by Damien Lewis
One of the last men to be plucked out of the sea was a Captain Gordon of the Royal Artillery. He’d managed to swim to a native fishing trap set offshore and cling to it for several hours. From there he was picked up by one of the Japanese corvettes. Having thanked the ship’s captain for rescuing him and many others, Captain Gordon asked the Japanese commander if he would be willing to make one last search of all the wreckage. He agreed, and by four-thirty that afternoon all the survivors had been plucked from the sea.
The convoy formed up and got under way once more, steaming south for Singapore. But with sundown the decks that had been boiling hot during the day were transformed into a freezing cold, icy bed for the night. Without any blankets and with many even lacking clothes—they’d lost them during the shipwreck—the survivors huddled as close together as they could, trying to share some body warmth. As a chill wind whipped across the exposed deck, the curses and shivers of the survivors mingled with the hollow, despairing cries of the wounded.
Among those who had escaped from the Van Waerwijck sinking were Les Searle, Jock Devani, Frank Williams, and Judy of Sussex, plus Gloegoer One’s makeshift padre, Peter Hartley—but they were spread across various vessels. Ahead of them lay a journey during which they would be frozen at night, baked under the burning sun by day, and forced to bury at sea many of their comrades—the worst wounded, who would not survive.
By the time the battered convoy sailed into Singapore, most were too numb with shock and exhaustion to register anything other than a dumb recognition that they had arrived.
Over two years had passed since Frank Williams had served with his RAF unit here in Singapore, or since Les Searle, Jock Devani, and Judy had striven valiantly aboard the gunboats to escape the encircling Japanese, or since Peter Hartley had refused the order to surrender and made his desperate escape bid. The vessels that were carrying them chugged by the sunken forms of the wrecks that still littered the harbor before passing the sleek gray forms of a pair of German U-boats emblazoned with huge red-and-white swastikas.
The first ships pulled alongside an empty wharf. The reality of what had happened started to sink in for the shipwreck survivors crouched like naked scarecrows on the decks. Naked and smeared with oil they might be, but somehow five hundred of the Van Waerwijck’s contingent of seven hundred POWs had survived. Dirty, bloodied, and bare they might be, but few felt ashamed now they were back in civilization.
Instead, they gave thanks for being alive.
But for one prisoner, 81A-Medan, the most life-threatening moment of this nightmare journey was still to come. The tongkang carrying Judy pulled into dock where there was a convoy of waiting Japanese Army trucks. A distinctive figure stood among the gray vehicles, looming head and shoulders above his fellow officers—Colonel Banno. After the horrors of Captain Nissi’s rule, some of the prisoners—Les Searle and Peter the padre Hartley among them—almost felt glad to lay eyes on Gloegoer One’s former commandant once more.
At first the colonel greeted their arrival with a smile. But it soon gave way to a look of horror as he surveyed the human skeletons clustered along the deck and the awfulness of what must have happened hit home. He was as changeable as ever, and the sight seemed to move him to a rare show of pity. He turned to his guards and began issuing orders, gesticulating wildly with his hands at the figures on the vessel.
The tongkang scraped its way along the concrete dockside and came to a halt. The gangplank went down, and volunteers were called forth to carry the wounded, including those Korean guards who had jumped from the ship in the first seconds after she was hit, only to be caught by the shock waves of the second torpedo and suffering horrific internal injuries as a result. Then there were the prisoners from the rear hold, who had been injured in the explosion caused by the second torpedo. A few Japanese guards had jumped into the sea with a supposed ready-made life raft gripped between their legs—a length of wooden planking from the ship, perhaps—only for its impact to cause serious injuries.
With the wounded unloaded, the order was given for the able-bodied men to disembark. As Les Searle coaxed Judy out of hiding, he had no sack in which to hide her or any means to click his fingers and get her to dart inside. He had no choice but to lead her down the gangplank in full view. Together with Padre Peter Hartley he and Judy half stumbled the short distance, for they were in a terrible way. Hartley’s legs and arms were cut to shreds from all the splintered wood that he’d had to fight his way through, and neither Les Searle nor Judy was in very much better condition.
But as soon as the three survivors made the quayside the Gloegoer One guards noticed Judy. The atmosphere surrounding the disembarkation changed completely. Two of the guards stormed forward, mouths spouting invective and arms jerking maniacally at the dog, at Les Searle, and then at the sea. The meaning was clear: they were threatening to throw Judy into the harbor and very possibly her human companions with her. Les Searle doubted whether he could survive another immersion, and as for Judy, even she was looking half beaten.
As the guards went to snatch the errant dog, a powerful cry rang out. Hands froze in midaction. It was the voice of Colonel Banno. Having seen what was happening, the colonel had barked out some form of counterorder. The guards jerked stiffly to attention and then bowed before the colonel before stepping away from the dog.
Colonel Banno strode forward. The guards bobbed their heads in cringing subservience as he tore into them. Then, rather than drawing his sword to bait Judy, he bent down to pat her oil-stained ears, clearly signaling that she had won her reprieve. In the eyes of many of the prisoners, in that one moment Colonel Banno had atoned for many of the past cruelties that he’d visited upon them at Gloegoer One.
The POWs were formed up in ragged ranks. Many were completely naked, their only covering being a thick layer of greasy soot and oil. More trucks pulled up at the quayside. Head count completed, the men—plus one dog who’d won an eleventh-hour reprieve—were ordered to board the waiting vehicles. But beside one of the newly arrived trucks stood another familiar figure, and this one was far less welcome.
It was the dreaded Captain Nissi, fresh onto the scene. As Les Searle went to hoist Judy into the rear of one of the trucks, the captain let out a strangled scream of rage. A torrent of abuse shot forth from his lips. A pair of soldiers stepped forward, rifles at the ready.
In her appearance Judy was very different from her heyday on the Yangtze gunboats. She was painfully thin, her white coat was stained black with oil from repeated forays into the sea, her teeth were yellow beneath snarling lips, and her red eyes burned with hatred for those about to seize her. Yet just at the moment when they were about to strike, an older, more commanding voice rang out. It was Colonel Banno once more, and this time he was countermanding Captain Nissi’s orders: prisoner 81A-Medan was not to be harmed.
Much as he hated having to do so, Captain Nissi was forced to give way. Before there could be any further attempts to do her harm, Les Searle bundled Judy into the truck and vaulted after her. Shortly they were off jolting along the harbor road, every man lost in a dark corner of the vehicle and entombed in his own thoughts. Not even the fact that they’d succeeded in frustrating Captain Nissi’s murderous intentions could lift the men’s sagging spirits.
The convoy roared through the streets of what had once been Britain’s island fortress but had been transformed into a stronghold of the hated enemy. Just a short drive across the city, the trucks pulled to a halt. The prisoners were ordered out. They had been brought to a new camp—or at least it was new to them—but a more dilapidated and dispiriting place they’d yet to imagine.
The huts were made of rough-hewn wooden frames, supposedly topped off with atap—rough thatch harvested from the jungle. But with many the roofing had blown away or rotted through completely. This accursed place was called the River Valley Road Camp, presumably because there was a garbage-choked drain running through the center of it.
The first survivors from the SS Van Waerwij
ck marched into the camp, passing through a group of huts that were already occupied by Allied POWs. They were forbidden from stopping or talking to anyone. They were herded across the stream-cum-sewer, through a barbed-wire gate guarded by sentries, and into what appeared to be the most godforsaken corner of the entire godforsaken place.
This end of the camp was strewn with garbage and filth. On the far side was a rank of bare huts, each equipped with wooden sleeping platforms. For now, this was home.
These men had lost everything when the SS Van Waerwijck went down. What few possessions they’d taken with them from Gloegoer One had gone to the bottom of the Malacca Strait. Reduced to numbed, naked animals, suffering from shock and exposure, their hair matted and oily and their faces covered in filthy stubble, most were almost as crazed as they looked—for right now the survivors of the Van Waerwijck sinking were close to being an army of the insane and the damned.
Landfills were ransacked for empty cans to use as mugs or bits of sacking from which to improvise clothing. A meal was served. It was rice and dried, salted fish. The men were forced to eat with their hands, using leaves cut from the trees as their plates. Harsh unsweetened black tea was sipped from rusty, dirt-encrusted cans. But the ration drove some even closer to the brink, for it wasn’t enough even to begin to satiate their gnawing hunger. There had been little to eat after the sinking of their ship, for the tongkang’s crew hadn’t expected to need to cater for dozens of Allied POWs.
And now this—starvation rations.
When Les Searle retired to his hut to rest his aching limbs, his shrunken stomach grumbling painfully, he expected Judy to come with him. But oddly, she refused. Instead she went from hut to hut, checking each in turn. That done, she proceeded to crisscross the entire length and breadth of the camp. By now Les had an inkling what she might be up to: she had to be searching for their missing friend—for Frank Williams. But he could think of little to say or do to comfort her.
It was as much as he had been able to manage to save Judy from Captain Nissi’s ire—with Colonel Banno’s help. He had no idea if Frank Williams had survived the shipwreck. They’d all heard the story of Frank pushing Judy through the porthole, but after that, who knew? Yet Judy was not to be deterred from her quest. Once she was certain that Frank wasn’t anywhere in the camp, she settled down at the gate, her head resting on her forepaws and her somber eyes fixed in the direction from which she hoped her master would miraculously reappear.
For two days she kept her lonely vigil. Judy’s was a watch that would not be broken. Too often in life she’d been parted from her greatest protectors—Petty Officer Jefferey and Tankey Cooper of the Gnat, Petty Officer George White of the Grasshopper, plus Private Cousens the Gloegoer One shoemaker, to name but a few. Losing Frank Williams was something that Judy simply refused to accept, as if by force of will alone she might bring him to her alive.
And so she waited patiently for a reunion that she felt certain was coming.
Some forty-eight hours after the first arrivals had reached the River Valley Road Camp, Frank Williams made it there too. Weakened by exposure, physically and mentally exhausted from the shipwreck, he was doubly traumatized by what he believed to be the loss of his beloved dog. Bit by bit, he seemed to be losing his will to live.
He clambered down from the truck, every movement causing him agony, and stumbled into the dreadful camp. He was blind to much of what was around him and lost in a dark world of his own. So cut off was he from his surroundings that when he felt the first blow to his shoulders as he staggered through the barbed-wire gate, he shrugged it off as just another exhausted prisoner stumbling into him.
The second blow had the power to send him sprawling facedown in the dirt, so weakened was his physical condition. He lay there feeling little but dull incomprehension as someone or something scrabbled anxiously at his head and shoulders as if desperate to attract his attention.
And then he heard it. At first he couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe his ears. A low, insistent whine had reached him, cutting through the hunger, the trauma, and the crushing exhaustion that had so befuddled his mind. As if to confirm his impossible hopes, he felt something cold and wet nuzzling into his face—and now the whining was right in his ear.
His hearing wasn’t playing tricks on him! It was her! It was Judy! Somehow the dog he thought had perished in the seas around the stricken Van Waerwijck—the dog he’d pushed through the ship’s porthole in an effort to save her—had come back from the dead!
Sensing that he recognized her at last, Judy flung herself upon Frank’s prostrate form in a wild frenzy of delight. Managing to roll over, he clasped his arms around her and gazed into her suffering but ever-hopeful eyes. He felt the thick crust of oil and soot that matted her fur. He felt how dreadfully bony were her ribs and her haunches. He sensed too how desperate she’d been to find him.
They embraced for a while, miraculously reunited and with nothing needing to be said between them. It was one of the sweetest of moments. Frank felt as if his heart would break with sheer unadulterated joy. As for Judy, her long wait had been rewarded. And in this one moment Frank seemed to have found the will to live again. He clambered to his feet, and summoning up his newly found reserves of strength, he scooped up his dog in his arms.
“Come on, old girl,” he told her with tears in his eyes, “and stop acting so daft.”
Together, man and dog moved into their new quarters.
That first night Judy lay stretched out at Frank’s feet. In spite of her recent ordeal, she remained ever watchful over the one she loved the most. At any movement from across the slumbering camp she’d open one eye, sniff the air, and flick her ears forward, checking for the barest hint of any danger. Judy was determined not to lose her best friend ever again.
Only when she was certain that nothing wicked was approaching did she close her eyes and drift into an aching, exhausted sleep.
The next few days were spent in rest and recuperation—not that the camp provided much of the means for either. It—and Singapore in general—offered none of the luxuries that these desperate men had so longed for. There would be no mail from home and little news of the fortunes of the wider war, their rations were worse than they had been at Gloegoer One, and the camp itself was a shabby, leaking, windswept ruin of a place when compared with their solidly built barracks on Sumatra.
The daily ration of rice and dried fish lacked the essential green vegetables or fruit needed to stave off beriberi, a debilitating disease caused by acute vitamin deficiencies. Already, every green and edible leaf had been stripped from the trees around camp. Occasionally, a dollop of dried seaweed accompanied the daily ration, but it looked and tasted like salty old rope. The Dutch and British doctors were forecasting dire consequences should the rations not be improved in both quality and quantity.
But nothing changed.
The Japanese issued new clothes to replace those lost in the shipwreck—yet these were mostly patched and repatched Japanese Army uniforms, ones that looked as if they had been removed from the bodies of the dead. A few battered British Army boots were handed out, but there were nowhere near enough to go around. For the first time since they had been taken prisoner, a blanket was issued to each man. They were sorely needed, for the huts leaked like sieves. Time was spent trying to sleep and recover or manufacturing crude spoons and plates from old cans and makeshift toothbrushes from tree branches.
On the first Sunday after their arrival Peter Hartley—Gloegoer One’s make-do padre—cobbled together a makeshift service. He had no Bible, having lost everything when the Van Waerwijck sank. He managed to beg and borrow some scraps of paper and a pencil, and he scribbled down as much as he could remember of four hymns, filling in forgotten lines with the help of other prisoners. The service was held in one of the skeletal huts. The singing would have raised the roof had it not been so rotten, as those who had survived the worst mourned friends gone but not forgotten and offered thanks for their own delivera
nce.
But in truth, that deliverance was a mirage. Their stay here would last only four weeks—the time that the Japanese reckoned the POWs needed to recover from their ordeal. This was but a transit camp, and in the last week of July 1944 the announcement was made that the Gloegoer One POWs were moving on. In Gloegoer—and now here in River Valley Road Camp—these men had thought themselves in a place very close to the underworld. But where man and dog were headed next would take them into the very jaws of hell itself.
They were returning to Sumatra to work as slave labor on the hell railroad.
Chapter Eighteen
It was in the late 1800s that the Dutch had first considered driving a railroad through Sumatra’s seemingly impenetrable central highlands. The terrain was impossible. It consisted of rugged peaks wreathed in mist and cloud, their perilous slopes cloaked in a carpet of dense jungle, one crisscrossed with fast-flowing rivers and deep gorges and undercut by a labyrinthine network of caves and tunnels. But the prize was also potentially stupendous: black gold. The Sumatran mountains harbored some of the richest coal reserves on earth.
The route that the Dutch railway engineers had first explored was only a little different from that taken by Judy and her fellows in the spring of 1942 as they traveled up the Indragiri River, trying to escape from the encircling Japanese. Much of it followed a knife-cut gorge where the Kuantan River—a tributary of the Indragiri—carved its way between jagged-toothed ridges. The sides of the gorge were nearly vertical slabs of rock, and where massive boulders had tumbled into the river its flow was rendered into a series of tortured rapids white with foam.
