulus-like plant, and sweet potato plants which never bore ‘fruit’, so we ate the leaves.

None of the vegetables out there compared remotely with ours at home; such things as sprouts, cauliflowers and cabbages were unknown. I made a small garden outside our hut, transferring any pretty weeds I found into it. I also found a coconut by the sea which had commenced to grow, and this was given pride of place. It soon looked like a giant aspidistra.

Joe Viner was our Pioneer Sergeant and thus responsible for sanitary arrangements, together with any other job which came along, from a collapsing cookhouse to a flooded hut. Weighing about twenty stone, he cruised through his duties like a battleship. He had been a stonemason in private life, and performed his duties well, even though he ruled his domain with an iron rod.

His command of language was rather limited, however, and much of his time was spent in giving serious replies to frivolous questions from mess-mates. Now and then Joe would ‘tumble’, and then woe betide the joker. Although fat, Joe was as strong as a lion, and had a very quick temper. He liked to talk ponderously, and to use long words; he also liked them to mean what he chose them to mean.

Never admitting that he did not know a word’s meaning it was very easy to pull his leg. ‘Joe, have you decided the designation of the new latrine you’re putting up for the officers’? .... 'They’re plenty strong enough without that', and then with a roar ‘Anyway, you look after your own qualifications and leave me to look after mine’

Joe’s sayings were bywords throughout the regiment; ‘Oose bin a-casting astertions about me?’ ‘They’re a-dropping on 'em mates, they’re them in-sanitary bombs’. Yet those who fought alongside Joe told us that he was steady as a rock and an inspiration to all those under him.

I found myself next to Joe in the mess, and he had developed bad ringworm, one of the curses of our existence during the coming years; being contagious I soon found that the complaint had spread to me. I saw Lionel our trusty medical sergeant, and he gave me a supply of sulphur and lime to rub in.

Scraping the infected area with my open razor to allow the treatment to penetrate I applied the mixture, which although painful, soon cleared up the trouble. Because each attack only required a tiny amount to heal it, my supply lasted, and after that, as soon as I found I had an attack, I always gave myself the same treatment, and thus remained clear until the end of our captivity.

The lives of some of our boys were made a misery with this ringworm, as once it became well established it was very difficult to eradicate. In its advanced state, huge red circles covered the body, overlapping one another. When one began to fade a fresh one would begin within the same area thus perpetuating the trouble. As they itched abominably, it was usually not long before the constant scratching started the tropical ulcers which were to cause many amputations and deaths.

Since my boots were beginning to show signs of wear I decided to make myself a pair of wooden sandals for about camp, so that I could keep my boots for long marches. I was able to find some suitable wood, and carved the soles to fit the soles of my feet, nailing a piece of strap from my army equipment across to complete them. I soon became accustomed to wearing these and they served me well.

It would of course have been easier to have gone barefoot, but our doctors had now forbidden this, owing to the scourge of hookworm. This parasite lurked in the dust until trodden on, when it bored into the sole of the foot, and after tunneling through the leg, it finally penetrated the intestines. Once there it was almost impossible to eradicate, and the disease was a major cause of debility and early death among the Malay and Tamil population.

A more pleasant member of the local fauna was the firefly. Although I did not see any of them from close up, I never tired from watching them on the trees during the dark evenings. In their myriads they would start to glow as darkness descended. Then, as if orchestrated, they would all commence to flash in unison.

Neither were the nights quiet; although many of the noises were unidentifiable, crickets, lizards and frogs, we knew. There were also great bats known as flying foxes. Luckily they did not suck blood, but lived on fruit. We also heard the cry of owls and other birds of prey, but we never saw them. The most hateful sound of all was the high-pitched note of the accursed mosquito. Now, many years later, I cannot rest if I hear one in the room.

Chapter 18

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