Comrades_on_the_Kwai

Introduction: The Good Soldiers Stan Henderson was called up to the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment on June 20th 1940. Travelling with him to Bedford was Wally Buller. Both were members of the Watford Communist Party, of which Henderson had been Secretary until he had opposed his party's 'about turn' in policy towards the war in the previous October. Both were active trade unionists; Buller at the Sun Engraving print works, Henderson at British Oxygen, from which he had recently been sacked for recruiting to the Transport and General Workers' Union.

During the journey they decided how, as communists, they would conduct themselves in the army: Wally and I agreed that we would endeavour to be the two smartest recruits ever to have walked through the gates of Bedford Barracks. Our boots and brass would be the shiniest, our weapons the cleanest and our foot and arms drill the smartest that we could achieve. If we were to fall foul of the British Army it would not be for anything so trivial as being unshaven on parade. On that foundation we would talk politics.

The result of their decision was that Henderson was quickly made a Platoon Leader and Buller a Section Leader.

Henderson was always selected as 'Stick Orderly', a job which freed him from guard duty, because he was the smartest man on parade. Before long he was told that he was to be selected for officer training. For a time he rejected the idea, especially as it was made clear to him that it would help his promotion if he dropped political

activity while in the army. However, while stationed at North Walsham in Norfolk, he met Private Joe Hinks, who in Spain was a battalion commander.

Hinks convinced him that he should show that the qualities necessary for leadership were not confined to public school boys. But when Henderson went for the Interview he was rejected because, like so many others, his answers showed that he was not from the 'right drawer' for the class-dominated British Army. Although there was later talk of officer training in India he spent most of his army service as a corporal.

All through their training and service Henderson and Buller organised political discussion groups and passed round Communist Party publications when these were available. At the meetings they argued that the war could have been prevented by an anti-fascist coalition of Britain, France and the Soviet Union, that one wing of the Tory Party had always been sympathetic to Fascism and that the policies of 'appeasement' in Europe and 'non-intervention' in the Spanish Civil War had made war inevitable. The meetings grew in size as they met more communists and other socialists, and as interest grew among their fellow soldiers.

There were times, too, when 'trade union' action was necessary. When there was dissatisfaction with the low level of army pay they organised a campaign of letters to M.P.s An increase was awarded but was held back by the Quartermaster, until he was faced with a deputation backed by a large crowd of 'other ranks'.

Such action was, of course, in defiance of King's Rules and Regulations but the organisers were not charged.

Stan Henderson and Wally Buller did not go through the war together. Buller went to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, served in the Middle

East and ended the war as a Quartermaster Sergeant. Henderson, with the fifth battalion of the Beds and Herts, sailed for India.

India presented him with new problems. He had been involved with the India League and knew Krishna Menon, then a Councillor in St Pancras in London, later Nehru's Foreign Minister. The discussions on the troopships made use of his knowledge, and when troops were given the usual briefing on India, intended to show the necessity of British rule and the inborn inferiority of the Indians, he argued in private with the Colonel who had given the talk. When the battalion arrived in India Henderson had to stand up against the racist attitudes of some of his fellow soldiers who threw coins from the train, saying "Fight for those you black bastards", and stop a Provost Sergeant who was physically bullying a 'fruit wallah', by threatening to hit the Sergeant and put him on a charge for bringing the army into disrepute.

After three weeks to acclimatise the men, the battalion sailed for Singapore as part of the force sent, in one of the greatest blunders of the war, to be captured three weeks later by the Japanese. The division which could have helped to hold the Japanese back from the Indian frontier was used by them to build the notorious 'death railway'.

At this time Henderson's wife and children were living in a bug-ridden slum house in Watford. He vowed that, after the war, he would seek to end such conditions. The promise was redeemed when, in 1946, he was one of the organisers of the London squatters' campaign, which took over unused hotels and blocks of flats for homeless families, so pushing the Labour Government to speed up its housing programme. Henderson and four others faced trial at the Old Bailey, charged with conspiracy and, under a forgotten law of Richard II, with entry.

Found guilty, they were bound over for two years. Stan Henderson has recently written up his experience in that campaign.

When the committee members of the Socialist History Society read Henderson’s account of his army experiences, which was written not long after the war, we all agreed that it should be published. Unfortunately the Society had the resources to publish it only as a booklet. The full manuscript is of book length, and when the Committee asked me to edit it this meant leaving out many episodes and truncating others. I hope the result gives a true picture of the courage with which Henderson and others in the camps faced and survived their ordeal. It would be good if someone were to publish the whole story which is, in many ways, a unique account.

Jim Fyrth

1. Survival It was January 24th 1942 when we landed at Singapore. 'We' were the Fifth Battalion of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, part of the ill-fated Eighteenth Division. Eighteen months of training and a world cruise – USA, South Africa, India – on board of the troopship Reina del Pacifico and U.S.S. West Point had brought us to a besieged island. Three weeks later, on February 15th, we became prisoners of war to the Japanese. Three-anda-half years later, in the second week of August 1945, those of us who had survived were freed when Japan surrendered. Many of us did not survive. I did.

What was it that allowed some to survive when so many died? A good physique helped, and I had to thank a long line of ancestors for bequeathing that to me; but malaria, dysentery, beri-beri, dangue fever, ulcers, pellagra and cholera were no respecters of physique. I did not get either cholera or malaria but I had all the others, which whittled me down to a skeleton.

For survival one had to have something to live for. By that I mean a fierce tenacity to hang on to life because one had a purpose to fulfil. My belief in my party, the Communist Party and its goal of socialism, allied with my confidence in the innate goodness of my fellow men, provided that. The last ingredient for survival was luck. Without that the other two factors tended only to delay the death sentence. Two of my comrades, Bill Peasnall and Eddie Edwards, who both attended our group meetings, were picked for a party which sailed for Japan. I was pulled out of the group on the grounds of my thinness.

Their ship, the Hofoku Maru was sunk by allied action on 21st September 1944. Forty-seven of the Bedfordshires were on that ship. Luck was certainly one reason why I survived.

It may seem strange today to write of my faith in the Communist Party, when there is no longer a Communist Party of Great Britain, or a Soviet Union. Once, during a barrack-room argument, a Scottish socialist named McNulty, asked

what I would do if it were proved that Stalin was responsible for thousands of deaths and a policy of torture, and that the 1917 Revolution had been betrayed. I replied that I had become a Communist, not because of what happened in Russia in 1917 but because of what I had seen happening in England up to that day. But if what he suggested were to happen I should be dismayed. We would have to start all over again, with our enemies having an additional weapon. But capitalism would still be capitalism, and all it stands for would still have to be replaced by a better system, and that system would have to be socialism.

In the light of what we now know, the word 'dismayed' is totally inadequate. But I still think of myself as a communist. We have a great record of struggle and achievement in the cause of the British working class and of socialism. Our concept of democracy was flawed. We placed our party above all else, forgetting, perhaps never knowing, that socialism must be by the consent, and with the participation of, the people. Now we have to find a better way to socialism.

But this is an account of my three and a half years as a prisoner of war to the Japanese. Through those terrible years my beliefs were a support, without which I would probably not have survived.

2. Confusion and Captivity After a long sea voyage from England, via the USA and South Africa, we landed at Bombay and went from there to Ahmednagar, an army centre in Mahaiashtra. There we spent a couple of weeks acclimatising ourselves.

Then, being judged to have regained our land-legs, we returned to Bombay, and from there, once again on board U.S.S. West Point, we headed southwards and eastwards. It was not, after all, to be India, or the Middle East or the Caucasus which was to be our destination, but Singapore.

As we approached the Straits of Malacca, we saw Japanese planes, but their business apparently was elsewhere.

Then I was summoned to a meeting in Captain Thrussell's cabin. All the 'A' Company officers were present but only two or three other ranks besides Sergeant Gladstone and myself. Thrussell told us that we were waiting for Singapore and would probably have to fight our way ashore as the Japanese had surprised everyone by the speed of their advance from the Siamese border to the Straits of Johore. Singapore however, was in no danger of falling. The Japanese were small men of inferior physique to the British. (Thrussell actually said that one British soldier was equivalent to ten Japanese).

As a nation the Japanese were afflicted with poor eyesight caused by a poor diet which was also responsible for the prevalence of rickets. Their rifles were small bore jobs which rarely caused fatal injuries. Finally, as if anything further was needed to show that the sons of heaven were incapable of taking Singapore, the Japanese were an unhygienic people likely to lose heavily from the ravages of disease in a long campaign. Thrussell asked for questions and comments.

I asked where he had got this information; he answered instantly, from a briefing by the Brigadier. I said that it was ridiculous and dangerous to write off a whole nation as suffering from poor eyesight and rickets, and that there was a contradiction; the Japanese army was physically sub-standard and poorly equipped but on the other hand they had surprised everyone by the speed of their advance through what was understood to be quite difficult terrain. I concluded by saying that I had no special knowledge of the Japanese but my belief was that the information supplied by the Brigadier was dangerously misleading. There was a very long silence. I

reconciled myself to the fact that no one was going to speak. Then got the shock of my life. I heard a deep cockney voice say "I must say sir, that I agree with what Corporal Henderson has just said. When I was doing my five years in India with the regulars I went to Japan on a short courtesy visit. They are the cleanest people I have ever met. They bath more than anyone and wear face-masks when they have a cold. I agree with what Corporal Henderson has just said." I would never have believed that the day would come when Gladstone and I would be allies in this manner, he was the most unquestioning soldier I had ever met.

Thrussell said that we could be right but wouldn't it be good for the men's morale to be given this account of the Japanese? To this I gave an emphatic "No". It was better to know exactly what one was up against rather than be given a comforting, but untrue, account of the enemy. "The danger is that once such a ploy is exposed for the lie that it is, you may have lost forever the confidence of the men you are leading." I think that the original intention had been that we were to accept the Brigadier's version of the Japanese and pass it on to the men. I didn't know how the other companies managed but 'A' company at least was spared such nonsense.

Later that day we steamed into Keppel harbour. We disembarked and watched as thousands of Europeans, mostly women and children, mounted the gangways to occupy the cabins which had for so long been our homes. Around us, watching too, were thousands of faces of varying shades of brown. At that time none of us could for certainty distinguish a Malay from a Chinese or a Tamil from a Dutch East Indian. I think, too, that none of us had ever met a Japanese.

Confusion I had never studied military strategies or tactics but in the following three weeks I was to come to the opinion that neither had the top brass who bore responsibility for the defence of Singapore Island. We were sent to the north east corner of Singapore adjacent to Seleta Aerodrome; there we took over the defence of the aerodrome from a company of Indians. My section was given the task of a daily patrol of the deserted aerodrome which looked like a parallel story to the mystery of The Marie Celeste. From the water tower on the site I was able to watch the movement of Japanese forces on the Johore side of the straits. I was told that the Causeway connecting to the mainland had been blown up by the Royal Engineers. I learned a few days later that it had taken the Japanese half a day to repair the damage.

We had responsibility for an important stretch of coastline including the air-base. Our job was to deny that area to the Japanese invader. I made myself familiar with the terrain. Then we moved. I had no idea where we were at any time thereafter. We slept that first night on the narrow banks which separated one paddy field from another. More than one soldier fell into the shallow water during the night, and sleep was difficult to come by on account of the frogs' chorus which was something new to us. 'A' Company ended up on a hillside which later I got to know as Hill 125. My section was posted three miles approximately to the rear of the company to prevent the Japanese from attacking our rear. I found a suitable position and we dug ourselves in. We had been told that the Japanese could be in some dense forestry about two hundred yards away. I was sure that the Japanese suspected our presence but were not sure of it. Then we were recalled.

Back with the company I found Captain Thrussell preparing for an offensive action. The whole company was lined up from the base of the hill. My section was on the extreme left where the undergrowth was very troublesome to the shorter men. I moved to the left of my section and put the shorter men higher up. Then we

advanced on that hillside with all our weapons firing. Thrussell was in the centre firing a bren gun from the hip.

Soon we began to step over Japanese bodies. If there was a response I was not aware of it. The sound of all those weapons, rifles, brenn and Tommy guns was deafening. Then Thrussell called a halt and we all dropped to the ground but for me. I took refuge behind a giant tree. Thrussell too remained on his feet. I had noticed that he was shouting out instructions and waving his arms about in a manner that was not typical of the man, quite foolishly drawing attention to himself as the commander of this little action. Suddenly, I heard a cry in a foreign voice and at the same time saw a hand-grenade sail out of the bushes. I shouted out at the top of my voice "Grenade" and stepped to safety behind my tree. I saw that Thrussell had flung himself to the ground. When the explosion was over I looked out again. Thrussell still lay there and there was an ominous red stain across the nape of his neck. Thrussell's batman ran forward to hint calling out his name. I fired a long burst from my Tommy gun into the bushes from where that hand-grenade had been thrown. An order was passed down the line instructing us to retreat over the crown of the hill. This puzzled me but one had to comply. We assembled on a narrow road on the other side of the hill, having passed Thrussell's inert body on the way. The CSM asked who had given the order to retreat over the crown of the hill. I said that it had passed from man to man and that I did not know the origin of it. It was apparent that something had gone wrong.

Gladstone and I went back to the other side of Hill 125 where Thrussell's body still lay. We hoisted Thrussell on to Gladstone's shoulder and retreated to the safety of the other side of the hill. The medical orderlies came with a stretcher and that was the last any of us saw of our Company Commander; he died, we were told, a few days later. Second Lieutenant 'Pull- through' Jackson also died on Hill 125.

I saw that we were leaving Thrussell's webbing by the roadside. There was his revolver and ammunition, his map case and his prismatic compass. I picked them up and stuffed them into my pockets and pouches, all but the spare revolver ammunition which I could not find room for. I was to retain possession of these items for many months to come. I now learned that we were no longer acting as a unified battalion and that our CO, Colonel Thomas had been given command of a body called 'Tom' Force, part of an overall plan. I never knew whether or not I was in 'Tom' Force and I never met anyone who did. What I did know was that the situation was worsening. In my section two of the men were in a constant state of distress, drinking water and smoking cigarettes incessantly. We never saw any British aircraft. One day we were treated to a psychological onslaught.

Thousands of leaflets were dropped on us showing a little girl appealing for her daddy to come home. I picked one up and have it to this day.

We moved off from Hill 125 under the leadership of Captain Kendrick, and occupied what I took to be a deserted Malay village. There for three or four days we were subjected to an almost continuous mortar barrage. We knew where the mortars were positioned but nothing was done about them. We just sat there waiting for the inevitable. Then, from Battalion HQ on the Henderson Road, I was ordered to take my section to a position beside the railway line which was being destroyed by Japanese mortar fire. There I was visited by Captain Kendrick who dropped down in the long grass beside me and offered me his water bottle. "No thank you." I said.

"My own bottle is full." "Go on." he insisted, "Have a drink." When, still puzzled, I took a sip from the Captain's bottle, it was to discover that it was full of cognac. I was not only surprised, I was alarmed, and refused further offers. I realised at that moment something which had puzzled me at the time, and that was Captain Thrussell's behaviour on Hill 125. 1 knew then that his bottle had contained something stronger than water.

Next we occupied a village where there were no signs of the Japanese. Captain Kendrick informed me that my section would advance across an area twice the size of a football pitch and just about as flat, where the Japanese were almost certainly waiting in the undergrowth and shrubbery around the base of a clump of coconut palms at the opposite side of that open area. There was absolutely no cover. "We'll give you covering fire. That'll keep their heads down," Kendrick said. "We could get 10 them by using the cover of those trees." I replied. "You've got your instructions Corporal," said the Captain. "Get on with it." I was angry when I went back to my section and led them in extended arrow-head formation across that billiard table of a padang. A hundred yards from those palms we came under rifle and mortar fire. There was smoke and dust all around and visibility was nil. I came to the conclusion that smoke bombs had been used. "Wait for the covering fire." I called out to my section but the covering fire never came. "When I shout `Go'," I told the section "I want you to leg it like hell to the cover of those trees. We aren't doing any good here." My intention was to take advantage of those trees which was what we should have done in the first place. Back in the safety of the trees a message from Kendrick ordered me to report to him immediately. To my great astonishment Kendrick sleeted me with the words, "Your section is on a charge." "What is the charge sir?" I asked. "Running away in the face of the enemy." said the Captain. "I have to contradict that," I said. I went on to explain the situation and asked what had happened to the promise of covering fire. As we argued we saw ten Japanese walk in single file from the palms across that fifty yard gap and disappear into the wooded area. "They're coming in this direction," I said. "We ought to prepare an ambush for them." Instead we retreated from that village. We made no further offensive moves of any kind. We seemed to be taking part in a long retreat.

Every Man For Himself We walked for a long time through wooded country until, in a clearing we found a tented camp. It had been deserted by the Australians. We prepared a defensive position and waited. A storage tent was full of boxes of canned fruit. Most of the men had gagged at the bully and biscuit issue for the midday meal. The tinned hunt was easier to swallow. That was until the padre, Captain Stallard, arrived on the scene. "Put that fruit back where it came from," he ordered. "It's government property. You have no right to help yourself to it." No attack came and eventually we moved off to another position where we once again dug in and set up fire lines. Several times we moved after setting up strong positions. We were still moving as darkness set in and for miles we travelled hanging on to the bayonet sheath of the moan in front. It was exhausting work.

We rested for a few hours just before dawn. Then we moved off again and were joined by lines of troops all heading in the same direction. We came to a range of hills, where we helped some Artillery men pull their guns up the steep inclines and got into conversation with them. They had fought the Japanese all the way down the Malay Peninsula. They told us what it had been like and had no doubts at all that we were in for a humiliating defeat. "The only people who know how to fight the fucking Japs are the Chinese guerrillas in the 'Dall Force'.

The Chinese hate the bloody Japs and they know what's going to happen to them if the Japs win. But they haven't got the equipment and our lot won't help them. I expect our top brass reckon they're a load of communists anyway."

At the top of the hill we were dive-bombed by Japanese 'Zeroes' for what seemed hours. At the bottom of the hill Major Ditton called the men of the Beds and Herts Regiment together, and made a little speech ending with the statement that it was now every man for himself. I had to explain to my men what this latest order meant.

At the end of my explanation I was asked by my men what I intended doing and I told them. "I'm going to collect all the food, medicines and ammunition that I can carry and tonight I'm going to try to get across to the mainland. If I manage that I shall try to join up with the Chinese force that the RA man told us about." There was some consultation and then my section asked if they could come with me. I said they could but that they should realise that the odds were against us succeeding. Soon we were all busy packing food, medicines, and ammunition into our pouches, haversacks and pockets. The word spread and before half an hour had passed my little force had been made up to forty men including two sergeants and two corporals. I spent the next ten minutes studying Captain Thrussell's map of the Singapore coastline. Then the order 'Every man for himself' was rescinded.

Surrender Bert Standen, our Platoon Commander, whom we had not set eyes on for days, came and told us that we were to attack a Jap-held village at dawn. We found a berth for the night amongst the footings of a half-finished building, arranged a guard roster, and settled down for the night. I was awakened a couple of hours later by our man on guard. "There's someone approaching," he whispered and I could hear the sound of heavy boots on the rough ground for myself. The footsteps were hesitant but they were getting nearer. We quietly roused the whole section. The newcomer turned out to be an officer with the rank of Lieutenant; he had, like Major Ditton, joined our battalion only days before leaving the UK; I knew him by sight only. "I have to tell you that it's all over. You can all get your heads down and make up for lost sleep. We've surrendered. The General in supreme command, a man called Percival, has surrendered Singapore to the Japanese. It's all over. The instruction is that you all stay exactly where you are to await further orders. There are both British and Japanese units which don't as yet know that it's over. Don't wander about. You may be fired on." I just couldn't believe it, like others of my generation I had been brought up and educated in the prose and poetry of British imperialism. "Whatever happened to that thin red line of Imperialism?" I asked myself. Then I had to smile as the thought occurred to me that I, a Communist, had really believed that the thin red line would hold out. Was there no public school boy here to rally the ranks with the cry, 'Play up, play up, and play the game'?

Later that day Lieutenant Standen and I drove a bull-nosed Morris a few miles along the road and found an Australian army clothing depot completely deserted We both exchanged our soiled clothing but unfortunately we found no footwear. In the process of changing my socks I found two large sores, one on each shin bone. We were to become familiar with these 'jungle ulcers'.

Mine were with me for the next three and a half years but I was one of the lucky ones; mine got no worse.

Introduction to Captivity The next morning we were ordered to surrender our arms. Every weapon was to be stacked in an open space in a nearby Malay kampong. My section, contrary to received orders, made sure that our weapons were made unfit for further use. Thrussell's revolver, maps and prismatic compass I kept on my person. It was about this time that I heard that the Japanese had entered a hospital, I believe it was the Alexandria, and had massacred doctors, nurses, patients and other staff. This was just one of many such stories and I advised all who dealt in them to take them with a pinch of salt. We were told to prepare for a long march to Changi on the east of the island where all prisoners of war were to be assembled. I had two kitbags containing changes of clothing,

blankets and such things as shaving materials. toothpaste, boot polishes and brushes, and thought myself pretty lucky to be so well prepared for a term of imprisonment.

I was not the only one with two kit bags and we all were concerned about humping them a matter of fifteen miles under a tropical sun. One of our officers told us that a truck would take them to Changi. We trustingly did as we were told and started off. The streets were lined by thousands of people all waving little Japanese flags.

We were flanked on both sides by Japanese soldiers, one every flinty yards or so. We passed burnt out cars, many still with bodies in them, and factories from which columns of smoke still rose. Then the word was passed up the line that some Japanese soldiers were forcing our men to surrender their watches, rings and other valuables. The men hastily put rings, watches and such-like in their pockets out of sight. I wore no rings but I put my watch out of sight like the others. Then I remembered that I had in my map pocket, maps of Singapore, a loaded 'evolver and a prismatic compass. There was nothing that I could do about them. When the looters caught up with us we gave them a frigid reception. One Japanese ordered a prisoner to empty his pockets and we all said a very loud and emphatic 'No'.

The Japanese hurried off at this which convinced us that they were engaged in a spot of free enterprise which was not approved of by the Japanese authorities.

At Changi there was no sign of our stuff and no one knew anything about it officially. The driver of the truck who told us that he had unloaded our gear, in fact he showed us where he had heaped it all, was sent off on another job and when he came back it had all gone. I had no mess tins, no knife, fork or spoon, no drinking mug. I went out and searched the many rubbish heaps. On one I found a brass pot curiously engraved. I polished it using sharp sand until it glistened like gold. It was all I had for months to eat and drink from. I learned before it was stolen from me, that it was an Indian's `gonga pot' in which he carried his water to wash his backside after shitting.

Our prison at Changi was a vast army barracks, purpose built, spacious and as airy as it was possible to get slap bang on the equator. We spent our first night stretched out on the concrete floor in an upstairs room. That concrete was very hard. Breakfast consisted of a hard biscuit with a smear of savoury matter on it, washed down with about half a pint of hot water misnamed 'tea'. We moved from the barracks down towards the beach and a grove of palm trees where we found some dubious looking huts equipped with army stretchers which we were told to use as beds. That evening we lit a camp fire and organised a sing-song which did something to relieve the tensions and anxieties. No one interfered with us and we went several days without sight of a Japanese.

Within a fortnight I was without a smoke. I had never possessed much in the way of worldly goods but life on three biscuits a day and not even a smoke to comfort me was something new. There was more, much more, to come. I discovered from an Indian soldier that 'beadles', a sort of cigarette smoked by the Indians were made from the leaves of an Indian cherry tree. I made a kind of plug from those leaves and solved my smoking problem. The officers were queuing up for tea leaves to use as a tobacco substitute.

A POW University was started. I attended lectures on the English language, sitting between a Lieutenant Colonel and a Major. One day I went to visit one of our company who was in a building nominated as a hospital. As I rose to leave, I was addressed by a man I didn't know, from a nearby bed. "You've walked past me two or three

times. You might at least stop and say 'Hello comrade', or don't you remember me?" I had met Gerry Hall who was to be one of my closest comrades in the dark days to come. He was in the Cambridgeshire’s, quartered not' too far from ourselves and when he was discharged from the hospital we often managed to get together to discuss what we should be doing in this situation.

We found that coconuts go down very well when one's entire input is limited to three biscuits a day. Len Free, George Haywood and I formed a syndicate. One of us rose very early each morning and searched for fallen nuts.

The idea caught on and soon, long before reveille, there would be twenty or thirty men diligently searching the sandy areas around the palms. Then an order was posted from our high command. We were forbidden to harvest the coconuts. They were to be conserved in case of future food shortages. "Conserved for the officers mess", I said, and we continued to collect the nuts which were I believe more important to our diet than the issue of biscuits. A Japanese notice was posted saying that when all the food held by the British in Changi Camp had been used up, then would the Japanese issue us with rations. When this happened, the Japanese issued a notice giving the quantities of rice, oil, vegetables etc. per man. Apart from the rice issue, the rest of the document was a sick joke, practically everything but the rice being measured in milligrams. The men would often sit with closed eyes, or with a faraway look in them if they were open. One knew what was in that man's mind. He would be asked, "Is your steak done just as you like it?" Often, when we attempted to rise from a recumbent position we would fall back almost in a fainting condition. We learned to rise slowly to minimise this disturbing symptom. I personally found the dollop of rice more satisfying than the army biscuits, even though our cooks made a diabolical mess of the cooking. The problem was that we could think of rice only as a pudding with sugar and milk and perhaps a sprinkle of nutmeg. As a potato substitute it was not on.

May Day Working parties went into Singapore daily. My party went to the docks and to load drums of fuel on to trucks which were then driven off to a storage depot Inland. I was in charge of a party of fifteen men and our work was explained to me In sign language by a polite long-bearded Japanese. He concluded by saying "O.K. ga", which I took to mean 'is that understood?' I asked my officer, "Isn't that directly helping the enemy's war effort?" The officer thought, he'd better ask for guidance on that. I was not happy about this, and never received a ruling on the matter.

We started work but not very enthusiastically. The Japanese soldier told me that in the Japanese Army number one did not work. I was in charge of this work party and so I was to do no work. I told him that I always worked when in charge at a work party. He became rather officious and indicated that he would get into trouble if I was seen to be working by his 'shoko' (officer). Nothing connected to the Japanese was going to be simple. I became bored with just hanging around. I was standing on a loading bay in front of a `godown' (warehouse), the corrugated frontage of which had been damaged by bombing. No Japanese were about so I stepped inside and found myself in an Aladdin's cave of culinary delights. The walls were hidden by hundreds of cases of foods of every description from Christmas puddings to tinned bacon. I found myself being regarded by a Japanese soldier; he signalled me to approach. In his hand was a tin of Mansion Polish; around him were a dozen tins of various foodstuffs, all opened and apparently sampled. The Mansion Polish was not to his liking and he asked in sign language what it was. I was tempted, but in the end I explained it's purpose. My reward was a tin of corned beef. I returned to my post and waited. When the Japanese soldier left, I went back inside taking my pack. When

I came out it was full to bursting. I explained the situation to a couple of my gang and they went inside and did the same thing. Then the next two went and so on until all had full packs. That evening we shared our goodies with our friends. We kept the procedure to our own work party for a week but the neighbouring work parties got wise to the situation. There came a day when the looting got out of hand. The Japanese drivers left their trucks to join in the fun. Their speciality was powdered milk. Instead of forty or fifty men loading the trucks there were six. The sound of rending packing cases could be heard a mile away. It all had to end. The Japanese soldier with the long beard walked towards me. I had two men at work instead of fifteen. He asked me where was my work party. The question was purely rhetorical. We could hardly hear ourselves speak for the sound of rending wood. The Japanese said, "One man O.K. all men no good". He indicated that if the `shoko' came and saw what was happening he would get his face slapped. I cleared everyone out of the go-down and told them what the Japanese had said. For a few days we were back to a good organisation but the situation deteriorated.

One late afternoon a high-ranking Japanese party on an official tour of the camp was held up by the crowds of POWs engaged in buying and selling the booty from the go-downs. After that work parties were searched before returning to camp. The looting continued, but on a reduced scale, with the cooperation of the Japanese truck drivers.

"You know," said one of my gang to me one day, "these Japs are not so bad after all arc they?" That same day we saw from our truck as we approached the docks, a Japanese soldier beating an Indian worker. The Japanese rained a series of blows to the head of the Indian, using the butt of his rifle. When the Indian lay motionless at the soldier's feet the blows continued. The soldier's face was contorted with rage. That same day, as we drove through Singapore, we saw Chinese heads impaled on the railings outside a public building. There were at least twenty of them. We learned, the hard way, that in the Japanese army a man may beat one of the inferior rank who is considered to have committed an offence. We prisoners of war were at the very bottom of the social order and soon there were very few who had not taken a beating.

One day we were sent to clear bomb damage to a university building. We returned to camp loaded with books which formed the basis for a lending or swapping library. My own personal prize was John Strachey's book The Theory and Practice of Socialism which was packed with valuable statistics. That book is on my bookshelf today and carries the official Japanese stamp which indicates that it had been submitted for and had obtained the approval of Adarchi, the Japanese interpreter.

I became friendly with a young man who had served with the Malay Volunteers; he was highly critical of his fellows who were no great advertisement for the Britisher abroad. I persuaded him to start a class in Malay, a simple language spoken widely along the coast lines of South-East Asia. It was possible to become quite fluent on a comparatively small vocabulary. I was not resigned to seeing out the war from behind a wire-netting fence and the Malay language had to be useful. Thrussell's revolver and other gear. were buried in the sand under my stretcher. They too were part of my half-formed plans, but I had to recognise that there were some special problems for me. The Japanese had posted up notices which told us that anyone attempting to escape would, on recapture, be executed. How was I at 6 feet and three inches, with fair hair and blue eyes going to blend into a background made up of Chinese, Malays and Indians.

In those first few weeks I made no contact with any Communist Party members other than Gerry Hall and we held no meetings although there was plenty of discussion wherever more than two or three were assembled.

Then I met George Cross from Tottenham. The three of us agreed that we should organise meetings to popularise the principles of Socialism and, if we could manage it, to recruit to the Communist Party.

On May Day 1942, we held a meeting at which we presented a May Day Manifesto which I had composed and which Gerry, George and a couple of others had vetted. We publicised this event for all we were worth; George and Gerry in the 'Foresters' and the `Cambs' respectively and I in the 'Bedfordshires'. Since we had been prisoners there had been a sudden rush to get to religious meetings and several improvised churches had been created. When it appeared that this explosion of praying was bearing no fruit, the orthodox churches lost their mass audiences who moved on to the Salvation Army and then to the spiritualists. It seemed that every group had its ouija board and there was always someone asking when would we be released. Our May Day meeting and the discussion that prepared for it was in a sense a challenge to the dreamers to come back to reality. There were half a dozen of us from the Bedfordshires, half a dozen from other regiments brought along by Gerry and George and half a dozen we knew nothing of. As we sat in the open air preparatory to starting the meeting two officers approached. One of them addressed the meeting, "Would we mind if they attended?" One was a Labour councillor and the other a Conservative councillor. Both were strongly in favour of the May Day meeting even though they could not support our party.

Beards and Bushido The death penalty will be executed in front of the prisoners by means of either decapitation or shooting.

(Rules for the punishment of prisoners, 1942) From March onwards the Japanese produced a number of orders for our notice boards.

People who resist the Japanese Army in any way are to be put to death.

People who form conspiracies to stir up trouble ... are to be shot on the spot all and several.

These notices were frequently written in comic opera English with many references to the humanity of the Japanese outlook which was based on 'Bushido'. The Japanese respected a defeated foe we were told. 'Bushido' seemed to be the Japanese equivalent of the medieval code of conduct for knights in shining armour.

The following is taken from a document posted at River Valley Road Camp, Singapore in 1942: Instructions given by Colonel Ikari, with comment by I. Fukuda.

You and I met on the battlefield as enemy each other. But it was the collision between the two countries.

This fact does not mean that there were private enmity and hate between you and us. Now we shaking hands each other are not enemy already. We are mysterious friends that have met here by mysterious providence, so we want to do anything with you as good friends. I tell you the instructions addressed to you by our commander Colonel Ikari as follows:

You should be absolutely obedient to the order of the Japanese soldiers.

2.

We treat you according to the warrior spirits Bushido. You must fulfil your duty faithfully.

Therefore we do not force you to be obedient to us by violence. Bushido, the way of the Samurai, has much contents, but now I show you an expression of them as follows.

It is to be kind to the enemy of yesterday. In old times of Japan, a general who had sea-shore as part of his territory sent much salt to his enemy in mountain where people could not get salt. Bushido spirits resemble the knight spirits of your country.

Our real heart is Bushido. But now the great war is in progress and so the materials to treat you are not sufficient, accommodation is poor. As here in battlefield please excuse us. But to conquer the present unhealthy conditions, the bad camps, insufficient bedding, poor food, etc. you must take care of your health as much as you can.

I think you do not like to work with us who were your enemies of yesterday. But when you do not use your energy that God has given you and your ability that you have gotten by your long diligence, spending your every day in vain you have no excuse to God. And it is not good for your health to spend all days inactively. So that, thinking upper matters, you must work every day in high spirits ..

Be frugal of materials. Example oil. It belonged to you yesterday but now it belongs to us. But after all, it has been given from Heaven. So if we use it in vain we must be called traitors who act against Heaven. We want to use all materials effectively.

(Signed) I. Fukuda.

By October 1942 I was turning the scales at less than eleven stone as a consequence of `Bushido Spirits'. Before that however, I had grown a beard as had several others who had lost their shaving tackle, and as a consequence I ran into trouble with our battalion adjutant. I was selected to be on a guard of honour for General Sir Lewis Heath.

"You'll have to take off that beard," I was told.

I explained what had happened to my gear as a consequence of having trusted the army. To shave off my beard would necessitate borrowing someone else's razor. In this climate a cut could have serious consequences and the chances of infection would be increased by borrowing a razor. I made a personal appeal to the CO for all of us who had no shaving gear to have the choice of shaving or growing

a beard. I shall never forget the look of astonishment on that General's face as he slowly examined my dress starting with my boots and working his way up. When he got to the beard, he was a very small man, he literally gasped with astonishment but passed on to the next man without comment. Later that week, on my way back from a 'university' lecture, I ran into Major-General Beckwith-Smith, our Divisional Commander. He called me over. Once again I had to explain about having no shaving materials. "Now that the Japanese have promised to pay for any work you do, you'll be able to buy a blade and perhaps even a razor," said the General. "If blades were available they would not be high on my shopping list sir," I said. "I have an ulcer on each leg and they show no signs of healing. I would only borrow a razor after making the strongest possible protest. The risk of infection is too great." This brief exchange with the Divisional Commander convinced me that we might all be prisoners of war together but our experiences were widely different. The Japanese were to pay me for ten days work a matter of 35 cents which might buy four eggs or six bananas, and that was more than a private would get. That bit about perhaps being able to buy a razor was too rich for words.

At Changi in the evenings there was always something going on. George Cross, Gerry Hall and I saw to that along with the religious meetings and the literary and history groups the Communist Party took its place. We held meetings outside on the open grass and also by invitation in the barracks. We might not attract large crowds but fifteen to twenty was regarded with some satisfaction. We also played a major part in getting an arts and crafts group started. Philip Meninsky started painting and was soon joined by others including Tony Searle and the other Searle, Ronald, who went on to create the St.Trinian girls. Tony became a regular supporter of our meetings. To begin with most of those in the craft groups turned out regimental badges carved from wood.

Later as skills developed more ambitious projects were tackled as many discovered they had creative skills.

Good quality chess sets were just bread and butter jobs.

The artists also served in a useful capacity. We had no cameras. Many hospital patients had leg ulcers of horrific proportions, completely outside the experience of most of the doctors. A record of these ulcers was kept and they were realistically depicted by the artists.

About this time I was awarded a blanket, a spoon, a battered enamel plate and a half mess-tin. I assumed they had all come from someone who had died. We had the first death in the prison camp of one of our own number, Private Rainbird, a man we all knew and grieved for. I was one of the funeral party and for the first time I heard 'The Last Post ' as I stood by the graveside.

Rumours began to circulate that a party was to go off somewhere on the mainland. June was upon us and the ouija boards were still saying that the war would be over in three weeks. One day, a list appeared on the notice board, naming those who were to be on that first party for the mainland. There were about twenty of us from the Bedfordshire. The senior man was CSM Goodwin and there was a sergeant whose name I've forgotten and myself. Len Free was on the party and so was George Haywood, both my particular friends. I talked with Gerry, George and all the others and it was agreed that Strachey's book should be left with Gerry Hall.

I almost forgot about the maps, revolver and compass which were wrapped in lilt and buried under my bed. I gave the maps to Lieutenant Standen, told him about the revolver and took the prismatic compass with me. The next morning we were driven off in trucks to Singapore Station.

3. The Railroad and the Bridge Pullman Special We assembled on the station at Singapore, joining men from other units. There were six hundred of us. After half an hour or so with no visible signs of action, a locomotive pulled into our platform towing a number of cattle trucks. We assumed we would be travelling in passenger coaches, but we were sadly mistaken. With harsh grunts and jabbing rifle butts we were informed that we were to board these trucks by the Japanese guards. George, Len and I managed to keep together with most of the others from our battalion but we were now part of another force.

We were twenty or thirty to a truck, and unable to sit down. The trucks had a central sliding door on each side. They were constructed of steel and apart from the doors were totally enclosed.

With the hottest part of the day to come, the metal of the trucks was already unbearably hot to the touch. Our clothing was soon black with perspiration. We started a rota to give us all a turn near to the doors, and a system of taking it in turns to sit down.

We were travelling at between thirty and forty miles an hour and the problem of passing water from the open doorway of a cattle truck is not to be underestimated.

We had to communicate with the truck immediately to the rear of our own or men in the open doorway area would have received an unwelcome baptism.

The man who was peeing was held by a couple of others so that he could lean out as far as possible to do his business cleanly. The calls of nature became more complicated. The procedure was to stand, legs apart and trousers down, in the doorway facing inwards; two men would hold on to each hand so that one could hang one's middle section as far outside the truck as was possible. A shout of warning was then given to the next truck and from then on matters took their own course, Before the night was through the atmosphere in our truck was almost unbearable. Several of the men had badly soiled garments which were too valuable to throw away but too filthy to wear and these accumulated as the

night wore on. On top of this we were unable to sleep for lack of space; and we were cold. I think none of us had ever experienced or even visualised such acute discomfiture.

We were on that train for four days at least, it might have been five. But it was the nights which stand out in one's memory. Many of the men who previous to this journey had gone for long periods without a bowel movement ended the journey with what we then thought of as diarrhoea but which often turned out to be dysentery. We were at last in Thailand and when we came to a small station called Ban Pong we learned that our journey by rail was over.

Ban Pong We were marched out of the station at Ban Pong in some sort of military order for a mile or two to our camp, which looked very good. The huts were of bamboo, with palmleaf roofing and walls. We found that these huts were quite comfortable inside. George, Len and I managed to find a corner for ourselves with some of our friends from the battalion. We had for our main meal that day a plate of extraordinary white rice and a soup which, if not exactly thick with vegetables, was better than anything we had previously experienced.

The officer in charge of our whole party was a captain. We had been given to understand that this officer had been given money with which to establish a PRI, a kind of army shop, but one was never started. In fact the history of that camp was one of almost total abdication of their responsibilities by both officers and senior NCOs. Life at Ban Pong deteriorated into a free for all.

The next morning we were awakened very early and long before sunrise we were paraded for work. I was in a large group of about fifty and so were most

of those in our battalion. Some of these parties marched off down the road, others, including mine, boarded trucks. In about an hour we arrived at our destination, which was on the banks of a wide river, which was practically jammed with floating logs. Our job was to get the logs on to dry land where there was a large shed, a few smaller buildings little more than huts, and a number of trucks.

I was in the gang that started work waist-deep in the river. Two of us would select a log and push it shorewards.

Two men on dry land would then augment our efforts to get the log out of the water. Once it was on shore others came and raised it to shoulder height and walked off with it in the direction of a waiting truck. When the truck was loaded it drove off, with four prisoners on board, presumably to unload the truck wherever it ended up. It was hard work but it was cool in that river. It was dangerous work. The logs were rough cut and our hands became soft and vulnerable in the water. We were in constant danger of receiving minor cuts and abrasions.

The risk of more serious injury in the midst of those turbulent logs was clear to us all.

After the first hour we called for a change-over and this was agreed. I was in the gang that was carrying the logs to the trucks. There were three of us to a log and this was grossly inadequate. I was the middle man of our trio and at least four inches taller than my workmates. If I stood my full height I bore the full weight of the log. So I moved with knees slightly bent until I was spotted by one of the guards. The first thing I knew was a stinging blow across my shoulders. I looked round angrily and saw that the Japanese guard a couple of feet away had struck me with a length of bamboo pole. "What the bloody hell was that for?" I shouted angrily. I couldn't do anything however as I was bearing at least one third of the load. I received two more vicious blows across the back for my pains. As I watched, the Jap indicated that I should straighten up. It was obvious that he thought that I was 'skiving'. My reaction was the normal reaction of our men on being beaten for the first time.

We worked until late before the Jap guards called us to assemble for roll-call. We learned that this parade was called a `tenko' in Japanese and it became a very important part of our daily lives. It took almost an hour to get back to camp where we formed a queue outside the cookhouse. We waited for about ten minutes before a cook-sergeant arrived."Who are you lot?" he asked. We told him that we were a work party and that we had just returned from a heavy day's work. "We've got nothing left," said the sergeant, "We didn't know about you."

Tired, bruised and bleeding we crawled into our corners and nursed our anger. It was then that Len, made the discovery that his blanket had been stolen. I cut mine in two and we had half each. I shivered my way through the night until some sort of acclimatisation set in.

As the days passed I found that I was visiting the latrines an increasing number of times a day. I was losing weight rather more rapidly than even the short rations could account for, I came to the realisation that I had probably got dysentery. I have no recollection of seeing a doctor in our camp at Ban Pong. I cannot bring myself to believe that our party would have been sent off without a doctor but I certainly do not remember one.

Then the rains came. Our camp quickly became a quagmire. After spending a whole long day working in the river or in the almost equally wet environs of the river and then to come back late in the evening to a camp site that was like a swamp was demoralising. Each day the conditions in camp became worse. The water level rose in our ex-paddy field, until the water was but a couple of inches from the level of our sleeping platforms. One of the problems was to obtain one's plate of rice and thin soup from the cookhouse and then negotiate the hundred or so yards of mud and swirling waters back to one's bed-space without losing the lot.

If one did, and it happened to us all at one time or another, we did without or reserved donations from the inadequate meals of our friends. On one occasion when returning to my bed-space with my meal, I suddenly had a pain as of five thousand volts in my ankle. In spite of the intense pain and because my care for the meal superseded all else, I raised the suffering ankle above the water level. Hanging on to it was an insect about six inches in length and an inch wide, blood-red in colour and adorned with many legs. I had seen many of these creatures near our river worksite and knew that it was a centipede. I ate my meal in the accompaniment of a throbbing pain in my ankle and a mounting temperature. I went out for the work `tenko' and asked Quinn if it were possible to have the day off as I was unwell. Quinn went off for ten minutes and returned to say that was not possible, there were no replacements available. I knew this was not true. There were men in camp all day, many of whom had only nominal jobs to do. I said nothing.

Next morning there was no breakfast. We stood in a line outside the cook-house door but all was silent within.

All the cooks and cookhouse personnel had over slept. We returned to our huts but there was a lot of angry discussion. We decided not to go on `tenko' until we had had breakfast. I said, "Stand firm. When I tell Quinn and the others that it's `No breakfast, no work,' they'll try to bully us to change our minds. They'll tell us to remember we're prisoners of war and the Japs are likely to cut up rough. Stand firm. If we don't things will get worse you'll see." Word went round to all the working parties that there would be no work until we'd been fed.

When I went out to explain to the officers and NCOs why there were no men on parade I was told that the action was illegal, that disciplinary action would be taken and that the Japanese would take punitive action. I replied that it was in the interests of discipline that this action was being taken. "All you have to do is explain to the Japanese when they arrive, that the men have had no breakfast and work parties are delayed until this matter has been put right." An NCO went round the huts, presumably in an attempt to get the men out. I stayed on the parade area. The Japanese arrived, expecting to find their work-parties ready. Instead they found only the officers and NCOs. I watched from a distance as the two groups went into conference. The Japanese detached themselves from the group and walked away. Quinn and the other officers and NCOs dispersed. When I got back to my hut I was told that breakfast would be in about one hour's time and after that we would go to work. The Japanese had listened with some sympathy to what they had been told and had accepted that work would start late that day. This confirmed me in my belief that in general we did not stand up to the Japanese sufficiently. After all, we were not a mere handful of prisoners. We were approximately ninety thousand troops with its organisation and High Command still intact. Our experiences over that period of three and a half years were to show that as our physical standards deteriorated and our morale went down, so did their demands on us increase.

The Black Market Conditions in the POW Camp at Ban Pong continued to deteriorate. With the rains the latrines became unusable. There were no alternative latrines provided. We would come 'home' from a heavy day's work in or near the river, to find the water level almost to the height of our beds, so that we had to call out to anyone walking nearby to take care not to disturb the waters too much, as the slightest splash ensured for some of us a wet night. When the latrines became waterlogged their contents spilled into the camp.

To add to our problems, we could see a new class of prisoner of war emerging and the growth of this class went with an increase of stealing. Ten minutes walk down the earthen road which passed our camp, was a street-

market. Japanese supervision was lax. It was not difficult to walk down to this market. There one was able to mix freely with the citizens of Ban Pong and even with Japanese soldiers. I know because I have done it. British soldiers in that street-market were there to sell something. It was a buyers' market as I found when I went there to sell my watch.

Business was conducted amidst the tempting odours of frying meat, onions and fritters. Each odorous intake weakened the resolve to stand out for a better price. We were ripped off.

All binds of secondary effects flowed from the black market. Some of the entrepreneurs, the hardnecked who were prepared to take a Japanese punishment if caught, were prepared to do the selling for those who had no stomach for it; for a good commission of course. There were men who had items such as watches and gold rings who were not to be persuaded to sell them. It was then that stealing began to be everyday event. We began to see in several huts, one or two men who had little use for the Japanese issued rations. These men ate eggs, meat and savoury fish dishes from the street-market, taking perhaps just a couple of spoonfuls of rice from their issued meal. They gathered around themselves a small retinue of hangers-on who touted for business for their 'bosses' in return for small, very small, food favours. These were the men who, in my opinion, were doing the stealing. I knew that officers were involved in the racket, and we all knew that racketeers almost never went out on work-parties unless there was a very good and profitable reason for doing so. The result was that the men who were going out daily to do very hard work came back to meals which can only be described as rubbish whilst others, admittedly small in number, stayed in camp, did no work, and fed considerably better.

Loneliness All the same, in spite of the black-marketeers there were, as well as George Haywood and Len Free, plenty of good honest men with whom it was a pleasure to sit and talk, men who were fundamentally honest in both argumentative and material terms. Nevertheless I had a sense of loneliness in that I had been separated from my section, from Ralph Smith, Gerry Hall, George Cross and all those others in my battalion who, whether party members or not, had come to and fully participated in our group meetings. Then one day Len was told to report to a different work party; he just had time to tell us that he would be away for several days; he believed he was going out with a small squad doing anti-malarial work. We never saw him again.

Inevitably that situation changed but the sense of loneliness persisted. A member of the Communist Party in the British Army had to face many different problems. To one's fellow soldiers, many of whom had little concept of what imperialism meant to the subject people, it was important that one's opposition to British Imperialism was not confused with pro-fascist or pro-Japanese sympathy.

The attitude of our Japanese guards had changed considerably since those early days on the Singapore Docks.

Face-slapping had become commonplace. Initially the Japanese had used it as a token of their displeasure but latterly the face slap developed into a severe physical punishment, administered with a clenched fist. A general response to this increased violence from our troops was to put it down to national characteristics; to be Japanese was to be sadistic. I and the remainder of my comrades opposed this mindless thinking at every opportunity but in so doing we had to be careful not to become apologists for the Japanese whose behaviour certainly needed some explaining.

In this period in Ban Pong I was not able to form a group. There were many reasons for this. To my sense of political isolation must be added my deteriorating physical condition. The dysentery was taking its toll. I was visiting the latrines, by which I mean I was going into the bush armed with a shovel, seven, eight, nine times a day and on many occasions during the night. Often I passed only blood and mucous but always the pain was intense. Then I had my first dose of fever. Several of our party had been admitted to the 'hospital' hut for the treatment of malaria. My fevers were never diagnosed as malaria. To the end of the war I had a fever which the doctors dismissed as a triviality and its name was 'dengue'. All I can say is that such trivia one is well-off without.

There were also on my record, as time passed, 'unclassified fevers'.

The other reason for my failure to establish a formal discussion group was the lack of opportunity. The majority of us were out before sun-up each morning and didn't get back to camp until near dusk. We were always physically exhausted and frequently sick, fit only to wash, eat our slops and crawl on to our bed slats. This is not to say that no discussion took place. It simply happened or it didn't wherever one was. In spite of this our education continued and one incident is worthy of mention.

The work on the river continued for weeks and we slowly realised that these floating timbers were sleepers for a railway track. One day instead of going to the river we headed in a different direction, towards a place called something like Nonpladuc. It was a point on the main railway where the new line was to branch off in a north westerly direction towards Burma. Work parties had been there for several weeks while we were on the river.

My first impression of this place, was that it was growing into a sizable junction. As yet no new line had been laid but a high embankment to receive it was under construction. From either side of the site earth was dug and carried to the top of the proposed embankment. The tools were picks, shovels of inferior quality, chunkles and baskets. Chunkles were heavy versions of the Dutch hoe, used for chopping and raking. It was a change from the river and the rains were abating. The work was hard but we had all come to expect nothing else. Two of us hacked at and loosened the compacted clay with pick and chunkle. Two men carried baskets into which one man shovelled the loosened earth. When the basket was filled, the two men took it to the top of the bank and emptied its contents so as to raise the level of the embankment. We devised a procedure which slowed the process down although when the Jap guard was near we were all apparently quite busy. By mid-morning the perspiration was flowing freely even though we were taking things more easily. The Japanese guard came by and shouted out "Yasumi", whit h meant we could rest.

We were working only about twenty or thirty yards from the main-line which wont southwards towards Malaya and Singapore. As we sat resting, a passenger train came m, travelling at no more than walking pace in the direction of Malaya. As we looked upwards we saw at the windows of the compartments black and brown faces both male and female staring down at us. Suddenly we heard the sound of the carriage windows being opened and the next thing was that small tons eels were being thrown down to us. There was a general rush to get to these prizes but I 'pulled rank'. "Just stop where you are," I said. "We will not behave like animals. We will not fight one another for these parcels". I told them to indicate, our thanks by a friendly wave of the hand and then share the parcels so that we all got equal amounts. That is exactly what happened and I was moved to see that we had retained something of former standards in spite of permanent hunger and bad example. No one challenged my proposal. As we undid the parcels, the outer wrappings were of banana leaf, we found that they contained a portion of rice, some fish and a sweet substance rather like jam. As the train slowly passed by we

saw friendly waves from many of the passengers in response to our own gestures of thanks. "Do you remember back in India on the way to Ahmednaggm?" I asked. "Were any of you on the train throwing small coins out to the starving Indians and shouting out to them, 'Fight for that you black bastards'." I knew some of our present work party had been involved and that most of them had heard about it later. "Those people in the train are black, or brown. Their skins are darker than yours. Are they the 'black bastards' some of you were taunting back in India? they looked at us and threw down food".

Battle of Wits The habit of beating the prisoners had grown steadily to become hardly a matter' for comment. It had really started with the arrival on the scene of an officer by the name of Teramoto. This unpleasant little man appeared on the back of a little Mongolian pony; he invariably carried a sword which was not always in its sheath. The bamboo switch with which he beat both pony and prisoner however, was his lethal weapon and he used it on the Japanese soldiers too. The result was that as soon as the guards caught sight of Teramoto's fiery steed coming up the line, they waded into us. On both work-sites we were driven to work harder than our physical condition permitted. Consequently a pattern of working was devised which created the impression of industry but which also economised on our store of energy. We became masters of deception in this matter but unfortunately there was no way to hide the fact that at the end of each day we fell short of the target which the Japs had set. The beatings became more frequent as did the presence of Teramoto.

One day while working on the river site, we stopped work for our mid-day rice, I saw a Thai standing in the shade of a mango tree on the edge of the clearing. He beckoned to me to approach. My first thought was that this was one of the locals out to pick up a bargain from the prisoners. I went over to see what it was about. The man said in very good English, "Listen carefully. I can get a message to your friends. Write down what you want to say quickly on this paper. I'll watch for the Nippon guards." I was taken completely by surprise. I wrote down that we were building a railway from Ban Pong to Burma and that we were being treated like slaves, deprived of proper food, medicines and clothing. I had just finished when I heard the shout of a Japanese guard. I handed over the paper and pencil to the Thai and saw the Japanese guard at the far end of the open clearing; he had started to run towards me but between us there were dozens of our party. I mixed with them and the Jap ran past me, his attention on the Thai who had completely disappeared.

The Japanese guard did not find the Thai and although he knew a prisoner was also involved he couldn't identify him, as we heard from Lieutenant Quinn as we stood on parade. Quinn had been told by the Japanese to produce the erring prisoner. "So," said Quinn, "Whoever it was, step two paces forward like the idiot you are and get a pasting from the Japs." No one moved, particularly me. Quinn walked off to where the Japanese were awaiting results. He came back with a further message from the guards which was that if the man they wanted did not come forward the whole party would be punished by having its rations reduced. To hold a group collectively responsible for the actions of one of its members was something we had not previously encountered. After a struggle with my conscience, I spoke to Quinn about my dealings with the Thai. My story was that the Thai offered me a packet of peanut biscuit for twenty cents. I told him that was too much and I would only pay fifteen. We argued for a time and then the guard shouted. The Thai ran away.

We did our work stint for the afternoon and returned to camp. I thought the Japanese had accepted my story, but I soon found out my mistake. We halted at the guard room at the camp gates and I was pulled out of the ranks by the work party guard. I was told to stand to attention near the guard room and that's where I stood for the next twenty four hours. It was the longest twenty four hours I had ever experienced up to that point. I received no food in that time and nothing to drink except that twice I fell to the ground and was revived by having a bucket of water thrown over me, some of which I was able to drink. I was in trouble with the dysentery and tried to indicate my requirements to the guards, at first without success. The result was a beating and then the humiliation of defecating as I stood there.

After that, having cleaned up the mess, I was taken under guard to the camp latrines, in the vicinity of which I was allowed to dig a hole and empty my aching bowels.

The coldness of the night gave way to the pleasant warmth of the morning and that in its turn was replaced by the blistering heat of the day. It wasn't until late afternoon that a small palefaced Japanese in a rather unusual uniform came to the guard room from the direction of the Japanese camp down by the street market. He came out of the guard room and spoke to me. "You have been held here because the Japanese soldier reported that he saw you give something to a Thai civilian when you were at work yesterday," the little man said in perfect English. "I had in my hand a packet of peanut biscuits which that man wanted twenty cents for. I refused to pay more than fifteen. The Japanese soldier must have seen me hand back the biscuits to the Thai. That is all that happened," I lied. This gentle speaking Japanese, whom I later learned was the official interpreter for our whole force and whose name was Adachi, looked at me for a few seconds. "The Japanese

soldiers are very conscientious in fulfilling their duties," he said. "You must be very careful not to be seen doing something which looks suspicious even if it is not. You may return to your house now. In future be very careful indeed." I tottered rather than walked to my bed space. I fell on to my half blanket and lay there in a daze. Then one of my friends took my half mess-tin and returned with it filled with rice and a better soup than was to be served later that day when the work parties returned. When that happened I was fast asleep.

Bushido As a Communist I have accepted that the human race is biologically indivisible. Under all our skins is homo sapiens no matter what our colour. But although my personal belief in our common heritage has never been shaken, the behaviour of the Japanese did take some understanding. In the discussions that were constantly going on in the camp I was often hard-pressed to counter the argument that the Japanese were of different origin from the remainder of the human race. George Haywood, always ready with a sharp line in repartee once said, "I accept what Stan says. The Japs are human like the rest of us. But you just think what thousands of years of a rice diet does to you. Look at us and we've only been on it for a few months. If I have to eat this fucking stuff for a couple of years I can well see that I'm going to grow to hate the rest of the human race."

The Japanese were fond of putting up notices many of which it seemed to me indicated that they, or at least some of them, were aware of how badly they were behaving as 'host' nation. One can see their real difficulties but ...

Part of a notice published in 1942, by Commandant Suzuki: ... but for the lying propaganda of the senior men of your countries you would not have met with hardship as prisoners of war. Because you believed them you came here to fight against us. You surrendered – You are prisoners of war. I am sorry for that. – Dai Nippon is a just country and does not use lying propaganda. Do everything honestly and be well repaid.

From an Address given by Lieutenant/Colonel Y Nagatomo, 1942: You are all only a few remaining skeletons after the invasion of East Asia for the past centuries and are pitiful victims. It is not your fault but till your Government do not wake up from the dreams and discontinue their resistance all of you will not be released. However, I shall not treat you badly for the sake of humanity as you have no fighting power at all. His Majesty the Emperor has been deeply anxious about all war prisoners and has ordered us to enable opening war prisoners' camps at almost all the places in the Southern countries. The Imperial thoughts are inestimable and the Imperial favours infinite and as such you should weep with gratitude at the greatness of them, and should correct or mend the misleading and improper anti-Japanese ideas. I shall meet with you hereafter and at the opening of the office I require you to observe the following points: I heard that you complain about the insufficiency of certain items. Although there may be lack of materials it is difficult to meet all of your requirements. Just aim your eyes to the present condition of the world. It is entirely different from the pre-war time. In all countries and lands all materials are considerably short and it is not easy to obtain even a small piece of a cigarette or a small match stick and the present position is such that it is not possible even for the needy women and children to get sufficient food. Needless to say therefore that at such inconvenient place even our respectable Imperial Army is not able to get mosquito nets, foodstuffs and cigarettes freely and frequently. As conditions are such, how can you expect me to treat you better than the Imperial Nippon

Army. I do not persecute according to my own wish and it is not due to the expense, but due to the shortness of the materials at such distant places.

I regarded this constant reference to 'Bushido' in these notices with scepticism. To me it was like trying to explain British capitalism in terms of the medieval orders of knighthood.

We who worked on the railway knew that many of the smaller groups that went out of camp each morning were on 'cushy' jobs. These parties were always led by senior NCOs. One such job was to look after a garden which supplied the Japanese Engineers with most of their vegetables. The work was light and they would often not see a Japanese all day. Another job was to do with preparing vegetables at the Japanese cookhouse itself.

This party was led by a Warrant Officer and sometimes the working part of the group was made up entirely of sergeants. On this chore the food was good and there were lots of `presentos'. This word generally referred to presents of cigarettes. There was a growing practice of making up to the Japanese guards, of being over-friendly with them in the hope that this would lead to `presentos'. It was all part of the general lowering of standards which in my opinion had set in from the very first few days in Ban Pong and for which, once again in my opinion, the officers had to take full responsibility. Then the Japanese attitude to the prisoners of war had stiffened and 'pinto presento', a present of a beating, became the order of the day. We heard reports of the senior NCOs being beaten up on these so-called cushy jobs and the suspicion grew that it was because of over-familiarity and too much expectation of `presentos'. The senior NCOs began to drop out of the competition for 'cushy' jobs, opting for camp administration instead. As a result, sergeants and corporals began to take over jobs previously performed by Warrant Officers.

In this way, it happened one day, to my absolute astonishment, that I was listed as NCO in charge of a small group of fifteen men, instead of being on the usual railway party. I had no idea what the job was to be.

A Plum Job I was in charge of a Japanese cookhouse party, one of the cushy jobs so long the preserve of the higher ranks.

When we arrived at the cookhouse a Jap explained as best he could that he wanted two men for chopping wood for the cookhouse fire, two men for fetching water and so on. After seeing the men at their respective tasks I joined the woodcutters, figuring their work to be the most physically demanding of all. The little man who had allocated the jobs came running to where we were working. He told me I was 'Number One' and that in the Nippon Army 'Number One' did not work, and persisted in leading me away from the work scene to where a shaded seat for two stood. There, he almost pushed me on to the seat and signalled that I should stay there, he would return. When he did so he had in his hand a packet of ten cigarettes and a fruit we came to know as a pommelo, something like a grapefruit, which he pressed on me. I sat there in the pleasant shade a few yards away from the woodcutting party. One of the group called out, "You stay there Corp., we can manage all right.

It's not hard work." About mid-morning the Jap cook came over to me and said, "Yasumi O.K." He indicated that there was a drink for us all and we actually tasted tea for the first time in months. It was the weakest tea I had ever tasted but the change was welcome. I shared out the cigarettes and the pommelo and felt that my luck had really changed. I found the opportunity to speak to the men as a group and warn them not to 'crawl-arse' to the Japs. "If they give us something or other that's one thing but no asking for 'presentos' O.K.?" The men all agreed and for several weeks we held that job with no problems.

We found a man who worked in the stores who spoke very good English and on several occasions he acted as interpreter for us; he told me that he had studied English Literature at Osaka University and this led to an unusual experience. He called me to join him in the front part of one of the store sheds one day; he gestured me to a seat and we sat facing each other across a small table. "How many Japanese soldiers do you think have died in this war?" he asked. I didn't know the answer to that question of course and I told him so, adding that the Japanese had been fighting since 1923, and must have lost many men. The Japanese nodded sadly. Then he said, "One day all people will perhaps speak the same language and then there will be no more war." I decided to be cautious so I just nodded and left it at that. He then went on to talk about his university course and his reading of English Literature and we exchanged views on the merits and demerits of authors and poets from Marlowe and Shakespeare, Fielding and Richardson to Auden, Spender and Huxley. I thought how odd it was, that I could involve myself in this absorbing conversation with this representative of a foreign culture but not with any of my friends in the prison camp.

Then the strangest part of the conversation took place. He said that he had recently read a book which had given him a lot of trouble. Perhaps I could help him with it. I encouraged him to describe the theme of the book as he could remember neither its title nor its author. I had not thought it likely that I would be able to identify the work but it was worth a go. To my pleasure as well as astonishment I was quickly able to name both title and author as the novel was by one of my favourite authors. It was Mr. Weston's Good Wine by T.F. Powys and just before the war it had been published by 'Penguin' as a paperback. The reason for the Japanese soldier's difficulty was that it was an allegory, to be read at two different levels. I was able to explain this to the Jap's obvious pleasure and enlightenment. He rose from the table and went to a cupboard from which he returned with three books which he offered to me and which I gratefully accepted. One hook was The Life Story of Oliver Cromwell. The second was Gilbert White's A Natural History of Selbourne and the third was The Yearling, by an American author whose name I cannot recall. Three new books to enter into our circulating library made a very acceptable present although, increasingly, good and invaluable reading matter was being either bought up or stolen to provide paper to make cigarettes.

We had a mid-day meal from the Japanese cookhouse each day and this meal we looked on as a banquet. It often consisted of a good helping of beautifully cooked rice, with a reasonable soup and almost always a portion of fish, meat or crayfish. But this additional food appeared to do me little good. I continued to lose weight and my visits to the latrines increased, often totalling a dozen times in one day.

There were three Chinese boys employed around the cookhouse. I knew them as Kwong Yee, Loi Toi and Yak Sik. They were approximately fourteen, twelve and eight years of age respectively. I became quite friendly with them often spending an hour at a time with them in conversation. We were on good terms to the extent that we would laugh together and try to think up new ways of poking fun at each other. They would often bring to us extra food from the cookhouse, assuring me that it was with the full knowledge of the Japanese cook. I was able to get food back into camp, and this food went to George Haywood and two others from my battalion who were in bad shape in 'hospital'.

I still continued to lose weight. On an improvised weighing machine I tipped the scale at less than nine stones at this period. I had no calves to my legs nor buttocks either. I could look down at my chest and see the movement caused by my heart beats. My knees and feet appeared to me to be immense bumps, their size being

exaggerated by the stick-like appearance of my legs. My skin was like a parchment with the map of some imaginary world etched on it. This was the effect created by the pellagra, a vitamin deficiency disease which was at this time beginning to affect many of us. Kwong Yee took me by the hand one day, and led me to the highest point in the cookhouse area near to the fringe of trees. From this point I could look down onto an earthen road which wound its way past the Japanese quarters. After a few moments I became aware of distant music. It grew louder and louder and eventually a funeral cortege came into sight. It was a Chinese funeral, all were dressed in white and the music, played on many strange instruments, stayed with me for years. The procession wound its way past us on its way to the Chinese burial ground. From that day on, Kwong Yee would look at my pellagra decorated body and at the thinness of my arms and legs; if he saw, or imagined a worsening of my condition, he would gently break into a hummed version of the tune played by the band at the Chinese funeral. Occasionally he would smile sadly, and as he hummed would point in the general direction of the Chinese burial ground; but always on those occasions the heavy hint of my short-term future, was accompanied by an extra helping of something nutritious when meal-time came round.

Trouble with the 'Shoko' I had begun to congratulate myself on having discovered the way to handle a potentially awkward situation when everything began to go wrong. One day, as I strolled somewhat aimlessly from place to place within the work area, I heard two revolver shots from the top end of the cookhouse area. A group of Japanese soldiers was standing in a semi-circle watching a Japanese officer, the biggest Japanese I had seen. It was this officer who had been firing the hand gun. He replaced it in the holster and walked towards me. I stood to attention and gave him a stiff little bow as were our instructions. The `shoko' did not pass me by. He stopped a couple of yards from me and surveyed me from head to foot. I had a premonition that here was a man wanting to show off in front of the troops and I was being assessed as the `fall guy.' The `shoko' Crouched into a wrestling posture and waved me to do the same. I quickly made up my mind that it would be folly to play the Japanese officer's game. I remained standing at attention. The Japanese soldiers formed a circle round us. The 'shoko' approached me very cautiously. I stared straight ahead. Suddenly I was flying through the air to land with a thud on that very hard ground. I picked myself up and resumed my former position, standing very correctly to attention. Three, four, five times this procedure was repeated. I lost count. Each time I was thrown I picked myself up and stood to attention, keeping an expressionless face as I did so. I think I won, for eventually the `shoko' walked away and the circle of Japanese dispersed. I have had discomfort from that hip ever since but when the twinges bring back the incident to my mind it is a victory I recall, not a humiliation. The next day I was in further conflict with this same officer. I walked past the bath house and saw that someone was in the bath and found myself staring straight at my wrestling adversary. As soon as the `shoko' recognised me he beckoned me to approach the bath.

Then he gestured me to take up his razor and shave him. I stood to attention once again and said in a very loud and determined voice "No". The 'shoko' thereupon repeated the gesture. Again I said "No. I am a soldier not a servant." I waited, half-expecting an outburst which could have ended with a severe beating or worse. It ended with the 'shoko' waving me to go about my business.

In just over a week I was in trouble again. A Japanese sergeant, or `gunso', came into the cookhouse area and indicated that he had a job for me and four men. We picked up two buckets, several scrubbing brushes, some bars of soap and marched out of the camp, stopping only to fill the buckets with water. We walked down the branch road to the street market and had only cleared the market area when we came to a gaily decorated

Japanese house about four feet off the ground, access being up a short flight of steps. It was only then that I realised that this place was a brothel for the use of the Japanese, and my work-party was being given the job of cleaning it up. "Not bloody likely," I said and I called the men out of the house. "This is a Jap brothel," I told them. "I am not going to clean out a brothel for the Japanese or anyone else. Where is that bloody `gunso"?" I found the Japanese sergeant and told him that we would not work on that brothel. I then awaited the outburst but I waited in vain. The `gunso' simply carried the remainder of the cleaning gear into the house, locked the door and marched us back to the cookhouse. There were no repercussions from that incident. I reported the incident to the captain who was nominally the Camp Commandant; he had no comment to offer on the matter.

Reunion Two men from my battalion were in the hospital hut. Both had dysentery and both were having increasing difficulty in eating the rice which was our principal fare. George and I often went over to the hospital hut to spend an hour with these two. When it was known that we were to visit, there was often a little gift of something special for us to take with us. One man would donate a banana and another an egg. To get hold of such items necessitated the sale of something that was treasured, perhaps a ring or one's last pair of trousers; the men who donated these items were themselves in great need and their actions were in stark contrast with those of the 'I'm all right' brigade.

Then we began to catch sight of strange white people in immaculate British uniforms, officers and men who looked to us as if they had just come in from a drill session on the barrack square. These people wore shirts and slacks, boots and hose tops and there wasn't a bearded face amongst them. I think we old hands at Ban Pong experienced mixed feelings as we stood before these newcomers in our rags and tatters. Were we part of the same force? Then it happened. I was standing in the cookhouse area talking to one of the men when suddenly into view came a young man dressed as if for an officers' parade; this vision swept across the intervening space between us and had me by the hand before I had convinced myself that this really was Second Lieutenant Standen. After pumping my hand up and down Bert then embraced me in a most un-English and most unarmy like way. "Corporal bloody Henderson!" he exclaimed. "I thought I was never to see you again. How are you? We hear you've been having a rough time up here. Anyway, the old man wants to see you. Can you come and see him?" I explained that I was in charge of a working party but I would ask permission to be absent for half an hour. Given the 'all clear' by the Japs, I walked off with Standen. "How long will it take you to get dressed in something decent?" asked Bert. I looked at him with a grin on my face. I had on my bush-hat, and a loin cloth. I had nothing on my feet. "This is all I have." I replied. "Come on then," said Bert, "I don't suppose the old man will mind." We hadn't far to go to find the hut where the Colonel was billeted; he was in the corner position of a hut and standing around him were four or five officers from the battalion. They were all correctly dressed as far as I could see. I stood before the CO very conscious of my appearance. He asked how I was. I replied that I was in reasonable shape apart from a touch of dysentery. "How are the other members of the battalion who came up here with you?" "Most are very thin as the food here has been very poor, sir. Two men are in very had shape and they are in hospital." I gave the Colonel the names of the men in hospital. "Did you receive Red Cross parcels up here?" asked the CO. "No sir," I replied. "So far we have received neither parcels nor mail." I told him that the discipline and morale in the camp was as low as it is possible for it to get, that the people who ran the black market were the real force in the camp and that senior ranks were involved. We talked on for several minutes. I spoke with none of the other officers. I had the distinct impression that they were looking down their

noses at me. The CO gave me two tins of powdered milk and two tins of bully beef. That evening I told the men of our battalion of my meeting with the CO and passed on his best wishes. So far as the tins were concerned, I said, "The powdered milk is for our two mates in hospital. The bully beef is not ear-marked. I am open to suggestions." Unanimously, they went to the hospital too. The next day the COs party had gone and I was not to meet him again for nearly three years.

Chungkai I was not sorry to see the last of Ban Pong. Our first move was to Kamburi, a forced march which took us two whole days. One night we spent in a field by a wide river. The field was planted with ground nuts and we all filled our pockets and haversacks. Chungkai was only five or six miles from Kamburi. It became the base camp for Number 2 Group to which we were allocated. Work parties came up from Singapore to Chungkai, stayed a short time and then set off up country for their allocated section of the line.

Instructions given by Colonel Sugasawa from Kamburi. Read by Lieut. Col. Yanagida to Number 2 Group at Chungkai Camp near Kamburi: I am glad to inform you that Colonel Sugusawa assumed the new post of Superintendent of Prisoner of War camps in Thailand. In this connection I have the honour of transmitting his instructions to you, and I request that all of you shall observe his orders.

Instructions given to prisoners of war on assuming my duty.

1.

Look forward to the happy day when you can be repatriated and keep your mind at ease, trusting in your religious belief, and take good care of your health. Particular diligence of medical staff to this end for sustenance of physical condition is expected.

2.

Observe our regulations and discipline on the honour of your nation.

3.

Those who violate the regulations or discipline will be strictly condemned. Given at Headquarters, Kanchamburi, August 22nd, 19th year of Showa.

Colonel Sugasawa, Superintendent, Prisoner of War Camp.

We worked on the embankment at Chungkai just as we had at Nonpladuc. The pressure from the Japanese was mounting. The sweat dripped from our bodies as the sun climbed higher and higher. We had to wait for the midday break for a drink, our water and rice being brought out to us on the line from the camp. Units from Singapore came to Chungkai. Some being part of Number 2 Group stayed and these units often included men from the Bedfordshires. Military organisation was breaking down, and being replaced by a work-based organisation. In one sense we who had been in that first party to go up country to Thailand had been lucky. We had been gradually hardened by our experiences. Those who had either stayed in Changi or who had moved into camps like River Valley Road Camp in or near Singapore were suddenly thrust into a totally different experience. Our feet were as tough as the feet of the native Thais who rarely wore footware. We survived our long walk, not without problems, but considerably better than many of the newly arrived units. I saw the condition of many of the men who came to Chungkai via Ban Pong. Often their feet were raw and their boots stained with blood. Often they were out on their feet as they came into camp, moving like automatons, seeing nothing, recognising only that to stop moving was to die. One party of Bedford-shires had done a march of about ninety miles. They had been told that if they fell out on the march they would be executed. Many were too exhausted to eat even though they had not fed for more than twenty four hours. Many had just one night in

Chungkai in which to recuperate. Next day they had to face a march which would take them from the relatively flat area of Chungkai northwards into the foothills, mountains and rainforests of Thailand.

Dysentery and other plagues.

I grew thinner and thinner and there came a day when I was pulled out of the work parade and sent off to the sick parade. There were at that time two hospital huts in Chunkai. One hut was for dysentery cases and the other was for those suffering from jungle ulcers. My treatment for dysentery was two meals a day, each consisting of boiled tapioca and as much boiled water as I could manage. The tapioca was boiled in water and bore more resemblance to wallpaper paste than to the milk pudding with which we were familiar. I continued to lose weight. In fact the hospital treatment accelerated my weight loss. The tapioca regime might have been suitable for treating bacillary dysentery but it had no effect whatsoever on amoebic. I was glad to get back on the work diet. I was at this time visiting the slit trench latrines as many as fifty times in twenty four hours although it was frequently the case that my bowels were empty. Blood and mucous were all that one could pass and all the time one's bowels were writhing in an agonised endeavour to discharge something. The rice at least gave the dysentery bug something to work on besides the lining of my intestines.

1 had another worry besides dysentery. On the day of the surrender I had discovered that I had on each leg, just below the knee, a sore about the size of a half crown. I had assumed that the two sores had been caused by leeches and that they would eventually heal. In fact the one on my right leg had done so but not the other. It persisted in spite of all my efforts to keep it clean although it did not grow. My concern was occasioned by the sight of some ghastly ulcers. As the months grew into years and as the Japanese viciousness increased, these jungle ulcers were to become an ever increasing problem.

At this time there were in Chungkai thirty or forty men who had lost one leg and some two. The common reason for that was jungle ulcers. We were all familiar with the sight of men who had ulcers reaching from the knee down to the ankle. The frequently used technique for keeping the putrid flesh to a minimum was to place a handful of maggots from the latrines on to the ulcer and then to wrap them up with any old rags which were available. The aim was for the maggots to devour the rotten flesh.

We were all familiar with men who were walking skeletons and others who were blown up by beri-beri to look like small barrage balloons. We were often kept awake at night by the screaming of men suffering from malignant forms of malaria and blackwater fever. That was where the heroism was to be seen. We luckier ones went to work with our jaundices and our dengue fevers which were not even factors worthy of comment.

Ralph Smith, one of our party members, was normally a very good trencherman but even down at Changi he had had difficulty in eating rice 'bust'. Since leaving Singapore he had deteriorated

considerably. Those of us who were on work pay often were able to give him tit-bits bought from the newly opened canteen at Chungkai but in spite of our efforts Ralph died; his last words to me as I sat beside him with his head cradled in my lap were, "If it was steak and chips Stan, I could have managed it with no trouble." He then slipped into unconsciousness and died a few hours later.

By 1943 we were constantly being told by the Japanese that the railway was behind schedule and we prisoners must work harder and for longer hours. The sick parade in all the working camps became a mockery. Initially the British doctors had had some say on whether a man was fit for work or not. Those days were over. Time and time again one saw a protesting medical officer roughly shoved out of the way when he tried to argue that a man was unfit for work. The Japanese 'honcho' or foreman made the decisions and if he needed two hundred men he would have two hundred men, even if some were so sick that they had to be carried on stretchers to work. We had many times heard the threat from the Japanese that there would be no issue of rations for the non-working sick. In 1943 this became official Japanese policy. The effect of this policy was to reduce rations for everyone. The death rate began to mount. One of our number died practical y every day and although we had the conviction that 'it couldn’t happen to me' common sense told us otherwise.

I went down with an attack of dengue fever just as I heard that there was to be a search of the camp by the Japanese. I was excused work parade, crawled under a piece of blanket and went into a troubled sleep. I had acquired an army tunic at this time by bartering some tooth powder for it. It was the kind of coarse khaki tunic that was worn by British regular soldiers before the battle blouse came into use. I was wearing a pair of very ragged shorts and this tunic as I lay there with the perspiration dripping from me. My temperature soared to 105 degrees. I felt awful. My head was thick and my mouth tasted foul. I had ten cents on me and decided to visit the Thai food stalls which the Japanese had permitted to operate just outside the camp boundary fence.

Normally there was no trouble in passing the camp entrance. This time there was a guard with a fixed bayonet standing there. I should have known there would be. The search parties were still doing their work. I suddenly remembered that in my left-hand trouser pocket was the prismatic compass I had acquired in Singapore. I was ordered to empty my pockets. I knew that I was in desperate trouble. Beatings were handed out for the possession of such things as a note book or a pencil. I inwardly cursed myself for being so thoughtless, although I realised that the dengue fever was responsible for my less than intelligent performance. I thought there was only one thing that I could do. I would have to make a long drawn out performance of emptying my pockets in the hope that the Japanese would tire of it and dismiss me before I got to that last pocket. When the guard, with a snort of disgust, indicated that I should be gone, I was down to that last trouser pocket with only sleight of hand to fall back on. A few days later I was in a work party that went off to Tamakan.

The POW Branch In Chungkai I had been reunited with several of those who had attended our discussions back in the UK or in Changi. They swelled our meetings and brought in others. Such backing made political organisation much easier.

The members got round to all the huts in the working lines and made sure that everyone knew when we had a meeting planned. Conditions at Chungkai were more relaxed than at any other camp I had experience of. When the evening meal was over, we were not troubled by the Japanese. With an hour or so of daylight left we were able to hold meetings. As soon as our first Christmas as prisoners drew near we Communists were calling for recognition that the brotherhood of mankind could only be realised through Socialism.

With so much support we declared ourselves to be 'The POW Branch of The Communist Party', gave ourselves the power to recruit members to the party and undertook to organise group discussions in whatever camp we might find ourselves. Most of our talks were given on the subject of 'Communist Policy'. With John Strachey's Theory and Practice of Socialism we were able to extend the range of subjects but more importantly we were able to get George Cross to open a discussion and then, as confidence grew, others took on this role. This development did not take place overnight of course, it took months before our work reached its highest level of activity by which time we had all been dispersed and reunited in different camps on many different occasions. I suppose I was the most regular speaker at our meetings, in fact in the early days I was the only one with any experience at all of public speaking. Even at the time of our second May Day meeting in 1943 I was the only party speaker. I went down with dengue fever on the last day of April and when the meeting was due to start I was wrapped up in a friend's blanket sweating and shivering and desperately trying to fall asleep. Gerry Hall and George Cross were having none of that; they carried me out to the meeting and I just had to get on with it. We had about thirty people at that meeting including Australians and Dutch. When the meeting was over I was carried back to my bed-space and loaned a couple of extra blankets to help me over the rigor stage of the fever.

Gerry was very good at informal discussion. Often after we had held a formal meeting where the discussion had not flowed as freely as one would have liked, Gerry would be discovered in the centre of a group of fifteen or more with question and answer following on freely and naturally under his guidance, with his sense of humour and ready line of wit and repartee. George was so different; he would tackle any job if he saw it as his political duty to do so. Not naturally gifted as a public speaker, George, more than any other comrade in our group, saw to it that in whatever camp he found himself, a discussion group in the name of the party was formed.

We decided to train our group members in the skills of public speaking so that when we were sent off to different camps we could start off Communist meetings. Eventually we held three meetings a week. In one we analysed the capitalist system and underlined its exploitation of the workers; one was an education class in which we endeavoured to explain the principles of Marxism; the third was current affairs, based on what little news we were able to garner of the war situation. The numbers attending our meetings varied from half a dozen to as many as thirty. At times we had Dutch present, including a man who told me that it was his brother, Van der Lubbe, who had been charged with the burning down of the Reichstag building, and executed by the Nazis.

On other occasions we had Australians including 'Banjo' Patterson who was a member of the Australian Communist Party. Later 'Banjo' was to invite me into the Australian huts to speak on various topics.

On one of my stays in Tamakan I decided that we would publicise a meeting held in honour of Joe Hinks, a veteran of the International Brigade who had died of dysentery in Burma. The meeting was called for an hour after the evening meal and when I arrived I was surprised to see about fifteen people, many whom I had never met before, sitting about waiting for the meeting to start. It turned out to be the largest I had addressed so far as the audience grew to well over fifty before it ended. I showed how the Spanish War had been used by the Axis powers as a rehearsal for the Second World War. This led on to a discussion of the nature of the present war and the different aims of the participating countries. We had received some news in the prison camps of advances by the Red Army and successes further west by the Americans and British. Thus we were able to bring into the address a touch of current affairs and more than a touch of the optimism which we tried to build in to all that we had to say.

That meeting was only halfway through when we were surprised by the sudden appearance on the scene of two Japanese guards. We had posted two lookouts to warn us of such an eventuality but these two had gradually become complacent and, unnoticed by the rest of us, had joined the meeting. The first guard pointed with a sweep of his hand to the fifty or more men sitting in a half-circle before me and delivered himself of the usual harsh crackle of unintelligible questions. Acting on the assumption that he wanted to know what this gathering was all about since any such gathering was expressly forbidden by camp rules, I explained in sign language that we were all friends, long separated by the fortunes of war.

As our party meetings succeeded in attracting a sizable following so did our confidence grow. By the time the railway was officially finished late in 1943 we in the Communist Party were recognised as being an integral part of the cultural circuit, receiving invitations for speakers just as did the Conservative, Labour and Liberal spokesmen in the camps. In fact we in the Communist Party had blazed the trail, the other parties following our example a considerable time later.

Tamakan At Tamakan our job was to build a bridge to carry the railway over the Meklong so that it could follow the Kwai towards its source. The river at Chungkai had been very important to the prisoners of war in that it not only provided drinking water but was the means by which rations were delivered to the camp. We were able, at the end of a gruelling day's work, to wash our garments and our scrawny bodies in the river. On occasions we could enter into a dialogue of sorts with some of the Thai people who lived in a kampong not very far from our camp.

That was on the asset side. There was a time when that same river was to bring sudden and terrible death to us in the shape of cholera. When the river was in flood the water spread over the land on both banks and flooded the adjoining countryside including the lowest areas of the camp. The Japanese supplemented their diet with fish from the river; they simply cast in dynamite and waited for the stunned fish to float to the surface. We prisoners were ordered to bring in all the floating fish and deliver it to the Japanese. We were able to keep some of the catch for ourselves but we also collected a few hidings when our plans misfired.

There was already a traditional steel bridge at Tamakan when we arrived. Our job was to build a very different bridge indeed. I went to work on the first day at Tamakan in charge of a small party of about eight men. We carried with us poles and ropes and some large pulleys, and then erected the poles to form a pile-driving' system which we worked for several days just driving those stout timbers into the river bed. The work was hard for men in our enfeebled condition but the river was cool and our overseers not too demanding.

When all the main supporting timbers had been driven into the river bed I was transferred to a different job in a quarry, which was to provide ballast for the permanent way and was blasted from the side of a hill. When our work party was taken to the site we saw that tons of stone had been blasted from the hillside. The stone was in all shapes and sizes and the main part of our force was given sledge hammers with which to reduce the boulders to a more suitable size. None of us had done this kind of work before. It all looked simple enough. One slammed the hammer on to the boulder and at some point that boulder would begin to break down. We discovered our error when the first strike was made. As the hammer head hit the stone so did a thousand stinging pin pricks assail one's unprotected legs. Soon our legs were running with blood and most of us decided that enough was enough. I went over to the sergeant and showed him my bleeding shins. "We need some sort of protection for

our legs at least," I told him. Together we approached the nearest guard. He indicated that he would speak to the `gunso'. As we waited one of our party said that pliable woven matting could be wrapped round our legs and held in position with string or the kind of fibrous ties that were used to secure the top roofing on our huts.

There was plenty of it in camp where huts were still being built. When the `gunso' arrived we showed him exactly what happened when the hammer head hit the stone; he examined our bleeding shins and nodded his head in an understanding way. The outcome was that a Japanese soldier and half a dozen of the party returned to camp. They came back within half an hour carrying shin guards for us all. From then on the work was bearable.

At various times I was in the smaller party that went off towards the quarry face. Our job there was to edge out on to narrow ledges with a long crowbar to lever loose boulders so that they fell to the ground some eighty to a hundred feet below. I have no head for heights and when first told to go out on one of those precarious tasks I simply shook my head and said, "No". The Japanese who had handed me the crowbar shouted and bawled for a few minutes and then turned to give the task to someone else. I saw that the fellow who had been given the crowbar was as reluctant as I was to go out on that narrow ledge and that made me realise that by getting out of that job I had landed someone else in it. After that I did go out on the ledges. I was terrified to begin with but discovered that I was able to control my fear.

One Foot in the Grave I was in Tamakan for several weeks until well into 1943. Then my dysentery exploded into action again and I was returned to Chungkai for a spell in the hospital hut. There were three or four huts which were used as hospitals and they were invariably fully occupied. There were several doctors in the camp and on one memorable occasion there was, for a short period, a dentist. On the day when the dentist was ready for business there was a queue of at least two hundred waiting for him and I was one of them. There were several Japanese soldiers in that queue as well. The dentist had the tools with which to perform only extractions but he worked quietly and quickly and soon we were all shuffling forward in the direction of that bamboo chair. Every man in that queue had health problems of a far more serious nature than bad teeth, yet there was blue funk written across most faces that day. There was a big Scot in front of me, a man from the cookhouse. He opened his mouth at the dentist's request and responded to the first exploratory probe with a yell that called an answering echo from the nearby hills. "Shut up man," snapped the dentist. "Are you trying to lose me my customers?" Those of his captive audience near enough to hear that remark laughed with him but there was anxiety mixed with the laughter. I lost two teeth that day.

When I went into the dysentery ward this second time I was something in the neighbourhood of eight stone and after a week I lay in a semi-coma barely conscious of what was going on around me. I heard the doctor talking to the medical orderly, their voices seeming to come faintly to my ears as from a distant planet.

"Discharge him this afternoon; he isn't going to make it and there is nothing more we can do here. They can cope with him in the work-lines better than we can." I was duly discharged, presumably to die. I left the hospital hut on two legs but after walking twenty feet I sank to my knees and continued my journey on all fours. The difficulty was my side-pack. It had within it my dented enamel plate, spoon and half mess-tin, my toothbrush and a small bottle of tooth powder, my wallet and a piece of cloth which was to be my new loin cloth when the present one fell to bits. That was all that I had in the way of material possessions in the world. The pack was too

heavy for me and I left it to be collected later. This was about one hundred yards from my old bedspace in the work-lines. About halfway there I paused for a rest, stretched out at full length on the patchy grass with my eyes closed. I heard a voice saying, "Hang on Stan. I'll be back in a minute." It was dear old George Haywood. He had decided to pay me a visit in hospital and that was how he came to find me; he had gone back to the hut for help and returned with a couple of helpers to half carry me back to the hut. I shall never forget that evening. At about eighteen hundred hours the call went out that the evening meal was ready. George came to me and asked if he should collect my meal. We always did this for one another whether we wanted the meal or not as there was always a friend who could eat it.

My enamel plate was half filled with rice, as usual the rice was liberally mixed with rat droppings. We had complained about the rat droppings, asking that the rice should be washed. The doctors had refused this request on the grounds that there was some protein in the rat-droppings and we ought not to lose it. My plate was swimming in pale green water and standing proudly alone on top of the rice was a cube of cucumber. I sat there from eighteen hundred hours to twenty two hundred hours, and as George came to see me I managed to force down the last grain of rice. It had taken me four hours.

We had with us in several camps a doctor who was, as they say, 'a bit of a card'. I met him in Chungkai when he treated me for dysentery; his name was Markovitch and he was a Canadian. I was told that he carried out many amputation operations, sending off to the cookhouse or the carpenter's shop for a saw when such a task had to be performed. This remarkable little man said to me halfway through 1943, "Corporal, you have one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana skin. You need rice polishings for your beri-beri and pellagra but those roughage foods will play hell with your dysentery. Somehow you've got to find a way to tread that narrow path between Charybdis and Scilla." For a diagnosis I had to see M.O. Doctor Gutler. "Bring me a specimen," said the doctor.

"We have just acquired a microscope in the camp. I should be able to tell you more about dysentery in a day or two." Later that day I took my specimen to Dr. Gutler and when he asked me what I wanted I fumbled for the polite term to use, not being that familiar with Gutler as a person. "I see," said the doctor, "You've brought me a sample of your shit. What are you stuttering about? That's what it is, shit." "I'm quite happy with the AngloSaxon word," I replied. "It's blood and mucous for the most part. I don't know the Anglo-Saxon for either blood or mucous. I'm sorry."

The next time I saw Gutler he said, "You've got amoebic dysentery and not bacillary dysentery for which we have been treating you." "What's the difference?" I asked. Gutler paused for a moment and then said, "We can cure bacillary but not amoebic. There is a treatment for amoebic. It involves a drug called emetine. We have a small quantity of this drug but it is reserved for the doctors." It was my turn to pause before asking, "What is the prognosis so far as the amoebic dysentery is concerned?" "Eventually it will kill you," said Gutler. "How long do you reckon that will take?" "That's impossible to say. It depends on so many other things, such as the kind of food you get; your lack of vitamins causing this swelling in your legs and feet. You see, what will help one condition aggravates another. Amoebic dysentery has spells when the bug is cystic and temporarily inactive.

Then it will erupt into activity and give you a bad time. It burrows into the intestine and we cannot shift it without emetine. You'll just have to tread carefully and hope the war comes to an end before the hug gets you."

Funeral Pyres I had been discharged only a couple of days when the cholera cases began to come in from up country. To say that their arrival at Chungkai caused a panic would be to overstate the situation but there was certainly an element of panic in some quarters, not least amongst the Japanese. The hospital wards rapidly filled and I personally knew of no cases where the cholera patient survived. I remember seeing one of the Bedfordshire sergeants arrive on a stretcher; he was a big raw-boned countryman, a farm worker in civilian life but of course much reduced by his experiences on the line. Even as he was being carried to the cholera ward I saw that he was in better shape than most of us. Two days later he was unrecognisable. Cholera had whittled him down to a skeleton and on that second day he died.

Orders were issued that the river was out of bounds. Only water which had been chlorinated was to be used for drinking purposes. Untreated water was not to be used even for washing clothing and most certainly not for cleaning one's teeth. The Japanese became interested in our welfare because our situation threatened theirs.

One day the entire camp population was ordered on parade, officers and all. We were formed into a long single line. A party of Japanese doctors started at one end of the line and made slow progress along it. As they approached we were ordered to drop whatever garment we were wearing. We then had to bend forward to facilitate the thrusting of a glass or wooden rod into the rectum. The rods were bundled into tens and later tested in an endeavour to discover if any of us was a carrier of the cholera bug, virus or whatever it was.

The cholera victims poured in to Chungkai, coming by train, river and truck. We buried the dead at the rate of twenty a day and soon had to resort to mass graves and eventually cremation. I approached Dr. Cutler with the suggestion that I should be allowed to work in the cholera wards. After all, I argued, my number was up, he had told me that himself. I was capable of keeping the cholera patients clean and comfortable, which was about all that we could do for them. My presence would release a trained 'medic' for more exacting duties. My suggestion was rejected on the grounds that I might infect the patients with my dysentery. I pointed out that the life expectancy of a cholera patient was hours rather than days and that the dysentery bugs would never have time to do any damage, but to no avail.

Instead I was put in charge of the fuel gathering party. My party supplied bamboo to another party which had the distasteful task of burning the bodies of those who had died. In practice the two parties fused. We built the funeral pyres down by the river as far from the dwelling huts as possible and on the average for several weeks we cremated twenty bodies each day. Cholera is a water-borne disease and it raged in the valley of the Kwai during the wet season. As the monsoons abated so did the occurrence of cholera.

Bamboo One of the most hated and feared of all jobs at Chungkai was this clearing of bamboo thickets. This giant grass grew to great heights and thicknesses but it also put out tendrils just below ground level. These tendrils were covered with needle-like spikes and most of us were barefooted. A mere scratch from the bamboo one day could be an ulcer the next and an amputation job a few weeks later. There must have been as many as two hundred amputs at Chungkai alone by 1945, some having lost both legs. If and when they survived the operation they were usually found congenial employment making cigarettes.

My instructions as NCO in charge of the bamboo party was that each man was to bring in to the cookhouse three bundles of bamboo, each bundle consisting of about ten fifteen foot lengths. The diameter of each bamboo would be ten inches at the base on the average and the bamboo had to be dry and dead. All the men on the bamboo party were sick men and such a load was quite enough. My bit of organisation was to bring into camp just one load of bamboo but it was a very large bundle indeed, one that I managed only with great difficulty. This allowed me to stay up in the tree-cloaked hills high above Chungkai Camp, high above the River Kwai, with not a Japanese in sight. I often roamed several miles in search of suitable bamboo. On one occasion I stepped into a large open space covered with grass and saw before me a Thai boy of perhaps ten or twelve years in charge of a herd of goats. I gave the boy a friendly wave of the hand and turned to leave. To my surprise the boy waved back with a gesture that I should not go. He busied himself amongst the goats, and then walked towards me carrying something in his hand. As he came nearer I saw that he was carrying a small glass bottle full of milk. This he offered to me, pointing at the pellagra patterns on my near naked body. He made signs that I should drink the milk and I was pleased to do so.

On another occasion I carried my large bundle of bamboo homewards along a lonely mountain path. Suddenly, fifty yards ahead of me I saw a group of five men. They were a tough-looking bunch each carrying a nasty looking parang thrust into his waist-band. I walked towards them holding up one hand, palm forward in greeting and was much relieved to have my greeting returned in friendliness. One of the Thais ran a finger along one of the pellagra lines on my shoulder and shook his head sadly. I nodded to indicate that I was aware that the condition was not good for me, following with a shrug of the shoulders to indicate that there was nothing that I could do about it. The man held up a finger as if to say "Wait!" and went off round a bend in the path so that I lost sight of him. As we waited I entered into 'conversation' with them. In sign language I answered their questions. Yes I was married. Yes I had two children and so on. They were intrigued to discover that my wife had given birth after I had left England. They indicated that the Japanese were taking a beating in many places, giving me names which meant nothing to me. It was obvious that these Thais were not at all sorry that the Japanese were in trouble. In about two minutes the man returned and between finger and thumb he carried the tail of a lizard. He pointed to this tail and then pointed to the pellagra markings on my body. I had to infer that in some way the lizard's tail would be good for my pellagra. We were not able to converse and so I was never to know what had to be done with the lizard's tail.

No Escape I had come to realise that I was never going to escape from Japanese captivity. My height, fair hair and blue eyes presented sufficient difficulties without the problems of health. I had considered selling the prismatic compass over the wire, but had rejected the idea on the grounds that surely someone would attempt an escape sooner or later and that it would then be of great help.

One day I heard that four officers were attempting an escape bid. These men had only recently moved into Chungkai and were not in a hut but sharing a tent. I went to see them and they confirmed that they had plans to escape. I told them that 1 had a prismatic compass and that it was theirs if they wanted it. My offer was accepted with thanks. The officers had gone within a couple of days and I never saw them again. Six weeks later I was in camp with Bill Lamb. He was a black marketeer from the word 'go', who had an intellectual admiration for our party and what we were doing, but who was single-minded about surviving at any cost. He told me, "I

sold a prismatic compass for an officer when I was in Kinsayok, he had just come up from Chungkai. I'm bloody sure that was your compass. I got thirty dollars for it and gave him ten. You should have let me sell it for you."

Bill then produced a five dollar bill. "Here, take this. Those bastards never intended to make a break for it.

They'd no right to take that bloody compass." Perhaps they were wise not to make the attempt.

One day as I passed through the gates on my way to the hills, I saw that there were five men, prisoners of war, huddled on the floor of the guardroom. All five were Northumberland Fusiliers and they were in chains. They were lying there in much the same state when I returned later that morning. I asked about these men back in camp but no one could tell me anything about them other than a Korean guard who simply said "Him no-good man." They were still there the following morning. I did not keep them under constant surveillance of course but I passed that guardroom several times. Never did I see these men being given food or drink. On the second day, as I returned to camp I was ordered to report for a fatigue with a party of men. We drew chunkles and spades and, accompanied by a `gunso' and two Japanese privates we marched out of camp.

To my surprise we marched to the pleasant glade we passed on our bamboo gathering duties, and there we were told to sit down and rest. The `gunso' gave to each of us a cigarette and then went about a measuring task with his two privates, leaving us to smoke and wonder what it was all about. When the `gunso' had completed his measuring up exercises he called me over and explained, with difficulty what he wanted the work-party to do. I passed on the instructions to the men and soon they were all at work. It wasn't until we had been at work for perhaps half an hour that I suddenly realised what it was that we were doing. We were digging five graves and a shooting point. The graves were for our fellows lying there in chains on the guardroom floor. I was angry with myself for having been so slow to realise what it was that we were doing. I leapt to my feet and called out, "Stop work lads. These sods are going to shoot the five men lying on the guardroom floor and we are digging their graves. We won't do it. Drop your shovels." The Japanese `gunso' came running over as the men stopped work. I told him that we would not continue with the work and prepared myself for the customary outbreak of fury and its attendant violence. It never came. The `gunso' accepted my refusal to continue working with no change of expression; he ordered one of the privates to march us back to camp where we were dismissed. I then reported to the Camp Administration Office what had happened. The next morning when we walked out of camp in our quest for bamboo, the prisoners were no longer in the guardroom. When we came to the glade, the scene of our aborted digging party of the day before, I saw why. There were five graves each piled high with flowers. The flowers were renewed as they faded and this continued for several weeks, as I was able to see as long as my job of collecting bamboo lasted. Who placed those flowers? I do not know. It could have been friendly Thais from the nearby village. It could have been the Japanese themselves. I was told later that the five men had been involved in an escape attempt during which a Thai policeman had been killed.

A week later we were to witness an incident involving Japanese brutality designed to make any prisoner in Chungkai wish to escape. A Japanese 'gunso' entered one of our cookhouses and started to browbeat one of our cooks, made him stand to attention and gave him a series of blows to his unprotected face. A signals officer, a very large and physically fit man who happened to be acting as messing officer, intervened. At this the Japanese turned his wrath on the officer, who responded by hitting the `gunso' with what a boxing commentator would have described as a beautiful right hook. The 'gunso' was considerably discomforted and returned to the scene with armed support. The signals officer was very roughly handled in being arrested and was made to stand to attention outside the guardroom at the camp gate; he was still standing there when the evening 'tenko' took

place. As we stood there, numbering off in Japanese, a group of four or five Japanese soldiers began systematically beating up that officer. They continued long after he lay an inert and crumpled heap on the ground. The officer suffered multiple broken bones but, I am glad to say, recovered. Years later I caught sight of him on the London Underground.

Doovers and other delights As time went by the standard of cooking improved. The cooks had invented a dish which we spoke of as a 'doover'. It was basically a rice cake with onion and a smidgeon of vegetable in it and fried in ghee oil. We got this only rarely, as it necessitated the oil ration having to be saved for weeks. The news that we were to have a 'doover' for dinner was usually greeted with a roar of pleasure. We always had 'doovers' on Christmas Days.

The Dutch taught us a lot of useful things about what could be garnered from the rain forests. We needed no telling about bananas, mangoes, limes, papayas or paw-paws. At Chungkai, primitive stills were constructed and from banana skins and other vegetable matter a tolerable alcoholic drink was produced. The Dutch however knew about green plants that were edible and through them we also found wild tomatoes. Tamarinds were made into a kind of jam and kapok was used to make a kind of 'do it yourself' cigarette lighter. In some camps the Japanese encouraged the establishment of vegetable gardens. Of course they always had the pick of whatever produce resulted. The delicacies which I have just referred to were often sold round the camp by men who were in on the rackets. There were always those amongst us with an eye for something that could be sold to the men on the work parties. I would never have believed it could happen but I was later to see drinking water being sold by racketeers to men who had gone through a long working day on less than a pint of water.

The real food situation for the majority of us was plain low grade rice assisted by a weak soup for the main meal of the day. One day several sacks of rice polishings came into the cookhouses. Those of us with vitamin deficiency problems were issued with a helping and told to make every effort to eat it. It was sour and hard to swallow and many just couldn't get it down. The cookhouse had promised to do something with the polishings to make the stuff more attractive to the palate. I can hardly say that they succeeded. The cooks made a sort of pudding from the rice polishings. We saw on a bamboo tray several long dark objects reminiscent of what may commonly be seen on the floor of the elephant house at London Zoo. The similarity didn't end there either and the result was that much was taken but little was eaten. I managed my helping and took a second for later.

The dishing out of food called for men of courage. The server had to judge how much to give so that all received an equal helping. If he started off giving too little he would end up with food left in his container and there would be shouts of fury from starving observers. If he gave too much there would be hungry men going without a meal that night.

The soup would usually have some solid matter in it such as vegetables and very rarely there would be a little meat. It didn't matter that the meat was frog, dog, snake or rat so long as it was shared out fairly. Woe betide the server who made only a pretence of stirring the soup with his ladle. The solid matter tended to sink to the bottom and some servers were known to leave it there until they served out their own helpings.

One day there was a rumour that we were to be given meat for dinner. None of us believed it but there for all to see, tethered to a stake, was a cow. Physically it was to the bovine race what we prisoners were to the human

race, pathetically unrepresentative. It was publicly executed that evening by a big fellow from one of the cookhouses; who, armed with a seven pound hammer, waged war on that pathetic beast for three quarters of an hour before he rendered it unconscious. There was a distinct rumble of protest from the watching crowd and I for one lost all interest in the supposed feast that was to come. I had no meat on my plate as a consequence of that animal's death, nor did any of those in my hut. It was one poor beast little larger than a sheep and we were three thousand strong.

The Death Railway The Japanese drove us to work with unrelenting savagery. Orders had been received by the commander of the Southern Army that the railway had to be finished no matter what the cost in human life. If a man could stand, he was judged to be capable of work. If a man could not stand or walk then he could be carried to work.

Prisoners stumbled on horrifying marches from camp to camp, some coming south, others going north. It was 'Speedo, speedo, hiako, hiako, you no beoki mei, you lazy mei,' and the bamboo pole would crash down on to bony shoulders and the blood would run down the emaciated bodies to mingle in the oozing mud that squelched warmly between our toes. The daily agony was never ending.

Officially the railway was completed late in 1943 but I and others were still working on it well into 1944. Some accounts have it that work on the railway started in October or November 1942 when the first work parties went up country from Singapore. I was in the first party to go to Ban Pong in Thailand and that was in June 1942.

Our work was all to do with the railway. We moved sleepers from the river to Non Pladuc. We started on the embankment before being joined by our comrades from Singapore. We built the first huts from bamboo and atap in camps along the line to receive the men from Singapore. By the time the main parties were coming to Thailand many of us at Ban Pong had already been reduced to shadows of our former selves and had become convinced that the Japanese tactic was to break us by starvation and overwork.

The death rate on the railway varied from camp to camp. Generally speaking the nearer one got to the Three Pagoda Pass, the heavier was the death rate. By the time it was completed we had, almost with bare hands, pushed that railway, mile by mile through some of the most difficult country in the world. We likened ourselves to the Israelites slaving on the pyramids of their Egyptian masters. With pick, shovel and chunkle we had dug out deep cuttings, built miles of embankments, and taken down great trees from rain forests where no white men had previously set foot. We had carried thousands of sleepers on our raw shoulders; we had built timber bridges and hacked at mountain sides to make narrow ledges to carry the permanent way; we had left our dead comrades in their thousands all the way along that railway of death.

The Japanese made a great deal of the completion of the railway. In a speech full of bombastic hypocrisy an important officer thanked us for our efforts and regretted that it had been the will of God that so many had died.

A Night at the Theatre After the completion of the railway Chungkai began to take on the dimensions of a small town. The social centre was where a Thai contractor had been given permission to set up a kind of 'fast food' bar where, if one had the money, one could buy from a wide variety of tasty dishes. There was 'mah mee', a relatively expensive noodle

dish and many others but the one I remember most was 'stink fish'. These were freshwater fish, similar in size to small herrings, which had undergone a mysterious process of curing which seemed to involve the sun and millions of flies. The finished article emitted a powerful odour, approximating to the smell of an over-ripe camembert. I had to overcome my horror of the flies but with just one 'stink fish' it was possible to eat a great quantity of the otherwise unappetising rice. There were also on sale banana fritters, peanut biscuits, meat and onion rice cakes and a passable imitation of a fried egg sandwich. I remember feeling a sense of outrage on an occasion when a major, a very well-known cricket journalist, stood with other officers in full view of a crowd of starving prisoners of war, eating one of those egg sandwiches, laughing with his friends as he tried to cope with the egg-yolk as it ran down his chin.

There was an amazing concentration of talent in Chungkai, including an orchestra which was remarkably good. It had violins and cellos, all the percussion instruments, most of the woodwinds and quite a number of brass instruments. Many of these had been salvaged from the wreckage of Singapore, some had even been donated by the Japanese but many had been made in the prison camps by gifted craftsmen. A piano made the journey all the way from Singapore to Thailand. Musical scores were painstakingly reconstructed from memory by a number of young musicians and these scores were wide ranging from symphonies and light music to such as Walt Disney's Snow White. I remember a musical comedy, the music and lyrics of which were written by prisoners of war.

In Chungkai there was also a theatre which, in my opinion, would have paid its way in London's West End. Each week its talented workers put on shows, drama, musicals or melodrama, which merited the thunderous applause which greeted their efforts from prisoners and Japanese alike. There were occasions when the theatre was closed down for a week or two for having offended the Japanese but it was always re-opened. The Japanese would sit in the best seats and two thousand or so prisoners would encircle them, straining to catch every word that was spoken. A giant basket travelled with the theatre party and it was packed with all that the actors required.

The very first cultural activity down at Singapore had been the organising of lectures. The procedure was that a group of men in a hut would decide that it would be a good idea to invite a particular speaker to address them.

Not all in the hut would attend the lecture but a lot depended on the subject and the ability of the speaker. At Chungkai an official list of speakers was drawn up showing the names of speakers and what subjects they were available to speak on. I was on that list and at first I believe that I was the only speaker representing a particular political party. I lectured on the theory and practice of Marxism and on the marxist interpretation of events between the two world wars. I was also down to speak on poetry, the historical development of the English novel and the short story with particular reference to O'Henry. I knew many of O'Henry's stories almost word for word and enjoyed rendering them in my best effort at an American accent. I remember an occasion when a group of American prisoners of war attended one of my O'Henry performances. I think their presence inhibited my efforts at an American accent. One of them told me afterwards that I hadn't done so badly, but that some of the accents were 'Bronx' and others 'Southern'.

Gerry Hall, `Gilly. Potter, myself and a number of our friends were listed as 'heavy sick' and told to prepare for a journey to a camp not far from Bangkok. This, we were told, was a model camp and would be inspected at intervals by the Swiss Red Cross. There was to be no more heavy work for us and the food would he

considerably better than anything we had seen so far. We did not believe a single word of all this but when the time came we travelled in hope.

First impressions of Nakon-Paton were favourable. The huts were of traditional style and lay-out but they had obviously been built by experts on a fairly flat site. Gerry Hall, 'Gilly' Potter and I settled in to a corner of the hut to which we had been shown, which came to be spoken of as the 'Red Corner'. To our great surprise we were supplied with mosquito nets, in our case a very large one under which a dozen of us found some relief from the malarial carrying female anopholes mosquito. For several days we were not called on for work duties, other than keeping our huts clean. The respite from hard labours did wonders for my dysentery as it did for all suffering from that complaint. All seemed to bode well although the food was just as it always had been, barely enough for survival.

Jungle Jim Our job turned out to be site levelling and certainly it was not heavy work. We worked in groups, a couple of men shovelling earth from high points and a couple carrying that earth to fill in low points. The earth was carried in a sack stretched on to two bamboo poles. We were directed where to deposit the soil by a Japanese soldier who carried what I took to be an ice-pick or alpenstock. This man became notorious in Nakon-Paton for his sudden outbursts of temper which frequently led to vicious attacks on prisoners. We christened him 'Jungle Jim'. He required each grain of earth to be placed exactly where he wanted. Inevitably mistakes were made and the load of soil would be tipped in the wrong place. Jim's face would then become contorted with fury; for a minute or so he would rage against the offenders and then, when the requisite head of pressure had been reached he would sail in with fist, boot and alpenstock. I once saw this man confront a young prisoner who was particularly inoffensive. There came from 'Jungle Jim' a staccato rattle of abuse. Then suddenly the alpenstock was brought into play without warning. It caught the prisoner just where in normal times the biceps of his left arm would be. There was a spurt of blood and from myself and 'Jock' Jennings who were nearest there came a spontaneous sound of protest. The guard swung round and stared at us. We stared back, I for one being certain that we would be next for the alpenstock treatment. Then the Jap lowered his gaze and turned to his victim, waving him away to get his wound attended to.

After a few weeks of this easier work of levelling we were ordered to build a great wall round the whole camp. It seemed that allied bombing had resulted in numerous deaths in unmarked prison camps in many parts of SouthEast Asia so an earthen wall was to be erected round Nakon-Paton to indicate that it was a POW Camp. We were to build that wall entirely of earth. It would be about twenty feet high, very wide at the base narrowing to a mere four or five feet on the cat-walk at the top. The earth for the wall would come from a deep moat-like ditch on either side of the wall.

We ran into trouble on the first day and it was with us the next day and every day. Its name was 'Jungle Jim'.

There were lesser problems too. We struck the water table at a depth of about three feet and from then onwards we were working with very wet mud. As the days passed. the trenches grew deeper and the wall grew higher. When the wall reached a height of five feet the shovelling man in the trench was five feet below ground level and to him the wall was already ten feet high. It was very heavy hard work and physically we were not up to it.

My group for some reason attracted the unremitting attention of 'Jungle Jim.' The nasty little man's favourite occupation was to position himself close to our working site and at intervals to lash out with a length of wood with a six inch nail driven through one end. We all had to jump lively at times to avoid having hand or finger skewered to the shovel by that ever-threatening nail. This persecution went on for two or three weeks. We returned to our huts each night dejected and exhausted just as had happened earlier on the railway.

It was Bert, a lanky Australian, who had lived a very spartan 'outback' sort of life at home, who eventually voiced what we were all thinking; "I reckon we'll have to do for that bastard before he does for us." Others added their support. I sympathised with them completely although I had always been strongly opposed to the taking of human life, but was under no illusions in the case of 'Jungle Jim'. It was only a case of when and how.

Ours was a brilliantly conceived plot. When 'Jim' visited our group, as he always did by walking along the catwalk, he would be struck violently by whoever was the man on top. That initial blow, delivered with a chunkle, was expected to kill 'Jim'. The body would fall into the trench and those near enough would arrange the chunkle so that it would appear that 'Jim' had fallen on to it and so come about his death. We would then call out to the other guards to bring them on to the scene. Fortunately for us, on the very day that we were to put the plan into action, I was included in a party that was to leave Nakon-Paton to go up country again to work on the railway, and I didn't ever learn what my former workmates did about 'Jungle Jim'.

Hope While we were working on the railway in Wampo we saw several train loads of Japanese soldiers going both up and down the line. It was obvious to us that the men going down were in bad shape, all destined for hospital.

The soldiers going in the direction of Burma were very young, little more than boys. This gave us heart, as did the sight of several flights of four engined bombers heading past us in the direction of Chungkai or was it Bangkok? We heard that the bridge at Tamakan had been bombed. We also heard that the bombing of a camp in Burma had caused the deaths of many prisoners of war. When our party was returned to Chungkai we were all becoming just a little more optimistic. This optimism was based on what we had seen for ourselves, and also from news picked up by an illegally operated radio. Two brothers in the Signals Corp had made and operated the wireless and would most certainly have been executed had they been discovered. Other indications that the Japanese were in trouble came from Thai traders but the difficulty was that all we had as a means of communication was sign language, which has its limitations.

Such news as was available relating to the war was discussed at that party group meeting which we optimistically allocated to current affairs. Our principal aim at these meetings was to develop a rational understanding of the war situation as a whole but with particular reference to the Far East. The trouble was that rumour, always active, often raised high the belief that our ordeal was coming to an end.

There were indications that the war in Europe was being won by the Allies and we had seen for ourselves those train loads of wounded Japanese heading for hospital and the boys who were to replace them. On the other hand the Japanese had occupied practically the whole of South East Asia. We did not know what the Allied strategy in South East Asia was. If the Japanese had to be driven out of their newly acquired territories one by one it could take years. If the Allies were able to go for Japan itself then the end might come sooner. What was to be said to the men who wanted to know 'How much longer?' and whose hold on life sometimes depended on

hope. Our reply, summed up into a few words, was that we believed that we were in the closing stages of the war but the end was not imminent.

Spreading the Message Every evening at Nakon Paton, after the last meal of the day, we settled down to discussion, usually political but sometimes cultural. To begin with there were about fifteen of us under the 'mossy' net but that net soon had to be lifted to accommodate all who wanted to join in. So we planned more formal outdoor meetings. Outside our hut was a giant ant-hill some twenty five feet high. About five feet up this hill was a convenient ledge which served as a good place for a speaker to sit. At least once a week but often two or three times a week, we held an open-air meeting there. We had our largest ever meetings at that ant-hill site at Nakon Paton and one of the features of those meetings was that we welcomed people who were prepared to challenge our political views.

One evening an Indian Army Captain came to our hut asking for Corporal Henderson. Captain Emmerson, who was a member of the Communist Party and in peace time the literary editor of the Calcutta Statesman, became a regular attender of our meetings. He told us that in the officers' hut there were several left-wingers, one of whom was a member of the Left Book Club; he also came to our meetings on several occasions. The presence of an officer at our meetings resulted in a dramatic increase in attendances.

One day one of the doctors stopped me and asked if we had held a Communist Party meeting on the previous evening. I said that we had. The doctor laughed. "I was at a meeting of the Literary Society last night. There were about a dozen of us present. We were discussing the war poets of the First World War when suddenly we were invaded by the camp police under the impression that we were a communist meeting. They got a right bollocking from the two colonels who were present I can tell you."

On one occasion I received a request from the officers' hut that I speak to them on the subject of 'Communist Policy after the War'. The invitation was delivered by Captain Emmerson. Some of the group were against my speaking to the officers but, after a discussion, it was agreed that I should go. I was loaned someone’s shorts for the occasion, more for my comfort than out of deference to the officers. I was conducted to the officers' hut by Captain Emmerson and found that there were about fifty officers sitting comfortably on chairs arranged in the form of a semi-circle. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas, my Commanding Officer, was conspicuous in the front row.

After the introduction, which was made by Captain Emmerson acting as chairman, I thanked the officers for their invitation but asked them to understand that I had not recently been in touch with my party. Neither was I a high ranking member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. I said that it had to be understood that the policy of any political party depended on the situation it had to face. As a prisoner of war I was in a poorer position than most to know what the circumstances in the UK would be at the end of the war. Bearing all this in mind I would do my best to estimate what Communist policy would be. Several questions were put to me afterwards but I remember only one. An officer wanted to know our policy regarding the Royal Family ! The response from the officers to my talk was restrained, but Emmerson told me that there had been some discussion among them afterwards and it was not all dismissive of what I had put forward.

The News in Chinese There was one chap at Nakon-Paton, whom I will call Peter, a lad who could easily have passed for a sixteen year old, who regularly went 'over the wire'. He came to me, quite unexpectedly, one day and said, "You're a

communist aren't you? How would you like to see a communist newspaper?" It would be Chinese and would be reasonably up-to date with news of the war. It would cost me ten dollars. Captain Emmerson produced the ten dollars immediately. I asked him if he knew anyone who could cope with the translation. "There's an officer in the sickbay," he replied, "who worked on Chinese broadcasting for years." The papers came into camp for several weeks and brought us very much nearer to being up-to-date than we had been for years. The officer in the sick-bay translated and little by little the news was filtered out through the officers to the rank and file. Then something went wrong. The Kempetai, the Japanese equivalent of the German Gestapo, came into NakonPaton, apparently aware of the fact that a news-sheet was getting into the camp, but the trail had gone cold with the death of the translating officer. Peter, however, was taken by the Kempetai and given some very rough treatment before being returned to Nakon-Paton.

The Bridge on the Kwai Again I think there were about forty of us. We travelled by truck for several miles and then we marched with no idea where we were going. As darkness fell we reached the railway and most of us slept beside the line. We must have been there for three hours before we saw the first train consisting of a long line of cattle trucks packed with Japanese soldiers. From our position we saw enough to convince us that these men were in pretty bad shape from wounds and were on their way to hospital. Before we moved off two more trains passed laden with Japanese wounded. At first light we resumed our journey on foot, eventually coming to an earthen road which we followed for about two hours. By this time we were literally on our last legs, strung out over a great distance and badly in need of rest and food. Our guards, there were either three or four of them, were in as bad a state as we. When a halt was called it was because the Japanese were also at the end of their tether.

An hour or so later we straggled into Kan Chana Buri or Kamburi as we called It, where after a long wait a train arrived on its way up country. We packed into two empty trucks and in this manner arrived at Tamakan which had changed since my last stay there. The iron bridge still stood, although several attempts had been made by allied aircraft to bring it down. The camp had grown; there were more huts and the labour force consisted of Americans, Dutch, Australians and a British majority. At two hundred yards from the huts were slit trenches which we soon realised were important, as allied 'planes were regular visitors and their bombsights were apparently none too good. Our party was put to work the next day on a bridge which the Japanese were to build as a replacement for the iron bridge which they were convinced would sustain serious damage. The new bridge was to be screened by trees so that it was hardly discernible from the air.

I had been at Tamakan about a week when I experienced my first air raid. Three four-engined bombers droned into our lives one day and we were ordered to the slit trenches. My first thought on arriving at the slit trenches was that they were fully occupied as dozens of the men were just standing about in the open. Then I realised that the men standing about were Londoners and they were just showing off because they had been in the 'blitz'. The noise was deafening but the 'planes eventually disappeared in the distance without having done anything serious to the bridge. On the occasion of the second raid three prisoners of war were killed. The bridge was still standing but was slightly damaged.

We started as a normal day-time job but within a few days we were working through the hours of darkness. The pressure from the Japanese became intense with severe beatings happening every ten minutes. The wooden

bridge was forty or fifty feet above the river. When the lower structures were completed, to get to our working positions we had to step from one sleeper-like cross timber to another more than a yard away, with the river sparkling in the moonlight down below. The Japanese engineers did all the technical work, while we did the labouring, moving the heavy timbers into position, or acted as 'mates', straddling the beams and handing tools to the engineers as they required them. Woe betide the man who misunderstood a request and handed over the wrong tool. I know because it happened to me. As a consequence of my mistake I had to endure a severe blow from a piece of loose timber that happened to be within the reach of the Japanese I was working with.

'Gobbler' With the completion of the wooden bridge we found we were to build a wall round the camp. "All we need is another fucking 'Jungle Jim' and we shall feel as if we've never left Nakon Pawn," Simpson said on hearing the news. We were not to find a second 'Jungle Jim' but we did find 'Gobbler'. 'Gobbler' was the Japanese soldier in charge; he had all the mannerisms of 'Jungle Jim' without the cold sadism. When 'Gobbler' clouted you it was because he had lost his temper, not because he took pleasure in inflicting pain. Like 'Jungle Jim', he knew a few words from languages other than Japanese. They flowed from him like water in a river at full flood, so that the effect was rather like the noise produced by a pen full of excited turkeys, and so to us he became 'Gobbler'. He dashed around trying to be everywhere at once; he would detect a spot where the wall was not quite right in his estimation and then he would relieve himself of an hysterical explosion of verbiage which no-one could possibly understand. After a couple of minutes, if the `culprit' had not rectified the alleged error, fists would fly and it would then be up to the NCO acting as `itchibahn', the Number One, to step in and solve the problem Itchibahn', was, in the first stages of the job, always a Warrant Officer. One by one the Warrant Officers took a beating from 'Gobbler' and were replaced. Then it was the turn of the sergeants. The problem was that no one could possibly understand 'Gobbler's' instructions. The deficiency lay in getting the angle of the slope right and this really necessitated a second man to advise the one who was actually doing the job. The sergeants came and went just as had the warrant officers; quartermaster sergeants, colour sergeants, sergeants full and sergeants lance, it made no difference; two or three days as `itchibahn', then a beating and a return to the work with pick, shovel and chunkle. The Warrant Officers left the wall to take up administration jobs but the sergeants weren't that lucky.

Then one day after work, I was called into 'Bull' Monaghan's (RSM of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) office. 'Bull' was the man who ran the camp. There was an impressive polished desk, comfortable office chairs and other equipment and a carpet on the floor. Sitting behind the desk was the 'Bull', a veritable captain of industry. He looked me up and down through narrowed eyes but his expression conveyed nothing of his thoughts to me. "You've been on this wall-building lark at another camp I'm told, Corporal. Is that right?" "Yes sir," I said, "At Nakon Paton." "Tomorrow you'll take over as senior NCO on the wall working party here. Any questions?" "Just one," I said. "There'll be sergeants working on that wall. Have they been informed that a corporal is to be in charge?" "They will be," said 'Bull'. "You'll be in charge and there'll be no come-backs. None of 'em wanted the job." I returned to my hut and thought the matter over. What worried me was that I was going to do a sergeant's work for corporal's pay. We were still on active service and our pay was mounting up somewhere back at home. I had no idea at the time as to what officers' pay amounted to in the Japanese prison camps. I saw very little of the officers and not a lot of the senior NCOs. Both categories fed in separate messes and the general belief amongst the rank and file was that they did considerably better than we did.

I took over the next morning and all went well. I adopted the tactic of never being more than a couple of yards from 'Gobbler' at any time, so that I was able to spot trouble as soon as he did, if not before. When, as inevitably happened, 'Gobbler' started raving about something in his unintelligible manner, I made a pretence of listening but really ignored him, concentrating instead on trying to detect the fault myself, and the ploy worked. The prisoners gradually grew to trust me and all went well for three whole weeks. Feeling that my modest success on the job had put me into a position where I could talk to the RSM with some chance of being listened to I eventually said to him, "Since we are all on active service, how do you justify having a corporal in charge of a working party that includes sergeants?" "I don't have to justify it laddie," said the RSM. "If I had to though, I would say that we were facing exceptional circumstances." That was that.

Then, a few days later, I had my confrontation with 'Gobbler'. The wall was about three and a half feet above ground level. For once I had allowed 'Gobbler' to get away from me. I heard his voice rise to a shrill squeal and saw that he was in a trench and berating one of the party whose job it was to maintain the wall at the correct angle. He started arguing with 'Gobbler'. I saw that disaster was imminent and leaped down to the trench below, prepared to take the shovel to pare off the offending bulge. I got the shovel all right. 'Gobbler' snatched it from the prisoner's hand and dealt me a mighty blow, the flat of the shovel coming down on the crown of my head. I felt the warm trickle of blood coursing through my hair and down my forehead. I looked straight at 'Gobbler' and he looked straight at me. With a totally expressionless face and in very gentle tones I said, "You diabolical little yellow faced abortion, one day you are going to get what is coming to you. You are the most ignorant little sod I have come across since coming to Tamakan. You are completely incompetent. I would not trust you to build a sandcastle never mind an earthen wall." It achieved nothing other than allowing me to slowly and very gently let off steam. That evening I reported to Monaghan. "The picnic is over. I have been struck on the head with a shovel. It is someone else's turn to be Aunt Sally."

A Japanese Socialist After some time I was in a party that returned to Chungkai and we all welcomed that, because we had a few weeks of comparative leisure, although the hospital population and the ever-growing area devoted to burials were a constant reminder that the death rate was not lessening. Whilst in Chungkai a book check was announced. All books were to be submitted for inspection with the name of the owner inside to ensure that the books would be returned to the rightful owners. It was Adarchi, the official interpreter, the man I had first met at Ban Pong, who made the announcement. There were several of our left-wing friends in Chungkai including George Cross, so we held a meeting to discuss what we should do about our book, John Strachey's The Theory and Practice of Socialism. After much debate we decided that it should be submitted for approval although we realised that we were taking more than just the risk of losing the book, and as my name was written on the inside cover along with my number the risk was mine. Two or three days later the Japanese began to return the books. After a week all books appeared to have been returned but not ours.

I decided that our best policy was to go to the Japanese administration office and make an open inquiry about our book. It was our most valuable possession so far as socialist ammunition went and after smuggling the book through several camps I was loathe to lose it. I was received by Adarchi in his usually correct and courteous manner; he listened to my request for information about the book and smiled in a friendly fashion as I finished. I never heard anyone complain about Adarchi. I was sure that he did not approve of what the Japanese military

was doing. "The book has not been mislaid," said the interpreter, "It is in my possession. I have been reading it with great interest. You see I am a Socialist but I had not heard of that book. I thought you would not mind me finishing it before returning it, even though it meant a delay of a few days." What could I say? Adarchi went on to say, "Two days more and you shall have your book back." Two days later I was called to the Japanese office and Adarchi handed me the book. "Thank you for your kindness," he said. The book carried the official Japanese stamp of approval, and as I mentioned earlier, it stands on my bookshelf to this day.

A few days later I was on the move again. A party of about one hundred marched out of Chungkai and walked the short distance to Kamburi. After a short train ride from there it was 'shanks' pony' again. The march, which started off all right as a compact body of men, eventually became more of a straggle, with three miles separating those at the front from the rear. It was a remarkable experience. Most of us were barefoot. We had only three guards on the entire journey and in the end, and particularly at night. we prisoners were guarding them. We were all in various stages of decomposition and there was no way in which we could keep together in a compact body. When the skies darkened we simply lay down and slept. On the second night the three guards insisted that we formed a circle around them. They indicated by sign language that the native Thais were cutthroats not to be trusted. It seemed that we prisoners were not threatened, it was the Japanese guards who had cause for fear. The Thais had not been defeated in battle by the Japanese. The Japanese were in their country by some sort of diplomatic arrangement which avoided the unpleasantness of war. This was however an arrangement between governments and it seemed not to be a popular arrangement by any means. We were all well aware of the fact that the Japanese were not doing well on the military front. We all knew that Italy was out of the war and that the Germans were in retreat on all fronts and my conviction that the war was nearing its end was much strengthened by seeing the contemptuous behaviour of the Thais towards the Japanese.

A strange thing I think it was on the third day of our march that a very strange thing happened, the significance of which I realised only some time later. I had joined Simpson to the rear of the party. A little way further back were half a dozen others, and the Japanese were practically out of sight at the head of the column. We had just passed a small hamlet outside of which a party of Thai men and women had collected to watch us pass by. Suddenly I became aware of a commotion behind me and I turned to see a group of two or three Thai men seize one of our party and try to carry him off. The man who was being abducted was struggling wildly and shouting blue murder in his attempts to free himself. Eventually, before we could go to his aid he broke free and his assailants quickly disappeared. The prisoner concerned was very frightened by his experience and there was much argument about why they had seized him. I still believe that the true explanation was that they were helping him to escape.

I think it was on the fifth day of our journey that we saw in the distance a walled town which our guards, who had become increasingly friendly as the march progressed, informed us was called Petburi. An hour or two later we limped our weary way by a large lake on the shores of which we saw there was a Buddhist monastery. A dozen or so water-buffalo lay contentedly in those placid waters which were fringed by a number of willow-like trees. The scene was tranquil, made to be depicted in blue on the whitest of porcelain. We bathed in that lake as we were to do many times in the coming months, and we learned with streaming eyes that the lake was practically pure buffalo urine. That lake was the only source of water for the camp for which we were destined.

In less than an hour from leaving the lake we arrived at what was the beginning of a camp. There were three or four bamboo and atap huts occupied by the Japanese and Koreans and a couple of huts under construction, the completing of which was our principal occupation for the first two or three days. Our supervisor on that task was 'Big Sam', a likeable Korean who made no bones about expressing his contempt for the Japanese. Many of the Koreans seemed to see it as their duty to outdo the Japanese in acts of brutality against the prisoners but 'Sam' was not one of those. "You number one prisoner," he would say sadly, "me number two prisoner."

The Air Strip We were in a wooded area where the trees were forest giants of immense girth and our job was to make a clearing. The technique used for bringing down a tree was to dig a trench round its base to expose the roots which were chopped through and the trench deepened until the tap root was exposed. When this was severed the tree was pulled over with ropes and down came it came. We then had to lop off the branches and drag the trunk to a place nearby where it would be loaded on to a truck. At first my impression was that the timber was the sole reason for our being there. The temperature was about one hundred in the shade and the sweat that poured from us formed muddy puddles at our feet. Before the day's work was over we were all suffering from dehydration. We trailed 'home' that evening like very old men. None of us could straighten his back and it was as if daggers were being thrust into the region of the kidneys. On the second and ensuing days we were joined in our labours by four or five elephants with their mahouts. Their job was to drag the tree trunks away to the collecting point. They were certainly more efficient than we but after a week or two they disappeared from the scene. 'Jock' Anderson of the Argylls said of the elephants, "The puir wee things could no stand it."

Somehow the information spread that we were clearing the ground for the construction of an airstrip. The senior NCO on my work party was Sergeant White of the Australian army. "If this isn't aiding the enemy's war effort what is? They'll soon be putting us into uniforms and drafting us to the Burma front to fight for them.

That's about all they haven't done so far." I said. "I know," said White, "It makes you fucking weep don't it?

These fucking Japs do just as they fucking like and we hear fuck-all from our officers. If they have made a protest I haven't noticed it. No-one seems to have the guts to stand up to them. Somebody will have to answer some awkward questions when this lot is over."

We complained strongly about the water situation. For the first few days a forty gallon drum part-filled with water accompanied us to the work-site. There were probably two hundred men working on that clearing.

Eventually two such drums were provided, which alleviated the more acute symptoms of dehydration but was still grossly inadequate. As a result of the poor water supply the work-rate suffered. The water shortage affected the camp too; our normal procedure was to by-pass the camp at the end of the working day and enjoy a bathe in the very doubtful waters of the lake. Many drank as they bathed; diarrhoea and dysentery were the natural consequences of such foolishness, but for many the temptation to drink was too much to resist. Once back in camp the weary members of the work party were confronted by a small group of water sellers. These men were the owners of cans and other containers in which the foul water of the lake could be boiled. They offered it for sale at ten cents a mug which was exactly what the workers had earned for their day's work. It took a deputation to put an end to this disgusting example of free enterprise. We saw the Australian who was the senior ranking officer at Mount Kajiwa and he was surprised to learn what was going on. There were other officers in the camp but apart from the doctors, they kept themselves very much to themselves.

The Japanese began to pile on the pressure. At the clearing we were given targets to be attained each day, targets which we never reached. It was the same on the quarry. There we worked in groups of four and we were told that we had to break down the boulders to a certain size. We had the same old trouble in fighting for legguards, which battle we eventually won. The manner of building that air strip was simple enough. Once the ground was cleared, large stones from the quarry were laid by hand to cover the entire runway. Loose earth was then shovelled over this layer before slightly smaller stones were laid. More earth was followed by a layer of even smaller stones and this process went on until the Japanese engineers were satisfied that the matrix of earth and stone provided a satisfactory surface for landing and take-off.

The fact that the Japanese had only two or three guards to supervise us gave us ample opportunity to devise ways of sabotaging the runway. There was a lot of decaying wood around as the airstrip was surrounded by pretty dense bush; this kind of wood was incorporated in the runway in the expectation of it collapsing to cause the Japanese war-machine some embarrassment. We also constructed shaky caverns below what appeared to be a sound surface. It was hoped that these too would collapse when put to the test. It wasn't much but it gave us a lot of satisfaction.

Supplies came into camp in a truck driven by a Thai contractor who at various times gave signs that he had something of importance to tell us. Usually there would be a Japanese NCO supervising the proceedings and this made communication with the Thai difficult. Once or twice however the opportunity to talk did present itself but the infuriating thing was that this man did a lot of gesturing but nothing substantial ever came out of it. The more excited he got the more confused we became. One day in May 1945, the contractor nearly did himself an injury in his efforts to communicate something to me. I recognised that it was important but that was all.

The Disappearing Men Then one morning we arrived at the runway as usual and I helped Sergeant Moon form the men up for the customary numbering. On the first count we were one man short and although Moon did his best to get the guards to accept this, we had to number off all over again. Once more we were one man short. Moon turned to the somewhat agitated guard and said, "Ichi mei go benjo." He pointed to the bush and then rubbed his tummy as he assumed an expression of pain on his face. This was customary sign language which said, "One man has gone into the bush for a shit." The guard then ran to the edge of the clearing to where the bush started. He shouted at the top of his voice, "Benjo mei! Benjo mei!" No reply. We numbered twice more and then the guard ran off in a panic to report to a Japanese `gunso'. The `gunso' had us numbering off again. Then, satisfied that our party was a man short, he went off to return half an hour later with a Japanese officer. Once again we had to number off but the result was always the same, irrefutably we were one man fewer than when we had set out an hour or more earlier. Nothing like this had happened before in any of the camps I had been in. None of us knew of a successful escape bid. The matter was talked about with excitement for several days. Many were the theories as to how the escapee had got away, one of the most popular being that he was in the Buddhist monastery near the lake. I was convinced by this time that the war was stuttering to a halt. It was not just the escape, but the way the Japanese had reacted to it that impressed me. Even six months earlier, an escape would have mobilised the Japanese into action. Questions would have been asked, threats of retribution made, rations reduced and punishments meted out to senior ranking prisoners. We saw none of these things from our captors at Mount Kajiwa.

There was no radio at Mount Kajiwa to my knowledge. Our only source of information, in fact our only contact with the outside, was the Thai contractor and he was not good at communicating. All we seemed to get from him was the thumbs up sign with no details. With the advantage of hindsight I became convinced that this man had tried to tell us in May that Germany had surrendered. There was a later occasion when he gave me the impression that he was talking about a great bombing raid followed by a meeting of many people; I'm sure he was really telling me about the dropping of the atom bomb and the meeting that followed it which virtually brought the war to an end.

About the time of the disappearance we began to receive nightly visits from an aircraft. It always came during the night, circled our camp several times and then, after perhaps half an hour, it droned off into the distance.

What its business was engaged us in discussion and speculation for hours. We all naturally assumed that the 'plane was circling the camp. "It might be", I suggested, "that the plane is circling something other than the camp, something which is not too far away. It could be that there is someone with a radio transmitter and the aeroplane crew is in radio contact with him."

Before we had properly adjusted to the disappearance of the first prisoner we had a second escape. Once again a man went missing from the runway party between the 'tenko' at camp and the tenko on the runway. Of course we had to go through the rigmarole of numbering off which we did for the customary five or six times before the guards were convinced that they had lost a man. Once again the guards, in a panic, asked the sergeant, "Ichi mei go benjo ka? You speak. Come back benjo mei." Sergeant Moon and I went to opposite edges of the clearing and called out, "Come back benjo mei. All is forgiven," and suchlike nonsense until the Japanese guards were convinced that another one had slipped through their fingers. During the next few weeks we had more escapes, perhaps nine or ten, all following the same pattern.

'Jock' Anderson of the Argylls was the last man to go. 'Jock' occupied the bedspace next to mine. One morning I noticed something different about 'Jock'; he was wearing his boots and his Glengarry. 'Jock' was one of the few who still possessed a pair of boots of any description; but his boots were not just any old boots, they were immaculate. He would never have worn them on a work party. "What's going on 'Jock'?" I asked. 'Jock' looked around, lowered his voice and said, "I'm going today. Leaving camp. Going over the wire." "Then put your hat out of sight," I said, "If the Japs get one look at your hat and your polished boots they'll know that something is up straight away. How about me coming with you?" "You mustn't," said 'Jock'. "My instructions are to come alone prepared for a ten mile walk. Get on the rear end of the work party and keep your eyes skinned. I got my instructions from a Thai who was hiding in the bush alongside the path." That morning I kept a close eye on 'Jock' as we made our way through the woods to the work site. One moment he was in full view, the next he was gone and I did not see the going of him. There was another change that morning. After the usual counting and re-counting an officer appeared. Ten minutes later we marched back to camp. We had only a couple of further visits to the runway and then all working parties came to an end.

A couple of days later our Thai contractor, who had obviously learned a few words of English parrot-fashion, told us that, "Hitler dead. Germany ..." here he must have forgotten the appropriate word or words; he just threw up his hands with one wrist clamped tightly over the other, the sign language for surrender or captivity.

Then he said, "Bom-bom Germany finish." Most of us had seen the train-loads of wounded coming down the line from Burma and the youths who were being sent up to replace them. The escapes had taken place. The

Japanese appeared to have taken no action. The aeroplane continued to make its nocturnal visits without hindrance. Work on the runway had come to an end. The expressions on the prisoners' faces reflected optimism as surely as the glum expressions on the Japanese faces reflected their thoughts. Increasingly, the Japanese kept out of sight. The days passed often without a Japanese being seen. Movement around the camp and even outside appeared to be unrestricted although most prisoners treated this new situation with caution.

Going for a drink One day, after work on the runway had finished, I was detailed for a job with a party of half a dozen men to search for any tools which might have been left lying about the clearing. The Japanese guard was friendly enough and when after an hour or so I told him that my work-party was in need of a drink he smiled his understanding and pointed a finger. He moved off in the direction indicated and signed to us to follow. We walked for about fifteen minutes away from the airstrip in a direction that was new to me and came to a clearing with gardens and about a dozen Thai houses. Eventually a young man appeared carrying two bottles. I assumed that the bottles were to be filled with water, but was completely wrong. The guard urged me to drink and so I took a very cautious sip. What I tasted was nearer to vinegar than wine. I smacked my lips in a pretence of appreciation and passed the bottle on to one of the others. It quickly went from mouth to mouth and came back to me empty, which I was thankful for. Then a sharp cry rang out. We turned to see a Japanese officer standing in front of one of the Thai houses; he was a small man dressed in olive-green uniform, white shirt and polished riding boots. Our guard stiffened to attention and bowed. We did not. The `shoko' then appeared to go mad. The cause of his rage was either that we had been found drinking with a Japanese soldier, or that we hadn't saluted him as we should have done, perhaps both.

The `shoko' ran towards us, his progress hampered by the long curved sword that swung from his belt. He smote the guard two or three times across the face and then turned his attention to me. I took the first blow on the face because I was not expecting it but I dodged the second. I should have known better. I dodged the third one too. I suppose that I was not unaffected by the recent events which had convinced me that the war was more or less over. I had advised others not to behave rashly during this period of uncertainty but I failed to heed my own warnings. It was not until I saw that Japanese officer drawing his sword that I came to my senses; by that time however it was too late. I saw the blade of the sword flash in the sunlight and I once again ducked to avoid the blow ; never had I been so convinced as then, not even when in action, that I was in mortal danger. I did not

think that this officer was drunk although he may have been drinking. I ducked a second too late and felt a sharp pain on the crown of my head. I did not have a hat. Immediately I felt the flow of blood as it trickled through my hair and into my eyes. At this point I lost my temper. I pointed a finger at the `shoko' and hurled a barrage of profanity in his direction. He stood for a moment like a statue with the sword raised high above his head. I turned to the men in the work-party who were voicing their protests. "Report this nasty little bastard to the Camp Commander when you get back what-ever happens." I pointed to the `shoko' and drew my finger slowly across my throat. The `shoko' struggled to sheath his sword; he was a very short man even for a Japanese and the sword presented him with problems. He turned and walked away with a comical attempt at a swagger. One of the men handed me a piece of cloth which I pressed hard against my bleeding head. I had no idea how serious my wound was.

We put a pile of spades and other items into the truck and drove back to camp. At the `Admin' hut an Australian medical orderly appeared. After an examination he said, "It'll have to be stitched. About six stitches will do it I reckon." The treatment was worse than the original sword cut. I don't know what kind of needle and thread was used but it felt as if I was being worked on by a man who would have been better employed in stitching mailbags.

Looking forward Discussion now was dominated by the growing conviction that the Japanese were nearing defeat. Thoughts that the war was ending brought with them questions about what sort of world, what sort of England, would we be going home to. In our meetings we Communists spent a lot of time indicating what had been wrong with prewar England both economically and politically and we urged maximum support for the Labour Party and a programme of socialism. `Jock' Anderson was by no means a pessimist but he said one day, before he escaped, "If this bloody war continues for another year there'll be no survivors to bear witness to Japanese brutality." "That'll be evidence in itself," another man said, "But what does it matter? It'll only be a five minute wonder and then it will all be forgotten. Singapore won't figure in the battle honours of any of the regiments that were there. They won't make war films about the gallant three week stand of the British at Singapore. The British and Japanese politicians and business men will soon be shaking hands and making deals as if all this had never happened. You mark my words." There was a mock groan as of disbelief from the listeners which silenced him.

Then, one day we were called out on parade and were told that letters from home had arrived in camp. We stood there listening to the names of the lucky ones being called out. We half shared in the pleasure that was so evident on the faces of the recipients. We waited and hoped, but not all of us were lucky that day. Some received as many as half a dozen letters. Others, most of us in fact, received nothing. I was one of these.

FREEDOM The first weeks of August 1945 were to be quite unforgettable to those of us who had survived the Japanese ordeal. For a week or so we had seen very little of the Japanese and gradually the prisoners began to move about more freely even to the extent of going out of camp. By this time everyone knew that the war was virtually over. Then, one day, we were called out on parade. It was mid-morning and we stood there awaiting

the arrival of the Australian senior officer who eventually appeared. One sensed that this was to be the big day.

He told us that the Japanese had surrendered, the war was officially over. A spontaneous cheer greeted this proclamation; it was not a roar of triumph so much as a gigantic sigh of relief. We walked away from the parade area, most of us deep in thought. I know that my thoughts were for my family. As we walked we heard the sound of a truck's engine being started. We saw a truck filling up with fully armed Japanese soldiers. It pulled out of camp, the soldiers looking neither to the left nor the right. We watched the Japanese go in silence. From the ex-prisoners came no shouts of anger, no threats of violence, no demonstration of anti-Japanese feeling.

There was just that deep silence as we watched the truck take those Japanese out of our lives forever.

Our great sense of joy and relief did not come in one blinding flash. It grew and developed within us rather like the blossoming of a flower and it was days and perhaps weeks and months before the full bloom materialised.

Even at that early stage of our liberation I am sure that there was no room at all for hatred.

The following day a small squad of British soldiers clad in jungle-green came into camp and amongst them was my friend 'Jock' Anderson. He told me how a Thai guide had conducted him from his place on the work-party to the slopes of a hill some ten miles away. There, on the hill were "thousands of troops" ready to come to our rescue should it have been necessary. He said that it was recognised that the Japanese might have used the prisoners' safety as a bargaining counter when faced with defeat.

Then 'planes came over and dropped supplies of food, cigarettes and clothing. We began to eat meals which not only contained meat but in which meat was the dominant ingredient. Then more letters arrived and I could hardly believe my ears when my name was called out. I received two that time and both were dated 1943. Betty told me in both of them that 'your son Richard turned out to be a daughter Julie'. I stood in the doorway of my hut reading those two letters over and over again.

The young Yorkshireman in the bed next to mine had received six letters. I remember him as 'Leeds' because that was his home town. Some weeks earlier `Leeds' had been beaten because he had been caught hiding a very small onion in his hat. The first letter he opened brought tears to his eyes. His father had died and he had so wanted to see the old man again and let him know that he was safe. The next letter brought a different expression; it was from a solicitor to tell him that his father had left him ÂŁ70,000 (almost one and a half million in today's money). "Now you will be able to buy all the onions in Yorkshire," I told him.

Arrangements were made for us to send letters but soon problems were revealed. In the malaria ward were men who were at death's door. Like everyone else they wanted to write home. I knew that most of them would be telling their wives and parents that they were fit and well and would soon be on the way home, whereas many, I was convinced, would not last out the week. I spoke to one of the medical officers about this problem and he promised me that he would certainly get the matter discussed by the people responsible for the camp administration. We sat around in groups smoking American cigarettes, talking about our experiences in the different camps and hazarding guesses as to how and when we would start on the long journey home. Then clothing was dropped from the visiting Dakotas. I received a pair of American army slacks and a shirt but had to give up the shirt as I was not entitled to both garments.

An ominous rumour began to circulate that we were to be flown out of Mount Kajiwa in Dakotas. These heavy 'planes were to land on and take off from our runway, the one we had spent so much of our time sabotaging. In

spite of our scepticism the day arrived when a Dakota circled the air above our camp and came down without trouble on our questionable airstrip. What is more it took off half an hour later carrying about fifteen of our 'heavy' sick. From that day onwards it became a daily feature of our lives to watch the Dakotas coming and going. The hospital huts slowly emptied. We learned that British personnel were all to be flown initially to Rangoon where we would undergo a hospital check-up before going on to the UK. The Last of the Camp The great day arrived. This was one occasion when no one had to be reminded to be early. We had been standing in the sunshine on the edge of that run-way for no more than ten minutes when the heavens opened.

The rain fell on the run-way which we had built. It formed rivulets which gurgled into the crevices and caverns which lay below the top layers of soil. Those pockets of subsidence, that built-in obsolescence had to show sooner or later. Was it going to be today? We were all nervous about the prospect of flying. Some of us expressed our concern. Others just nibbled at their finger nails.

At last, someone came to tell us that we could board the 'plane and so we had to walk about two hundred yards through the mud. In the process I lost one slipper, sucked off my foot by the sodden earth and others of our party lost both slippers. If this anxiety at the prospect of flying appears to be overdone, it has to be remembered that we working class men were a little overawed by the prospect of riding in a car never mind an aeroplane.

Bicycles were more our line. I had been a passenger in a car only twice in my life before joining the army.

Soon we were moving down that run-way at what seemed to be a suicidal speed. Looking out of the sidewindows the bush was just a green blur. Ahead the trees at the end of the run-way were coming at us far too quickly for comfort. Safely airborne the Dakota gained height and banked to circle our camp. We settled down for a long journey. What had threatened to be the most frightening experience of my life had become nothing but a bore. It was a great relief to hear the pilot call out, "Rangoon is showing up ahead. If you look out you'll see the Shwe Dagon, the Golden Temple. We'll be touching down in five minutes."

Rangoon When we landed we were escorted to a nearby building by girls in service uniforms, and entered a long room set out as for a tea-party. Never were girls so beautiful, never were tablecloths whiter, never did table silver sparkle more brightly. Sandwiches and cakes were piled high in reckless abandon. It was almost too good to be true.

From that reception we went on to a hospital where we lived for the next two or three weeks. We were put on double rations. During that time we were subjected to tests of various kinds to identify such things as amoebic dysentery and malaria.

The wards were manned by African orderlies who were kindness itself. On awakening every morning, we found a couple of bottles of beer on our bedside lockers along with a sealed bag of sweets and a block of chocolate. I drank the beer but my sweets all went into my kitbag. There were two children at home who had probably seen little of sweets in their short lives.

Our days were free once the doctors had done with us but there was little to do in Rangoon. I paid a visit to the Shwe Dagon and wished that I could have had a conducted tour there were so many wonders to see. I also attended a concert where the band was composed entirely of Burmese instruments. I was the only European present. It took time to adjust to the new sound but before the end I was beginning to enjoy the music. For the most part, along with Bill Lamb and the others, I walked the streets of Rangoon without finding much to enthuse about. Rangoon was swarming with troops. Little by little, in conversation with these men we picked up information about the 'big bombs' that had been dropped on Japan. These deadly bombs we were told had made unnecessary a major invasion of areas still in Japanese hands and particularly of Japan itself. They had brought the war to a conclusion. We did not at that time pay much attention to the new bomb and we certainly did not realise its significance. We were of the opinion that the Japanese were on the brink of defeat anyway.

The important thing so far as we were concerned was that the war was over and with a bit of luck we might never see a native of Japan ever again.

Our thoughts tended to be centred on when would a ship be available to get us on the way home. We learned from conversations with men of the Fourteenth Army that many of them were disgruntled at the news that we ex-prisoners were to have priority for return to the UK. Most of the exprisoners had some sympathy for that argument and I believe that we stated that we would be happy to go home on a fifty- fifty basis with the Fourteenth Army men. I think that this point of view was conveyed to Mountbatten who, however, was adamant that the ex-prisoners should have priority. We also learned somewhere along the line that there had been an election back home and that Labour had won a landslide victory.

Then, after days of doing nothing, suddenly someone was urging us all to get moving as we were to be ready in one hour to move off to Rangoon harbour to where a ship was waiting to take us home. We rammed our possessions into our kit-bags and had breakfast. Someone said, "It's only half past five. We've been sitting on

our arses doing nothing all this time and suddenly there's panic stakes at five o' clock in the bleedin' morning. If you want to do something efficiently, find out how the army would do it and then do it differently. You won't go far wrong." By half past seven we were rocking gently to and fro on the decks of the Orduna in Rangoon harbour.

Home We were really on the way home. I think we all had to keep reminding ourselves of that. There was a lot of happiness about but there was also something else. I recognised it in myself and in others. Often as I observed a happily-chatting group, I would see one of the men suddenly become detached from what had been going on. It was as if a switch had been flipped. For a short time that man's mind was back in the rainforests, remembering faces that should have been with us on the Orduna. It happened to me and I saw it in others.

When we docked at Columbo everyone on that quay seemed to be waving a white handkerchief in a gesture of welcome. On the quay we were taken up by a group of young ladies in various uniforms and escorted towards a building some ten minutes walk away. We were informed that there was to be a reception at this building followed by a tea-party but even as I took in this information my attention was distracted by the sound of music.

We turned a corner and to my great delight I saw that there was a march taking place, headed by a Ceylonese version of a brass band. Hundreds of red flags carrying the hammer and sickle were held on high by the marchers who were steadily chanting slogans which of course I couldn't understand. What did that matter? I apologised to the young ladies I was with and left them to join the march. I was in army uniform and many of the marchers regarded me with questioning looks which soon turned into smiles of welcome as I joined in the clenched fist salute. I stayed with the demonstration for about half a mile before deciding that I had better not get myself lost, so waved a farewell to the marchers and found my way back to the hall and the bun-fight.

We were in Columbo for only a few hours and then it was back to the ship and the next stage of our journey home which was certainly not being rushed. We understood that this was deliberate policy. We were on double rations and with each passing day most of us gained a little weight. We were to be made presentable for our arrival in the UK. Suez was interesting. None of us had realised how narrow that channel of water was or for that matter how red was the landscape on either side. We came to Gibraltar, 'grand and grey', and picked up mail.

Soon after leaving Gibraltar we began to notice that the nights were becoming chillier.

We steamed northwards and up the west coast of England. It was October 1945. We had left the UK in October 1941 also from Liverpool. As the port came into sight the ship became suddenly a silent place. It was as if all the talking had been done and now we were to be put to the test. We were welcomed into Liverpool like returning heroes. Hundreds of craft sounded off as we nosed our way cautiously to our allotted berth. There was a brass band and the Lord Mayor and the City Council were there in full civic regalia. There was a crowd numbering thousands on the quayside amongst which were many friends and relatives of ex-prisoners. Once the speeches were over we were transported to a centre where, we were told, we would spend the night. The rest of that day and part of the following day were spent in filling in forms and going through a health interrogation.

Then we boarded a London-bound train. We had been told that our arrival was to be quite an event with bands and speeches by dozens of civic dignitaries and others. I think that by this time most of us had only one thought in mind. We were impatient to get home. McCormack, whose home was also in Watford, and I decided to jump

the train if it slowed down sufficiently as it passed through Watford Junction station, but if the train did slow down it was only marginally. At Willesden Junction, however, it slowed down to a fast walking pace and we jumped. It wasn't dignified but we rolled over a time or two on the platform and got to our feet unhurt. Outside Watford Junction station we bade each other good luck and promised to meet again. My home was normally a five minutes walk from the station. That night it took me half an hour. I turned into that miserable little street and made my solitary way up to number thirteen. West Street could boast without fear of challenge that it contained the worst housing in Watford. As I walked up that short street I renewed the pledge that I had made so many years earlier. Those dwellings were unfit for human habitation and the fight for somewhere decent to live would be my priority. I stood before the door of number thirteen and took several deep breaths. The gaslight was on and I could hear voices through the ill-fitting door. I had been telling myself that something terrible had happened to my family. This then was the moment when I would find out. In those days the front door was never locked. It opened directly on to the living room. I opened the door and stepped in. There, sitting in a group in the centre of the room, was my family.