The Forgotten Highlander

by Alistair Urquhart

  One evening hundreds of men milled about our normal spot up the hill. There was to be a concert, a break from the grinding monotony of camp life. As a music lover I was thrilled. The boys were excited too. Somehow, goodness knows how, a piano had been dragged all the way up the hill. It was a brilliant moonlit night and as the musicians arranged themselves total and respectful silence descended on the huge crowd. Had it not been for the sound of the crickets and the tropical breeze, we could have been in the Albert Hall. Then a solo violinist, a professional with the London Philharmonic called Denis East, stepped forward and the plaintive notes of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto reverberated around the hillside. It was the first music we had heard for months. I sat entranced, and the boys, strangers to classical music, were agog – spellbound by Mendelssohn’s magic. For a few minutes the beauty of the music lifted us out of the camp and reminded us of the greatness of the European civilisation that the Japanese militarists despised. Some men wept. When East finished several stunned seconds passed before rapturous applause and cheering broke out. It was so beautiful.

  Eventually the Japanese guards present got bored and left. When they had gone an altar was set up and an interdenominational church service held. It proved a welcome morale booster. Even people like me, not especially religious, found it comforting. It was to be my one and only church service during three and a half years of captivity but it struck a real chord and made me think seriously about Christianity for the first time. When the padre finished his sermon on our mount in Changi prison, thousands of miles from home, hundreds of voices joined in a moving rendition of ‘The Old Rugged Cross’.

  The first verse seemed so appropriate to all of us caught up in the fall of Singapore:

  On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,

  The emblem of suffering and shame;

  And I love that old cross where the dearest and best

  For a world of lost sinners was slain.

  The Brinds were both devout Roman Catholics. Freddie never talked about his beliefs but the brothers were always missing on Sunday mornings and were friendly with the Roman Catholic padre. The Japanese did not allow church activities yet there were obviously secret masses going on – at considerable risk to all involved. I never enquired because I did not want the boys to think I was spying on them. Freddie always wore a crucifix on a silver chain, which he kept tucked under his shirt. If the guards had discovered it, they would have taken it from him and given him a beating.

  During this bleak period when the days dragged on for ever, Freddie scored his greatest triumph. On one of his regular snooping missions around the sprawling camp complex he stumbled upon a clandestine cooking operation run by a Swiss gentleman – the former head chef of Raffles Hotel no less! Along with two or three of his friends the master chef had set up a concealed cooking stove in a basement of one of the buildings. Needless to say, Freddie quickly befriended the chef, who took the boy under his wing, and one evening we were invited for some food.

  The endless diet of rice had long lost its appeal and the invitation prompted frenzied speculation as to what would be on the menu. The vegetable stews served in our early days had ceased and the rice rations had already been cut. So we were just incredulous after we nervously entered the basement and the exotic and glorious aromas overwhelmed us. The chef showed us how to make an omelette and then carefully cut it up and served us each with an equal portion. It was a mouth-wateringly magical moment, the omelette delectable in the extreme.

  Thanks to Freddie, who spent his days scavenging food to give to the chef to cook, we were invited back regularly. We used to joke about how as Other Ranks we had been banned from Raffles Hotel before the surrender but now had our own personal chef. It was brilliant. We got our ration of rice and eagerly took it to him. He was quite a character, short and stout, not much taller than Freddie. A typical chef, he had a fiery temper but good humour in equal measure. He idolised Freddie, who never failed to cheer him up.

  This culinary conjuror would transform our weevilridden rice into mouth-watering kedgeree, delicious risotto and savoury rice balls – it did not mean more food but more variation and taste. One of my favourites was a risotto of plain rice that the chef would add all sorts of spices to – God knows what – and it tasted superb. As prisoners fixated with food your stomach never let you forget that you were hungry. You became obsessed with when the next meal would be and when that time arrived, with the portion sizes. All eyes stared beadily at the pail of rice and the server to ensure that you were not being cheated.

  Lack of food and the dire conditions were beginning to take a serious toll on everyone. Myself and the boys all came down with dysentery, which tore at your stomach lining and had you running to the squalid latrines dozens of times a day. Then in May 1942 I suffered my first bout of malaria. With no sprays or mosquito nets the place was alive with insects. I was lucky. At this stage the medical officer still had a little quinine. The boys looked after me and I stayed in the hut, wrestling with the shakes, sweats and fever, while they were delighted to be rewarded for their efforts with the rice ration that I was too ill to eat. As I suffered they grinned and wolfed down the extra spoonfuls of rice.

  During this period of camp life Changi was still quite a disciplined and organised place. British and Australian officers were basically in charge of running the camp and the Japanese left us pretty much alone. The only time we saw much of them was when they searched for radios. On these frantic occasions the Japanese turned everything upside down, taking anything that was a benefit or bonus to us. Books, bibles, pens and paper were all taken away.

  Our regular guards and sentries were Sikhs, who had served with the British Indian Army. Around thirty thousand of the forty thousand Sikhs serving in Malaya went over to the Japanese, who promised India independence. The Sikhs who refused to switch sides were treated appallingly as prisoners and some were executed.

  The Sikh guards dressed in turbans and obviously despised us. You could see the hatred in their eyes. But they were rarely violent towards us. I had heard stories of the brutal treatment they dealt out to other POWs but I never saw it. We had once been their colonial masters, now the boot was on the other foot. I hated the fact that they had sided with the Japanese but that is human nature, I suppose.

  One day a few weeks after our arrival at Changi Captain Faulder, the education officer, approached me.

  He enquired, ‘Are you the one in charge of these lads?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about them. Turned down the chance to go with the civilians, eh? Remarkable.’

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ I said, wondering where this conversation was heading.

  Captain Faulder then decreed, ‘Very well. Urquhart, I would like you to take classes so that these lads can get their British Army General Certificate of Education while they’re here. Might as well spend this time wisely.’

  ‘But I’m not a teacher, sir. I’ve never taught in my life.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’re sufficiently educated to teach them the basics. We’ve got a room for you to start immediately. Come along, I’ll show you.’

  I trotted after him to another outhouse building near by. It might once have been used as a type of lecture room because it had a blackboard easel and a tiny stump of chalk, a long trestle table and three chairs.

  ‘This should do you,’ Captain Faulder said, standing with his hands on his hips, admiring the choice of classroom.

  He said, ‘I’ll get you some exercise books and some pencils. You can start straight away.’

  I thanked him and he marched off, leaving me scratching my head, wondering how the heck I was going to teach these rascals anything. After the shock had subsided I recognised that it could be a positive thing. At least it would keep my mind busy and away from depressing thoughts.

  The following day class started at 9 a.m. With my only previous teaching experience being dance classes for Eric and co. in the living room ba
ck home, I decided to concentrate on English and maths, and also Latin, since my father had ensured I was a fairly accomplished scholar. There are so many Latin words that tell you what the English meaning is, I thought the boys would benefit from my personalised syllabus. There were no books or manuals to call on so my own ideas had to suffice. We worked for two hours on the basics and I tried to keep them interested by asking questions relating to the outside world. While Freddie was by far the most intelligent, he was also the most restless. He was forever day-dreaming out of the window or distracting the others, who were slower and inarticulate. Jim was rather backward in his work and his ponderous handwriting was almost unintelligible – like a hen’s scrawl, as I used to tell him. They hated the lessons more than I did but it kept us all occupied.

  After two hours we stopped for lunch and a break. We continued in the afternoon for a further two hours but the schedule was flexible. If I got fed up, which occurred frequently, the day would be called off short, much to the boys’ delight.

  After three months they were ready to sit their exam. I had high hopes for Freddie but was unsure as to how the other two would fare. Much to my surprise and general delight they all passed and received handwritten certificates, signed by me, that confirmed completion of their British Army General Certificate of Education. Hastily typed up certificates were later presented to the boys and Freddie was extremely proud of his, especially when he learned that his Army pay would now be increased! Not that it did any good in the camp.

  Meanwhile most of the men went on work parties during the day. I was very lucky, exempted since I had a duty of care towards the boys. The others went to the very docks where I had landed less than two years earlier or to the aerodrome to clear trees. In the first few months the men could work hard in the tropical heat because they were in relatively good health. But as their health deteriorated and their body weight dropped due to the poor diet, fewer and fewer of them came back from the work parties. Many were visibly withering away and, suffering from dysentery or malaria, dropping like flies. The officers had even to designate a new work party whose sole function was burying bodies.

  The work parties taken to Singapore harbour to work on the docks, unloading shipments of rice, sugar, meat and vegetables, plundered as much as they could. For starving men the temptation to help themselves was just too great. The Japanese deemed stealing food the most heinous of crimes. Some paid with their lives for a handful of rice. Guards administered savage beatings with iron bars, staves and pick-axe handles that left men paralysed and blinded and others dead. The dreadful dangers, however, did not stop starving prisoners from taking their chances.

  There was constant paranoia in the camp that some men were acting as spies for the Japanese. Anyone seen being called to their offices regularly and who returned unscathed was singled out as suspicious. Of course some men might have been chiropodists or something, called in to work on the officers’ feet or whatever. But it did not stop fevered speculation and tongues wagging among bored men. If there was a particularly strong suspicion that someone was in the pockets of the Japanese, or ‘Jap happy’ as it was known, they would be confronted. I heard rumours that some men were even murdered; their bodies disposed of head first into the latrines. Surprisingly, though, the men who secured jobs working in the Japanese cookhouse or helping in the storerooms were never castigated by the rest of the men. They were obviously better fed but there was no jealousy. It was more a case of ‘fair play to them’.

  As the weeks turned into months in 1942, there were plenty of rumours circulating in the camp about the progress of the war. We heard of a huge armada sailing from England with the RAF to save us, of major sea battles, of Japan running rampant through the Pacific and taking island after island. The Russians had reached Greece. The British were winning in North Africa. And so it went on. Through his interpreter the Japanese commander would take great glee in announcing, ‘The mighty Japanese empire is taking over India and Australia.’ It got into your mind and you did not know what to believe. We would ask our officers for any information but they were just as in the dark as we were.

  The lack of contact from our families also got us down. Men wondered how their families were surviving the bombing of British cities, if sons and brothers had been conscripted. The lack of letters from home made us feel like a forgotten army and we were anxious that our families knew we were OK. In June the Japanese had allowed us to send a message home. I had filled in my little card with the message: ‘My Dearest Mother, I am in good health and spirits and being well treated. Hope you are well. Much love to all at home. Please do not worry too much. Please let Hazel know and give her my love. With all my love, Alistair.’ But we never knew whether the cards had been sent or not. (In fact I was to send a total of six of these cards during captivity and all of them arrived in Aberdeen after my return home.) By now every prisoner was suffering from depression, and coping with ‘black dog’ was the hardest thing a prisoner ever encountered.

  That was why the concert parties were so important. I had been mesmerised by the concert on the hill above the barracks; then one day it was announced that there was to be a stage show on the parade ground of Selarang barracks. We all trooped along on the night to be treated to a burlesque show entitled ‘Tulips From Amsterdam’. It was hilarious and with Japanese guards in the audience, pretty near the knuckle. The concert party had devised all kinds of skits sending our captors up, with great music too and we all sang along to the hits of the day. The indisputable star of the show was a drag artist called Bobby Spong. Dressed up to the nines and positively glamorous, when he came on stage the audience went wild, the boys besides themselves laughing, hooting, yelling and cheering – and no shortage of indecent suggestions. We laughed until our sides nearly split.

  It was to be our last laugh at Selarang. A couple of weeks later at the beginning of September, things turned nasty, very nasty. The Japanese had decided to tighten the screw and increase control over the camp. Unbeknown to the prisoners they had plans about what to do with us and blind, terrorised obedience was central to those plans. The strange limbo we inhabited, in which we lived as prisoners but under British authority, was drawing to an end and the Japanese wanted to impose their authority.

  A new regime headed by Major General Shimpei Fukuye wanted to transform Changi into a proper prison camp. A few weeks earlier four prisoners, two Australians and two British, had tried to escape from up-country in Malaya and Fukuye demanded that all the allied prisoners should sign an undertaking not to do this. Escape attempts were futile and doomed in my view. But our officers refused to sign as a matter of principle. The first we knew about this row was on being told to report to the Selarang barracks. As we made our way there, thousands of men were doing the same, streaming in to the barracks from all directions. The Japanese had decreed that all prisoners must be inside the barracks by 6 p.m. – anybody outside after that time would be shot. It was the beginning of a terrifying stand-off that became known as the Selarang Incident.

  Seventeen and a half thousand men crammed into the Gordon Highlanders’ barracks designed to accommodate fewer than a thousand men. It was appalling. We had no space and what little water we had was for cooking only. Latrines had to be dug in the middle of the barracks square but we could never get near them, the place was so heaving with men. Somebody worked out that the population density was one million men per square mile. Outside of the crammed barracks in the parade ground there was very little cover for the men and we baked in the sun. Our officers warned us that we would face a court martial if we signed and that the Japanese were breaching the Geneva Convention that allows prisoners the right to attempt to escape without facing punishment.

  The Japanese could not have cared less about the Geneva Convention and had no intention of observing it. To rack up the pressure they ordered the execution of the escapees and the British and Australian commanding officers were instructed to attend. It was a brutal, botched affair during which the Sikh f
iring party had to shoot the men several times. They shot some of the prisoners in the groin and the poor chaps had to plead to be finished off. Refusing blindfolds the condemned men displayed fantastic bravery and the British and Australians still refused to give in.

  We were playing a dangerous game. The Japanese could not stand to lose face and we knew that they were capable of anything. Crammed into the parade square we were so vulnerable, deprived of all items of war. There was no possibility of an uprising. Personally I was riddled with fear that the situation could escalate into a massacre.

  At various points during the stand-off the Japanese would drive in a dozen lorries covered in tarpaulins. These would reverse into strategic positions in front of us covering all points. Then at a signal the tarpaulins would be torn off in unison to reveal machine guns mounted on the trucks, four soldiers at the ready on each. Their guns pointed at us, the Japanese would start screaming. It was all part of the terror tactics they so enjoyed. We responded by singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. The national anthem was banned and this became our theme song, our only weapon and I doubt if it was ever sung with more fervour. The Aussies would pipe up with ‘Waltzing Matilda’, and sometimes a chorus of ‘There Will Always Be an England’ would ring out. As conditions deteriorated and more men went down with dysentery and diphtheria, singing was a way of keeping our spirits up. But I always believed that we were all going to be massacred.

  On the third day of the stand-off conditions had become really desperate and men began to die of dysentery. I tried to keep a brave face on things for the sake of the boys but it was an awful ordeal. We were down to half rations, constantly thirsty and had hardly room to lie down – sleeping was a problem.

  Still we stuck it out and then the Japanese played their trump card. They threatened to transfer in two and a half thousand sick and wounded men from the hospital in the nearby Roberts barracks. It would have been mass murder and reluctantly our officers agreed to sign but insisted that it be recorded we did so ‘under duress’. At last it was over. We were ordered to sign a piece of paper that read, ‘I the undersigned, hereby solemnly swear on my honour that I will not, under any circumstances, attempt to escape.’