by Peter Brune
In his Official History, Lionel Wigmore cites the above quote—other than the first sentence ‘Necessary to speak to Maj Kerr about slackness of some officers.’ The observation would at best seem far too general, and at worst quite simply unfair. Some of the soldiers Varley referred to would have surely been reinforcements; likewise, a number of the officers would have been reinforcement officers; and the environment into which all were placed was hardly a typical military one.
Captain Rowley Richards was present at that time with Major Kerr and his battalion at Tavoy, and recalled that Kerr was ‘a fine soldier’.41 That some junior officers had ‘no life—no command, and show signs of slack training’ was more than likely accurate for a few, but to brand the 2nd AIF in the above manner would seem an unfair exaggeration. Anderson’s column at Muar, and the Australian performance at Gemas and along the Malay Peninsula would seem to contradict Varley’s assertion. Given that a multitude of reinforcement officers and other ranks had only fought on Singapore Island and had therefore only been on their unit’s establishment for a matter of weeks or days before the capitulation, the thrust of Varley’s diary entry becomes easier to appreciate.
During August and September 1942, with the work on the airfields at Victoria Point and Mergui completed, Green and Ramsay Battalions were gradually shipped to Tavoy to join Varley and Kerr’s men. On 24 August, Varley noted in his diary that Lieutenant-Colonel Ramsay gave him 200 rupees which was the ‘unused portion of advance made to his force. Gave some to Paymaster, Capt Hetherington.’ He also observed that Ramsay Battalion men seemed to be in poor condition when compared to his Tavoy men: ‘was concerned with state and number of sick in hospital from Mergui—82 compared with 22 from this camp’.42 By the middle of September, the work was completed at Tavoy and ‘A’ Force began its movement first to Moulmein and then by road and rail to Thanbyuzayat. Ramsay Battalion was the last to leave Tavoy. It was here, on that famous Tuesday in November, that the Japanese yet again showed their almost total unpredictability. Private Wal Williams:
There was some bloody Nip, and he must have been in Australia or something, because he knew that the second Tuesday [sic] was Melbourne Cup Day, and he declared a bloody holiday. And we couldn’t get over it! . . . he said, ‘All men yasumi’ [stand at ease, rest, holiday].
. . . from memory it [the ‘Cup’] was a polished coconut with a couple of bloody handles on it . . . it got organised then. Ramsay got into the swing of things, and he said, ‘All right, we’ll do it the right way, we’ll have the Governor General come.’ The blokes pulled a bullock cart in and it was decorated . . . Ramsay’s sitting in there with Hence [the 2IC] he was his Aide-de-Camp, and he pulls up, and the Japs got into the swing of it, they thought it was fuckin’ terrific! . . . they had bookmakers . . .43
A number of the fittest men became the ‘horses’; jockeys were found (weight was not an issue); modest bets were laid; and most of the horses were named after previous Melbourne Cup winners. Wal Williams:
And Bobby Farrands from the 2/19th . . . won it and he got the trophy. At that time the bloody broadcaster of races here in Sydney was a bloke called Lachie Melville . . . and they built a thing like a big old radio cabinet and [a substitute Lachie Melville] got in behind that . . . it was a real morale lifter that!44
After the presentation ceremony the ‘stewards’ staged an inquiry into the performance of one of the jockeys, his trainer and their ‘connections’.45
After around six months variously spent at Victoria Point, Mergui, Ye and Tavoy, the fortunes of ‘A’ Force were about to take a decided turn for the worse.
Brigadier Varley reached Thanbyuzayat on 2 October 1942. This centre was the northern startline for the Railway and was therefore stacked with huge dumps of materials, a Japanese HQ and main camp, anti-aircraft defences and what would soon become the main POW hospital and HQ. Unlike the Thai section of the Railway, camps along its Burmese stretch would be chiefly identified by the number of kilometres each was distant from Thanbyuzayat (0 km). Varley and Major Kerr’s Number 2 Battalion were deployed in a camp about 600 metres from the Thanbyuzayat Railway Station. They soon discovered that Green’s Number 3 Battalion were in a camp about eight kilometres away and ‘working on a new Railway line to Thailand’.
The next day—3 October 1942—Varley was ordered to Japanese HQ to meet the Commander of the Number 3 Branch of the Thailand Prisoner of War Administration, Colonel Nagatomo. It was at this meeting that Varley learnt that he was to have a HQ consisting of a ‘General Affairs Department’ of ten men; a ‘Foodstuffs Department’ of seventeen; a ‘Property Department’ also of seventeen; and a ‘Medical Department’ of twelve. In essential terms, his three-battalion structure was to remain intact.46
The construction of the Railway from Thanbyuzayat to about Three Pagodas Pass was mainly centred on the clearing of large trees and jungle, and the making of embankments and cuttings. In this exercise, the Japanese engineers and their POW labourers were handicapped chiefly by the absence of a parallel river—as in Thailand—and a serviceable road. The transportation of manpower and supplies would therefore prove to be time-consuming and tedious.
By the end of October, Varley’s ‘A’ Force was expanded to include further British, Dutch, American and Australian arrivals. The Australian contingent consisted of Williams Force (Lieutenant-Colonel J. M. Williams, 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion) and Black Force (Lieutenant-Colonel C. M. Black, 2/3rd Motor Transport Company), who had travelled from Java to Singapore and then to Moulmein. As had occurred elsewhere under Japanese rule, October also saw the Japanese demand that the POWs sign a pledge not to escape. And as had also transpired elsewhere, Varley and Green were locked up under deplorable conditions until they realised that the signing of such a document made under duress was meaningless, and subsequently ordered all to sign.
During November ‘A’ Force was deployed in a series of camps stretching south from Thanbyuzayat: Green’s Number 3 Battalion was at the 4.8 Kilo Camp (Kendau); a Dutch party was at the 8 Kilo Camp (Wagale); Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson’s Battalion—Anderson had assumed command of Kerr’s Number 2 Battalion—was at the 18 Kilo Camp (Alepauk); Williams Force was at the 35 Kilo (Tanyin); and Black Force was at the 40 Kilo Camp (Beke Taung). Ramsay’s Number 1 Battalion arrived for work on the Railway in December and was sent to the 26 Kilo Camp (Kun Knit Kway).
November 1942 also saw the arrival of around 200 Korean guards assigned to ‘A’ Force. If the Japanese guards had shown a propensity for unpredictable violence and cruelty, then the Koreans were to take such behaviour to new levels. Private Wal Williams, Ramsay Battalion:
. . . the Japanese, they disliked the bloody Koreans, no two ways about that, because they’d been under the Japanese occupation for bloody years in Korea, and they were down trodden bastards . . . and the Japs still applied it to them on the line, and the only retaliation the Koreans could get was to take it out on us, because we were the lowest of the low . . . they were brutal bastards . . .47
It mattered little which battalion a POW served with, or indeed, where he served with ‘A’ Force. All were subjected to frequent and brutal treatment that only differed according to the Korean’s name and location. To Wal Williams and his mates in Ramsay Battalion, the ‘Boy Bastard’ and ‘the BBC’ (the ‘Boy Bastard’s Cobber’) would never be forgotten. You might forget to bow; you might not be working fast enough; perhaps an instruction in Japanese was misinterpreted; but, very often, your only crime was being a Caucasian, or quite simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and thereby being exposed to a creature who considered you the lowest of the low. Wal Williams:
I got done in by the Boy Bastard . . . you tried to keep out of the way! As soon as you saw that bastard coming . . . you’d get out of the road if you could. It didn’t always work out that way . . . they’d go round looking for bloody trouble; they’d pick on some poor bastard for anything really. And they’d work themselves up into this bloody frenzy, they all seemed to do tha
t . . . a hell of a temper . . . they’d do a bloke over, they start slapping him across the dial . . . and then work themselves up and put the boot in . . . they’d go for your bloody crutch and if you avoided it well that’d make them more determined than ever. They’d belt you till you couldn’t take any more—you’d have to drop. There was them [the Boy Bastard and the BBC], and another bloke called Dilinger [sic], they were about the worst I think.48
Private Roy Whitecross remembered his Korean guards: there was the short and thin ‘Mickey Mouse’, the short but fat ‘Jeep’, ‘the Maggot’, ‘fat, broad head, no neck’, and the never-to-be-forgotten ‘Storm Trooper’ who possessed a ‘permanent scowl’ and seemed to hit someone every half an hour.49 And if personal brutality was an insufficient form of entertainment, then there was the anonymous, sudden demonstration of sadism directed to either a POW or an innocent animal. Sergeant Jim Forbes was on Ramsay Battalion’s HQ Staff:
. . . you’d be talking in a hut and they’d stick a bayonet through the attap. It didn’t happen every day of every week . . . I’ve had that happen . . . it was close enough to shut you up straight away . . . the bashing was a regular happening . . . they loved this idea of bowing to them too, as much as the Japs . . . and it was easy to forget to do so . . . you got a back-hander for that . . . the sadism . . . the treatment of a dog, the joy and pleasure they got from kicking a dog around. And then you had the guardhouse situation . . . yeah, that one happened to me . . . you never knew what would happen . . . stand you there for a day, a half a day. What you didn’t know was what was going to happen to you at a particular time . . . when they felt like doing it . . . so there was a pressure there the whole time to sort of comply.50
As time went by the Australians developed a heightened instinct, an awareness, for impending trouble. Sergeant Jim Forbes: . . . you developed a sixth sense and this is not exaggeration. You developed a sense if something was about to happen . . . that trouble was brewing, that something was going on, just the attitude of the guards, what was happening . . . that you were going to move, that there was going to be a search . . . just some action of a Japanese or the guards [Korean] . . .51
We will never know how many POWs were exposed to a more sinister danger. Captain Rowley Richards, RMO Anderson Battalion, recalled a Korean guard christened ‘Peanut’ Tomoto. It seems that his nickname was derived from his poor intellect. But ‘Peanut’ had other qualities. Captain Richards:
In broken English he frequently talked about sex in front of us, boasting that when Japan invaded Australia they would also conquer ‘Australian girls. Jiggy-jig.’ His voice was effeminate and from the way he stared at some of our men, many of us soon wondered if his only, or even main, interest was in women.52
On Boxing Day 1942, Sergeant Ron O’Donnell and ‘Peanut’ were seen walking into the jungle. Shots were later heard and when Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson sent a few men out to investigate, O’Donnell’s body was found; he had been shot three times, in the chest first and then twice in the head. Richards recalled that some of the men had ‘speculated that Peanut may have been seeking retribution for O’Donnell rejecting sexual advances, but none of us will ever know the truth’.53 ‘Peanut’ Tomoto was immediately renamed ‘Dillinger’. The men were incensed. Protests brought no action. O’Donnell, the Japanese claimed, had been shot trying to escape. ‘Peanut’ was simply transferred to Thanbyuzayat for some time. But the salient point is that the descriptions given above of the Korean and Japanese guards’ behaviour on the Railway merely served notice that life was a lottery, that in their masters’ eyes a POW’s life amounted to nought, and that a savage beating, prolonged pain in front of a guard house holding a rock above one’s head, or other unwelcome occurrences instilled a sense of helplessness and therefore vulnerability. There was no sense of right or wrong, or the ability to protect oneself, but merely a growing resignation that one’s life lay in the hands of others who possessed a completely different moral code.
By the end of November 1942, Brigadier Varley was forced to take drastic action in an attempt to purchase more supplies for his rapidly increasing number of sick and dying hospital patients. On Armistice Day he ordered that all personal property of the deceased was to be collected, such as razors, pencils, watches and rings and given to Major Campbell for sale. The proceeds were then to be given to the Red Cross for such purchases. Later that very day Colonel Nagatomo ordered Varley to ‘bundle’ such items and that he would send them to Tokyo ‘for dispatch to Australia’ after the war!
Nagatomo’s corrupt behaviour was not limited to trying to obtain POW possessions. On 18 November Varley recorded that: ‘Evidence of overcharging of goods supplied to our canteen were accidentally discovered today by Maj Campbell, which confirmed our mind on this. By order of Lt Colonel Nagatomo camps are restricted from purchasing goods for canteens otherwise than from him.’54 When Campbell had received the bulk purchase of supplies the previous day, he had, unbeknown to Nagatomo, examined the Burmese trader’s invoice and had discovered that the Japanese paid one price for their goods and the POWs another. Varley listed the price differences in his diary and they reveal that Nagatomo was ‘raking off ’ around 23%. Varley: ‘Thus on first invoice (3 Nov) we have been overcharged $340, while on second invoice (18 Nov) the overcharge is $600 . . .’55 In a letter of protest, Varley diplomatically accused the Burmese trader of the rort, but stated in his diary that after a meeting with Nagatomo two days later, ‘very little was gained’.56
Apart from Nagatomo’s rampant ‘fundraising’, Varley’s plight worsened during the next few months. His force was rapidly becoming scattered along a long line of communication where getting news of his men and communicating with subordinate commanders was becoming increasingly difficult. This, in turn, made the ordering, collection and distribution of critical food supplies and scant medical items for his camps almost impossible. His diary entry for Armistice Day adequately displays his frustrations. The Japanese, he claimed, always required absolute proof that any given medical condition or dietary deficiency existed, and that ‘the proof lies in the burial of a number of men who could have been saved if our warnings were heeded . . .’.57
In December 1942, Brigadier Varley attempted to further supplement hospital rations and each battalion RAP by levying officers’ pay in excess of twenty rupees per month. This money was given to Mr Murchison, the Red Cross representative, who also endeavoured to provide for those men who had chronic disabilities. The next month Group 5 arrived in Burma, which was made up chiefly of Australians, Dutch and Americans from Java. Varley requested a swap of Dutch and Australians so that nationalities, where possible, might work and live together. He made little headway.
In early January 1943, Ramsay Force was at the 26 Kilo Camp (Kun Knit Kway), Anderson Force joined Williams Force at the 35 Kilo (Tanyin), and Green Force was at the 14 Kilo Camp. Thus far, the death toll in Varley’s Group 3 command had been surprisingly low: 73 in total of which 24 were Australians of ‘A’ Force. But events took a turn for the worse from early March when the work rate demanded by the Japanese increased, and the prolonged poor diet, the lack of decent clothing and the paucity of medical supplies began to severely impact upon the men’s health.
For Australians used to hard physical labour in their civilian life, the initial demand of about one cubic metre of earth per man per day was relatively easy. For those who had come from more sedentary occupations prewar, the task was more difficult. Early on there were some who managed, when not watched, to ‘lessen’ the quota by moving the bamboo pegs laid down to measure the day’s work. Before long however, the Japanese and Koreans demanded much more and were ruthless in their expectations. Private Wal Williams, Ramsay Force:
When we was at Kun Knit Kway it was easy digging, it was comparatively flat country . . . we started off with a metre. They conned us! They said, ‘When you’ve finished you can go home.’ And we did. We finished by bloody lunch time. Then they started putting it [the quota] on and bloody
on. Two metres a man. People think oh Christ, two metres a man, you could do that on ya ear! Twelve blokes, and it all depends on the digging . . . the Nip would have a bamboo, it might be a metre long . . . here’s a quota for the day, he’d peg that out . . . 24 cubic metres. It got to the stage that we were working from daylight to dark. Everybody’s losing weight because everybody’s starting to get malnourished . . . the task’s getting harder, the Japs are getting more cranky because we’re not shifting the dirt, and they’re keeping us out on the bloody thing longer until the quota’s done . . .58
In March 1942, the Japanese ordered the Group 3 HQ forward to the 75 Kilo Camp (Meiloe), and that Anderson Force and Williams Force were to be combined to form the ‘Number 1 Mobile Force’, tasked with laying the rails. The new force was to begin its work at Kun Knit Kway. For the men of ‘Number 1 Mobile Force’ a new sense of urgency was demanded by their captors. Teak sleepers had to be unloaded from rail bogies and then placed in position on embankments. Then gangs of spikers drilled the holes and belted the spikes in with ‘poor quality four-kilogram hammers’.59 The Japanese demanded that between one and two kilometres of rail was to be laid daily.
In April the construction of the Railway was massively reinforced with coolie labour. If the Australians, British, Dutch and American POWs suffered cruelly on the Thai–Burma Railway, then the coolie labour which consisted chiefly of Burmese, Malays (including the Malayan Tamils and Chinese), the Javanese, and the Chinese from Singapore had the odds stacked even higher against them. Specialist skills always exist within an army formation, and standards of training, discipline and hygiene are demanded and enforced. The coolies lacked the cohesion of an army unit; they lacked the specialist skills found in such units; and they lacked basic standards of hygiene. And their plight was universal along the whole line. Sergeant Frank Baker: