by David
Elliott McMaster, of the 2/20th Battalion, had to transport supplies for the Japanese from the docks to Tanglin Barracks, where they were sorted.
We were labour staff for a Japanese Field Hygiene Unit, responsible for supply of all medical stores to the whole South West Pacific area, including the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, Solomon Islands, etc. Mostly, the work involved loading and unloading supplies from ships, trucking out to Tanglin, where they were checked, counted, re-sorted and re-shipped . . . The boys pinched large quantities of drugs, including M & B 693, very valuable, rare and up-to-date drugs. These were all sent to Changi (Roberts) Hospital by various underground and underhand routes. In fact, Tanglin virtually supplied all Changi Hospital drugs and medicines, such as they were.1
Others were made to repair and maintain the roads all across the island. One group was responsible for a road that ran along the side of a golf course. According to a poem, ‘The Golf Course Road’, which was penned about this time, they were none too concerned about the quality of the work they provided, so long as it looked right for their Japanese supervisors.
We used to belong to old Aussie
We joined in the first Aussie Corps
But now we belong to old Tojo
Bloody well prisoners of war.
We’re building a road round the golf links
With progress remarkably slow
It’s no bloody good on the surface
And a bloody site worse down below
They feed us on rice for our breakfast
We gobble it up with great glee
They feed us on rice for our dinner
Then more fucking rice for our tea
But one day the Yanks will relieve us
Arriving in all kinds of crafts
In a rickshaw I’ll ride round our roadway
With a little Jap boy in the shafts2
Changi was a reasonable place in which to be held as a POW. Food was scarce and mostly rice, but everything was well organised. Most of the men were employed in some useful activity. There were various clubs and groups, and prisoners were generally free to follow their own interests in their spare time. Vegetable gardens were established, with the aim of supplementing the rice ration, and the hospital at Roberts Barracks was decently equipped. Some of the AIF members were even thinking of starting a university.
Today, most who went to work for the Japanese – either on the Thai–Burma railway or in other places – remember their days at Changi very fondly. All hardship is relative, and many prisoners who were first interned at Changi before going to other locations in South-East Asia looked on Changi as a home away from home.
In March 1942, the survivors of the USS Houston and the HMAS Perth, both of which had been destroyed, joined the Australians British, Dutch and Indians at Changi. By then it was home to some 60,000 POWs. Digger met and made friends with quite a few of the Americans.
I became friendly with Bill Tucker, who was a very personable guy. We spent a great deal of time thinking up schemes that we would implement in the United States when the war was over.
‘You come to the States, pal, and we will make a bundle,’ Bill used to say to me in his broad American accent.
We became great friends, and when he was called to join A Force in May 1942, we exchanged gifts as a token of our friendship. I gave him a vial of iodoform, a sure cure for tropical ulcers, and he gave me his belt buckle.
Unfortunately, Bill, strong as he was, succumbed to a tropical ulcer at 80 Kilo camp, south of Thanbyuzayat. I reckon he probably gave all the iodoform away to others suffering ulcers when really he needed it himself.
Many years after the war, Digger tried to trace Bill’s relatives to return his belt buckle, but he never found anyone who claimed to know him. So he did the best he could. He had the buckle silver-plated and engraved with both their names, and today it resides in the American National Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, Georgia.
Coy York was another survivor of the USS Houston whom Digger got to know well. Coy was a great talker and a very skilled gambler, and Changi, despite the lack of money, was a great place to gamble. The men had a lot of time on their hands, and the need to spice life up a little was strong. Coy’s father was one of the great Mississippi steamboat gamblers and this was how Coy had been raised. His ‘lessons’ cost Digger plenty, but he regarded them as well worth it.
The Roberts Barracks boiler room, with its pipes and sterilisation equipment, was the ideal place for a party for those with contacts at the hospital and a little knowledge of winemaking and distillation. Making a drinkable spirit took a lot of work and time, what with collecting the vegetable and fruit materials, fermenting the wine and setting up the still. Everything was used – potato peelings, pawpaw skins, overripe fruit – in fact, any vegetable matter that could not be eaten. Bobby Small, another friend of Digger’s, had the necessary expertise; Joe Milledge and Max Wall were also involved.
The spirit took a couple of weeks to make. When the time came to taste it, all declared it a great success. By the time the mates had shared all the liquor they could squeeze from the apparatus and had sung every Australian song they knew, they were all beginning to feel a little queasy. When they staggered out into the cool night air, they were barely able to crawl to the showers in order to sober up enough to get back to their respective quarters. The experiment was not repeated!
By mid-1942, the hospital was well set up for the recovering wounded. The POWs even had it organised so that the fifty or so mentally ill patients were also taken care of in a separate building. Digger had volunteered to take care of this ward. One night he was talking with his mates about what a miserable existence these patients had. Digger explained that he was going to play ‘imaginary cricket’ with them.
‘How the hell do you play imaginary cricket?’ Max Wall asked.
‘Right, come outside and I’ll show you,’ replied Digger.
They all went outside to the barracks square, where they took up positions on an imaginary cricket field. Digger explained that, just like in normal cricket, the umpire had the last word – but in this version you could defend your interpretation of what had happened. You could argue about whether or not a no-ball had been bowled, or if someone was out or not – this was the fun of it. After the discussion the umpire would give his ruling. Digger made ‘Lofty’ Cameron the umpire because he was a natural comedian.
Max Wall was first in to bat. He stood in front of the stumps – a backpack – with an imaginary bat in his hands. Digger went to the other end to bowl. Bobby Small and Joe Milledge were fielding. The game started on Lofty’s command, and Digger ran up and pretended to bowl a fast one. Max played it away safely and did not take a run. The game continued, with everyone arguing whether or not Max had been bowled, whether a shot had been caught, whether he was out LBW and so on. There was a great deal of argument and banter, and after half an hour or so they had agreed to give Digger a hand playing the game with the patients.
Imaginary cricket was played twice a week with the twenty or so patients on a grassy area outside their billet. It was difficult to organise and enthuse the group at first, but once the patients got the hang of it Digger’s cricket games proved very popular.
But it was not all fun and laughter at Changi in 1942. Some men would occasionally sneak out of the camp to trade with the local people, usually at night. But you were much more likely to come across a Japanese soldier outside the camp than in it, so it was anything but a safe practice. By mid-1942 items such as tobacco were becoming scarce, and the men were desperate to supplement their rice with food brought in from outside the camp.
Digger was a risk-taker and a trader by nature. He and Bobby Small started trading with the locals outside under cover of darkness. One night in Changi village they heard a jeep approaching – a Japanese patrol. They only just had time to hide in the dense vegetation at the side of the road.
The truck stopped at the group of locals with whom Digger and
Bobby had been trading, and found on them the goods that they rightly concluded had been acquired through trade with POWs. They searched through the roadside vegetation, beating and stabbing at the shrubbery as they progressed. Digger reckoned that he and Bobby escaped that night by good luck alone. They never went outside the fence again.
Security was tightened further following the arrival of dedicated Japanese POW staff at the end of August 1942. The new Japanese commandant requested that all prisoners sign a statement declaring that they would not attempt escape. The prisoners refused, and on 2 September all 15,400 Australian and British prisoners in the Changi area were confined in the Selarang Barracks square.3
Most of the men – including the sick, many of whom had dysentery or malaria – were camped out on the black and hot barracks square.
We had to dig trenches through the bitumen for latrines, and you can imagine how fast they filled up, with 15,000 contributors. The whole square just looked like an overcrowded Asian market. The culmination was when Lieutenant Colonel ‘Black Jack’ Callaghan, our commanding officer, addressed us after a couple of days. He explained that he had been ordered to witness an execution on the beach, but that what he had witnessed was murder.
Two Australians, Corporal Rodney Breavington and Private Victor Gale, had escaped from the Bukit Timah Road POW camp in early May. After stealing a native fishing boat, they almost made it to Ceylon but were recaptured. They were taken back to Changi, allowed to recover from their ordeal in the hospital and then taken down to the beach, along with two Englishmen who had also attempted to escape. There they were shot by some Indian Sikhs, who had by this time joined with the Japanese.
Anyone who did not sign the agreement not to escape was threatened with the same fate, and so the Australian officers ordered everyone to sign. Most forms were signed ‘Ned Kelly’, ‘Mick Mouse’, ‘Errol Flynn’, ‘Charles Chaplin’ or something similar. Digger certainly didn’t sign his real name.
‘The Corporal & His Pal’ is a poem written in memory of Corporal Breavington and Private Gale.
He stood, a dauntless figure
Prepared to meet his fate.
Upon his lips, a kindly smile
One arm around his mate.
His free hand held a picture
Of the one he loved most dear,
And though his hand was trembling
It was not caused by fear.
No braver man e’er faced his death
Before a firing squad
Than stood that day upon the beach
And placed his trust in God.
He drew himself up proudly
And faced the leering foe.
His rugged face grew stern, ‘I ask
One favour ere I go.
Grant unto me this last request
That’s in your power to give.
For myself I ask no mercy
But let my comrade live.’
Then turning to the side
Where his sad faced colonel stands
A witness to his pending fate
Brought here by Jap command.
He stiffens to attention
His hand swings up on high
To hat brim, in a swift salute,
‘I’m ready now to die.’
They murdered him in hatred,
Prolonged his tortured end,
In spite of all his pleadings,
They turned and shot his friend.
They said ’twas an example
Of what they had in store
For others who attempt escape
Whilst prisoners of war.
Example, yes, of how to die,
And how to meet one’s fate.
Example, true, of selfless love
A man has for his mate.
And when he reaches Heaven’s gate
The angels will be nigh
And welcome to their midst, a man
Who knew the way to die.
Whilst here below in letters gold
The scroll of fame e’er shall,
The story tell of how they died,
A corporal and his pal.4
Chapter 6
The Officers’ Mess
In late 1942 the food situation in Changi deteriorated significantly, and by early 1943 there was a growing degree of deficiency diseases among the POWs. This was despite the allocation of ‘rice polishings’ and grass juice drink.
Rice polishings was the brown outer surface of the rice grain, which contained vitamins but which the Japanese polished off in order to produce white rice. Grass juice was produced at the hospital as a special vitamin drink. It was particularly foul-tasting but very good for preventing deficiency diseases.
Nevertheless, the calorie ration per man per day was again reduced, and the numbers being admitted to the hospital were increasing. Whilst some of the earlier deficiency diseases had been reduced or contained, there were now more cases of beriberi and pellagra. Malaria and dysentery were always present, and the diet of mainly rice did not help at all.1
Joe Milledge had succumbed to a very bad case of dysentery. Very often those with bad dysentery lost all appetite, and Digger felt sure that if he could get some meat he would be able to tempt Joe to eat again. But there was no meat available. By this time, there were no cats, no dogs and – Digger was sure – very few rats in Singapore.
Digger wondered if the snake population at the swamp was increasing again, so he and Bobby went down there and had a good look around. They had evidently done too good a job nine months earlier, as there was not a single snake to be roused from the swamp. Digger did notice the huge numbers of large snails in the nearby vegetation and immediately wondered what they would taste like.
That night he, Bobby and Lofty ate cooked snails with their rice. They were a bit hesitant at first, but eventually decided that they tasted not bad at all. As Bobby said, ‘If you close your eyes while you’re eating, you can tell it’s some kind of meat. But no way can you say if it’s lamb, beef or chicken.’
‘Not much fucking wonder, since it’s bloody snails!’ replied Lofty.
The next day they made a second journey to the swamp, this time to collect snails. They left them in clean water for the rest of the day – Digger had read somewhere that this is what soldiers had done in France in the last war. He killed the snails in boiling water, separated them from their shells, roughly chopped them so that they resembled any meat, and then fried them in his precious cooking oil. He served them up to Joe as meat that they had ‘acquired’, and Joe presumed Digger had stolen some tinned meat.
Joe was soon cured of his dysentery and down at the swamp with the rest of them, gathering snails to supplement their own rice rations. Many other POWs learned of the delicacy, and gradually the snails were as extinct as the snakes.
The general deprivation caused much complaint among the men. They knew that they were slowly starving to death, and that those in the hospital – particularly those with deficiency diseases – were likely to be the first of many victims. The men discussed all aspects of this problem. They had plenty of time to talk and no topic was off-limits. Things came to a head in January 1943, when they had endured a particularly bad three weeks of rations. As well as being meagre, their food was now full of maggots and weevils – they had to pick the rice clean before they could eat it.
In his memoir of this time, Bill Flowers notes: ‘How we grumbled at the fact that once again the rice ration had been cut. All were never free from hunger – a situation that one never became accustomed to but nevertheless had to be endured.’2
Initially, the Japanese were the main target of their frustration and anger. However, the Australians came to understand that the Japanese were also affected by this war, even if they were the cause of it. They knew that the Japanese soldiers were not living off the fat of the land. With the number of mouths to feed on Singapore Island, there simply was no fat in this land.
It did not take too long before the Australians’ own offic
ers copped some criticism. As in armies everywhere, they did not eat with the men but had their own officers’ mess. At Changi, some of the ORs served as cooks and servants in the officers’ mess, and these men now came under a bit of pressure from Digger and his group. It emerged that there was quite often tinned meat or vegetables on the officers’ tables.
That very night, in the early evening, Digger visited the officers’ kitchen to have a look at what was being prepared. Sure enough, the quality of food was far above what was available for the ORs, and certainly much better than it was possible to serve to the patients in the hospital.
Digger called together all his trusty mates, including Joe Milledge, Lofty Cameron, Bobby Small and Max Wall, and told them what he had learned. The officers may have had access to this tinned food ever since they came to Changi – perhaps it was left over from what they had smuggled into Changi in the ambulances when patients had been transferred to Changi almost a year previously. Everyone had known about this at the time, but they’d assumed that it had been finished long ago. It was also possible that the officers had organised other supplies – perhaps they had stolen it from the docks or from other sources where POWs were working. But whatever the case, they had reasonable food and no one else did.
By chance, or perhaps not, no officer suffered from a diet deficiency disease. Digger knew that this was probably because they were better aware of the precautions to take to prevent such diseases, but there was certainly the other obvious explanation of a better general diet. Some of Digger’s pals also held the notion that officers were expected to eat better than the men because they were the leaders; the ORs would be in a far worse situation if their leaders were sick, they argued.
This did not go down well with Digger. ‘Okay,’ he said to the group. ‘Let’s just take the food off them and give it to the hospital. We are all POWs, and not one of us should be eating any better than anyone else, no matter what rank you hold. The only people that deserve to be eating better than the rest are the patients.’