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We now had two working parties leaving the camp daily; one was raising sunken parts of the embankment, the other, repairing wooden bridges. These abounded in this part of the country, where many ravines had to be traversed, and mountains byepassed.

On the twentieth of June, a prisoner fell off one of these bridges and suffered a very bad leg injury. He was carried back into camp, and on a table in the medical hut Dr. Gotla operated without anesthesia, there being no analgesics or anesthetics in the camp by this time.

On the twenty-third, our C.O. and Sgt. Pitkin (our medical sergeant) were ordered to go down river by barge to Chunkai to draw wages and rations for us. They returned four days later with nothing but a sack of soya beans.

None of us had ever seen these before, but someone said that they were very nourishing, and would provide some of the vitamins and protein missing from our diet.

No-one knew how to cook them, but they looked somewhat like haricot beans, so we cooked them for about half an hour. They were by then still harder than boxwood, and the best teeth in the camp could not crack them.

After some experimentation, it was found that by simmering them for twenty-four hours, they became just about soft enough to scrunch up. We cooked them in this way as and when firewood was available.

I discovered later that the Thais did not cook them whole, but ground them up with water in small stone mills, and the white paste that came out was cooked as a batter. Some of our cooks later found a way of soaking them, and then grinding them into a flour which they made into sour bread.

Rations began to improve slightly, with the issue of a small amount of meat brought in by barge from Chunkai. The worst of our sick went down to Chunkai by barge, and fit men came to replace them on the return journey.

These barges were hired from the Thais, who also manned them. They had obviously been made originally to be pushed through the water by the big ‘T’ handled punt poles, as indeed some of them still were. The ones hired by the Japs all had paraffin engines, but in the swiftly flowing and meandering parts of the river, skilful use of the pole was still needed, as the engines were not powerful enough to drag these heavy boats, often loaded down to the gunwales.

Each boat had a running-board along each side; the boatmen walked along this to the front of the boat, dropped their poles into the water, and walked back along the board, ‘T’ piece to his chest ‘walking’ his boat upstream; very hard work it looked too, and they kept it up all day.Those boats with no engine had two ‘pushers’, one walking along each side, and keeping the craft straight with no-one at the tiller must have taken quite a lot of skill.

On the fourth of July, we were informed that there was to be no more meat sent up from Chunkai, instead we would be issued with beef on the hoof. I was still working as camp tinsmith, carpenter and general handyman, so the C.O. asked me to add ‘camp butcher’ to the list, and never having been short of confidence, I of course accepted.

The next day I was told to bring one of the cooks with me as we were going down the line a couple of camps to collect two oxen.
After a few kilometres we arrived at a Tamil camp, and outside this we found our two oxen tied to a tree. They were very ancient beasts of burden with most of their hair worn off where plough and cart had rubbed during the years.

They were not without sores either. The ropes they were tied with were far too short to lead them by, and we only had one piece of string between us. The cook and I agreed that the only thing we could do was to kill one of the animals then and there and carry it back, while the Jap led the live one back on our string.

After some demur, our guard agreed, and I asked him if I could go in and ask the Tamils to lend me a knife and axe or hammer. He said he would go himself, and left us outside the wire, unguarded.

Later, he signaled for us to bring one of the animals into the camp, and we found him standing by a post with a hook in it where we could tie the ox while we killed it. He had a knife and hammer in his hand. So we dragged our reluctant charge to the post and tied it up.

Until now the camp had appeared to be deserted, but suddenly we were aware of dozens of furtive figures appearing from the nearby huts. Some were staggering on fleshless legs, most were crawling on hands and knees, too weak to stand. We were soon completely surrounded by these poor Tamils whose shrunken lips, but still white teeth, gave them the appearance of walking dead. Eyes and cheeks were sunken, bodies fleshless. Belsen could not have looked worse; I shall never forget them.

Our treatment of the Tamil workers on the Malayan rubber plantations before the war may have left much to be desired for all I know, and they may have been justified in welcoming the Japs as their saviours. Now, in these forced labor camps they were quite unable to cope. Having been told exactly what to do all their lives, they were incapable of organizing themselves in the way we could.

Japs only issued food rations to those who could do a full day’s work. We shared ours out between fit and sick. The Tamils each ate their own, so the sick men starved. Since, sooner or later, all fell sick, inexorably, they nearly all died, if not of their sickness, then of starvation.

I was told that the Japs had written this camp off and left them to starve; they just sent lorries in periodically to collect the dead and burn them in the jungle.

After the experience I had already gained in killing a pig, I managed much better this time, finding that both animals ‘worked’ more or less the same way. The skinning proved the most awkward part of the work, and I was unable to avoid getting the carcass smothered with dirt off the ground. While I worked, every movement was followed by hungry eyes, as the Tamils squatted in a circle around us. They were waiting for the skin and entrails of this old-age pensioner we had slaughtered.

I cut the skin into as many pieces as I could, and gave them one each. We tied the skinned ox’s legs together, and slinging it on a bamboo pole we moved off with our load. I looked over my shoulder and saw two Tamils squabbling over a piece of skin from the head with the horns attached.

It gives an indication of the condition of these animals, that we arrived back in camp not unduly tired, though having carried the equivalent of a side of beef each for a distance of about three kilometers. The cooks found it necessary to cook the flesh until it separated like string from the bones, and every man received a tablespoonful of beef broth with his evening rice for three days.

A week later, I killed the second ox, but after going to the trouble of killing and skinning it, I found its lungs were eaten away by disease, so we had to bury it.

I suppose the reason that there were no horses in Thailand is that there is hardly any grass. During the rainy season some coarse grass did spring up here and there, but this disappeared completely in the dry season.

The oxen and water-buffalo however, seemed to be able to exist on rice straw alone, so it was no wonder they were so thin. The carts these animals pulled were long, but only three feet wide, so made for traversing the narrow jungle paths. The two wheels were untyred, with the four wooden felloes (rims) tied together with rawhide. As they wore, the wheels became nearly square as the softer long grain in the middle of each felloe wore away more quickly than the end grain, and they would rock crazily from side to side as they went.

The drivers did not carry a stick or whip to urge their beast on; instead they sat at the front of the cart, hand on the tail. If the pace slackened from the usual dead slow to nearly stop, then a twist of the tail would liven the animal up. These same beasts pulled the ploughs, which did not look to be much more than pointed branches to be dragged through the mud under water.

In this camp was the Jap office covering the whole area. On the eighth of July the Japs who worked there brought some native spirit into their quarters, and at nightfall they moved out of their huts the worse for drink and evidently looking for trouble.

Experience had taught us to keep out of the way when they were like this; however to our surprise they made for the huts where our Korean guards slept, and started shouting what to us sounded like nasty remarks at the Koreans. Several of these left their quarters and started to scrap with the Japs, and the fighting continued until the N.C.O. in charge of the engineers came over and sorted them out.

These squabbles became fairly frequent from now on, as the hitherto latent dislike which had always existed between Japs and Koreans broke through to the surface.

As camp handyman I was kept very busy with jobs which included making stretchers for the doctor, baking tins for the cookhouse, sharpening gramophone needles for the Japs, and mending their torches. These contained a small dynamo which was ratchet operated by means of a lever on the side. A Dutchman brought his ring for me to remove the diamond for him to sell. He wanted to keep the ring itself as it was given to him by his wife.

On the tenth of July I received two more letters, one from my sister written in June 1942, and one from my mother dated the following November. The rainy season had started a week or so earlier.

The wet season was now with us, and the rain was falling in ceaseless torrents. The river was soon in full spate as it roared down from the mountains in swift, muddy, and un-navigable flood. We had to stop washing in the river, not only because it was so muddy, but mainly for fear of being carried away. Instead, we washed in the continual stream pouring from the eaves of our huts.

During the hours of darkness in Kinsio, we could often hear tigers roaring in the jungle. The Japs kept their meat ration in the form of live pigs in an enclosure on the edge of the camp, and the tigers now started leaping the fence at night and running off with pigs.

After losing three or four in this way, the Japs erected a bamboo tower with a platform on the top overlooking the pigsty, and on the night of the nineteenth they lay up there waiting to ambush the unsuspecting tigers. In the middle of the night we were awakened by a noise sounding like the opening barrage on the Somme.

Next morning we heard that the bag had been one tiger, and that it was to be shared by all the Japs in the area. Our four guards share was one leg and a portion of the brain, which later they ate raw, dipped in sugar! The leg they stewed, and had for supper.

One of them brought the bones out of the foot to me and ordered me to make them cigarette holders out of the digits. I made them all right, and was so pleased with them that I decided to keep one for myself for a souvenir.

When the Jap came to collect them a day or so later he spotted at once that one was missing. When I explained that one had been no good and that I had thrown it away, he clearly did not believe me, and yelled and waved his arms about for a while; but no blows were struck, and he eventually left, muttering.

Our four Japs were pretty good as Japs went; the working parties on the railway however, worked under the Jap engineers from the next camp; these were a savage lot, and not a day passed without tales brought back of someone having been beaten up.

Not only did I have to kill the very few animals that the prisoners were given, but as camp butcher I had also to kill the Japs’ pigs and cattle. On my own it was quite a problem holding the animal still while I clubbed it unconscious. In the end I hit on quite a satisfactory expedient. I tied the animal to a tree with a fairly long rope, then chased it round and round the trunk until it was jerked to a stop head against the tree, and I landed my blow before it could start to unwind.

As I have indicated before, the Thais seemed to be an independent and brave race. A day or so later one of our work parties came across a dead tiger with a knife in its side, and not far away on the jungle path lay a dead Thai.

Thais did not lick the Japs’ boots as did most of the Oriental races, and although like all peoples there were plenty of rogues, I left Thailand with a very soft spot in my heart for them.

It was one of my life’s ambitions, one day to return and see that country and people through a free man’s eyes, but somehow I have always been too busy. Anyway, I understand that evil has been at work there in recent years, making a visit less desirable.

Early on in our stay at Kinsio, a trainload of Javanese and Sumatrans had stopped at our station on their way up country. Some of the Dutchmen went over to speak to them but were hissed and spat at. They spoke to us however, and one of our boys who spoke Malay was told that the Japs were giving them virgin land for them to colonize, and they had promised that each would have his own farm.

On the twenty-fourth of July, a Javanese lad in his early teens staggered into our camp and collapsed. When he regained consciousness he told us that he had walked without food from Moulmein, that was about a hundred miles as the crow flies and probably twice as far the way he had come; with no-one to share the terrors of the jungle nights, it was a miracle that he survived the journey. In fact he was the only one who did, though not for long.

He told a Dutch interpreter that the trainload of them had been dumped in the middle of the jungle without supplies, and were expected to scratch a living without help or tools to get them started in their cultivations. Cut off from everything that was familiar to them, and without food or medicines, they were dying mainly of starvation.

The boy said he had left while he still had the strength to walk. The guards came over and told us not to talk to him but leave him to die where he was. Needless to say we ignored this (with impunity, to our surprise), and laid him in our hospital hut. He had nothing but the rags he was wearing, so many of our lads brought him presents from their meager kits. I made him a set of mess-tins.

Looking more like a sick child than a young man, he hung on only for a week or so, but our doctor said that the will to live had gone. The terror of the solitary nightmare journey, together with the shock of losing all his family, had proved more than he could take, and he died peacefully among our sick; we buried him with our dead, and all mourned him as one of our own children.

One of our lads had a narrow squeak two days after the Javanese boy arrived. Out on a working party, he had gone a hundred yards into the jungle to relieve himself when, hearing a rustle, he looked round and found himself looking into the face of a large tiger. He hoisted his shorts and ran for his life back to the protection of our armed guards.

It had seemed to him that there were worse things than Japs. Especially so, when, on the twenty-eighth a Japanese general visited the camp and left a present of a Tickel each for every prisoner. Never having heard of anything like this before we wondered if the war were approaching its close and the general was trying to curry favour.

The river was getting frighteningly high now, and tales filtered back from up country of bridges inundated by the raging torrent, the Japs not having made proper note of the high flood marks when they surveyed the route.

In camp at this time, one of the guards obtained an old Burmese sword, and proposed to take it home with him as a souvenir. However, it was badly bent, and he brought it over for me to straighten for him. It was just what I had been looking for, with enough steel in it to make a slaughtering knife, a spokeshave blade, and perhaps even a sheath knife. I bent the blade backwards and forwards until the metal broke, then I pulled the handle off and threw it on the rubbish heap.

In the evening I went over to the Japs’ hut and told of the terrible accident that had befallen the sword; it had just come to pieces in my hand. Although the owner exploded in rage and unbelief, his friends laughed uproariously at some huge joke.

There was clearly a tale behind that sword. However the mirth of his friends I think saved me from the bashing for which I had been prepared, and he simply asked me for the broken pieces; I took him to the rubbish dump, and after raking it over for a while managed to find the handle. He let it go at that, to my great relief.

I worked late that night over my charcoal furnace, transforming the metal so that it would not be identifiable in the event of a search.

Chapter 34

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