The Forgotten Highlander (24 page)

The smell inside the hold was indescribable, a repugnant stench. An overpowering mixture of excrement, urine, vomit, sweaty bodies, weeping ulcers and rotting flesh clogged the atmosphere. There was no way we could get any fresh air. Even when the Japanese opened the hatches it didn’t really help that much – you were still breathing in what was already there.

In the darkness we had no way to keep track of time. But at some point on that first day of the voyage the battens were taken off and the hatches opened wide. I was stuck a long way from the hatch but could see the blue emptiness of the sky, a distant, tantalising beacon of freedom that from down there looked as close as I would ever get to it again. Some men, maybe forty or fifty or so, were allowed to go up on deck. Not the rest of us. That started a terrible mêlée. People climbed over each other, scratching and scrambling. It was sheer pandemonium. I supposed that the men allowed on deck could use the toilet arrangement that hung over the side of the ship. But letting fifty men use the toilet would have taken a long time and it would have been an especially long time for the impatient Japanese, so I doubt whether more than one or two were allowed to go. It did allow a lovely cool breeze to come inside the hold and ease some of the airlessness momentarily. While the hatches were open, the guards lowered down a single pail of rice. Even the most peaceful man alive turned into a real scavenger. We were fighting for our lives. When the men got put back down in the hold they found that their places had been taken over by other prisoners. Space was at such a premium. That caused more fights to break out. It is impossible to describe fully just how horrendous the conditions were. During the whole journey the guards opened the hatches just three times. I never got up on deck. I suspect that some allowed up managed to hide somewhere on the deck. I know I would have. It would have been worth the risk. Anything was better than being down in that dark hold. If anyone got caught, they would in all probability have been killed. At the very least they would have had a serious beating.

When the guards closed the hatches again, plunging us back into darkness, the feeling of complete desolation, total resignation, returned. Thirst became our biggest problem. People don’t understand what real thirst truly is. You start to hallucinate and see mirages, and that is the most dangerous thing. People died down in the holds from suffocation or heart attacks. The men who died were not taken away. Their bodies lay among us.

The second time the hatches opened the bucket of rice came down nearer to where I was. Someone threw a lump of rice and I managed to catch it. I wolfed it down. Rice becomes water and that is what I needed to abate my thirst. At no time during this terrible journey did the Japanese give us water; we relied on the occasional rice ball for it. The terrible stomach cramps induced by the lack of food and water defied belief. The pain doubled me over. This was a slow and painful death.

Six days out of Singapore I wondered how much more I could take. Then in the distance came a muffled explosion. Right on cue we had sailed into the trap set by the American submariners, who were determined to sink as many of the vessels they believed to be carrying oil and rubber as they could. At two in the morning the USS
Growler
had fired at the convoy sending our escorts fanning out. Then in one of the most daring manoeuvres in American naval history the
Growler
took on the Japanese destroyer
Shikinami
bow to bow. At a range of a thousand yards, Commander Oakley slammed three torpedoes into the
Shikinami.
She was only two hundred yards from the
Growler
when she sank. Oakley hit another two vessels before withdrawing to rearm.

Next the
Pampanito
and the
Sealion II
moved in for the kill. On board the
Pampanito
Lieutenant Commander Paul Summers had just taken up a perfect position to attack the scattered convoy when several large explosions unexpectedly rocked his vessel. To the west of Summers the
Sealion II
had fired two salvoes of three torpedoes each at the frantically zig-zagging convoy – and met with spectacular success. Three torpedoes smashed into a large oil tanker that exploded into flames, lighting up the sea like a giant flare. Out of control the burning tanker collided with the
Kachidoki Maru
. We had an amazingly close escape as it screeched along the side of our hull. When the
Kachidoki Maru
suddenly listed dramatically, pandemonium broke out afresh as men screamed in terror and begged to be let up on deck. It was terrifying; we expected to be torpedoed at any moment and drowned like rats in those stinking holds. We all fixed our eyes on the narrow stairwell to the decks, wondering how the hell we would ever get out.

But the burning tanker had illuminated a second target, the
Rakuyo Maru.
The poor prisoners in the holds knew what was coming and braced themselves for the inevitable. At 5.25 a.m. Lieutenant Commander Eli Reich steadied the
Sealion II
, a modern Balao-class submarine that had been commissioned just six months earlier, and fixed the
Rakuyo Maru
in the sights of his periscope. The thirty-one-year-old skipper took careful aim at the 9500-tonne vessel silhouetted against the night sky by the burning tanker. He was not going to miss. Earlier in the attack he had fired in support of the
Growler
and missed and been forced to flee Japanese escorts. And he had a personal score to settle: the first USS
Sealion
had been sunk in a Japanese bombing raid on the Philippines at the outbreak of war and Reich had lost four of his crew. There would be no mistake. As he gave the order to fire three steam torpedoes at ten-second intervals, the young New Yorker had no idea of the carnage he was about to cause. All three tin fish hit the
Rakuyo Maru
. The first struck the engine room, another hit amidships and the third torpedo hit the 477-foot ship in the bow area. Amazingly none of the 1317 prisoners were killed by the explosion. The ship started to list and the Japanese guards and sailors immediately deserted the sinking ship in ten of twelve available lifeboats, leaving the prisoners to fashion makeshift rafts and take to the water with what little food and water they could find on board.

Tragically 1159 men, survivors of the Death Railway and all of its hardships, either drowned or died of exposure after days floating in the sea. It was a colossal loss of life and as the
Sealion II
dived to avoid depth charges the young sailors who celebrated their kill had no idea of the catastrophe unfolding above them.

While the
Sealion II
dived to safety, the
Growler
and the
Pampanito
set off after the convoy, and when Commander Oakley caught up with it the survivors in the water found themselves in the middle of a fierce naval battle. The
Growler
fired its torpedoes on the Japanese frigate
Hirado
and scored a direct hit. Some men in the water cheered while others saw all chance of rescue disappear. The shockwaves from the
Hirado
explosion killed some prisoners, others died when the Japanese retaliated with depth charges or were killed by the propellers. The
Growler
got away unscathed. (It was Oakley’s last major triumph, two months later he and his crew were killed when the
Growler
succumbed to Japanese depth-charging.)

Darkness had once again fallen and the
Kachidoki Maru
steamed north towards Taiwan, making a dash for protective air cover. But by eleven o’clock that night the
Pampanito
caught up with us and thirty-one-year-old skipper Paul Summers was planning a very special celebration of his birthday, which had taken place just a few days before on the day we sailed from Singapore.

Any hopes we had that we had outrun the wolf pack or that the attack was over were about to be dashed. Summers prepared to mount a surface attack on the
Kachidoki Maru
but had to abandon it because of technical difficulties. His crew worked feverishly to fix the problem and Summers resumed the attack. We were the biggest vessel among the group of small ships and made a juicy target. As the
Kachidoki Maru
steamed into the crosshairs of
Pampanito
’s periscope, Summers gave the fateful order to fire. Four minutes later we suddenly felt a tremendous blast and an explosion tore through the hold. The whole structure shuddered and water flooded in from above. I knew then as the water crashed on top of me that my worst fears had been realised. We had been hit and I knew that the torpedo had struck very close to us. It was in fact the first of two torpedoes that would send the hellship to the bottom within fifteen minutes.

The ship tilted. We were going down. Up above the Japanese began shooting their wounded men in the sick bay in mercy killings. Down below men shouted and panicked and scrambled madly for the single ladder up on to the deck. The noise was horrendous. But the pressure of the water must have pushed the hatches wide open. Either that or someone on deck, whether one of the stowaways or one of the POWs up there at the time we were hit, gave us a chance. Water rushed into the hold straight away with incredible pressure. It pushed me up as the ship continued to tip over. The hatches became parallel with the sea now and by some miracle the water washed me out of the hatch, and I floundered into a stream or strong current that rushed me out into the sea. It all seemed to happen at once. I popped out of the ship like a cork out of a champagne bottle.

After the extreme heat of the hold the water felt very cold. The sea was just a mass of thick oil as a total of twelve ships in our convoy were sunk that night. I knew I had to get as far away from the ship as possible as soon as I could, to avoid being dragged under with it, but it was like swimming through treacle. Those of us who could swim were the only ones who had a chance. I knew from my Boy Scout training that I had to swim away to avoid getting pulled down by the suction.

I swam for my life, as hard as I could, away from the waves created by the pull of the ship going down. I put my head down and powered with desperate overarm strokes, dodging debris as I went, all the time gulping down oil. It was like drinking fire and burned all the way down, doing irreparable damage to my vocal chords.

When I was fifty yards away I felt safe – for the moment. I turned to look at the ship. Treading water I saw it tilt and then in just a few seconds the stern silently and gracefully slipped under the waves. The sea was now aflame as the oil burned, and a torpedoed oil tanker was well ablaze. Like a scene from Dante’s
Inferno
, smoke filled the night sky and shouts and screams came from all directions. As the flames got closer I feared that I might be burned alive. Luckily they spluttered out before reaching me and then I was very sick, bringing up a horrible mixture of crude oil and salt water.

Even after the sinking the killing went on for those of us who survived and got on to rafts. Anyone starting to panic was thrown off into the sea. When they scrambled to get back on they were kicked away. Men pushed under and held under Japanese survivors. Fighting broke out as the animal instinct to survive asserted itself, making some survivors try to capture more seaworthy vessels and shove others off to their deaths. Many gave up, already so weak, dangerously dehydrated and ill. Frequently they had been injured too in the sinking. Many gulped salt water and quickly went stark raving mad, drowning themselves to end the torment. Horrible as it may sound, as men became mad they had to be shoved off the rafts or boats or the remainder might have perished.

There was a lot of shouting and screaming. Cries of ‘Get off, you bastard!’ or ‘I’ll kill you!’ made me close my eyes in distress. Most of the shouts were in English. There were not many Japanese, the majority of whom had got off early in lifeboats. Drowning and dying men called for their wives, their children or mothers. Men said things like ‘Daddy will be home soon’ and then disappeared beneath the waves. It was harrowing to hear. By that stage most of us were treading a very fine line between sanity and madness. It didn’t take much to put people over the top. I couldn’t see where it was coming from but a group of men started singing. First to keep their spirits up they sang ‘Rule Britannia’. After the Selarang Incident we had been banned from singing this stirring anthem with its line about ‘Britons never, ever, being slaves’. But this was a strange freedom and as the situation worsened the song changed and the poignant words of the great hymn ‘Abide with Me’ drifted across the South China Sea. It was very moving and I still cannot bear to hear that hymn in church.

I felt horrendous and wondered if I would last the night. How little could a human being survive on? I was about to find out. In the water with bedlam all around, a great urge to be on my own engulfed me. It felt like the safest tactic.

Two hundred and forty-four of my comrades on the
Kachidoki Maru
died that night. It was tragic beyond belief that having survived the Death Railway they became prisoners of the deep.

Suddenly the thought of sharks came into my mind. I knew that I must have suffered some cuts on the way out and that sharks were attracted to the scent of blood – I had to get out of the water as soon as I could.

My prayers were answered when a single-man raft came floating past. Exhausted and covered in thick bunker oil I hoisted myself into it. It was oval-shaped like a big dog’s basket, made of a cork-like substance and just big enough for me to sit in with my legs out in front. It had no provisions in it. With so many dead bodies floating in the water the sharks must have had a field day. From the sea I picked up shreds of string and rope, as well as bits of wood that I thought might be useful later. I also managed to find a few scraps of canvas to shield me from the sun if I lasted that long. I looked for anything in the water that might do for a paddle but it was pointless anyway. I didn’t know in which direction to paddle. It was amazing how quickly I drifted away from the rest of the shipwrecked men. I could soon see outlines of people in the water in the distance, all of them covered in oil. I had no way to know who they were, whether Japanese or POWs. It was easy to mistake a Japanese for one of my own. I made up my mind that if it came down to me or a Japanese, he would be going to meet his ancestors.