by Jon E. Lewis
Basu stalled as best he could. “I am here for three days only,” he said. “I don’t know much about the organisation here.”
“What army units are posted here? How many of them are British and how many Indian?”
“I am a doctor,” said Basu. “I am interested in medicine, not military tactics.”
At this, one angry Japanese soldier brought the point of his bayonet against the doctor’s head as though to finish him off unless he answered the questions more satisfactorily. But the Japanese commander cut in brusquely: “Show us to the telephone.”
Basu thought quickly. “It would be dangerous to go near it,” he said. “There is a machine-gun post just beside it.”
“Then show my men to the operating theatre and the laboratory,” ordered the Japanese officer.
Basu could not get out of this. But he took them to the small theatre which was used only for minor operations. As bad luck would have it, while the Japanese hunted round the theatre for anything they could lay their hands on in the way of bandages and cotton wool, they came on three of the hospital officers asleep. They were awakened and made prisoners. With Basu, they were taken back to the commander for further questioning. It was quite clear that the one piece of information the enemy were particularly anxious to discover was where the supply depot was situated. Basu kept up his presence at ignorance: “I don’t know; I tell you I’m only here for a few days. I’ve been too busy looking after patients to find time to visit the supply depot.”
All the officers had their hands tied tightly behind their backs and they were taken to join the British and Indian other ranks, who had been trussed in a similar painful fashion.
The Japanese officer pulled out his sword, waved it over their heads threateningly, sheathed it and withdrew.
The purpose of this melodramatic gesture became clear almost at once. It was intended to cause the maximum alarm to the Indians as an inducement to make them desert to the Japanese to save their lives. The offer came almost immediately.
A man whose appearance suggested he was Indian was brought in.
“There is no need to worry,” he assured the Indians. “No need at all to worry. You will be taken to Rangoon to join the Indian Independence League.”
“What is your native country?” Basu asked him.
“I come from Maungdaw, in Burma,” he answered.
Later that night, the five Indian medical officers were taken to the dispensary and ordered to pack up drugs for the Japanese. They were particularly interested in quinine, morphine, anti-tetanus and anti-gas-gangrene serum. They wanted to know what was in every phial. Those they did not want they threw to one side. Sally, in 9 Brigade Headquarters, could hear the bottles breaking.
When the Japanese had taken all they wanted, they drove the medical officers back to the watercourse where the rest of the captives were seated in acute discomfort because the bindings on their wrists were cutting into the flesh. Those who asked for water were jabbed with a heavy stick by a Japanese sentry.
The following morning a carrier pushed through the bushes towards the medical inspection room and one Japanese soldier dragged the trussed British other ranks out in front so that they should receive the first burst of fire. When the automatic gun of the carrier opened up, the prisoners desperately tried to find shelter, but they were handicapped because their hands were lashed behind their backs. Some of them were killed and others were wounded. The Japanese looked on grinning. They, too, had suffered casualties. They selected six of the Indian soldiers and ordered them to help to carry seven wounded Japanese.
The stretcher-bearers struggled southwards through the jungle the whole of that day. When night came, the Japanese cooked food for themselves but gave none to the Indians. Next morning, still having had nothing to eat, the Indians were given packs to carry and it was not until the early hours of the following morning that they reached their destination. This was the Buthidaung Tunnel, where there were about a thousand Japanese living. The tunnel was used as a store for arms, ammunition, guns and transport. During the day, six Indians came to see them. “You need not worry,” they told them. “You will have trouble for a few days, but then you will be sent to Rangoon to work. Our major will fix things and you will not be tortured by the Japanese.” One of their visitors, a Madrassi, said: “There are now 400,000 followers of Subhas Bhose. In two months we shall reach Chittagong.”
Seven days later, the six Indian soldiers were taken out of the tunnel, ordered to strip off their clothes beside a sixty-foot-deep gorge, and then were shot by a Japanese officer and five men. Four were killed and their bodies were kicked down the gorge where already more than twenty bodies lay decomposing. One of the Indian soldiers, a RIASC ambulance driver, was shot through the right arm, left shoulder and right hand by the Japanese officer and managed to fall down the gorge without being kicked. At the bottom he discovered that the sixth member of his party, a labourer, although badly wounded, was still conscious. When the Japanese had gone, he helped the other man to move across the gorge, but after a hundred yards the labourer lost consciousness and he had to leave him. Five days later, after living on water and leaves, the ambulance driver staggered into the regimental aid post of 3/14 Punjab Regiment, one of 9 Brigade’s units.
Meanwhile, back at the hospital in the Box, the Japanese raiding party had completed their crime. Wounded prisoners received no attention. Those who cried out were shot or bayoneted. Men lying helplessly in bed were killed. In one shelter were a British lieutenant, a major of the Gurkhas and a Signals sergeant. They were being tended by a captain of the RAMC. Four West Yorkshires, whose defence post was overrun in the attack, joined them. When day came, they lay still so that the Japanese might not notice them. During the morning they heard a shout outside and the RAMC Captain asked: “What do you want?”
The shout – it sounded like “You go” – was repeated. The Captain shook his head and lay down again. “Who is it?” asked the Lieutenant.
“It’s a Jap,” said the Captain. At that moment one of the Japanese soldiers appeared and shot him through the right thigh. The Captain shouted: “I am a doctor – Red Cross – I am a medical officer.”
The Japanese shot dead the Captain, the Gurkha Major, two British soldiers and a mess servant. The Lieutenant and the three surviving British soldiers lay still. They stayed like that all day, and when darkness came they managed to leave the hospital and find the safety of the nearest West Yorkshire post.
A British private of the RAMC – one of a party of twenty – survived to describe his experience. He was tied by his neck to another man – as they all were – kicked, cuffed and cracked over the head by rifle butts, and used as a shield on top of a trench by the Japanese when the carrier attacked. Just before dark on February 8 a Japanese officer told the twenty men: “Come and get treatment.”
They were taken along a dried-up watercourse to a clearing with a running stream. Through the whole hot day they had been allowed only two bottles of water between them. And now they stood by the stream. But they were not allowed to drink. The Japanese opened up at them with rifles. Seventeen of them were killed. That night Lieutenant Basu and nine men who had been wounded when a mortar exploded near them lay in a watercourse, some dying, some crying for water. The Japanese shot one man and bayoneted another who cried too loudly. Just before they left, the Japanese stood in front of them, their rifles ready.
“We are Red Cross people,” said Basu – he and another doctor both had their stethoscopes slung round their necks. “We are doctors and hospital workers. We have nothing to do with actual warfare.”
Most of them wore Red Cross badges on their arms. It made no difference. The Japanese shot them all.
Lieutenant Basu was shot at twice. He was left stunned. At first he was not sure whether he was alive or dead. He felt at his ear, but there was no blood on his fingers. He could still see and his thoughts became clear once more. He realised how vulnerable he was lying there still alive. So he
reached out to the body of one of his dead friends and put his hand on the wounds until it was covered with blood, and then he smeared the blood over his face and head and down his shirt front, so that the Japanese would think he, too, was mortally wounded. He slipped groaning into a trench, and there he spent the night.
On the morning of February 9 the West Yorkshires cleared the Japanese out of the hospital. Their task was made all the more difficult because the enemy had camouflaged their machine-gun posts cunningly with stretchers in the wards and theatre. Fortunately, before the attacks began, most of the wounded had been removed from the hospital to a dried-up watercourse lying to the north. As it was, we found in the hospital area the bodies of thirty-one patients and four doctors – doctors whose services were to be desperately needed in the days to come.
CLOSE-QUARTER FIGHTING, BURMA, MARCH 1944
John Masters, Long Range Penetration Unit (Chindits)
On 5 March 1944, Wingate’s Chindits began landing 100 miles behind enemy lines to cut off the Japanese divisions “Marching on Delhi”. The Japanese reacted furiously to this incursion.
The rain now fell steadily. The Deep sector looked like Passchendaele – blasted trees, feet and twisted hands sticking up out of the earth, bloody shirts, ammunition clips, holes half full of water, each containing two pale, huge-eyed men, trying to keep their rifles out of the mud, and over all the heavy, sweet stench of death, from our own bodies and entrails lying unknown in the shattered ground, from Japanese corpses on the wire, or fastened, dead and rotting, in the trees. At night the rain hissed down in total darkness, the trees ran with water and, beyond the devastation, the jungle dripped and crackled.
A Japanese light machine-gun chatters hysterically, and bullets clack and clap overhead. Two Very lights float up, burst in brilliant whiteness. Click, click, click – boom, crash, boom, three mortar bombs burst in red-yellow flashes on the wire.
The third crisis came on May 17. On that day our Lightnings (P-38s) patrolled the valley for several hours, searching for the guns which had done us so much damage. They did not find them. Towards evening the P-38s left and I went down to the water point, as I usually did, to wash, shave, and brush up for the night’s battle. While I was shaving, the enemy began to shell the block with 105s and 155s. Twelve guns or more were firing. Soap all over my face, I looked across at the ridge to the west, where the enemy had once put a mortar, and saw movement there. Mortar bombs from the ridge whistled into the block. The shelling grew more urgent and I walked quickly up to my command post – I tried never to run.
The shelling concentrated on the Deep and became a violent, continuous drumfire. My stomach felt empty and I was ready to vomit. I should have relieved the King’s Own. This was more than human flesh could stand. Nothing to do now though. The attack would come in immediately after the bombardment.
The shelling increased again. For ten minutes an absolute fury fell on the Deep.
Major Heap, the second-in-command of the King’s Own, tumbled in, his face streaked and bloody and working with extreme strain. “We’ve had it, sir,” he said. “They’re destroying all the posts, direct hits all the time . . . all machine-guns knocked out, crews killed . . . I don’t think we can hold them if . . . the men are . . .”
I didn’t wait to hear what the men were. I knew. They were dead, wounded, or stunned.
I took the telephone and called Tim Brennan, commanding 26 Column of the Cameronians, and told him to bring his whole column to the ridge crest at once, with all weapons and ammunition, manhandled, ready to take over the Deep. “Yes, sir,” he said pleasantly. I had time to call Henning and order him to spread out to occupy Brennan’s positions as well as his own, before going quickly, my breath short, to the hill crest.
The shelling stopped as I reached it. Tim arrived. Johnny Boden, the mortar officer, arrived. Now, now, the Japanese must come. I told Boden to stand by with smoke and HE to cover the Cameronians; 26 Column arrived, at the double. Still no assault. Tim ran down the forward slope, his men behind him. I waited crouched on the ridge top. Ordered Boden to open up with his mortars. The enemy must have this blasted slope covered by machine-guns. I knew they had. They didn’t fire. It was twilight, but down the slope in the smoke I could clearly see Cameronians jumping into the waterlogged trenches, King’s Own struggling out and up towards me. The Cameronian machine-guns arrived, men bent double under the ninety-pound loads of barrel and tripod. Bombs burst, smoke rose in dense white clouds. I told the officer to move the machine-guns again, after full dark, if he could. “Of course, sir,” he said impatiently.
The men of the King’s Own passed by, very slowly, to be gathered by Heap into reserve. They staggered, many were wounded, others carried wounded men, their eyes wandered, their mouths drooped open. I wanted to cry, but dared not, could only mutter, “Well done, well done,” as they passed.
The minutes crawled, each one a gift more precious than the first rain. I sent wire down, and ammunition, and took two machine-guns from Henning’s 90 Column, and put them in trenches on the crest, ready to sweep the whole slope. Full darkness came, with rain. An hour had passed, a whole hour since the enemy bombardment ended. In our own attacks we reckoned a thirty-second delay as fatal.
With a crash of machine-guns and mortars the battle began. All night the Cameronians and the Japanese 53rd Division fought it out. Our machine-guns ripped them from the new positions. Twice the Japanese forced into the barbed wire with Bangalore torpedoes, and the blasting rain of the mortars wiped them out. At four am, when they launched their final assault to recover their bodies, we had defeated them.
AN ENGLISH OFFICER ESCAPES THE JAPANESE, MALAYA, MAY 1944
Colonel F. Spencer Chapman, 5th Seaforth Highlanders
Chapman entered the jungle of Malaya in 1942 to organise stay-behind parties; he did not leave it for three years.
Although my hosts did not attempt to tie me up, they took no other chances. There were three sentries who seemed to be particularly interested in my welfare. An N.C.O. who carried a pistol – I saw him take it out of its holster, cock it, and push it into the belt of his raincoat. A sentry with fixed bayonet who strolled up and down beyond the fire in front of the tent. Another with a tommy-gun hovered on the edge of the firelight and seemed to be watching the jungle as if they expected my friends might attempt a rescue. Alas! how little fear there was of that!
My tent-fellows slept in all their clothes, including boots, and were thus able to dispense with blankets. I lay between my English-speaking friend and another officer in the centre of the tent and therefore directly in front of the fire, which was only a few yards from my feet. It was quite light enough to read, and the encircling jungle night looked inky black by contrast, though I knew there would soon be a moon. My neighbours seemed to fall asleep instantly, but were restless and noisy sleepers. We were so crowded that one or the other often rolled against me or put a knee affectionately over mine and I had to push them back, observing with satisfaction that no amount of manhandling seemed to disturb them – though my guard showed signs of disapproval.
In the days when I was a fieldcraft instructor I had read every book on escaping and used to lecture on the subject. But none of the methods I had advocated seemed to be of much practical use now . . .
At about one o’clock I woke up. The N.C.O. on duty had been changed and the new one did not seem so vigilant. I watched him closely, and while pretending restlessly to stretch my arms, I was able little by little to ease up the canvas behind my head. Before I could continue operations I had to do something about the fire which, in the chill early morning, had been made larger and more brilliant than ever. I now had an inspiration which traded, most ungenerously, on the natural good manners of my hosts. After a few preliminary hiccoughs, I got up, retching horribly, and pretended to be violently sick. I had saved up spittle for a time and the results, especially the noise, were most realistic. The N.C.O. was quite sympathetic and I explained that the heat of the fire was so
great that I was unable to sleep and was indeed – as he had seen – very ill. He immediately called up the sentries and together they damped down the fire and raked it further from the tent.
From there the firelight still shone on my blanket sleeping-bag, but I was able to put on my rubber shoes (which I should have to wear until daylight) and then to collect some of the miscellaneous gear belonging to my bed-fellows – a haversack, a tin hat, some spare boots, and a despatch case (which, unfortunately, I could not open and it was too heavy to take away), and pushed them down into my sleeping-bag, tastefully arranging the boots to resemble my own feet thrust into the corners of the bag. Meanwhile, with legs doubled up, and watching the guard through half-closed eyes, I worked myself further and further back into the angle of the tent. A Japanese rifle caused much discomfort to my backbone; I thought how careless of them to have left it there, and wished I could have taken it with me, but it would have been too much of an encumbrance.
I waited till one sentry was out of sight, the other at the far end of his beat, and the N.C.O. not actually looking at me. Then, in one movement I thrust myself violently through the opening at the bottom of the canvas. I heard a “ping”, as a peg gave or a rope broke, and a sudden guttural gasp from the N.C.O. – and I was out in the jungle.
LIFE IN A JAPANESE POW CAMP, JUNE 1944–AUGUST 1945
Anton Bilek, mechanic USAAF
Bilek was captured at Bataan in 1942.
In June of ’44, they asked for another detail to go to Japan. I volunteered for it. I talked to a buddy, Bob, who I knew from Chicago. I said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” We’d been hearing some rumors where our troops are movin’ up, gettin’ some foothold into the islands here. Down south, Guadalcanal and this stuff. When they come in, they’re not gonna come in like a ballet dancer. They’re gonna come in with both guns firin’ from the hip. They can’t afford to be very fussy. We could be bombed by ’em or shot by ’em.