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We immediately saw that Chunkai was now unrecognizable from what we could remember of our earlier sojourn there. First of all, the graveyard was ten times or more the size it was then. With a dozen or more deaths a day it was daily growing much bigger. Compared with Tamarkan, everything looked shabby and dilapidated. Attap does not last for long, and I suppose there were insufficient fit men here to maintain the huts properly.

I was put in charge of feeding arrangements, and taking the job seriously, got out my tools and fashioned two ladles for dishing out fairly. The rice ladle did not work very well, so I found a couple of pig’s shoulder-blades, and these proved very satisfactory.

Nearly everyone in Chunkai seemed to have skin disease, with huge ring-worm patches overlapping each other, and pellagra, the vitamin deficiency disease which makes the skin the texture of brittle tissue paper, weeping between the cracks, and often forming ulcers. There were no supplies of calamine lotion or other medicines to relieve the terrible itching these complaints caused, let alone supplies of the vitamins which would quickly have cleared the trouble.

As soon as I was able I toured the camp to find our own lads, and was disappointed to find that Jimmy Hume had moved out some time before. There was one of our officers, Mr. Oliver, keeping a record of known deaths in our regiment, and when he was able to add those from my list, the total reached one hundred and eleven.

After a few days with no work to do, I began to think that I was in danger of ‘letting myself go’, as I could see so many had already done in this camp; so I saw the camp R.S.M. and asked if I could be given a full time job. Somewhat enigmatically he said ‘Wait and see!’ so I had to leave it at that.

Chunkai was still plagued with rackets, and after a few days one of our corporals reported that a thousand Tickels worth of stuff had been stolen from his kit. I wondered how, under our conditions, any prisoner could legitimately have acquired such a huge amount of booty.

Very few working parties were being sent out, and half the fit men seemed to be engaged in some business venture or other. Every few minutes of the day and evening someone would pass through the huts shouting his wares; ‘Come and get it! Hot and sweet, five cents a cup’. This was a ‘coffee’ made by burning rice on a shovel and then grinding it up with a bottle on some hard surface.

By now we all called the ‘Stang’ ‘cents’, as there were a hundred to the Tickel(or Baht). Other men came round with peanut toffee, sambals, and many other things. There was also a thriving industry in cigarettes, these were fashioned on home-made machines from the black local tobacco, and they looked very professional although the thick paper, mostly torn from books, could not have tasted very nice.

On the eleventh of December, and without much notice, we were told to pack up and parade to board a barge for Tamarkan. I could scarcely believe my ears or my good luck. It would be good riddance to dirty, thieving Chunkai, where a good dose of Col. Toosey was what was really needed. Thrilled to bits, I climbed aboard the boat, and arrived at Tamarkan an hour or so later; but Col. Toosey and Capt. Boyle the interpreter had left the previous day.

The Japs lined us up to tell us why we had come here. The railway had been completed with ‘the diligent help of the prisoners.’ As a token of appreciation of the work done by The Imperial Japanese Army, and out of respect for the lives laid down by the prisoners, we were to build a shrine under the guidance of Japanese soldiers. When finished it would be dedicated to all races, whatsoever their religion or colour.

We commenced work immediately, forming human chains from the river bank to the hillock two or three hundred yards away where the monument was to be erected. Baskets of sand were filled and passed back to be emptied in a heap at the top. Our task was to transport so many cubic meters per day, and when we had accomplished that we could go ‘home’.

The guards regarded the work in exactly the same light as before, and every now and then there would be the inevitable shout of ‘Courra!’ perhaps followed by a blow, as someone was spotted not working hard enough.

On the second day, it was decided that we had enough sand for the time being, and we were put to collecting shingle. We had to crawl along the beach selecting stones as near an inch in diameter as possible.

One of the men picked up a stone, decided it was too big and tried blindly to throw it far away behind him. I heard the usual Jap scream of rage, and saw the nearest guard clutching his nose in furious agony. He laid about the unfortunate prisoner for a minute, but luckily his stick was not a heavy one, and no injury was caused.

None of my men had a watch, and the Japs refused to tell us when it was mid-day, so that we could eat. So I rigged up a sundial on the beach. Sun was one thing we had plenty of, and if primitive peoples could rig up a sundial, then, I thought, so could I. However I was wrong; my sundial never worked properly although I tried it at many different angles, adjusting it each day. Later on I wondered if the Japs moved it every night after we left, for a bit of fun.

When we had gathered all the shingle they required, we were sent over to the foot of the Ack/Ack hill to gather small rocks. These, we were told, were to be built into a plinth which would form the base of the shrine. We carried them back by the hundredweight, in barrows and on stretchers, until it was decided that there was a big enough heap of these.

Lastly, as far as materials were concerned, the Japs gave us dozens of old marble table tops; they must have raided every cafe in Thailand to find them all. Every one was badly stained and our immediate job was to clean the faces up ready for names to be carved in them. Although we tried everything from soap to sand, the stains refused to budge.

In addition to working on the shrine, we had to find work parties daily, carrying stores and water to the top of the Ack/Ack hill. This was the most hated job; there was no shade, the hill was very steep and the guards would allow no rest half-way. Our wooden buckets weighed as much as the two gallons of water they held, and if the Japs had not used all their previous day’s supply they tipped it out on the ground in front of us.

Back to the shrine, and our next task was to clean up a big heap of old timber, which was to be used as the form work in which to pour the concrete. The timber was full of nails, and very rough-sawn. We had no tools like planes or scrapers, so I told the guards that it was not suitable, but was just ordered to get on with it. In fact when they said that they were satisfied, the timber still looked pretty awful, and it was clearly going to be unsatisfactory.

The Japs had to ‘stand to’ nearly all the night of the twentieth of December, as a continuous drone of Allied planes was heard passing over the camp. I was on Ack/Ack fatigue the following day and found the tired guards particularly evil tempered, especially as we were unable to avoid a certain cockiness in our manner.

For years they had been telling us that there were no Allied planes left as they had blown them all out of the sky. To get their own back they made us fill their bath to the brim, and when I protested that the precious water we were carrying would overflow when they got in if any more were added, I received a cuff for my trouble.

Parties of sick from up-country had been arriving in camp ever since we started work on the shrine. Many of these men were Aussies, and very sick, often with dead and dying among them. They mostly arrived during the night in barges, and when we heard the ‘Poof Poof’ of the boats stop at the camp, we used to turn out to help carry bad cases into the huts. One Aussie died in our arms as a friend and I tried to lift him out of the barge.

During the night of the twenty-third, we were carrying a barge load of very sick men in when the Jap gun opened fire on planes flying over the camp, and we were lit by the flashes of exploding shells as we walked.

The Japs now issued us with wood cutting saws, and told us to make batch-boxes for measuring the ingredients of concrete. I was surprised to see that Japanese saws work in reverse to ours, cutting when pulled instead of when pushed. They are shaped something like a large butcher’s cleaver, with the teeth starting small by the handle and gradually getting larger towards the further end. Two hands are necessary to hold the long handle, so the wood has to be held with a foot or by a comrade. None the less, they seemed to work very well.

We were allowed a day’s rest on the twenty-fifth of December, but we scarcely noticed that it was Christmas, and I did not even mention it in my diary. This was the only occasion as POWs that we made no effort at all to celebrate Christmas Day.

Three days later we started mixing concrete. Two men at a time were required to do the mixing, working at breakneck speed until relieved. The mixers had to keep in front of the measurers who had to pile up the cement sand and stone on the end of the wooden staging. The staging stretched right up to the memorial itself, and as the mixers were required to turn the mix over four times in all, at the last turning the concrete went straight down into the form-work. This proved a very efficient way of working, and I think the concrete went in faster than if we had had mechanical mixers.

The pace set by the Japs was so fast, that after a couple of days only a private soldier named Mooney and I could stand up to it, so we got the job full time. I did not really mind, especially as we knew that at least we were not assisting the Jap war effort, as we had been on the railway work.

Fifteen days after our return to Tamarkan, the Japs told us that their rations were now so bad that they were going to leave us for a time while they went upstream to blast the river for fish. As they disappeared round a bend in the river, I took a friend and waded out to collect any stray fish that might elude them.

We were lucky, collecting and stowing away about ten pounds of fish before the guards came back. We had far more than many of the Japs. That evening we cooked them up and had a grand fish supper. The following day a plane came over in broad daylight, again attracting Ack/Ack fire, and the guards had to ‘stand-to’ all afternoon, which meant that we had the afternoon off.

On the first of January 1944, New Year’s Day, the Japs told us that this was a feast day in Japan, and celebrated it by decorating the camp with palm leaves and green bamboo. Everyone had the day off, and I made use of it by sewing up the sword cuts in my Aussie hat. I also took the opportunity to insert some packing between the two thickness’s of crown as cushioning, should further blows be struck. While sewing I heard the drone of planes again, and the ineffective staccato of the Bofors on the hill.

Out on the shrine, the Japs were in a bad. mood now, and set us bigger tasks to complete. The first day back at work they gave us thirty-six bags of cement to mix with nine times the volume of aggregate, and we had to stay until the work was done. Mixing that lot in the blazing sun, by hand and with no respite, was almost too much for me, and I thought I was tough.

To make matters worse, they made us find hut pickets every night, to make sure no-one got out of the camp. Every time a man left the hut to go to the toilet he had to collect a numbered tally from the duty picket, and hand it back when he returned. Woe betide any caught outside the hut at night without a tally; and the Japs collected the tallies in the morning to make sure none were missing.

We were worked so hard for the next few days that it seemed likely that the shrine would be followed by another in memory of those who died on building the shrine!

There was a full moon on the night of the tenth, and as we heard the Japs being rousted out of their beds to ‘stand-to’, and heard the drone of our planes overhead, we began to feel that perhaps it was not all quite so one-sided now.

We talked among ourselves, some voicing aloud the question that had bothered us all; what would the Japs do if Allied parachutists landed nearby and tried to free us? The general opinion seemed to be that we should all be shot before they had the chance.

As we lay chatting, for the first time we heard the sound of distant bombs exploding. From the direction and distance we decided that the attack must be in the vicinity of Bangkok

Our shrine was now beginning to take shape. It consisted of a cubic base or plinth with a tapering ‘needle’ rising from it; all cast from very rough concrete.

Our next task was to travel down to Kanburi by barge to fetch a load of rocks; these and the smaller ones from the Ack/Ack hill were to be used to build a wall round the site. The marble table-tops were going to be stuck on; it seemed to me that it was going to look a very scruffy monument. However, I was never to see the finished job, as the next time I returned to Tamarkan I was too ill to go out on working parties, and the shrine was outside the camp boundary.

On the seventeenth, I was given my third stereotyped postcard to complete for sending home. I now saw that I had an opportunity to let the folk at home know that I had received their mail. One part of the card read; ‘Please see that . . . is taken care.’ On the dotted line I wrote ‘Jennifer Jane’ the name of my new niece.

My parents did receive this card, about a year later, and that was the first intimation they had received that I was alive. In spite of this, my mother had written me a long letter each week until the day of my return; she had learned to type, as she had been told that typed letters would be more likely to be passed by the Jap censors. I believe it was because of this that I received letters, when many of my friends had none.

When, on the twenty-first of January, I received another twelve letters from home, my cup of happiness was full, let the Japs do what they might.

A new phenomenon now appeared in camp, when one night a few Japs sidled up to a group of prisoners asking if any had pound notes to sell; until now, they had told us that Sterling was worthless. I guessed that the Thais were offering big money for our pound notes, and the Japs were trying to make a profit; I cannot think that they wanted to save them in case they lost the war. In fact they had changed their tale of late, telling us that the war would probably go on for ever; before, they had always spoken of the imminent total victory.

For some days I had been developing an ulcer on my heel and it was not responding to the treatment I was giving it, probably because I was standing on it for such long hours while working on the shrine. In the end I had to show it to the doctor, and he took me off work at once.

On the second of February, I was sent back to Chunkai, and arrived there at one p.m. At sick parade, the doctor told me to rest my foot up for seven days, and I spent practically all that time bathing my heel with salt water.

When I was not doing that, I was de-bugging my bed-space, as the place was practically alive with the beastly things. Most days I heard planes fly high over the camp, and often heard them open fire at Tamarkan.

Chapter 31

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