by Damien Lewis
As the three remaining pups grew bigger and stronger, feeding them and controlling them became ever more of a challenge. The next to go was Rojok. He was passed through a hole in the camp fence to be given to a Swedish Red Cross official who was based in Medan as a long overdue thank you for the food parcels.
But a horrific fate awaited one of the remaining pups: Blackie, perhaps the most curious and nosy—a trait inherited no doubt from his mother. One dark night Blackie ventured out of the hut on some whim or fancy. Sadly, he ran into a drunken Korean guard, who proceeded to beat the puppy to death. The Koreans in particular were like spoiled children, and they could fly into a savage rage for no apparent reason. They were even worse whenever they had been drinking.
Poor Blackie had found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There was no doubt about it—in recent months the disposition of the guards had been worsening. Many put it down to the fact that things weren’t going all Imperial Japan’s way in the war. For months now the guards had been boasting about the Japanese Army’s invasion of India. A huge map of India had been displayed in a prominent window, with arrows indicating the line of the Japanese march. But for several weeks now that line had remained static at a hill station called Kohima, on the Imphal-to-Kohima road on India’s eastern border.
The Battle for Kohima would become known as the Stalingrad of the East. From April 3 to April 16, 1944, the Japanese attempted to storm the Kohima ridge, which dominated the road by which the British and Indian troops at Imphal were supplied. The tiny force at Kohima held out against all odds, and by mid-April the siege was broken. British and Indian troops then counterattacked, forcing the Japanese to abandon the positions they had captured, driving them off the road and away from Imphal completely.
Imphal had been marked on the map at Gloegoer One with a prominent Japanese flag, as had the next several objectives in line all the way to Delhi itself, the Indian capital. But after weeks during which the flags had remained firmly fixed, the map was quietly taken down. It was never to reappear.
The prisoners at Gloegoer couldn’t know it yet, but Imphal marked a decisive defeat for the Japanese. From there on General Bill Slim’s magnificent 14th Army—the so-called forgotten army, a polyglot force of dozens of nationalities speaking numerous different languages but united in their fight against the Japanese—would drive the Japanese Imperial Army back into Burma and beyond.
But with the turning of their fortunes in the war, the spirit of those guarding the Sumatran POW camps would turn darker still.
It was the second week of June 1944 when Colonel Banno left Gloegoer, to be replaced as camp commandant by one Captain Nissi. The moment of the captain’s arrival was a dark day for all. At the crack of dawn on his first morning as commandant, Captain Nissi ordered all prisoners to appear on parade. And when he said “all” he meant all—no matter how sick or injured anyone might be.
Those who were unable to stand were supported by their fellows. Those who couldn’t walk were carried. Even the stretcher cases had to be formed up in one rank of the sick, the lame, and those close to death’s door. Captain Nissi stood in the center of the parade ground, lord of all that he surveyed. His cane slapped against his long leather jackboots as he gazed over the pathetic stream of humanity that had stumbled and crawled and been carried forth from the huts.
But as he ran his gimlet eye down the emaciated figures, his cane stopped slapping quite suddenly. He had spotted Frank Williams with a distinctive four-legged figure at his side. Captain Nissi had gone quite rigid. His eyes bulged in disbelief at spying the English pointer sitting to attention as if she were one of his prisoners. A dog? A dog! What was a dog doing on his parade?
Captain Nissi moved toward man and dog at a slow, predatory pace, his face dark as thunder. His sword hand crept toward the hilt of his weapon. Frank Williams watched the captain’s approach with a quaking heart. At his side was a thin and worn Judy, who was still recovering her strength after raising her brood. Her body was trembling slightly at the new commandant’s approach, and her lip had curled into a barely audible snarl.
Captain Nissi came to a halt.
The atmosphere was fraught with tension.
Not a man spoke—neither prisoner nor guard.
Frank knew this was balanced on a knife edge now. If the captain was allowed to bark out an instruction for something unspeakable to be done to Judy, then the guards would be duty bound to execute it. He had to strike the first blow, and before the captain started yelling orders.
With a shaking hand he delved into the pocket of his ragged shorts. He pulled out the piece of paper that Colonel Banno had penned for him—Judy’s “official” POW permit. Gesturing with one hand at his dog, he held out the permit in the other, Colonel Banno’s swirl of a signature prominently displayed. The captain stared at that dog-eared scrap of paper for a long second before snatching it away.
As he read it incredulously, his cronies gathered around, nattering away and gesticulating at both the note and the dog. Finally, there was a series of head scratchings and blank-faced stares between the captain and his fellow officers. However implausible it might seem, this note about the dog seemed to come from Colonel Banno himself, a superior-ranking officer to Captain Nissi. The colonel appeared to have conferred upon Judy official POW status, and in the rank-obsessed Japanese Army no one ever went against the decision of a superior officer.
For now at least Judy was no longer a legitimate target of Captain Nissi’s ire. Instead, he turned his attention to the men. Everyone but the wakeful dead was sent out on forced-labor parties. The guards had clearly been given orders to up the work rate or face the consequences. Captain Nissi seemed determined to drive the men to exhaustion and death in record time, and the prisoners were soon dropping like flies.
Day two was even worse, and if this was kept up the hospital hut would soon be filled to overflowing. But on day three came a reprieve of sorts. Mustered again at dawn on the parade ground, the men listened to Captain Nissi as he barked out a new order.
“All prisoners are to be shipped forthwith to Singapore.”
The news came as a total surprise, but it was greeted with barely disguised elation among the men. Singapore. It was a bustling metropolis compared to Sumatra, this jungle island where the prisoners had labored for so long in forgotten isolation. Singapore. It was sure to offer news of the outside world and perhaps a sense of how the war was going in Europe. Singapore. Surely there might be better treatment there—and more food—and perhaps even letters from home.
If nothing else, the urge to leave Gloegoer was so strong and surely anywhere had to be better than this. Les Searle used a rag to wipe the perspiration from one of the stretcher cases laid next to him on the parade ground.
“Cheer up, mate,” he whispered, “you’ll soon be out of this.”
That evening the huts were a scene of frantic activity as men packed and repacked their meager belongings in preparation for departure. Each hut received a visit from the guards, warning all to be ready to set off at first light the next morning.
For Frank Williams, there was to be a different kind of a visit. Captain Nissi himself came to have words with Judy’s chief protector. The commandant delivered a curt directive. He wished to make himself clear: the dog would not be going to Singapore. As Judy was Gloegoer One’s mascot, at Gloegoer One she would have to stay.
Once Captain Nissi was gone Frank took a few quiet moments to try to digest the news. But he felt truly shaken. He sat in one corner of the hut with Judy clasped between his knees, and he tried to think up a plan—a plan to thwart the cruel camp commandant and keep Judy with her fellows, her natural family. He knew he could rely on Les Searle, Jock Devani, and the others to help him, but the main risk in all of this would have to be his own.
He eyed Judy for a moment. He couldn’t expect any of the others to sacrifice their lives for her—and certainly, disobeying Captain Nissi’s order would be life-threatenin
g in the extreme. The Japanese—and especially ones like the new camp commandant—were incapable of dealing with loss of face. If the plan now forming in Frank’s mind was successful, when Judy was discovered gone, everyone would know that the captain’s order had been disobeyed, and by a lowly POW. The loss of face that entailed was incalculable, as would be the punishment that would inevitably follow.
But Frank was absolutely determined: where he was going his bitch was going too. No matter who might be issuing the orders, they would not be parted. Man and dog hardly slept that night. They were up for many an hour as Frank went about teaching Judy a new trick—a variation on the fetch-the-fresh-fruit-from-the-Japanese-grave game.
The prisoners were going to be shipped to Singapore aboard an old freighter. Frank spent those few quiet hours before dawn—when the hut was filled with the groans and snuffles of hungry and exhausted men lost in the uncertain release of troubled sleep—teaching Judy to run to a burlap sack that he was holding, at his signal. When she seemed to have grasped that much, he taught her to jump in and out of the sack at a quiet click of his fingers.
Regardless of their breed, dogs respond best to training when the reward offered is play or praise. Frank had little else to offer Judy but play and praise in abundance.
As the first rays of dawn broke across the roofs of the Gloegoer One huts, Judy seemed to have mastered her new trick perfectly. She didn’t quite grasp what it was for yet, but she trusted her teacher implicitly.
Little did she know it, but her life was hanging by a slender thread.
All they could do was to wait and hope.
Chapter Sixteen
At dawn the prisoners were ordered to muster for their final parade. But one, prisoner 81A-Medan, was left tied to a post in the British hut. Thanks to his days serving in the merchant navy, Frank knew just about every seaman’s knot there is to tie. He’d used a slipknot to fasten Judy, one that would come loose under moderate pressure. Knot tied, he’d ordered her to stay and left to join those lining up in the dim light outside.
After less than a week of Captain Nissi’s brutal rule there were now two rows of stretcher cases. God only knows how the prisoners would have fared had they been forced to endure his murderous rule for any longer. Les Searle, Jock Devani, and the other old faithfuls were in on Frank’s Judy-rescue plan, and each had his part to play. They waited tensely as the guards counted and recounted the POW numbers and checked and rechecked their bags of pitiful possessions.
It was crucial to Frank’s plan that he was seen to be carrying a bulging sack, although in truth he possessed little of anything that was worth taking with him. He’d stuffed his sack with an old blanket so that it appeared bulging fat and full to those who might scrutinize it. At last the guards seemed satisfied with their inspections, and they reported to Captain Nissi that all were present and correct.
The captain gave the order to move out.
For the last time—at least for these prisoners—the camp gates were swung open. The first to move off were those interred from the hospital hut, borne on hastily improvised stretchers. As the stretcher carriers passed through the gates of Gloegoer One bearing their living skeletons, it was as if the tombs of the dead had opened. These were once men, but through a combination of brutal forced labor, tropical disease, and starvation they had been reduced to wraiths.
Those who were still fit—though that term in Gloegoer One had a very different meaning from the norm—watched this ghostly procession of the barely living in stunned silence. While busy on the work gangs, few had had the energy, the want, or the need to venture into the hospital hut. Under Captain Nissi’s orders that hut had been forced to disgorge its secrets. Many a man felt himself biting his lip or driving his nails into his hands as he struggled to master the hatred he felt for those who had done this and to resist the urge to strike back. Anyone who did so would end up either dead or in the hands of the dreaded Kempeitai, which was a fate worse than death.
The Kempeitai was the Japanese equivalent of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police. Among this procession of the walking dead were those who had had cause to fall into their clutches. Mostly they were Dutch officers who’d been interrogated and tortured in unspeakable ways as the Kempeitai had sought intelligence on the territory that they had overrun. They had returned to Gloegoer broken men: it wasn’t so much their bodies that were finished as their minds. They stumbled along like zombies, lost in a world to which their tortured psyches had, in desperation, retreated.
Frank lingered at the rear of the line of those deemed fit, waiting his turn to move. As the column began to snake ahead, he joined the very end so he would be last out. The moment he was through the gates he gave a faint whistle, the call that Judy would recognize as the signal for her to come. But as he followed the last in line toward the nearby railway siding—they were catching a train from the camp to the docks, the first leg of the coming journey—there was no sign of his beloved Judy anywhere.
Frank was worried sick that he’d tied the knot too tightly. But what could he do? He could hardly turn back for her. He was bound to be spotted, the questions would begin, and Judy would quickly be discovered. So he did the only thing he could do, moving along those lining up to board the train, his eyes searching everywhere for any sign of his dog.
It was then that he saw it—a dark and moist nose and a pair of shining eyes, half hidden in the shadows beneath a railway truck. He went down on one knee, and a screen of bodies formed around him—Les Searle and Jock Devani herding others in closer to hide what was about to happen. Once he was completely surrounded, Frank whipped the blanket out and clicked his fingers, and Judy darted out from her place of hiding and leaped inside the empty sack.
With the blanket packed down on top to better hide her, Frank hoisted the heavy sack on his shoulders and climbed aboard a waiting railway carriage. With Judy thus hidden, the journey to the dockside proved a bittersweet affair. Even though the future was uncertain, the British and Australian prisoners were mostly relieved to be getting out of Gloegoer One. But for the Dutch prisoners there were distant and anxious farewells to be said as they streamed past the family camp and desperate rags and handkerchiefs were waved out of the carriage windows.
On reaching the harbor, the carriages shuddered and squealed as the brakes were applied. Now came the real test of Frank’s plan. He released Judy from the sack, and she darted from the open door to her hiding place beneath the wagons, almost before the train had come to a stop.
Again the men were formed up in ranks as the Japanese did the second head count and baggage inspection of the day just to ensure no one had made a break for it during the train journey or was carrying any hidden contraband. The prisoners eyed the ship that lay before them with some concern. The ship’s name—the SS Van Waerwyjck—had been painted over with a Japanese one, the Harukiku Maru, and the tall gray-painted hull was streaked with rust and dirt.
The SS Van Waerwyjck was a Dutch vessel captured and pressed into military service by the Japanese. She had been built in 1910 as a passenger steamer, and the Royal Dutch Navy had commandeered her at the outbreak of the war and then scuttled her at the entrance to Tanjung Priok harbor in Java, the island lying to the south of Sumatra, in an effort to prevent a Japanese invasion by sea. But once the Japanese had been victorious across the region they had refloated the ship, repaired her, and pressed her into service as a transport vessel. She was the biggest ship that any of the prisoners had ever seen in the port of Balawan.
The head count seemed to go on forever, as did the inspection of the prisoners’ possessions. Once his sack had been searched and the coast seemed clear Frank gave another whistle. Word ran down the line of waiting men, whispered from mouth to mouth, that Judy was coming. Having made as much progress as she could crawling beneath the train, she popped out and weaved her way between the ranks of prisoners, making directly for Frank’s position.
Not a man among them so much as glanced down as she passed
by. Seizing his moment, Frank bent again and whisked her into the sack, and moments later he had her hoisted onto his shoulders. So far, so good. The waiting men began to shuffle their way up the gangways leading onto the Van Waerwyjck’s main deck. The prisoners were divided into two parties: officers and wounded for the front hold, all others for the rear.
There were some seven hundred prisoners gathered on the quayside, and it was taking an age to get them loaded, especially the wounded. The midday sun beat down mercilessly from a cloudless Sumatran sky. Sweat poured off the men standing unmoving in their ranks. Frank felt his limbs weakening with exhaustion, but he was determined not to buckle under the heavy weight slung across his shoulder.
He sensed the tall Australian beside him lean across and place something on his head. It was a wide-brimmed Aussie bush hat.
“If I fall down, someone’ll pick me up,” he muttered cheerfully. “But if you fall down, mate, you’ve had it—you and your dog.”
Quite suddenly, Captain Nissi materialized right before Frank. For a second or so he scrutinized the wide-brimmed hat perched atop the prisoner’s head. Frank could see the captain’s mind working away feverishly behind brutish eyes. Captain Nissi had seen Judy tied to a post back in the hut in Medan. He’d seen Frank’s sack inspected once back at the camp and once here. Presumably, the dog had been left behind, as ordered.
“Ino wa arimasen deshita?”—“The dog’s not come?”—he demanded menacingly.
“Ino wa arimasen deshita . . .” Frank confirmed unhappily.
He did his best to look utterly crestfallen at the loss of his faithful friend, eyes cast at the ground, but at the same time the heavy sack was biting deeper into his bony shoulder. If Judy so much as breathed right now, the captain would be bound to notice.