by Peter Brune
To further complicate the building of a unified battalion, Newton was faced with the small ‘foreign’ contingent of South Australians from the 8th Division Ammunition Sub Park. Private Walter ‘Banjo’ Patterson, was one of them:
I thought he [Newton] looked a good officer, and a good chap, and when he was so concerned about us few goin’ in with these New South Wales chaps, I thought, well, he’s going to look after us as well as he looks after his own men. I liked him straight away really.7
However, such mutual respect and admiration were not always forthcoming. Sergeant Bert Donaldson, 2/19th and ‘U’ Battalion, recalled that:
[Newton had] . . . a very strong voice. ‘Can you hear me in the rear?’ And one fellow [2/20th] said to him, ‘Yes, I can hear you, can you hear me?
‘No, I can’t hear you!’
‘Well get fucked!’
It was up on the line somewhere.8
On 11 April 1943, the soldiers of ‘D’ Force received a cholera injection and were told that priority was to be afforded them in the sorting of recently arrived Red Cross mail from Australia. Small issues of clothing were given to allow all men to have one pair of boots, one pair of socks, a shirt, a pair of shorts, a hat, singlet and handkerchief. The force was also issued with ‘2 days reserve rations of rice, tea, sugar, preserved meat, salt and butter’.9 It was to be a four-day trip. Although Thompson has recorded that ‘only baggage which could be manhandled [was] allowed to be taken’,10 Newton and his officers ‘made a few searches of the individual kit and by force lightened the load of a number of individuals’.11 As had happened with a number of battalions, a radio was hidden in a rice container and remained undiscovered throughout.
It is of interest to note that Thompson made no mention of funds for the AIF component of ‘D’ Force in his diary. But Newton, in his 2/19th Battalion Unit History recorded that: ‘L/Col. McEachern was handed the proportion of A.I.F. funds in hand on departure date amounting to approximately $[Malay]4 per man and he in turn would distribute to the four Battalions.’12 Given that the AIF component of ‘D’ Force was 2200 officers and ORs, and the money per man was ‘approximately $4’ McEachern must have left Changi with around $8800. One of the universal force funding problems on the Railway was the notion that a force commander should hold his formation’s money. As we have seen with ‘A’ Force and will soon note with ‘D’ Force, battalions tended to be split along the line and therefore communication between a force commander and his battalion commanders could often prove difficult.
‘D’ Force began leaving Singapore on 15 March 1943, in daily trainloads of 555 men, with Newton’s ‘U’ Battalion departing on the 18th. Newton would recall that his men left ‘thirty . . . crammed and jammed into each steel rice truck, steaming, sticky hot by day and bitterly cold by night’.13 The rice trucks were about two metres wide, six metres long and a little over two metres high. Sanitary conditions were appalling with a bucket supplied in only some trucks, and calls of nature were often facilitated by two men holding a man’s arms whilst he performed the deed perched at the steel door opening. Private Gus Halloran would remember having to sleep in shifts and that the whole trip was ‘bloody uncomfortable! . . . there was no modesty in this world’.14 Whilst soldiers lose a certain degree of their civilian reserve during any form of military service, on the Railway the humiliation of fouling oneself and all kinds of indignities became the norm. Private Walter ‘Banjo’ Patterson, ‘U’ Battalion, recalled that those Railway days were unique:
I’ll tell you how I felt! When I went into the army, we was at Wayville, and they got an order to take the doors off the toilets there. And I thought, ‘What a dirty thing to do!’ You’re sitting there, everyone walking past looking at you. By the time I got [off the Railway] you were lonely if there wasn’t a half a dozen chaps there to talk to you!15
The above accounts of the train journey to Bampong become far more vivid when one stands in Rod Beattie’s steel railway truck at his Kanchanaburi museum. An understanding of what lay ahead hit home in Beattie’s confined steel ‘cell’: the utterly confined nature of that truck with its only ventilation being a door on each side (which was often shut in transit by order of Japanese guards); the very limited water supply; the inability to sit all at once—much less sleep; the desire to relieve oneself; and the ever present disturbing uncertainty of exactly where one is going and when a meal will be provided.
After an overnight stay in a British camp at Bampong—Newton described it as a ‘typical no-hoper British camp’, and a ‘collection of dilapidated attap huts, wallowing in a mess of water, filth and mud . . .’16—‘U’ Battalion was taken by train to Kanchanaburi on 23 March 1942. It was here that two extraordinary events took place: one a characteristic example of disjointed Japanese organisation, and the other a meeting which was to dramatically influence the men of ‘U’ Battalion’s chances of survival.
As the men detrained at Kanchanaburi and began their march to one of the gates on the edge of that walled city, they noticed Thais waving money and goods at them, and seemingly wanting to trade. Upon arrival, the officer and guards who had brought Newton and his men from Singapore, handed them over to a new officer and departed. Newton was then stunned to see his new master wave him off and also depart with his guards. Private Charles Edwards would recall that: ‘they weren’t ready for us. We had a week just doing nothing.’17 It will be recalled that Edwards had accumulated quite a stash of money whilst in Pudu, and was therefore in an excellent position to buy all manner of items.
At the ‘Car Park Café’, situated in one of the CBD areas of Kanchanaburi, Rod Beattie asks if we know where we are. Not a clue. It is early evening and suddenly, the vehicles depart the car park, while hordes of stall owners descend on it with plastic tables, chairs, cooking implements and all manner of other café essentials. The transformation is all over in minutes. We are standing right on what Rod calls ‘the Aerodrome Camp,’ where Newton and ‘U’ Battalion camped—totally unsupervised—for a week. This rapid transformation from car park to a thronging mass of traders and humanity must have been almost the same for ‘U’ Battalion in March 1943.
Some men indulged in iced coffee purchases until they found out that a number of such beverages often came from breast-feeding mothers; all manner of fruits and vegetables, eggs, ducks and fish materialised; a thriving sale of POW watches, rings and clothing ensued; and, most of all, this impromptu ‘market’ lasted a blissful seven days. Sometimes food is not a young man’s only want. According to Private Gus Halloran, there were a limited number of POWs who successfully engaged in the pursuit of ‘horizontal refreshment’.18 It didn’t take Newton and his officers long to realise the possible health pitfuls amidst this carnival atmosphere. Picquets were placed around the market, and whilst the week-long good times continued, some sense of order was restored. Captain Reg Newton in The Grim Glory of the 2/19th Battalion AIF:
This ‘holiday’ lack of control period, gave us an opportunity to check with the local store-keepers. Enquiries were made if anybody spoke English and eventually Newton was directed to a business chap in the centre of the old city. So very quietly we met Boon Pong and his wife and brother-in-law, Nai Lec.19
It is highly likely that Newton was again drawing on his experiences at Pudu. We have noted that when Pudu POWs were first taken out on work parties in Kuala Lumpur, British soldiers who had lived in Malaya prewar established contact with known local business people, and limited purchases of drugs and food resulted. Newton’s enquiries as to whether any store owners spoke English was an attempt to make such contacts. In his chance meeting with Boon Pong, Newton established a business relationship that was destined to provide the most substantial food, drugs and trading black market network anywhere on the Railway. Boon Pong informed Newton that he had just secured the Japanese contract to provide food supplies ‘to rail or barge head’. But he added that he shortly expected to gain the Japanese contract for barge supplies to be delivered directly to work ca
mps along the River Kwai.
Captain Reg Newton was not one to think in limited terms. He told Boon Pong that:
. . . we would take barge loads which would save him time and instead of calling in at various locations and selling a bit here and a bit there, if he came straight through . . . we would take the lot . . . He agreed to this and said that Nai Lec looked after the river trade as a rule unless there was something important. (We did not realize the import of this remark until later.)20
At that fateful meeting Newton also purchased ‘a small quantity of British Army medical supplies’ but wisely did not ask Boon Pong his source.
But how to pay for this potential windfall? Newton drew on three sources. The first was the ‘U’ Battalion share of the ‘D’ Force funds brought from Changi. Given that we have identified this sum at about $4 per man, ‘U’ Battalion’s portion might have been around $2200. Newton’s second source of ‘income’ would be the Japanese payments made to his workers. Not unlike some other forces, ‘U’ Battalion pooled most of that money for the greater good. However, the third money source involved a touch of genius. At some point during a number of searches to lighten his men’s haversacks, Newton himself, or one of his officers, discovered a Bank of New South Wales cheque book in Sergeant John French’s (2/20th Battalion) haversack. Newton proceeded to cross out the Wahroonga Branch on each cheque and promptly labelled them all ‘Head Office Sydney’ where he (Newton) had an account. Boon Pong agreed to hold the cheques until after the war when ‘Head Office’ Sydney would redeem them from Newton’s account.21 Boon Pong was to be seen by the men of ‘U’ Battalion at various camp barge landing points along the River Kwai. Private Gus Halloran: ‘Oh yes, you’d see him up the line. It was a great association. He [Newton] made the deal with Boon Pong, he was to pay him by cheque . . .’22
At this time Newton had no real idea of the magnitude of Boon Pong’s business, nor the Bangkok organisation which was the predominant source of his cash and drugs. Shortly after the war began, most British civilians were interned in the Vajiravudh College in Bangkok. Amongst them were Mr Peter Heath, the Chief Officer of the Borneo Company, which was involved in shipping and commerce; Mr K. G. Gairdner of the Siam Architects Imports Company; and Mr Dick Hempson of the Anglo–Thai Corporation (also an importing business).23 As Gairdner’s wife was a Thai citizen and had relative freedom of movement, she soon learnt through her contacts of the desperate plight of British POWs during the early stages of the Railway’s construction. The first efforts by these businessmen to assist the POWs came in the form of funds essentially from their own pockets, but when the magnitude of the dilemma of the Railway camps became known, it was decided to raise funds from the general business community.24
Here was the beginning of the soon to be named ‘V’ Organisation, which was destined to become two groups, both named ‘V’. Heath and Hempson would later state that: ‘Money was therefore raised from persons outside the Camp under guarantee of repayment in sterling after the war. These guarantees were originally signed by persons of standing within our Camp or known to be possessed of means.’25 Attempts were also made through the Red Cross to contact the British Government to both inform them of the POWs’ plight and to obtain pledges of financial support for the reimbursement of all moneys raised after the war. An example of the size of some of these deals was the £4000 (about 68 500 ticals) received from the East Asiatic Company, which sought a guarantee from four British companies in Thailand. As an example of just four Railway camps assisted by the ‘V’ Organisation, Lieutenant-Colonel Alf Knights, who for some time commanded the Number 4 Group Base Hospital at Tarsau, cited the following money and medical supplies given over the Railway construction period: Tarsau £2400 (35 408 ticals); Tamarkan £2810 (42 105 ticals); Tonchan £933 (14 030 ticals); and Tamuang £1000 (15 000 ticals).26 It will be realised that by 1943 standards these were substantial amounts of money. Whilst it will be seen that the above-mentioned camps were within reasonable proximity to Boon Pong’s store at Kanchanaburi, the ‘V’ Organisation’s exploits did in fact journey much further. In his report, Lieutenant-Colonel McEachern would cite two fascinating sums of money: ‘Up River Camps’ 17 400.00 ticals and ‘Various’ 65 236.34 ticals.27 The ‘up river’ and ‘various’ were camps such as Tampie, Rin Tin, Takanun and as far north as Nieke. In the case of the last two, we shall scrutinise their significance when examining ‘F’ Force in the next chapter.
By April 1943, contacts through Boon Pong between the ‘V’ Organisation and the Railway camps were becoming frequent. On the 20th of that month, a letter arrived from Lieutenant-Colonel Knights at Tarsau:
As intimated in our last letter, this Camp has been turned into a base hospital and convalescent home, receiving patients from the up river Camps. At the moment there are about 4,000 sick men here of whom a number are seriously ill. Money is urgently required for food etc, to supplement the meagre Japanese rations, and the Tcs [ticals] 2,000 which is [sic] to arrive shortly will be most useful particularly as the concession whereby Officers could use their bank balances to aid the hospital has been withdrawn, and which has had the effect of depriving the hospital of about Tcs [ticals] 5,000 monthly.28
Knights’s letter then proceeded to list the drugs required and concluded with a tragic qualification: ‘Emetine and Morphia are of paramount importance as men are dying for want of the former and dying in pain for want of the latter.’29
In supplying the Thailand Railway camps, Boon Pong’s barges therefore eventually operated from Bampong to Takanun, and during the wet season as far north as Neike. Rod Beattie:
. . . he’d probably only own a few [barges] himself. You can put tons on these things. These old single cylinder pom pom boats, the old single cylinder diesel, would have a maximum speed of probably, four knots, that’s probably only about two knots faster than the river’s flowing . . . [the barges] came from Bampong . . . Boon Pong was here in Kanchanaburi . . . he was a trader. All the barges, nearly all of the supplies originated from Bampong; Kanchanaburi was a . . . little town at the time. An educated guess from here to Takanun would be about a week, because in the dry season you’re having to go through sets of rapids and there were places on the river where they actually set up little satellite camps, of POWs who were towing the barges up stream through rapids . . . This doesn’t apply so much during the wet season—the problem then becomes the very strong current. The Kwai Noi [River Kwai] finishes at Nieke. So your barges could only go that far . . . they could go to the Nieke camp area . . .30
Apart from the sheer volume of ‘V’ Organisation supplies for Railway camps along the River Kwai, another most impressive feature of the system was the ability of Boon Pong to hide his drug supplies from detection relatively easily. Whilst he had numerous barges in operation—either his own or others he had leased—he could always personally accompany drug and money shipments, and upon delivery, simply obtain as required by the ‘V’ Organisation a signed receipt from either the camp commander or the medical officer. The other striking characteristic of the barge transport system was the inability of others to significantly pilfer supplies in transit—a problem, through no fault of his own, that Brigadier Varley was repeatedly facing in Burma.
Whilst Boon Pong has received considerable praise for his constant and daring barge supply to the Railway camps, it should also be realised that he was an astute businessman. Private Jim Stewart, ‘U’ Battalion, would recall that watches, rings or any form of jewellery could be traded with him for cash. Stewart remembered a POW selling a ring with a gem in it to him for ‘substantial cash’.31 With the Japanese food contract, the delivery of ‘V’ Organisation goods and frequent trading with individuals, business must have been good.
Captain Reg Newton had certainly picked his ‘U’ Battalion officers with great shrewdness; had made every endeavour to unify his battalion; and, above all, had struck a mutually advantageous deal with Boon Pong in Kanchanaburi. But his relationship with his RMO provides us with a
model of a commander who had realised that the one man in any unit who was pivotal to the survival of all on the Thai–Burma Railway was the unit doctor. ‘U’ Battalion’s RMO was Captain David Hinder. Private Jim Stewart, ‘U’ Battalion: ‘One of the quietest blokes you would ever meet . . . very retiring, very unassuming. A very plain man physically, and in features.’32 Sergeant Frank Baker was Captain Hinder’s RAP orderly:
. . . but the background to it was Dave Hinder . . . [he] couldn’t have done what Reg Newton did, he was a quiet, gentle man. He had the knowledge to impart . . . They were a team, certainly a team, because they did consult all the time . . . Hinder used to make all the rules regarding hygiene and food . . .33
Sergeant Bert Donaldson was more blunt: ‘I think Newton fired the bullets, that our medico, Doctor Hinder made . . . and he fired them in no uncertain terms!’34 If that meant a savage beating on occasions, then so be it. Private Charles Edwards: ‘I saw Newton, when we first went to Tarsau and he refused to send men out [to work] who were sick. They belted him black and blue . . . I saw him being belted with a bamboo . . . when it was over . . . black eyes and bruises all over.’35
Newton did not, by any means, win every fight over the issue of sending sick men out to work. But his booming voice, his utter determination to often stand between one of his men and a beating—also expected of his fellow officers and particularly his work party NCOs—won him the unqualified respect of the other ranks. Further, the fact that officers and NCOs were never seen loafing around camps, but were always engaged in camp duties and ate exactly the same rations (after the men had been fed) instilled a sense of cohesion and lifted morale among the men. And whilst Newton administered his battalion’s finances, such funds were usually handled by Captain Keith Westbrook. Private Len Gooley, 8th Division Ammunition Sub Park: ‘Westbrook . . . that’s what I can remember about him—he was the money man.’36 Private Gus Halloran: ‘This is the whole thing. When you have a communal sort of approach to it, you can survive an awful lot of things, by everyone pulling their weight. And it works.’37 Halloran’s comment is critical to an understanding of ‘U’ Battalion’s exceptionally low death rate on the Railway. An examination of the structure of this unit, and the nature of ‘life’ or survival within it, is intriguing. We begin with the RMO and his influence upon the men’s chances of survival.