by Damien Lewis
With the men staggering under the weight, the pole balanced across emaciated, bony shoulders, the work became an agony of endurance as the guards aimed blows from rifle butt or boot at any who faltered. They insisted the baskets always be filled to the brim, disregarding the fact that the thin scarecrows before them could barely lift their load off the ground, let alone stagger to the far side to dump the contents on the cursed hill. The higher it rose, the more the hillside became a slurry of mud up which the prisoners had somehow to haul their burden.
By the time the White Man’s Mountain was nearing completion, conditions in Gloegoer were worsening daily. Even as the wooden temple itself was erected atop the hill—ornately carved dragons writhing above the doors to a house in which the souls of the ancestors could dwell—the brutal working conditions and the lack of sustenance were claiming their first victims.
As the temple mountain had risen from the earth, the food ration at Gloegoer—chiefly the rice slop—had shrunk in size almost as if the two were inversely linked. And even that pathetic amount of sustenance wasn’t guaranteed to all. Those who formed the work parties got their daily share. Those who were too weak and were confined to “light duties” were placed on half rations. And those too ill to work at all received practically nothing to eat—meaning that men already sick were further weakened by starvation.
It reached the stage where the daily slop of rice simply had to be supplemented by extra food or the prisoners—especially those forced to labor so mercilessly on the White Man’s Mountain—would die. But at the same time the Japanese currency—on seizing Sumatra the Japanese had replaced the Dutch-issued coinage with an occupation tender, the Sumatran or Nippon dollar—had plummeted in value.
The prisoners were paid a few cents a day for their labor, a pittance that might buy them a few eggs or vegetables at best. But as Imperial Japan’s fortunes in the war began gradually to worsen, her legal tender became increasingly worthless. By the time of the temple mount’s near completion, two weeks’ wages was needed to purchase a single egg. It was the cruelest of blows, coming on top of a constellation of circumstances that seemed designed to sicken and to kill.
Weakened by hunger, Private Cousens was struck down by disease. The ever-cheerful cobbler—he who had fed Judy surreptitiously from the scraps of leather reserved for the Japanese officers’ boots—was carted off to the hospital hut. There, with an ever-faithful four-legged companion more often than not at his side, Cousens sickened further and died.
On more than one occasion the soldier-cobbler had risked his life for the Gloegoer One mascot, and they had grown close. After his shock disappearance, Judy would be found lying under the overhanging roof where he used to work, still and silent and with her head resting on her outstretched paws. There was a deep sadness in her eyes as yet another of her special protectors had been taken from her at just the time when she was most in need.
Perhaps it was this resounding sense of loss that would send Judy in search of a new companion, or perhaps it was the cumulative effect of being repeatedly parted from so many of those who had grown to love her. For whatever reason, it was now that Judy opted to seek out and choose her “master.”
Shipwrecked in the Berhala Strait just hours prior to the Dragonfly and the Grasshopper’s sinking, Leading Aircraftman Frank George Williams had found his way to Gloegoer One by a similar route to that of Judy and her fellows. From the tropical island where he’d found himself marooned, Williams had traveled by tongkang, launch, truck, RAF warplane, and other means in an effort to escape the encircling Japanese but had nonetheless ended up in Gloegoer after a short stay in Padang.
Williams was a tall, softly spoken individual blessed with a ready wit and a boyish appearance that belied his apparent wisdom and maturity. One of six siblings, he’d lost his father when he was nine years of age, and life after that had been hard. He’d had to save up for two years to buy his first bicycle, perseverance becoming something of a Williams family trait. Age sixteen, he’d joined the merchant navy, which was a tough and challenging career but one that offered the considerable benefit of travel to the four corners of the world.
Hailing from Portsmouth in Hampshire, he’d only just turned twenty when war broke out. He had enlisted in the Royal Air Force, service number 751930, joining the RIMU—the RAF’s Radio Installation Maintenance Unit. He was duly posted to Singapore, joining the ground crew that supported those gallant RAF airmen flying sorties against the Japanese. Outnumbered and outgunned by the far superior Japanese warplanes, the RAF crews had battled to the very last, but with the fall of Singapore many had been taken captive, Frank Williams among them.
With his kindly face beneath dark, wavy hair, Frank Williams wasn’t the toughest or roughest of the POWs in Gloegoer One, and he certainly wasn’t the most outspoken. But he was a lover of animals almost without equal, with a correspondingly big-hearted loyalty to boot. Perhaps it was for this reason that Judy was to discover her master in Frank Williams—although “life companion” would be a far better description for the extraordinary relationship that they would forge.
Frank was squatting in his hut, gazing into the can containing his meager rice ration, when he felt a pair of eyes upon him. He glanced up to find that a striking-looking dog was staring at him intently. The two eyed each other for a long moment before Judy began to advance. She seemed slow and uncertain in her movements, as if unsure of the reaction she might receive from a stranger—especially at feeding time. But still there was the faintest suggestion of a wag in her slender tail and just a hint of the love that was to be forged between them in her intelligent, somber eyes.
Frank could see how thin she was and how hungry she had to be, but even so she remained a strikingly beautiful English pointer. He eyed the gooey mess in his can once more. It looked and smelled as revolting as ever, but every prisoner faced the same unpalatable choice at mealtimes: eat or die, eat or die. Everyone received the same ration, so it was his alone to consume—and most felt they had only themselves to look out for whenever the slop was doled out.
He hesitated for just a moment before tipping a dollop into the palm of his hand. He held it out to Judy. Her eyes flicked to the proffered food, but still she wouldn’t move. She let out a low, plaintive whine but stayed where she was, eyes flicking from rice slop to Frank and back again. It was obvious she needed some sort of reassurance, some sign from Frank that his was an entirely friendly, selfless gesture and that he was not trying to trick her somehow.
Over the year or more that she’d spent in the camps, Judy had learned to be suspicious and guarded until someone proved himself worthy. Frank understood. Placing the can of precious food on the ground, he reached forward and fondled her behind the ears.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he murmured softly. “Make yourself at home.”
Only then did Judy seem to relax. She took the food that he’d offered, lapped it up, then settled contentedly at his feet. Frank was by no means the first to share his ration with her, but he was one of the first strangers to do so—someone who lay well outside of Judy’s normal fellowship. Neither quite knew it yet, but each had found in the other a companion for life.
From the very first Frank Williams seemed to have a nearly magical way with Judy. In short order she appeared to learn many a whispered instruction from the young RAF man, almost as if she understood his every word. He even had a command that he’d give when he wanted her to go and lift some of the fresh fruit that the Japanese guards would lay on the graves of their dead, their cemetery lying just outside the camp boundary.
The Japanese practice two forms of religion that run side by side: one is Shinto, an ancient animistic or nature-based worship, the other the more modern form of faith, Buddhism. The wooden spirit house built on the newly completed White Man’s Mountain would be a Shinto or Buddhist shrine—they would often be placed side by side. But for prisoners dying of starvation, fresh fruit was far better in their bellies than being left to rot above t
he bodies of the dead, or so Frank and his fellows reasoned.
As the food situation worsened, such risky forays by Judy became ever more vital to keeping both man and dog alive. But each time she ventured forth she risked being nabbed by the camp guards, whose own rations were often not a great deal better than those given to the prisoners. Very soon now, Judy would find that one of her daring expeditions outside the wire would put her life in mortal danger.
But it would do so in the most unexpected of ways.
Chapter Fifteen
For those of Judy’s companions who had always believed that sex was the prime human motivator, Gloegoer One had soon taught them otherwise. Les Searle, Jock Devani, Punch Puncheon—and now Frank Williams—had found that food had long become the foremost inspiration for both waking dreams and sleeping nightmares.
Not for months had any of the prisoners talked about women or told the usual soldiers’ smutty stories. Talk about the fairer sex had given way to endless discussion about food. Sometimes it was the wonderful meals they used to eat at home. At other times it was the wonderful meals they would eat when they got home. Even the scant news cobbled together from the secret radio eventually got boiled down to food: when they might get out of there and get to a place where they might enjoy all the wonderful meals they had planned.
Judy’s fellows had presumed that sex was very much off her menu as well. How wrong they were. Not long after finding Frank Williams, Judy returned from one of her nightly forays with more than a little extra food: she was pregnant. At first no one could quite believe it. How could it have happened? Every dog in the area seemed to have been shot and eaten long ago. The men joked among themselves that maybe she would give birth to a litter of tiger cubs or maybe even goats!
But beneath the humor there was real jeopardy. The larger Judy became, the more sustenance she needed—for she had a hungry litter of young ones now growing inside her. For Frank and his fellow Judy protectors, the daily struggle to find enough to eat for themselves was challenge enough: now they had Judy and her unborn offspring to fend for as well. Their greatest worry was this: the fatter the expectant mother became, the more she appeared like a feast fit for a Japanese or a Korean guard, not to mention a local Sumatran family.
Judy’s protectors banned her from leaving the camp unless she was in the company of a work party so she could be better protected. Every now and again a precious can of food from a dwindling Red Cross hoard was volunteered for her. Daily she grew plumper, until the puppies were about due. And perversely, it was in their impending birth that Frank Williams saw an opportunity finally to secure for the Gloegoer One mascot the protection that she was due.
Under the care of Dr. Kirkwood, Gloegoer One’s British medical officer and himself a POW, plus a team of Dutch POW medical staff, Judy gave birth to nine puppies. It was four fewer than she’d managed aboard the Gnat, and these certainly weren’t pedigree English pointers. But under the circumstances, she had done incredibly well. As she licked them clean and nuzzled them onto her teats, four were clearly too weak to suckle and survive. They were passed to one of the men for proper disposal, leaving her with five healthy pups.
So, amid the misery of Gloegoer One, Judy became the proud mother of those five mischievous balls of blind fluff and hunger. Even if it was half the number of pups she had managed aboard the Gnat, in its own way it was even more of a miracle. On a diet of bully beef and condensed milk—courtesy of the Red Cross food parcels—Judy’s puppies grew fat, healthy, and strong. Five balls of boundless energy started to totter around the British hut, causing amusement, havoc, and chaos in equal measure wherever they ventured.
Once they were as chubby and irresistible as ever they were going to be, Frank put his plan into action. Judy never had been able to hide the loathing she felt for the Korean and Japanese camp guards. Indeed, only recently she’d gone for one of them whom she’d sensed he was threatening one of her pups. But for some unknown reason she just about tolerated Colonel Banno. In fact, over time the Gloegoer One mascot and the Gloegoer One camp commandant had developed a kind of playful antagonism, which Frank hoped betrayed an unexpected softness on the colonel’s part—that he was secretly a dog lover.
The colonel loved nothing more than to draw his sword and pretend to threaten Judy with it, seemingly with the aim of making her growl and snarl, at which he’d burst into laughter. He seemed to find it great sport. Frank also knew that the colonel had a special friend in Gloegoer—a young and beautiful local lady. He’d also noticed how Colonel Banno’s lady friend always made a real fuss over Judy. Whenever she was around, she’d sing out “Judy—come!”—which were about the only words that she knew in English.
One evening when he was sure that Colonel Banno was drinking alone, Frank took Kish, one of the most irresistible of the pups, and made his way to the colonel’s quarters. Any prisoner approaching the Japanese officers’ part of camp did so with utter trepidation. A story had gone the rounds recently of how sickeningly and inhumanely Colonel Banno and his fellow officers had treated one of their own soldiers.
A while back the colonel had ordered tea for himself and his officers. A soft-footed orderly had entered, tea tray perched in one hand, and he had succeeded in bowing so low that his head almost touched the carpet, all without spilling the tea. Unbelievably, the man had a white gauze mask over his nose and mouth to prevent him from breathing any of his lowly germs over his superiors. The orderly had finished serving tea when he turned to leave and happened to stumble over a polished boot of one of the officers.
Before he even had the chance to utter an apology, the boot had slammed into his groin area. The orderly collapsed in silent, writhing agony. The rest of the officers grinned and nodded their satisfaction as the assaulting officer got to his feet and proceeded to kick the orderly unconscious. Colonel Banno smiled his approval once the job was done and promptly rang for another orderly, whose job it was to drag the bloodied and unconscious figure away from their esteemed presence.
That was the kind of environment that Frank Williams, a mere prisoner, was voluntarily heading into now. He didn’t underestimate the dangers. More often than not, a prisoner who had the effrontery to approach the camp commandant’s quarters without being summoned faced a long stretch in the solitary cell or even summary execution.
Fortunately for Frank, Kish proved to be an instant success with the quick-tempered, irascible colonel. Frank placed the tiny puppy on the desk before him, and the colonel seemed to find the scene of her wandering her wobbly way toward him almost as funny as he did her mother snarling at his swordplay. But what really seemed to do it for him was when Kish stopped, flicked out a tiny pink tongue, and had a few licks of the colonel’s sword hand.
Trying to keep the tremor out of his voice—he knew just how much he was walking on eggshells here—Frank explained to the colonel that Kish was a gift for his esteemed lady friend. The colonel nodded and chortled his enthusiasm. This was a very fine idea indeed, very fine. Seizing his chance, Frank asked whether perhaps the pup’s mother might be rewarded by being made an official Japanese prisoner of war. She was after all a Royal Navy mascot and a serving member of His Majesty’s Armed Forces, so it was perhaps the least she deserved.
The colonel appeared to weigh the suggestion for a long moment. His face darkened. Much that he regretted having to refuse, he could see no way in which he could explain a sudden new addition to the camp roster to his superiors. It was then that Frank truly risked all. He had a suggestion to make, he ventured. If the suffix “A” was added to his own prisoner number—Hachi-ju-ichi; 81—then Judy could become Prisoner 81A. That way, everyone would be happy. Kish’s mother would be happy, the colonel would be happy, and most important, his lady friend, Kish’s new owner, would be happy.
The colonel rolled the puppy backward and forward a few times, his hand buried in her pudgy tummy. He was clearly enjoying the play. He reached across his desk with the other hand for his official writing pad. There
and then he began to scrawl out an order making it so. Judy was being given the Japanese prisoner of war number 81A-Medan, just as Frank had requested.
But as Colonel Banno scrawled out the precious missive, Frank felt his heart sink to his boots. Beneath Kish’s bottom a puddle had started to spread across the colonel’s polished desk. Frank had to hope and pray it didn’t reach the writing pad before he was done scribbling. Barely had Colonel Banno handed him the precious slip of paper and dismissed him than Frank practically ran from the room.
As no insanely angry voice yelled expletives after him in Japanese, Frank figured he must have gotten away from the officers’ quarters before the puddle was discovered. By the next morning Judy was sporting a new metal tag on her collar, one fashioned by her protection committee using the flattened piece of a tin can. On it was etched in fine lettering: “POW 81A-Medan.”
The news of Judy’s promotion in status spread far and wide, just as would word of the exploits of the four remaining pups. With Kish gone, Rojok, Sheikje, Blackie, and Punch proved bundles of maverick-spirited foolishness, and they got themselves into all sorts of trouble. They were too much for their mother to keep a watchful eye over. Fortunately, claims were about to be made on them. The women in the family camp—Gloegoer Two—had heard about the puppies. They sent word with a local fruit seller that consisted of a scribbled message hidden in her basket:
“Please, can we have one of your puppies?”
None could refuse such a request, especially as the men of Gloegoer One dreaded to think what life must be like for the Dutch women and children in their camp. Les Searle argued that Sheikje was the most beautiful of the four pups, which made her the most fitting to send. When the fruit lady again visited, a space was made at the bottom of her basket. Sheikje was put to sleep by a tiny dose of chloroform administered by Dr. Kirkwood, wrapped in a cloth, and covered over with some bananas before being whisked out of the camp in the basket balanced upon the woman’s head. Risking all kinds of reprisals from the camp guards, the fruit seller smuggled Sheikje out of Gloegoer One and into the family camp. And once she’d woken from her chemical-induced sleep and settled into her new home, Sheikje did no end of good in raising the morale of the women and child prisoners.