The Forgotten Highlander (12 page)

After three months they were ready to sit their exam. I had high hopes for Freddie but was unsure as to how the other two would fare. Much to my surprise and general delight they all passed and received handwritten certificates, signed by me, that confirmed completion of their British Army General Certificate of Education. Hastily typed up certificates were later presented to the boys and Freddie was extremely proud of his, especially when he learned that his Army pay would now be increased! Not that it did any good in the camp.

Meanwhile most of the men went on work parties during the day. I was very lucky, exempted since I had a duty of care towards the boys. The others went to the very docks where I had landed less than two years earlier or to the aerodrome to clear trees. In the first few months the men could work hard in the tropical heat because they were in relatively good health. But as their health deteriorated and their body weight dropped due to the poor diet, fewer and fewer of them came back from the work parties. Many were visibly withering away and, suffering from dysentery or malaria, dropping like flies. The officers had even to designate a new work party whose sole function was burying bodies.

The work parties taken to Singapore harbour to work on the docks, unloading shipments of rice, sugar, meat and vegetables, plundered as much as they could. For starving men the temptation to help themselves was just too great. The Japanese deemed stealing food the most heinous of crimes. Some paid with their lives for a handful of rice. Guards administered savage beatings with iron bars, staves and pickaxe handles that left men paralysed and blinded and others dead. The dreadful dangers, however, did not stop starving prisoners from taking their chances.

There was constant paranoia in the camp that some men were acting as spies for the Japanese. Anyone seen being called to their offices regularly and who returned unscathed was singled out as suspicious. Of course some men might have been chiropodists or something, called in to work on the officers’ feet or whatever. But it did not stop fevered speculation and tongues wagging among bored men. If there was a particularly strong suspicion that someone was in the pockets of the Japanese, or ‘Jap happy’ as it was known, they would be confronted. I heard rumours that some men were even murdered; their bodies disposed of head first into the latrines. Surprisingly, though, the men who secured jobs working in the Japanese cookhouse or helping in the storerooms were never castigated by the rest of the men. They were obviously better fed but there was no jealousy. It was more a case of ‘fair play to them’.

As the weeks turned into months in 1942, there were plenty of rumours circulating in the camp about the progress of the war. We heard of a huge armada sailing from England with the RAF to save us, of major sea battles, of Japan running rampant through the Pacific and taking island after island. The Russians had reached Greece. The British were winning in North Africa. And so it went on. Through his interpreter the Japanese commander would take great glee in announcing, ‘The mighty Japanese empire is taking over India and Australia.’ It got into your mind and you did not know what to believe. We would ask our officers for any information but they were just as in the dark as we were.

The lack of contact from our families also got us down. Men wondered how their families were surviving the bombing of British cities, if sons and brothers had been conscripted. The lack of letters from home made us feel like a forgotten army and we were anxious that our families knew we were OK. In June the Japanese had allowed us to send a message home. I had filled in my little card with the message: ‘My Dearest Mother, I am in good health and spirits and being well treated. Hope you are well. Much love to all at home. Please do not worry too much. Please let Hazel know and give her my love. With all my love, Alistair.’ But we never knew whether the cards had been sent or not. (In fact I was to send a total of six of these cards during captivity and all of them arrived in Aberdeen after my return home.) By now every prisoner was suffering from depression, and coping with ‘black dog’ was the hardest thing a prisoner ever encountered.

That was why the concert parties were so important. I had been mesmerised by the concert on the hill above the barracks; then one day it was announced that there was to be a stage show on the parade ground of Selarang barracks. We all trooped along on the night to be treated to a burlesque show entitled ‘Tulips From Amsterdam’. It was hilarious and with Japanese guards in the audience, pretty near the knuckle. The concert party had devised all kinds of skits sending our captors up, with great music too and we all sang along to the hits of the day. The indisputable star of the show was a drag artist called Bobby Spong. Dressed up to the nines and positively glamorous, when he came on stage the audience went wild, the boys besides themselves laughing, hooting, yelling and cheering – and no shortage of indecent suggestions. We laughed until our sides nearly split.

It was to be our last laugh at Selarang. A couple of weeks later at the beginning of September, things turned nasty, very nasty. The Japanese had decided to tighten the screw and increase control over the camp. Unbeknown to the prisoners they had plans about what to do with us and blind, terrorised obedience was central to those plans. The strange limbo we inhabited, in which we lived as prisoners but under British authority, was drawing to an end and the Japanese wanted to impose their authority.

A new regime headed by Major General Shimpei Fukuye wanted to transform Changi into a proper prison camp. A few weeks earlier four prisoners, two Australians and two British, had tried to escape from up-country in Malaya and Fukuye demanded that all the allied prisoners should sign an undertaking not to do this. Escape attempts were futile and doomed in my view. But our officers refused to sign as a matter of principle. The first we knew about this row was on being told to report to the Selarang barracks. As we made our way there, thousands of men were doing the same, streaming in to the barracks from all directions. The Japanese had decreed that all prisoners must be inside the barracks by 6 p.m. – anybody outside after that time would be shot. It was the beginning of a terrifying stand-off that became known as the Selarang Incident.

Seventeen and a half thousand men crammed into the Gordon Highlanders’ barracks designed to accommodate fewer than a thousand men. It was appalling. We had no space and what little water we had was for cooking only. Latrines had to be dug in the middle of the barracks square but we could never get near them, the place was so heaving with men. Somebody worked out that the population density was one million men per square mile. Outside of the crammed barracks in the parade ground there was very little cover for the men and we baked in the sun. Our officers warned us that we would face a court martial if we signed and that the Japanese were breaching the Geneva Convention that allows prisoners the right to attempt to escape without facing punishment.

The Japanese could not have cared less about the Geneva Convention and had no intention of observing it. To rack up the pressure they ordered the execution of the escapees and the British and Australian commanding officers were instructed to attend. It was a brutal, botched affair during which the Sikh firing party had to shoot the men several times. They shot some of the prisoners in the groin and the poor chaps had to plead to be finished off. Refusing blindfolds the condemned men displayed fantastic bravery and the British and Australians still refused to give in.

We were playing a dangerous game. The Japanese could not stand to lose face and we knew that they were capable of anything. Crammed into the parade square we were so vulnerable, deprived of all items of war. There was no possibility of an uprising. Personally I was riddled with fear that the situation could escalate into a massacre.

At various points during the stand-off the Japanese would drive in a dozen lorries covered in tarpaulins. These would reverse into strategic positions in front of us covering all points. Then at a signal the tarpaulins would be torn off in unison to reveal machine guns mounted on the trucks, four soldiers at the ready on each. Their guns pointed at us, the Japanese would start screaming. It was all part of the terror tactics they so enjoyed. We responded by singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. The national anthem was banned and this became our theme song, our only weapon and I doubt if it was ever sung with more fervour. The Aussies would pipe up with ‘Waltzing Matilda’, and sometimes a chorus of ‘There Will Always Be an England’ would ring out. As conditions deteriorated and more men went down with dysentery and diphtheria, singing was a way of keeping our spirits up. But I always believed that we were all going to be massacred.

On the third day of the stand-off conditions had become really desperate and men began to die of dysentery. I tried to keep a brave face on things for the sake of the boys but it was an awful ordeal. We were down to half rations, constantly thirsty and had hardly room to lie down – sleeping was a problem.

Still we stuck it out and then the Japanese played their trump card. They threatened to transfer in two and a half thousand sick and wounded men from the hospital in the nearby Roberts barracks. It would have been mass murder and reluctantly our officers agreed to sign but insisted that it be recorded we did so ‘under duress’. At last it was over. We were ordered to sign a piece of paper that read, ‘I the undersigned, hereby solemnly swear on my honour that I will not, under any circumstances, attempt to escape.’

We all lined up to sign and it seemed to take ages. Some men signed as ‘Mickey Mouse’ or ‘Robin Hood’, while ‘Ned Kelly’ was a popular choice with the Australians. After standing in line for hours it finally came to my turn. I signed as ‘AK Urquhart’ but deliberately made it an illegible scrawl so I could deny it if need be.

Once you signed you were moved to your new barracks, or camps as they now were. As Gordon Highlanders we stayed put at our barracks in Selarang, along with some members of the Malay Volunteer Force. The Japanese used Selarang as a propaganda victory. They could tell their population how cowardly we were, how easily they took Singapore and that we were a feeble enemy.

The Selarang Incident was mentally and physically draining. We had been on an emotional roller-coaster, playing for the highest stakes. It also marked a dark new phase in our relationship with our captors.

We were surviving each day at a time. Every day seemed longer and tougher than the previous day. Freddie was the only one who did not seem to be suffering. One steamy October day in 1942 a British officer’s runner found me at my hut and snapped, ‘You’re to report to Lieutenant Emslie’s office straight away!’

‘What for?’ I asked, annoyed at his abrupt manner, which seemed uncalled for.

The runner looked at me and said with a wry smile, ‘You’re down to go to a holiday camp.’

I reported to Lieutenant Emslie’s office. He said, ‘You’ve been selected to go on a draft up-country. Get organised and be ready for parade at 8 a.m. tomorrow.’

He refused to tell me any more but I suspected that even he did not have more information. I trudged back to my hut, trying to compute the information, wondering what he meant by ‘up-country’ and working out how to tell the boys. They would be devastated.

Back at the hut I sat the boys down and relayed the news, emphasising the part about its being a ‘holiday camp’. They were understandably upset.

Jim said, ‘But who will look after us?’

‘An officer will make sure you are looked after,’ I said, reigning in rampant emotions.

While I was only a few years older than the boys, I had become a father figure to them over the last few months. We had formed a strong bond and it was being ripped apart. They felt abandoned and I felt as if I had failed them.

Four

Death March

I did not sleep a wink that night. I scrunched my eyes tight to block out the horrible visions but all I could see were images of us being taken away to be executed. I imagined us being led into a field and shot in the back, machine-gunned on a beach, bayoneted or beheaded on the deck of some Japanese warship.

The next morning I said my goodbyes to the boys. It felt like leaving my family all over again. None of them tried to stop me going, they knew that would have been fruitless, yet their eyes betrayed their fear and concern. As I went to leave, Freddie grasped my arm and with tears welling up in his eyes said, ‘See you later, mucker.’

I reported to the parade ground, trying as best I could to compose myself. Despite my anxiety I had to focus on what lay ahead. I was joined by twenty or thirty other Gordon Highlanders out of the five or six hundred stationed at Changi at that time. Cleverly the Japanese did not send a whole bunch of men from one battalion together. They always took care to split us up. None of the Malay Volunteers billeted at Selarang had been selected for this mysterious task, whatever it was.

The Japanese officer in charge began shouting in staccato and through his interpreter broke the ‘good’ news. He told us, ‘You have been selected as the best men for this duty. You will go to a holiday camp, where you will work for three days, have four days rest, have good food, good conditions and everyone will be happy if you work hard.’

Our officers had been told that we were moving to special ‘rest camps’ in which food would be more plentiful than in Singapore. In these hill camps we would be supplied with blankets, clothing, mosquito nets. Even gramophones would be issued at the new camp, along with medical supplies to equip a new hospital. There would be no marching except for short distances from the trains to nearby camps, transport being available for the sick and unfit, as well as our baggage. The ill men would have better prospects for recovery in a ‘pleasant hilly place with facilities for recreation’.

Thousands of miles away Japan’s European ally Nazi Germany was issuing similar rosy promises of ‘resettlement’ in the East to Jewish families.

But some of the men, desperate to believe that their luck was changing, actually believed it all and were excited at the prospect of filling their bellies and escaping slavery in the docks. There were cheers and shouts of ‘Let’s go!’ and ‘Sounds great!’