by Alan Chin
Mitchell had a dangerous fever and his cadaverously pale body trembled, so once again Andrew begged for drugs and bandages. This time he was shoved aside by three guards holding bamboo canes and received a blow to the side of his head. As he crashed to the deck, one guard drew his revolver and pointed it at the other prisoners stuffed into the shelves so that they would not interfere.
“Please, Master, don’t beat me,” Andrew mumbled.
Rough hands, unbelievably strong, grabbed his shoulder and pulled from behind, jerking him to his knees and whirling him around to face a guard. Andrew’s lips were pressed to the man’s crotch. He saw the brown buttons of the man’s fly, the weave of the uniform. It smelled of soap and sweat. Andrew’s eyes followed the line of the uniform up to the man’s face. The guard, stocky and powerful, slid his tongue across his lower lip. Andrew heard it, the sound of the man’s moist tongue wetting his lip. Above the open mouth were eyes blazing like a tiger’s.
A shiver ran up Andrew’s spine. The guard’s hand cupped Andrew’s jaw, applying enough pressure to hold it in position, while his other hand unbuttoned his fly. The odor of sweaty flesh hit Andrew’s nose. Another guard knelt behind him, leaned his head next to Andrew’s, cheek to cheek. Hands fumbled at Andrew’s belt. He caught the stench of whiskey on the man’s breath while his pants and underwear were yanked down, bunching about his knees. The man’s breathing was heavy and echoed in Andrew’s head. Everything became a blur as Andrew was squeezed in the vise of these two men, one holding him from behind, the other towering over him.
Andrew understood the snarl of Japanese. “This is what we do to Asians who are white inside!” Andrew heard the man behind him spit three times into his palm. An electric charge ran from Andrew’s heart to his testicles. He struggled to free himself, but there was no escape.
The ache in his head became searing waves of pain. The compartment went deathly still. Andrew looked to the side. Eyes were watching. All the Pilgrim’s survivors were stuffed into the floor-to-ceiling shelves, witnessing his shame.
The guard looming over Andrew let his pants fall about his thighs and pressed his cock against Andrew’s lips. A slap across Andrew’s face dropped his mouth open, forming a red circle. The guard cupped a hand behind Andrew’s head and wrenched it forward.
As Andrew’s face mashed into the man’s sweaty pubic hairs, he felt a searing pain rip into his bum. He screamed a muffled cry. The compartment spun about him. He gagged again and again. He couldn’t get enough air. He focused all his attention on gulping air between thrusts as the guards worked him over, roughly and clumsily.
Occasionally, details of what was occurring filtered through his numb consciousness: the taste of slick flesh, the stink of whiskey, the bristly pubic hair, the labored breathing, the animal-like grunts, the stench of vomit from the other prisoners.
An eternity seemed to pass before the man standing over him squeezed the sides of Andrew’s head and pumped his hips like a jackhammer. All at once, Andrew was choking on sperm. Even while gagging, Andrew could feel the eighty pairs of horrified eyes helplessly staring.
The guard behind him savagely groaned in his ear and he knew it would soon be over. But he also knew that it would never be over. He would suffer this humiliation every minute of his life. Andrew whimpered as both men pulled free of him and he was finally able to breathe.
They shoved him to the deck and beat him with bamboo canes: five blows across the back, slamming him harder and harder; two severe blows to the head. He heard his skull crack, twice. His mind drowned in a sea of flames.
They hauled him across the deck and rolled him into the lowest shelf, where he lay perfectly still with eyes unblinking. In that tropical heat, Andrew felt cold. He wanted to move, to pull his pants up over his nakedness, but he couldn’t. Rifts had opened in various parts of his body, in his mouth, his bum, his skull. He felt the hot, sticky, stagnant air within the ship’s compartment course through these ruptures, touching something deep inside. At the same time, he felt his life force hemorrhaging out these same holes.
Mitchell’s face hovered above him, looking helpless in a comical sort of way. There was something ridiculous about the situation. Grady slid closer, eyes as wide as saucers, and he turned and vomited.
Andrew wanted to tell them that it was okay, that the pain was seeping away, leaving only the frigid cold, but he couldn’t speak. Mitchell curled an arm under Andrew’s head and across his shoulders, but Andrew couldn’t feel his touch.
“Christ, he’s dead.”
Andrew recognized Cocoa’s voice but couldn’t see him.
The hold-cover was lowered into place. Andrew was consumed by claustrophobic darkness. He became convinced he was dead. A moment later, he felt a cool breeze whisper across his cheek and under his wings, lifting… lifting…. The world below stood still as he glided high above the ship. He did not know if he was flying through time, or suspended, hovering in a still universe of blue sky and brilliant sunshine. He only knew that delicious feeling of freedom.
Ever so slowly, his feathered body fused with the sky and he became the wind. After a timeless span, things turned confusing. Harsh voices, burning light, and an incredible soul-consuming pain all rushed back to him, pulling him down.
The men in the darkness around him had become crazed with fear. They shrieked obscenities and lashed out at each other in claustrophobic hysteria until the guards opened the hatch cover once again, letting light and air pour into the compartment.
Andrew opened his eyes, blinked. The first thing that came into focus was Mitchell’s face, which still held that comical expression. “You’ll be okay,” a voice said. He felt himself being pressed in a tight hug and he heard words hastily whispered. “I love you,” or “God love you.” He wasn’t sure which, but regardless, he was startled to his core.
During the seven-day voyage, to escape the pain, humiliation, and stench Andrew often wished for death, for that freedom of flight, to never return to his body again. Every day, three or four men were given up to the sea, and he prayed he would be next.
Once, while waiting on deck for the daily rice ration, a prisoner stumbled to the rail and jumped over. Nobody knew who it was. Guards and prisoners all stared as the man drowned in the ship’s wash. In the hold, Andrew emptied his mind and willed himself to have the same courage as the man who jumped.
Chapter Eighteen
May 25, 1942—1500 hours
IN THE Changi courtyard, the prisoners baked for an hour before the prison commandant sauntered in front of them and stepped onto a wooden box. He was a powerful man, about forty years old. He stood slightly under six feet tall and wore an immaculate, straw-colored uniform. A samurai sword clung to his side, tucked under his thick belt, and his black boots gleamed in the sunlight. In the center of his red-striped visor-cap sat the emblem of his regiment, which shined like gold from years of polishing. The cap covered a head of short, iron-gray hair, and his face and arms were burnt a masculine red-brown. He surveyed the ragged survivors while holding a swagger stick in one hand, slapping it against the palm of his other hand. Behind him spread a black shadow that seemed to move of its own accord.
He pointed the stick at the Pilgrim’s crew and, using a belligerent, baritone voice, announced in perfect English, “You are the first Americans to become prisoners of this camp. The Imperial Army has conquered the English, the Australians, and the Dutch. Now we are defeating the Americans. The prisoners of this camp are not prisoners of war, but rather, captives. A real soldier fights to the death and would not disgrace himself by being taken alive. You are no better than dogs, only concerned with saving your miserable skins. Thus, you will be treated like dogs. Obey the rules and you will avoid punishment. Break the rules and we will show no mercy. Escape is futile. There is no place on this island to hide. That is all.”
Commandant Tottori’s supercilious voice broke over the prisoners like a sea surge. Andrew felt a jolt in his testicles, as if the force in the man’s voi
ce were crushing his most tender flesh. He knew that resistance to this man’s authority was unthinkable. In fact, even the officers and soldiers under Tottori’s command leapt with surprising fervor at his most trivial orders.
As Tottori stepped from the makeshift podium and stomped from the courtyard, a short, pugnacious-looking captain took his place on the box. Using an interpreter, the captain explained the camp rules.
As the officer’s truculent voice droned on, Andrew scanned the prisoners gathered on the courtyard’s borders, the ones leaning against the cell block walls. They stared at the newcomers as if they were inspecting themselves in a mirror, seemingly afraid of what they found.
Andrew focused on one middle-aged prisoner wearing loose-fitting shorts soiled with tropic mold, wooden clogs, and a green Tank Corps beret. Round, protruding eyes dominated his face, and his body, wasted by malnutrition and amoebic dysentery, was nothing more than parchmentlike brown skin stretched over sinew and bone, like the tortured steel framework of a building from which everything else had been sandblasted away. But those eyes, those colorless eyes, were so dull they didn’t reflect any light. The other prisoners all carried that same emaciated look. The only differences between them were age, height, and color of hair.
Andrew tried to focus on the interpreter’s words, but the heat allied with his exhaustion to make his head spin, and he couldn’t reach through his dizziness to understand.
He leaned forward and rested his forehead on Mitchell’s chest. The rhythm of the officer’s heartbeat vibrated through his skull.
Mitchell’s body rose. British prisoners lifted the litters and carried the wounded to the camp hospital. The man wearing the green beret led the Americans who could walk out of the courtyard.
Andrew and Grady struggled to their feet and followed a ragged line of the Pilgrim’s crew outside the high walls and down the outer road that cut through the go-downs. The crew turned off the main road and headed down a path to the ninth hut in a row of ten: Hut Twenty-nine. They filed into the hut and Andrew collapsed on the floorboards inside the entrance. Out of the scorching sun, his head cleared and his thoughts returned.
The man in the beret lingered inside the doorway, watching the crew file in. Ensign Fisher was the last one through the door, and the man addressed him with a nasal British accent.
“My name is Lieutenant Fowler. Welcome to Changi. This is Hut Twenty-nine and the American enlisted men will be housed here. I’m afraid that we weren’t expecting you, so it will take us a day or so to make room for your officers. Until then, you’ll have to sleep here.”
“Ensign Monte Fisher.” Fisher held out his hand, but Fowler only peered down at the gesture until Fisher pulled his hand to his side. “It won’t be necessary to find other accommodations. There are only three officers. We can bunk with the enlisted men.”
“Rather bad form for officers to fraternize with the ranks. Next thing you know they’ll be calling you by your Christian name. You Yanks are notoriously undisciplined. Respect for the chain of command is essential. Now that America has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the war, I suppose you’ll have to sort that all out.” He paused for a moment, and added with a smirk, “Along with growing some spine.”
Fisher’s face reddened and his eyes smoldered, but he held his tongue.
Fowler glanced down at Andrew and his nose wrinkled, as if detecting a foul stench. “Curious—are you Yanks enlisting Wogs?”
Andrew glanced up at the smirking officer and said, with a weary voice, “I’m an American.”
“When you address an officer you will use the term, ‘sir.’”
“If you’re an officer, then you are pathetically out of uniform. And as I said, I’m an American. I’m not under British authority and don’t have to kowtow to you or your bloody rules.”
Fowler’s face flushed. “Pity. If you are an American, that would make you yellow on the inside as well as the outside.”
Ogden stepped forward from the circle of onlookers and grabbed Fowler by the throat, slamming him up against the flimsy wall. “Watch your mouth, you skinny fuck!”
Andrew held up his hand to stop Ogden, who let go of the lieutenant and retreated a step.
Andrew struggled to his feet to face Fowler. “I’ve always heard that a British officer is the consummate gentleman, but a gentleman would never humiliate himself by insulting another man to his face. So it seems that only the British upper class are gentlemen, and not the commoners.”
Fowler’s eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. He hissed, “You’ll pay dearly for that remark. I can promise you that, you yellow bastard!” He turned on Ogden. “And you assaulted an officer. That’s a criminal offense.”
“Lieutenant Fowler.” A tall, gray-haired man wearing a shabby uniform and clogs, carrying a wooden cigar box under his arm, appeared in the doorway. He twisted one end of his handlebar mustache with his fingertips. “We can give our American allies a warmer welcome than that, don’t you think? After all, we’re all on the same side, eh?” The man’s eyebrows lifted.
“Colonel Henman, I-I was….” Fowler stammered. “Yes, you are right of course. Frightfully sorry.” He moved to the doorway and turned to Fisher, still visibly struggling to regain his composure. “You will catch on to the routine soon enough, old boy. Nothing changes from one day to the next. On each bunk you will find a water bottle, a tin mug, a spoon, and two billycans—one for rice and one for soup. You will need those to eat. Anything else you need, like tobacco and soap, can be purchased from Little Sister Wu. She’s the Chinese woman who runs the camp store. Of course you’ll need something of value to trade. Showers are at the end of the row and the latrines are up the hill from the west wall. Every day, a few men from each hut must work. Details gather wood for the cooking fires, bury the dead, and repair the airstrip. Be careful to tuck your mosquito netting in thoroughly—one tiny opening and those tenacious buggers will drain you dry in a single night.”
Fowler paused, as if considering whether he had covered all the bases, and added, “Oh yes. If you’re caught outside the wire, they’ll kill you. And if you’re caught breaking any camp rules, they’ll send you north to the work gangs building the Burma railway. If you think this is hell, think again. Here they only starve you to death. There they also work you to death and beat you to death. Life expectancy on a work gang is three weeks.” Fowler’s voice shivered at the mere mention of the railway gangs.
Fowler turned to leave, but Fisher said, “Hold on, Lieutenant. I believe you owe Seaman Waters an apology.”
“I quite agree,” Colonel Henman added. “Come now, Fowler. Let’s have it.”
Fowler opened his mouth, but paused. His lips trembled as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. His expression went hard as he twisted his head toward Andrew, saying in a softer voice, “You have my apology, Seaman Waters.” He glanced at Henman, who dismissed him with a flash of his eyes and a nod. Fowler whirled about and disappeared through the doorway.
Henman shook his head as he watched Fowler stride away, and asked to speak with the senior American officer.
Moyer stepped forward. “Hello, sir. I’m Chaplain Moyer, I mean, Ensign Moyer.”
“A chaplain? Oh, capital! You have no idea how badly we require religious guidance. Seems our English clergy fell sick and passed on during the first months. They say the meek shall inherit the earth, but not in this camp, I’m afraid. I am sure you are not Church of England, but no matter. I would love to work with you to organize services for our boys, and of course the brave souls in the hospital need you so desperately. In this camp of perpetual starvation and sickness, the men who keep to their faith in those moments of deep anguish are the ones who survive. But so many boys give up too easily. It is as if they will themselves to die in order to end the suffering. Surrendering the spirit is an infectious disease, and it is spreading all too quickly here. Can I count on you, sir?”
Moyer’s eyes shone. “Of course,” he stammered. “It will be
a privilege.” His bewildered expression metamorphosed into an aura of joy.
“Smashing. Oh, I am forgetting my manners. I’m Colonel Thomas Henman.” He extended his hand and Moyer clasped it firmly.
“This is Ensign Fisher, Monte Fisher.”
“So pleased.”
Henman stared at Andrew. “Young man, you’re either frightfully clever or you know a thing or two about Englishmen. Your comment about not being upper class was the most injurious insult you can give a man like Fowler. Either way, I’d say you’ve made an enemy during your first hour in camp. I certainly hope you are not planning to make a habit of this sort of behavior, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“Interesting that you call me ‘sir’ but refused Lieutenant Fowler the same courtesy.”
“Sir, you earned my respect.” The effort to speak used up Andrew’s remaining strength. His voice trailed off until it was overpowered by the drone of flies.
“Well put, young man. Here, let me help you to bed.” The colonel helped Andrew to lie on the bunk nearest the door. He pulled the cap off his own water bottle and held Andrew’s head up to drink. Andrew swallowed a few mouthfuls before Henman laid his head on the pillow to rest.
“Sir,” Andrew rasped. “When can I see Lieutenant Mitchell?”
“You must be referring to the officer they carried to the hospital. Do not worry about him, young man. Our medical staff are giving him the best possible care. I am sure he will be allowed visitors in the next day or two. You concentrate on getting yourself stronger.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“Now,” Henman said, facing the officers. “I popped in to pump you for news about the latest battle developments. Perhaps we could take a walk and you can fill me in.”