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After a few minutes, with much incomprehensible shouting of orders, we were herded into a tennis court nearby. When we thought this was full, there were still about a couple of hundred of our men remaining outside. The Japs, swinging their rifle butts, soon convinced us that we had misjudged the court's capacity, and somehow we all got in.

Machine gun posts were quickly established a few yards from each corner of our enclosure, and riflemen were spread along the sides, all with their weapons trained on us. Someone pointed out that they could not have found a better place to shoot us all if we were to be wiped out, as none could climb over the ten foot wire netting sides.

As I looked out towards the big house that had been our B.H.Q., I thought for a moment that I was dreaming. A wide drive swept round the rear, and on it, in full view of both us and his own men, rode the officer in charge of this part of The Imperial Japanese Army. His charger? A captured child's fairy cycle! He pedalled round in circles, knees poking out sideways to miss the handlebars, his long sword dragging along in the dust behind him. Others were queuing behind in orderly fashion for their turn, and the game continued until nightfall. We knew now, at least, that the Japanese were human beings like ourselves.

We soon realized that for the time being we were not going to be shot, and began to stake out our spots in which to spend the night; we all just about found ourselves room to lie down, albeit like sardines.

However, reaction to what we had recently endured soon began to affect our internal workings, and with no toilet facilities, senior N.C.O.s held a conference to decide upon what to do for the best, As no better idea prevailed, we decided to clear one corner of the court and to use this for a latrine. The top was asphalted so there was no chance of digging a hole.

Darkness fell to the sound of protests as men were moved from their sleeping spaces and were trying in vain to squeeze in elsewhere. Many had to sit up with their backs to the wire, as there was simply not enough room for all to lie down.

I still had a little water in my bottle, but those who had lost theirs had to go without a drink, and none of us had eaten for a long time; but that was the least of our worries.

The nights in this area are cold at that time of the year, but although only wearing vest and thin tropical shirt, I was soon sleeping the sleep of exhaustion. I awoke shivering in the gray dawn, and picked my way over prone figures to find the toilet corner.

Eventually I reached it. but one look convinced me that I would rather burst than go there, where six or seven hundred men, many of them with diarrhea, had been going all night.

About an hour later the Japs opened a gate, letting a few men out into the bushes at a time, and my turn came round in time to avoid my having to burst. We were at the same time permitted to fill our bottles water from the anti-malarial ditch which ran nearby.

Later, we discovered that there were dead bodies in the ditch a few yards upstream, but even had we known, there was none other, and one cannot live for long without water in the tropics. Presently, a few tins of army biscuits were pushed to us through the wire. We shared them out; they are as hard as stone, and those with dentures broke their share against the iron posts, and sucked them until soft enough to swallow.

There was no shade, and as the sun rose in the sky our position rapidly became untenable for Europeans; many became unconscious from heatstroke. At midday the Japs let us out under the trees and we moved out carrying those who had collapsed, then flopping on the grass with relief.

I am fair, and had not dared remove my shirt in the direct sun. Now, in the shade of the trees, I stripped down to the waist to feel the air round my foetid torso.
'Whatever have you been up to Sarge?’
Looking up I saw one of my neighbors pointing at my chest, and following his eyes I could hardly believe what I saw. The front of my body looked as though a tin of maroon paint had been poured over it, causing it to run down in tears and curtains.

I rubbed my hand on my chest, but apart from a few places where the blood had burst through the skin, the stains were indelible. It was to be about a year before those stains finally faded.

Then, one of our guards noticed my condition, and called me over to take me to see the N.C.O. in charge of his watch. He sent us both over to see our doctor, who was in the hut where our R.A.P. had finally been established after the fire; the Japs evidently thought that I might have some contagious condition.

The R.A.P. was a very distressing place. As there was very little equipment, and only one or two beds left after the fire, severely wounded men were lying all over the hard floor, and our medical staff were only able to administer first aid. One of the orderlies told me that most of the patients would only have stood a fifty-fifty chance with proper drugs and equipment, but under these circumstances they were doomed to die.

The busy doctor had little time to spare for me. Before even noticing my condition, he asked for my field dressing (every soldier carries one). He then took a look at my lurid skin, and told me that there was no disease, but that capillaries under my skin had burst during the fighting, during a time of ‘severe nervous tension and physical strain’.

I returned to the sentry on guard duty (the guard who originally accompanied me to check the dead around the trenches had returned), and reluctantly signaled that I was ready to return to the others. He refused to let me pass, and I had perforce to spend the night in the R.A.P.

The heartbreaking sounds of the dying made me realize that we who were whole still had blessings to count. An hour after daybreak the sentry received orders that I was to go back with the others, and I entered the tennis court just in time to receive my ration of one biscuit.

The second day we were again let out under the trees at midday, and this time I noticed some hard-shelled fruit on one of the trees. Having climbed up and picked one of these, I removed the shell and found a jelly-like fruit inside. A voice from the ground called out, ‘Don't eat those, they're poisonous!’ I smelled it, and the smell was good. It tasted even better, and I gathered all I could reach, and ate them.

They were, as I later discovered, mangosteens. Others saw me eating them, and the tree was quickly stripped. This principle of ‘taste it and see’ served me well all the days of my captivity, not without some narrow squeaks, however.

The Japs did not seem to be so trigger happy now; they were probably beginning to realize that, with thousands of miles of sea between us and our allies, there was nowhere for us to escape to.

Back in the court again, and with most of us having diarrhea by now, conditions became bad; with many unable to reach the toilet corner in time, there was now nowhere clean to sit, and we could scarcely see for the flies which had bred in the faeces.

That night the stench hung over us like a vile blanket, and it was hopeless to think of sleep. When morning came we saw that our guards had migrated further afield during the night, no doubt unable to stand the smell. Probably because of the condition of our surroundings, we were moved out under the trees much earlier that morning.

At this time the Japs' attitude began to change, and some of them tried to converse with those strange long-nosed creatures, as we must have seemed to them. Conversations did not develop very far, as their English vocabulary consisted of no more than ‘O.K.’, ‘Numbar one’, and ‘No good!’

The day wore on and in the afternoon the sun became overcast. Within a few minutes the whole sky had clouded over and a gusty wind sprang up. As the rain began to fall Japs let us crawl under the raised floor of the nearby house.

This was the start of the wet season here, not continual rain as in monsoon climates, but rather, sharp daily rainstorms, far heavier than we had ever experience in Britain. The so-called anti-malarial drains had been dug to get this storm-water away quickly, so that the flooded areas where mosquitos could breed did not form. (The various strains of malaria parasite spend an essential part of their life-cycle in the anopheles mosquito.)

When the rain ceased, we moved back into the tennis court. The rain, far from cleaning away the filth, had spread it from the toilet corner in an even layer over everything. We had thought conditions were intolerable before, but they were now indescribably worse, and our guards patrolled wearing improvised surgical masks.

At long last another dawn raised me from the stupor into which I had descended. The Japs passed in a few tins of biscuits, and told us to be ready to move off at nine a.m.

Without regret, we moved from the court, and formed up outside the R.A.P. The surviving wounded had already been moved out of the building, and were lined up beside the road on stretchers.

Although most of the worst cases had died by now, many of those we were to carry were very ill indeed, with broken limbs, burns, unstitched wounds and internal injuries. It is impossible to carry a man on a stretcher without some jolting, and the patients suffered greatly on the long journey which lay ahead.

We paired ourselves off, all the fittest men, according to size. At first we carried the stretchers knee-high, the handles suspended at arms' length, as this is the most comfortable method for the patient. We soon found out, however, that we were not strong enough to keep this up, and had to change to shoulder high.

There were many of these wounded, and our turns on the stretcher came round all too quickly. After about five miles, many became too weak to take a turn, and our rest spells became shorter and shorter. I had just reached the point when I felt I could go no further, when what seemed like a miracle happened; a fleet of army lorries pulled up alongside us, and we were allowed to load our wounded onto them.

We were able to converse with the British drivers, and they told us they had not been ill-treated, and that as far as they knew, we were the only ones who had had such a rough time since the island fell. They themselves did not even have guards with them.

As we moved off again, we began to obtain our first insight into the Japanese character; incredibly short tempered, no patience, childlike emotions, and lack of inhibitions; but no lack of intelligence, as we soon realized. I learned my first Japanese words on this journey, I also learned that some words were best avoided.

During one of our short roadside rests, a passing guard overheard the word ‘Jap’ being used by one of our boys, and running over he hit the man with his rifle butt. I was the nearest N.C.O. and jumped up to ask the guard why he had done this. ‘Dammeda’, he shouted; ‘Jap dammi-dammi. Nippon O.K.’

Dammeda and dammi meant, as far as we could make out, no-good, and we very quickly learned to stop saying ‘Jap’ altogether. Eventually we used the word ‘Nip’, as they did not seem to object to this abbreviation.

After travelling a dozen miles or so without water and in our weak condition, we became stretched out in a long thin column, in spite of the continual shouting and prodding that the men behind received. It thus happened that when my part of the column was passing a Chinese biscuit factory (designated by a huge picture of biscuits hanging outside), there was not a guard in sight.

The factory door was locked, but we soon broke it open and helped ourselves to a tin of biscuits each, which we shared out as we marched the road, and threw the tins away before our captors saw us with them. We soon heard screams of rage coming from behind as the Japs caught some of our comrades in the act, but as they told us later, they only received a beating.

The guards told us they were taking us to Changi, which was the area of the old civilian prison; this meant a journey of over twenty miles. As we approached one small town, we saw trenches dug alongside the road. with our dead still lying in them where they fell. They looked as though they had been attacked with flame-throwers, and were badly burned. One lad was still gripping his rifle, and the butt was half burned away. These men had the guts to face flame-throwing tanks with only their rifles, and had held their positions to the end.

As we passed through several small towns and villages, we saw that practically every dwelling had a home-made rising-sun flag hanging out of the window. Although the Chinese hated the Japs because of the Sino-Japanese war, the Orientals believe the reed that bends with the wind does not break, so most of them kow-towed to the Japs.

I believe that in those early days, the native Malays genuinely welcomed our conquerers, as they believed they were being freed from colonialism. The population of Singapore is mostly Chinese, however, and their energy and business acumen was gradually ousting the more indolent natives.

The last lap of that journey was only accomplished by the stronger among us carrying the weaker ones; nevertheless, at six o’clock that evening we did all arrive at a hutted encampment on the far side of Changi Jail.

Our cooks and other headquarters staff had not been captured with us, as cooking is not carried out in the front line; we now caught up with them for the first time. They told us that they had been sent straight to Changi after being captured, and had been waiting for us all this time.

The sick whom we had put on lorries had arrived before us, and forecast our arrival, so the cooks had prepared a good hot meal for us. Although it had seemed like weeks since we had seen a square meal, most of us were too tired to eat, and that was unfortunate, at it apparently comprised the last of the tinned food that the regiment held.

We were allotted quarters in palm-leaf huts that had originally been built to house casual workers from adjacent rubber estates, now unattended like all the other rubber plantations. Most of us ached too much to sleep after the long march carrying our comrades.

The next morning we began to take stock of our new surroundings, and found out that we were only a few hundred yards from the sea as the crow flies, but it was accessed by a road that followed a tortuous route through a mangrove swamp. These swamps consist of trees that stand high out of the water on roots that form grotesque shapes, looking like huge spiders.

Between us and the commencement of this swamp, there was a coconut grove. We were told that the Japs allowed us to visit the sea once a day, and had provided a flag of identification for bathing parties to carry. As the size of the party had to be limited, it would be a few days before our turn came round.

The camp covered many acres, so Sgt. Atlas and I went off on a tour of exploration, my main object being to look for any object that 'might come in useful' during the days to come.

We found a deserted shop the other side of our camp, and in it I found a bucket charcoal fire, a bag of charcoal and a teapot. These fires were the universal method of cooking out there, and consisted of a bucket lined with fire-clay, with a small aperture low in the side. Air is fanned into the aperture producing a fierce heat, and a very effective cooking stove, but they are heavy; I carried my treasures back to our hut.

We also found a stream during our reconnoitering, and later on that day I took my clothes over and washed them out 'dhobi fashion'; that is without soap, dipping them in the water and bashing them on a rock. Cheap on soap but expensive on buttons. Drying was no problem, half an hour in the sun was quite enough.

Our kit-bags, containing spare clothes and personal possessions, were handed in at the commencement of the fighting, and these were now handed back to us. Mine had been opened, and several items taken, the most important being my best open razor. In the years to come, when I was shaving twenty or thirty friends each day, it would have been invaluable; now, I was left with the old first-world-war razor that I had also taken into battle with me.

Our diet now consisted of little else besides boiled rice, and our cooks had not yet learned the right way to cook it. To those who have taken their rice only in the form of rice pudding, or tenderly boiled with curry, ours, just boiled in water and served with hard lumps in the middle of every grain, was far from appetizing. Yet before long men were squabbling over the remains in the dixie after all had been served.

Thinking that sparrow stew would liven up this monotonous diet, I rigged up a trap from bricks, sticks and string. There were thousands of sparrows about, but although I baited my trap with precious grains of rice, in the crowded camp someone would always come by to disturb my prey before I could pull the string, so I had to give up.

On our fourth day in Changi camp, our turn came round for a visit to the sea, and we all enjoyed a swim from the beautiful sandy beach on the other side of the mangroves, which only appeared at low tide.

I found a towel floating in on the tide, and the name of one of the ships from our convoy was embroidered on it. I later heard that this ship had been sunk after leaving Singapore harbour; it had been heavily laden with refugees, mostly women and children. My two towels had been among the items missing from my kit, so I was delighted to find this one.

The next day we were warned to get ready for a Japanese General to inspect us. By the time we had all spruced ourselves up we were told that the visit was off. The Japs were like that, and the mystery was, how did they accomplish so much?

Nothing seemed to be carried out to a schedule; an appointment kept to within twenly-four hours was good going. The phrase ‘brute force and ignorance’ seemed to suit them, as they tackled what looked to us like an impossibly huge task, without apparently any plan of action.

When they seemed to be getting nowhere, everyone from the most senior officer downwards shouted at, and perhaps bashed, his junior, and somehow, with frantic tearing about, the object would be achieved. Perhaps it demonstrated the Quantum Theory; with so many hopping up and down so quickly and all the time, the pieces would eventually fall into place!

The Jap General turned up only one day late, though we were lined up in the blazing sun for hours before he finally appeared. Poor old Colour Sergeant Gold stood near me; he was sandy-haired with milk-white skin, and freckles. Although he was wearing a hat, as he stood there blisters appeared on his face and hands, and he was unable to stand by the time we were dismissed; he never became acclimatized, and within a short time, lost his reason. He died a month or two later.

We had no salt, so a party was organized to carry up water from the sea and boil it down. However, salt never became plentiful in Changi through shortage of fuel.

Rumours were now becoming a part of our daily life, and the general greeting was, ‘What's the griff?’, or ‘What's the latest bore-hole'?’. Our Pioneer Platoon excavated deep holes for latrines, and it was here that most of these tales started, hence a rumour became a ‘borehole’.

At that time we had not been disappointed so often, and the wish being father of the thought, we were disposed to give credence to the most optimistic stories that were passing round, such as an armada of Allied planes being on its way.

Chapter 12

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