大象传媒

Every morning I woke up early. The sun rises were beautiful and we felt hopeful that conditions were going to improve. Although we had big airy huts and we had plenty of space, we found it a long way to walk from one place to the other. For the first time Mary and I did not live in the same hut as the missionaries. They arrived a few days after us with the rest of the women and children from Palembang. From then on Mrs.Colley looked after Mischa as Mary was not well.
The first few days the
nursing sisters were kept busy trying to help the new people from Bencoolen. Most of them had malaria but we had no quinine to give them. The Jap guards wanted to be friendly and they always asked us if we were married and if not, why not. A dreadful sickness known as Muntok fever spread through the camp. There was a bird which we heard at night and the local people called it the death bird. The sick
were looked after in two huts, one for the very ill and dying, known as the hospital, and the other, known as the convalescent hut, where there were also some very sick people.
I did regular hours of duty with other nursing sisters. We had to draw water from the well for all the patients. It was very tiring work and often the rope broke. The water smelt horrid but we had to use it. Occasionally we were allowed to go to a nearby stream for a bathe, but the only time I did so I became ill with fever and dysentry.
Outside the camp near where we emptied the garbage there was a cinnamon tree. We sometimes chipped off a piece of bark - this, when pounded with a stone and sprinkled on our rice, gave us a welcome change in flavour.

After a few weeks in Muntok the latrines were in a disgusting state - there was no drainage - just a large tank that rapidly filled up to almost overflowing, with huge maggots crawling about. One had to crouch on bamboo slats, a foot on each side with the foul tank below. Some of the women volunteered to clean out the tank, using buckets and emptying them outside the camp.
Ena Murray and her sister Norah Chambers and Audrey Owens were amongst these splendid people who did this filthy and nauseating task. They were given a few cents each week to buy extra food. Years later I still had nightmares of this seething mass of maggots.

There was not enough wood sent in for the cooking, so a wood squad was formed to go outside with a guard and search for logs ect. Most of the women were too weak to walk for carrying bundles of wood but the children helped to do this. It was here that the Japs said that we must dig the graves for our dead. Some of the stronger women and young boys became the regular grave diggers.
The water in the well by the hospital hut got very low and some of the other wells dried up, so there was the additional chore of fetching water from the stream. By this time we were all getting weaker and everything one did was an effort. Most people developed fever and the death rate rose rapidly. But however bad it got we never gave up hope and people were always saying 'it cannot be long now'.
Christmas 1944 came and went, very few efforts were made this time. We were mentally and physically tired. We could not sing even if we had tried, as most of us had lost our voices and were apathetic to what was going on around us - even when our friends died.
Mary Jenkin improved and came out of hospital. She was still weak when one day the ration lorry arrived. It had come from the men's camp and beside the rations came bundles belonging to the men who had died and whose wives were with us. Mary was handed a pair of boots and a small case - evidently her husband had died a few weeks earlier. Mary was very brave - quiet and unable to cry, she was determined to keep going for the sake of her son Robert, who was 21 and in England the last time she had seen him.

Mary and I were just about at the end of our tether when we heard that we were to move again to another camp. We were told we could go with the first batch if we liked, so we decided to do so, glad to get away from Muntok. I felt there was something evil about the place, even when we saw the beautiful clear sky and the dawn break with all the most lovely colours that I have ever seen, there was something sinister about it all.
We were all ready to go - then there was the usual waiting about for hours before we finally boarded a small ship. We were so crowded that we could hardly move, all packed close to one another on the open deck. Fortunately it did not rain and we remained like this all night. We sailed at dawn and sat on the hard deck in the blazing sun with aching backs. Once more across the sea and up that wretched river. Just after dark we stopped and got herded onto a train. The Japs insisted that we left our bundles and cases behind on the ship and we wondered if we should ever see our few precious belongings again.

Mary was feeling ill and could hardly stagger along; I felt shaky but managed to get her in with the hospital patients on the train. These were lying on the floor of a goods wagon. I spent the night in another crowded compartment sitting on a hard bench. There was no room to straighten one's legs, let alone lie down. We were in pitch darkness with all the windows closed. A poor girl called Gladys was at my feet. She spent the entire night moaning and clutching hold of us, saying that someone was trying to kill her. In the morning we were given a tiny loaf made of tapioca flour. It was good to have something to chew but we wished it could have been three times larger.
When it was daylight the train stopped and the guards let us get off for a few minutes and we climbed down onto the railway track where there was a water tank, but no houses or water to be seen. I was asked to go along and help with the sick in the goods wagon and was only too thankful to move away from Gladys. Mary and the other patients were in a closed truck which had previously been used for coal. It was filthy and very hot because the Japs made us keep the steel doors shut. There was a large pot of water in the truck and it slopped over and mixed with the coal dust on the floor where the patients were lying. Dr.Thomson, Miss MacKinnon and Mrs.Rover were helping to look after the sick and there was hardly room to move without treading on someone. The patients were mostly Dutch nuns suffering from fever and diarrhoea and asking for bedpans all the time. These we had to empty through a small opening in the door, which had to be completely shut whenever we got near a village or a station. The smell and heat were almost beyond endurance.

A day and two nights passed in this atmosphere. The little Jap guard in charge of us did his best to give us some air, but the steel door of the truck was too heavy for us to move. Once he handed us a bunch of bananas. We only had one stop during the day when we were given a little rice. At the end of the second night we were bundled out before dawn into torrential rain. We had to carry the sick who were unable to walk and everyone got soaked to the skin. We had to lift the stretcher cases along a road and up a steep slippery bank to a warehouse. It was still dark and there were eight people to carry. We were exhausted and shivering by the time we had finished. We remained in the warehouse for about an hour and were given a small cup of soup and some rice. It was now daylight and lorries came to take us to our destination. Once more we had to lift the stretcher cases and carry them down the slippery bank in the early morning air. Our clothes had dried on us and our legs were caked in mud, but it was a joy to know that we had left that ghastly train behind.

After a long drive we turned off the road and into a drive through a rubber estate. We stopped in a clearing near a river - the end of our journey had come. Three days and two nights without sleep - I climbed down from the truck and was about to collapse when Dr.Thomson came up to me with a drink of saki. They brought me round, so I was able to keep going a little longer.
The journey for the other two groups of people from Muntok was equally bad. Altogether seven people died during the journey, while others collapsed on arrival and never recovered.

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