Larrikins in Khaki

by Tim Bowden

  Prawn suggested that Big Red come and talk to his men.

  ‘What the hell could that lazy, fat bugger do to help us?’ his fellow prisoners asked.

  ‘Well, he’d give anyone the shits, wouldn’t he?’

  Humour became one of the essential elements of surviving as a POW, as shown by this ‘drinking story’ from Gunner Tom Dowling about the occasion of the emperor’s birthday. The Japanese certainly revered their emperor, so it was natural to expect that come his birthday, there would be a flurry of excitement and festivity.

  The first time we encountered his birthday came shortly after the fall of Singapore, when at Changi we were called on parade and ordered to bring our drinking mugs. We wondered what on earth we were going to do with the mugs, but did as we were told.

  Along came a Jap officer resplendent with gold braid and campaign ribbons, sword swinging by his side, and he stepped up onto a well raised platform specially placed in front of the parade so that he could address us at eye level.

  ‘Today is Emperor of Japan’s birthday and we are to celebrate.’ Having said that the guards accompanying him, armed with flagons, moved up and down the lines and half-filled everyone’s mugs with saki.

  When the last of the mugs had been charged, the Japanese officer said, ‘Now we drink to Emperor.’

  This put the prisoners in ‘a bit of a dilemma’, Dowling recalled, and ‘he had us by the short and curlies’. The idea of drinking his sake was appealing, but to drink to the emperor’s health was quite a different matter.

  ‘You will all drink to health of Emperor,’ the officer repeated sternly.

  There was ‘no way the boys could bring themselves to drink to the emperor’s health,’ Dowling said, so they just stood there blankly, carefully holding on to their half-filled mugs of sake.

  Then out stepped Vern Rae, a rugged 15th Battery intelligence officer, hailing from the tall cedar country of Tasmania, who thundered out, ‘Boys, we will drink to the Emperor.’ He held up his mug: ‘FAAAARK the Emperor.’

  A great roar went up.

  ‘The Emperor—FAAAARK the Emperor,’ and the Australians quaffed down their sake.

  The Japanese officer then dutifully completed his toast. ‘Ah so … FAAAARK the Emperor.’

  Dowling could see the Japanese officer was exceedingly delighted that his emperor’s health had such an enthusiastic response from his vanquished foes.

  ‘The boys enjoyed their first encounter with sake, also feeling smugly satisfied that in the course of its enjoyment they too had paid their rightful dues to His Imperial Highness on his birthday.’

  In round figures, 22,000 Australians became prisoners of war of the Japanese in camps in Timor, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Ambon, Hainan, Borneo, Singapore, Malaya, Thailand, Burma and Manchuria. Three and a half years later, only 14,000 were still alive.

  In Singapore, the Japanese were surprised to find that they had some 50,000 British, Australian and Indian troops to cope with on the small island. The Japanese believed they should have committed suicide rather than endure the disgrace of capture, and so were men without honour. The Allied troops felt differently, and looked forward to getting home, eventually, to their families.

  Faced with the task of managing this situation, and not wanting to involve their front-line troops in guarding POWs, the Japanese were quite smart in allowing the Australians and British to retain administrative control of their own men—in Selarang Barracks for the Australians and Roberts Barracks for the British. Senior officers over the rank of colonel were later shipped off to their own camp in Manchuria. Meanwhile, on the Changi peninsula, the POWs were set to work putting a barbed wire barrier around their own encampments.

  At first the main problem for the Australian officers running Selarang Barracks was boredom, as the still fit (although ravenously hungry) men milled around aimlessly. So it was that the so-called ‘Changi University’ was created, but only for a few months, before the Japanese started hiving off the POWs into work gangs, first on the Singapore docks and on construction projects on the island, and then to build an aerodrome in Sandakan, Borneo—which would culminate in the infamous Death Marches, beginning in early 1945, in which 2000 Australians and 500 British would be slaughtered in the jungle and only six men survived. Things were also extremely tough from the beginning of 1943 when one in three Australians died while building the Thai–Burma Railway in atrocious conditions on starvation rations and virtually no medical supplies.

  All this was unforeseen when Australian officers organised the brief flowering of the ‘Changi University’. In an army, you can always find experts in just about anything.

  Captain Adrian Curlewis recalled that within four days of the capitulation, Brigadier Herbert Taylor was appointed as the chancellor of the university and he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Law and general organiser. The response from the troops was amazing, they all wanted to learn. The Australian army could produce experts who could lecture on Tutankhamen in Egypt, on history, languages, mathematics, business principles, engineering and art. Curlewis himself took up the Malay language and motor engineering. There were plenty of war-damaged vehicles to pull to pieces, but the paper shortage was nearly a disaster. So they improvised blackboards and used clay from a nearby pit for chalk.

  There were also many who did not have the basic education to benefit from most of the courses, and they were given the chance to acquire primary school skills. YMCA officer George McNeilly ‘even found men who couldn’t read and write, so we taught over 400’.

  Russell Braddon was incredulous when he saw one of the classes in self-improvement in action:

  Alec Downer [later Sir Alec and a member of the Australian federal parliament] suddenly decided that he really couldn’t bear any longer the way Australians spoke. He assembled a class of hairy, uncouth, pigheaded, very volatile Australian privates. They were thieves of the first order, and then survived because of their daring and recklessness. They used to sit on palm logs in front of Alec Downer while he conducted a litany of elocution. ‘How now brown cow.’ It was magnificent! Nobody sent them up. Nor did they send up Alec. But it was weird.

  For those who wanted a more private path to advancement, there was a library of 20,000 books. Men who in other circumstances would never have had the chance or inclination to read made their way from classical, to romantic and travel literature. Colonel Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop encouraged each man leaving Batavia to carry a book in his pack, and the so-called ‘Java Rabble’, travelling in the holds of ships and crowded into fetid railway cattle wagons, had their own circulating library.

  Many prisoners remembered the pleasure of listening to recorded music in Changi’s warm evenings, organised by George McNeilly, a professional singer. ‘Men sat on the grass all around the huts. For some of the concerts, when I played jazz records for instance, I had an audience of 10,000. The music seemed to just float over the air into the night and the boys really loved it.’

  On the second day in captivity, the Changi Concert Party was formed and began rehearsals, and continued performing all the way through the captivity to 1945. The Japanese attended the concerts, too.

  Traditionally Australians are said to be willing to bet on two flies crawling up a wall, and there wasn’t much else to wager on in the main Changi POW camp. Frog racing became popular—when the contestants could be spared from the pot.

  ‘While the Melbourne Cup may have been thousands of miles away, it was never far from our minds,’ recalled Don Moore. ‘It was natural that in this setting, frog racing would emerge. It provided a spectacle that satisfied both our urge to gamble and gave us an even money chance with the professionals. So we believed!’

  With typical Aussie racing know-how, the CFRC (Changi Frog Racing Club) was officially inaugurated to arrange regular race meets. Official positions were established and appointments made. These included president, committeemen with board member status, stewards, clerks and of course starters and judges, as well as t
he essential registered bookies.

  According to Moore: ‘Given the potential food value of their contestants, the frog owners took exceptional care in stabling them. They also had their own stable colours which the frogs wore during the race. So determined were the owners to make the event colourful and realistic, that the needlecraft of some of the surcingles [a girth to keep the saddle on a horse] would have put grandma’s knitting to shame.’

  On the advertised day of the meet, the race officials gathered together in the centre of the Changi parade ground and took up their assigned positions, surrounded by a huge crowd of excited punters. With strong convictions and hopeful expectations, they placed their bets with the bookies.

  Once in the hands of the stewards, the frogs were then passed over to the starter, who took them to the starting stall in the centre of a large circle and placed them under an upturned bucket. All bets were called off and silence reigned. With an elegant flourish, the starter lifted up the bucket.

  ‘They’re off!’ the crowd roared as the race began.

  But not always, as Moore observed:

  Well! It did for some of the contestants. Some of them were so overcome by the excitement around them that they froze and remained motionless, palpitating as frogs do, and looking extremely bored with life. Others, having been trapped in darkness under a bucket for a few unpleasant moments, took one great leap to hopeful freedom and then having achieved it, stopped, uncertain as to what their next move should be. Others would take a couple of long healthy jumps, to the great excitement of the crowd, only to freeze just short of the finishing circle.

  When at last the third frog passed the winning post, the race was declared over and the judges announced the place-getters.

  One of the owners experienced an unusual run of success. His frog soon became a hot favourite. It seemed that particular frog began to understand what the race was all about, for as soon as the bucket was lifted it would take three or four mighty leaps and bound right across the finishing line before the other contestants had even realised the bucket had been lifted.

  In the course of his duties, one of the stewards picked up this ‘hot’ frog to inspect the small brass buttons which held its colourful knitted surcingle in place. While examining it, he pricked his finger. A closer examination revealed one of the ‘buttons’ was in fact a small drawing pin cunningly aligned with the buttons in the surcingle.

  ‘This was the equivalent of an electric battery—a major violation—and unpardonable offence,’ Moore explained. ‘Every time the frog landed it had an immediate incentive to leap into the air to relieve its discomfort. The higher it hopped, the more discomfort it had on landing and the more incentive it had to leap once again.’

  On the evidence of the steward, a meeting of the executive members and committeemen was quickly convened and the race committee handed down a life suspension to the owner, who was also warned off the course.

  For humanitarian reasons, the committee reviewed its decision a few weeks later and withdrew the ex-owner’s life suspension, but with a special proviso that he was permitted to attend only as a spectator. The race committee reasoned that his ingenuity at least entitled him to enjoy the excitement of future meetings.

  In Java, the remnants of ‘Blackforce’, sacrificed to the hopeless and lacklustre efforts of the Dutch to hang on to their colonial empire, were enduring a mixed bag of experiences as prisoners of war of the Japanese. Gunner Clarry McCulloch remained in the village of Leles, where he had been captured in March 1943. Their guards were still front-line soldiers, who did not attempt to loot whatever meagre possessions the Australians had. Although sleeping on the ground under flimsy atap (palm frond) shelters, they were getting a reasonable amount of food.

  At first there was no fence around the market area, with just a few guards wandering around, and it was from here that the first escape attempt was made. Six West Australian chaps from D Company of our battalion decided to try their luck and managed to cover a few miles before being recaptured. They were then imprisoned in a camp which contained Royal Air Force personnel, but later escaped from this camp also. This attempt also ended in failure mainly because of the jungle and the hostile attitude of the Javanese population, most of whom at the stage were very pro-Japanese. This time the six Australians were not given a third chance and we heard later that they had all been executed.

  On 14 April all the POWs were all moved to the nearby town of Garoet, where there was an improvement in accommodation. The Australians were billeted in a local school. Although the school grounds were surrounded by a high chain-wire fence, on the plus side they had electric lighting, sewerage and showers, ‘the latter being very welcome in the hot tropical conditions’.

  It was at Garoet that McCulloch had his first close shave with death as a prisoner. Several of his companions had contracted malaria; one man died from it. Somehow McCulloch had contracted a very nasty type of dysentery and his visits to the latrine increased dramatically. During his worst day, he had more than 60 bowel movements and was losing weight at an alarming rate. The medical staff had practically no medical supplies, so for six days the only medication available was tea without milk and powdered charcoal. This was no use whatsoever as the bacteria rapidly stripped the lining from his lower bowel. McCulloch lost more than 13 kilos in weight during that time.

  Fortunately for me, the chaps had decided to move all our group to a Dutch military camp near the city of Bandoeng. Most of the prisoners travelled by train, but the very sick, including me, were loaded into a truck and taken directly to the Dutch hospital in the camp. By this time I was so weak that I remember very little of the trip. Arriving at the hospital we were carried into the medical ward. Here a jovial Dutch doctor, Dr Heggie, took one look at me and said, ‘Ha! You have bacillary dysentery—soon I will have you fit again,’ and proceeded to give me a large hypodermic needle in the buttocks, with a parting assurance, ‘in two days you will be cured’. I just hoped that he knew what he was talking about. I need not have worried. Miraculously the diarrhoea stopped almost immediately and I began to feel much better.

  Dr Heggie explained later that without treatment McCulloch would not have lasted more than two days at the most. Apparently bacillary dysentery is a particularly aggressive type which, untreated, can kill quickly, but with the correct drug can easily be cured. There is another type known as amoebic dysentery, which is more of a chronic condition. This can be very debilitating, last a long time, and is much harder to treat. This was the type that most of the POWs experienced later in Thailand.

  In a little over two weeks Clarry had regained most of his lost weight and was feeling quite fit again. ‘I was also conscious of the good fortune which had moved this group to Bandoeng at that particular time. Once again Lady Luck had smiled on me and I was suitably grateful.’

  Their new camp was a big improvement. It had been a permanent Dutch army camp and contained most of the facilities necessary for reasonable living. At first the Japanese did not interfere very much and it was left to their own officers to organise daily routines. Although not the most senior officer in the camp, Colonel ‘Weary’ Dunlop—a medical officer—by common consent became the camp commander of the very mixed collection of prisoners. There were British army, navy and air force personnel, Dutch colonial troops from Ambon and the Celebes, a few of the Texas gunners, and most of the Australians from Blackforce plus sailors from HMAS Perth—‘altogether a fairly lively mixture’. McCulloch recalled some of the efforts of the officers:

  As our food supplies begin to dwindle some of the senior officers managed to organise a large loan of money from a wealthy Chinese merchant from Bandoeng, pledging their personal IOUs. In doing so they imagined that the Australian government would make good the money after the war, but received a nasty shock when it was not forthcoming. Fortunately the Red Cross came to the rescue and repaid the loan after the war had ended. In the meantime the money was put to good use purchasing extra food and medical supplies.r />
  To cater for the intellectual life of the POWs, many activities were organised, the main one being the creation known as the ‘University of Bandoeng’—a mirror image of the brief flowering of the ‘Changi University’ on Singapore island. This rather grandiose title covered a series of classes devoted to further education at all levels, from primary to tertiary, and included a number of educators, with some from Cambridge University. This was a great opportunity and McCulloch, with many others, was soon enrolled in quite a number of classes. ‘I was particularly pleased with the ancient history class, run by an English classical scholar.’

  It was during these classes that Clarry McCulloch first met with a remarkable man, Lieutenant Colonel Laurens van de Post, a South African by birth. Before the war, van de Post had spent time in Japan and spoke Japanese fluently, and so was able to interpret with the Japanese on the POWs’ behalf. During the early part of the war, he had operated in Ethiopia as an intelligence officer and then had been sent out to the East Indies to organise guerrilla operations against the Japanese. Unfortunately for van de Post, the speed of events in this region overtook him and the plan was abandoned. He was one of the prime movers in the development of the education classes and a very valuable asset to the prisoners.

  The camp also contained quite an extensive library, many of the books being printed in English. Naturally, being an avid reader, I spent quite a lot of time there. One volume in particular caught my eye. It was titled, ‘Why Japan Must Fight Britain’, and had been written in 1936 by a Japanese ex-naval attache. It gave a very reasoned explanation why there were many economic factors which would eventually lead to a clash with Great Britain. For some reason no mention was made of the USA.