They alternated beatings and half-drownings for I know not how long. No one was ever able to tell me how long all this lasted, and I have no idea whether it finished that day, or there was more the following day. I eventually found myself back in my cage. I must have been dragged there.
After dark – perhaps that same evening, or was it some other evening? How can I be a reliable witness about time? – the Kempei NCO made a special journey to my cage and handed through the bars a mug of hot milk, made from sweetened condensed milk. This was an incredible delight, but even at the time I knew it was not an act of kindness: it was a way of maintaining ambiguity, of keeping a prisoner off-balance.
The interrogations stopped. One morning, without warning or explanation, our cages were opened and the small interpreter took charge of us. Our kit was brought out of the building and into the yard. All seven of us were told to pack one bag, for we were moving again. This was a further shrinkage of our belongings and of our humanity. We asked a lot of questions, but there were no replies from the young translator-interrogator. A truck drove up, with a number of guards on board.
We had to show the interpreter what we were packing. I showed him my Bible, and he nodded. Then I displayed a mounted photograph of my fiancée. He decided that space was at a premium, carefully tore the photograph from its mount, threw the frame away and handed me back the photograph.
Then Slater asked: ‘Can we take money with us?’ I was too disturbed to work out whether he meant it satirically or not. The interpreter replied: ‘You won’t need money where you are going.’
As I was climbing aboard the truck, with Mac’s help, the interpreter walked up close to me and said gravely: ‘Keep your chin up.’ He stood there in the yard, a tiny figure standing among the larger regular soldiers. The truck pulled away.
During the journey we were able to speak quietly beneath the noise of the engine as the guards spoke among themselves. We spoke about our interrogations; I told them about my treatment with the hosepipe. Their warmth, and the solidarity of their anger, was worth so much. There was an extraordinary urgency about this whispered conversation: we were sure that this time we were about to die. Slater’s incurable hopelessness seemed the right attitude to all of us.
But instead we were taken to Ban Pong station, thirty miles away, back to the beginning of the railway, and got off at the eastbound platform. It looked as though our destination must be Bangkok.
A train arrived quite soon, an ordinary local passenger train, full of Siamese civilians. Seats were easy to find: local people moved rather than sit next to the Kempeitai.
The train moved off eastwards. After a while we passed the big camp at Nong Pladuk, on the north side the line, which was one of the largest POW camps in Siam. On the south side were the extensive new railway yards, with rows of wagons, flatcars and shunting engines, and a large number of Japanese C56 steam locomotives. I had first seen one of these at Prai, on the way here, but that seemed a very long time ago. The presence of all this machinery could only mean that the Burma-Siam Railway had been completed in record time. The engineers must have felt proud of themselves.
I wondered whether many people who travelled through to Burma on that line across the viaducts cut into the hills by hand would know what it had cost; and I wondered how long it would remain intact.
Despite what had been done to us, most of the information about the construction and operation of the radios, and our lines of communication for distributing the news, and even the purpose of my map, remained our secret. Silence was the only reprisal we could take. Now, apart from the assumption that we were on a train on our way to the royal capital of Siam, we had no idea what was facing us.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AT THE MAIN railway station in Bangkok the Kempei agents led us out on to the platform, among the Siamese travellers in their vivid sarongs, and handed us over to a squad of soldiers. Their numbers and their attitude of alert defiance, as though challenging us to try to escape, signalled our importance to some security-obsessed bureaucrat further up their hierarchy. My six companions were immediately handcuffed, while I had a rope tied around my waist, with one of the guards holding the loose end. They paraded us through the midday throng, in which life was hurrying along to its normal imprecise schedules. The civilians barely glanced at us, or studiously ignored us, for the sight of a man with his arms held out in front of him in splints being led like a donkey on a rope, accompanied by six bruised wretches in handcuffs, was not something to notice too openly. We moved through that crowded station like ghosts.
A Japanese truck was waiting for us. We were driven away, and it was a strange feeling to be in one of the few motorized vehicles on the streets. War had subdued this city, leaving it practically no traffic except bicycles and the occasional cart. The quiet was oppressive as our truck roared through banging its gears and trailing dirty fumes. We passed the German Embassy, a big stone building picked out by the fire-engine red of the swastika flag fluttering on its roof. For a while we ran parallel to one of the electric tramway routes, with elderly single-deck tram cars clanging slowly along. They made a homely noise.
We reached a large nondescript building, with guards standing to attention outside it on an entirely empty street. The Kempeitai ran this place, judging from the uniforms of the men who took us inside and led us to our cells. I was separated from the other six and put into a cell packed with desperately frightened Siamese and Chinese civilians, some of them in tears. I noticed that the cell was square, and this seemed very strange; later I realized that most cells are oblong. I was reduced already to noting the smallest changes in the small spaces in which I was imprisoned wherever I now went.
I have never been able to discover where that building was. Next day all seven of us were reassembled and moved again, this time to the grounds of a grand house, some other requisitioned mansion in the Japanese Army’s secret estate. There were various outbuildings in the grounds, and one of them had been turned into a large cell with a walkway for a guard along the front of it and bars through which he could see and speak to us. We were hustled inside and told to sit; when we did, the Japanese officer shook his head and demonstrated the posture he wanted us to adopt: he was determined to make us sit cross-legged.
We occupied that cell for thirty-six days, sitting with our knees spread and ankles locked, from seven in the morning until ten at night, with the exception of a bare hour of daily exercise in the yard. They did not expect us to move or to talk during those hours in the cell. We suffered the cramps and rigors of unsupple muscles forced into this unfamiliar position. You discover the weight of your own body in surprising ways: the crushing pressure of your leg on your heel becomes unbearable, for example, and comfort is a minute shift of position that gives momentary relief before the new alignment begins to ache. My hips were still very painful, and I had to hold out my broken arms and rest them on my knees, so that is how I sat – like a caricature of a praying Buddhist.
Major Smith, so much older than the rest of us, could not manage the position at all, and his distress was acute, his knees splayed out at the weirdest angles and he was constantly in such pain that he was ready to risk the guards’ anger and abuse by sticking his legs out straight in front of him. After a while even the guards gave up trying to bend him into the shape they desired and allowed him to sit as he normally would. In this as in all other situations, poor Smith was the most vulnerable of us.
Some of the army guards who had to enforce these absurd secret-police rules of deportment were better than the average run of men doing prison duties. One of them tried to talk to us in English, which was not only a welcome relief from sitting cross-legged in depressed silence, but gave us hope that we could get information from him. He was a ‘Gunso’, a sergeant, a regular army professional with no interest in petty cruelty. He asked us questions about the British Army, and about our food and climate, and we tried to pump him about what was waiting for us in the big house. He couldn’t say, and
probably had very little idea himself; I wondered whether he would be a member of our firing-party, if it came to that.
One of the guards told us one day that the previous occupant of our cell had been a POW, a Scotsman named Primrose. He described his uniform as though it had a skirt, and said that he had been charged with the murder of a fellow-prisoner. We were deeply curious about this Scottish soldier in his kilt and probed our guard as much as we dared. The story that came out was one of those legends that later circulated around the network of prisons and camps, a rumour that was so strange it could be true. Primrose was a lieutenant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and in the middle of 1943 had been in a camp far up the railway. The Japanese sent in a huge labour force of Tamils, who were as usual treated like atomized slaves, starved and brutalized and dying in handfuls every week. Cholera broke out in the Tamil camp, and the Japanese railway administration found a novel way of containing the epidemic: they shot its victims.
When a single British POW caught the disease he was moved to an isolation tent on the outskirts of the camp, to await ‘disposal’. Primrose happened by the tent in time to see two Japanese guards carry the feverish soldier out to a tree. One of them prepared to shoot him, from a considerable distance; the guard was clearly nervous and incompetent, and would almost certainly only wound the prisoner, prolonging his agony needlessly. Primrose grabbed the rifle and shot the man himself with a single round to the heart. And for this he was charged with murder.
I wondered what had happened to him: had they already killed him for his act of loving violence? For years I remained fascinated by what Primrose had done, his decisiveness and compassion. It seemed so symbolic of what they had reduced us to, that he should have to kill one of his own men out of kindness.
The days dragged slowly by in mindless boredom and discomfort. Apart from our more humane guards, we had no distractions or stimulation of any kind. They fed us rice with some nondescript fishy sauce, and lukewarm tea. Apart from our trips to the toilet hole, we squatted on the ground.
Thew muttered under his breath once: ‘I can’t think of anything to think about.’ Fred Smith hissed back: ‘Have you thought about everything already?’ ‘Yes,’ said Thew. ‘Well, start again,’ Fred suggested. But after a time recycling your memories is beyond a joke, and the mind chews itself painfully over and over, cud without nutrition.
The exercise period was always a relief because there was plenty of water, and we could wash out there in the sun. They even gave us a hosepipe, which in that yard had almost certainly seen some strange uses, and the others would turn the gush of water on to me because I could not lift the hose with my bound arms. The cold water swilling over me washed out some of the sweat and a little of the tension.
On the morning of 22nd November we were abruptly told to smarten ourselves up. They gave us what was left of our kit and we had to get into uniform, as far as that was possible any more, an instruction that rattled us. This sudden formality was disturbing, as change of any kind had become to us in our helpless situation.
We were taken into the main building and into a large room with long windows. Several Japanese officers sat along a table with their backs to the light. They clearly formed a court martial. The president of the court appeared to be a lieutenant-general, wearing the most remarkable whiskers I have ever seen, drooping down far below his chin. Our reception at the railway station was indeed intentional; we were a prize catch.
There was an interpreter, but his English was more halting than my interrogator’s had been at Kanburi. He read out the charges. The prosecuting officer wished to make it clear to the judge that the seven tattered characters standing in front of him were the most dangerous anti-Japanese group they had ever had to deal with, that the group was experienced in and had been involved in subversion, sabotage, secret radio-operation, illegal trading with Siamese civilians, organization of escapes, theft, dissemination of British propaganda – and so on. The ultimate accusation was read out with great melodramatic expressions of indignation: we were, collectively, accused of being a ‘bad influence’. This catalogue was flattering, and had we not felt sure that they were about to shoot us we would have enjoyed the compliment even more. A stenographer carefully recorded the prosecutor’s speech.
An officer representing the defence, who was a complete stranger to us, gave a rather half-hearted address which seemed to be to the effect that we were sorry for our anti-Japanese activities and had not intended to cause trouble. The defence speech was not recorded for posterity.
The presiding general asked us if we had anything to say. Jim Slater spoke up, with considerable courage, and suggested to the court that whatever conclusion they might come to, we had surely been punished enough already. The judge asked what he meant. Slater attempted to describe quickly and neutrally the beatings at Kanburi, pointing to my broken arms and our still visible cuts, and my torture by the Kempeitai. If the judge had not been aware of our treatment before, he certainly betrayed no interest now.
After conferring with his colleagues, the judge pronounced sentence, his whiskers lending the moment a suitably farcical air of gravity. Thew and Fred Smith, ten years’ imprisonment each; Bill Smith, Slater, Knight, Mackay and Lomax, five years each.
We were taken back to the cell, and resumed our cross-legged squatting. Our relief was so intense that it amounted almost to joy. For the first time since the discovery of the radio in Thew’s bed at Kanburi, the imminent threat of death had been lifted. We sat there no longer like condemned men, and Slater’s elation at our reprieve was almost palpable in the stuffy air of the cell. For the first time, we began to think that for us the physical and mental ill treatment might be over.
* * *
A few days after our trial, the radio party was told to get itself ready for another move. The guards did not tell us where we were being taken, but they ordered Thew to stay behind, and no amount of pleading and questioning would make them explain his detention to us. This was the second time he had been separated from us, our radio buff, and we were desperately afraid for him. Fred later told me that Thew had blandly informed the white-haired interpreter at Kanburi that he needed a radio because he worked for the BBC. The man had beaten Thew around the head with the flat of his sword. He might have annoyed them too much, once too often; or perhaps they had singled him out again for additional torture and questioning; or they felt he was, after all, too dangerous to keep alive. It was dreadful to have to walk out of that cell and leave him sitting there alone.
We were put into uniform again; my five comrades were handcuffed; my arms were still in splints and the guards decided that I was sufficiently restricted without the cuffs. Yet another truck rolled up and we were driven back through the dead streets of Bangkok to the railway station. Our weird group once more attracted a certain amount of attention as we were taken to a waiting train. As I walked along the platform I remember looking with pleasure at a perfectly ordinary, shabby passenger train and hoping that we were going to be allowed to sit on seats, like ordinary travellers, now that we were convicted subversives instead of battered prisoners. Instead we were shoved into the guard’s van, which was at least empty and spacious – an improvement on the foul covered goods vans in which we had travelled from Singapore to Ban Pong just over a year before. The escort told us to sit on the floor with our backs to the end of the van. We spread out our kit and settled down. Slater thought we would be taken to Japan; others assumed we would serve out our sentence working, under closer supervision, back at Kanburi or somewhere else on the railway. One of the guards settled the question of our destination by saying: ‘Shonan.’ Singapore. We were starting all over again.
Singapore is 1200 miles from Bangkok, and there are more comfortable ways of travelling between the cities than sitting on the steel floor of a luggage van for three days and nights. But this was a better journey than most in our experience as prisoners, even though my five companions were handcuffed for most of the way. For once,
the Japanese administrative arrangements worked well. Food appeared miraculously at certain stops, and it had obviously come from Japanese cookhouses. We ate exactly the same food as the guards. It was among the best we had eaten for two years.
Bill Smith’s frailty singled him out yet again for embarrassment, or perhaps we were simply a little embarrassed by him. He clearly had a slight bladder problem and the regular stops were not enough for him. There was, as usual, no latrine on board to which we were allowed access, and Smith was once in real discomfort. The rest of us immediately began to calculate the speed of the train, the time to the next stop, whether we could risk holding him out the door – a manoeuvre I suggested reluctantly, remembering my own humiliation on the way to Ban Pong – but the train was moving too fast and the other four were afraid of dropping him. Smith interrupted us with great suppressed urgency and begged for a more immediate solution. He could not bear to foul his mug or mess-tin, so someone suggested that he use his footwear. So it was that the poor man urinated into his own boot, which was large enough and watertight enough for the purpose: there was no leakage at all. It is the strangest tribute to the quality of British shoemaking that I can think of.
The journey was monotonous and uneventful, perhaps because we were so exhausted by letting go the tension and uncertainty that had gripped us since our arrest at Kanburi. The guards kept us sitting against the back wall of the coach, so we saw almost nothing of the view, only the occasional glimpse of forest at a sharp angle out of the open door. We tried to sleep as the wagon swayed and rolled, pounding the metal of the rail with the metal of its wheels in that smooth, lunging rhythm of train travel. Unless some violent force intervened, we were as trapped as those flanged wheels on our own iron road.