by Damien Lewis
Other animals that had previously kept away were driven closer to the camps. One evening the Japanese guards yelled out a warning that a tiger had gotten into their livestock and taken some of the Japanese pigs (they kept livestock in an effort to supplement their own meager rations). In spite of the prisoners’ exhaustion, there were howls of laughter from the huts and cries of “Which guards have the tigers got, then?”
Yet in spite of such rare moments of levity the monsoons brought added suffering. The rain that fell like a waterfall from a dark sky was surprisingly icy. A sustained belt of storms drove down the temperature, rendering the nights chilly and damp. For healthy, well-fed adults equipped with proper sleeping gear this would have posed little problem. For starving, emaciated prisoner-slaves who were lucky if they had one blanket to sleep under it could be a killer.
More than ever food became paramount. All conversations dealt with it, all dreams featured it, all schemes concerned how to get one’s hands on it. Finding enough calories to drive out the cold and stave off death had become all-consuming. Anything even remotely edible would be caught and eaten, and the absolute master in all of this was an English pointer called Judy of Sussex.
Not for her the pointing out of prey anymore, or at least not normally. Every day they were at the railhead, and every day she would be off in the jungle hopping, dancing, and darting forward to snatch her prey. Often it was a snake. The Sumatran jungle abounded with them, and many were highly venomous. She’d dance a duel with the serpent until it was exhausted and disoriented, and then she’d dart forward to strike. She’d snatch it by the tail, shake the body violently like a whip until the neck snapped, then carry it proudly to lay at Frank’s feet.
Judy proved such an accomplished hunter that even the guards learned to appreciate her talents. They did so because they might profit from it. Most prey she was happy to take on herself, but just occasionally she’d come across something that was too hot even for her to handle. There were wild pigs, deer, bears, and tigers in the jungle. Whenever she encountered something of that size, she’d start to bark ferociously. The guards soon learned what that signified. They’d come running with guns at the ready in the hope of bagging some fresh meat. Of course, they’d keep the best for themselves, leaving the offal, the hide, and the bones for the prisoners.
Each evening at Camp 4 dozens of hobo stoves—small cans rigged up to cook in—would be balanced over wood fires. The prisoners would cluster around whatever brew was cooking, fanning the flames like witches at a cauldron. Snake proved to taste a lot like chicken, and it made delicious soup. But the jungle harbored a plethora of other exotic prey—giant cane rats, giant lizards, monkeys even—and nothing escaped a ravenous dog’s attentions or that of her half-starved human companions.
The prisoners themselves learned to scavenge during the midday work breaks. Fungi, roots, berries, fruit—anything that was remotely edible was harvested. From the Dutch, who had inhabited this wild country for generations, they learned about what was poisonous and what was best avoided. But it was from the romushas that they learned the most about what was edible and could be used in an effort to supplement their starvation diet and so up the chances of survival.
It was not long after the Black Corporal’s murderous actions on the tree-felling gang that Leonard Williams found himself working at the railhead again, along with Judy and her fellows. He’d noticed that the dog they all cherished hadn’t been herself of late, and he’d surmised that she must have been bitten by a snake. He and his fellow prisoners were ordered to work alongside a group of romushas, clearing vegetation.
Leonard Williams watched them closely, hoping that perhaps they knew of a native cure for a dog suffering from snakebite. In the process he noticed how the romushas had these odd, bright green tips to their fingers. Via sign language, he managed to ask them why. By way of explanation one of the romushas took the British sailor to a certain shrub and ran his forefinger and thumb down the stem. The leaves peeled away, and he caught them in the bottom half of his hand.
The romusha mimed cooking and eating the leaves. There was iron in them, he explained. Iron was one of the many vitamins lacking in the prisoners’ diet. Leonard quickly spread the word. The leaves didn’t taste very pleasant, but even so, from then on his fingers and those of his fellows would often be stained a bright green.
While plucking the odd leaf or mushroom was tolerated by the guards, barter with the locals was not. Shipwreck victims who had lost practically everything would at first sight seem to have little left to trade. But many still possessed a precious ring—perhaps an engagement ring, a much-cherished wedding ring, or even one handed down from parents—and gold has a value everywhere. The trouble was that any contact with the locals was strictly against the rules and would attract savage retribution if found out.
Again, in bartering along the railway Judy was to play a key role. She’d lope along beside the rail-laying gang, alert to anything of interest. Frank Williams had learned to read her body language quite perfectly, and one particular form of behavior signaled that an opportunity for barter was at hand. Judy would stop and sniff at a bush, then stick her head and shoulders right into it, her rear end still apart from her long white tail swishing gently to and fro. This indicated that there was a local hiding in there, awaiting the opportunity to trade.
Jock Devani proved to be the ace bargain hunter, but once again the incredible thing was how such trade was conducted under the very noses of the guards, with both sides sticking to the terms of the deal. One day a prisoner offered up a battered gold ring. It was worn and broken, but it was still a band of gold. Over repeated passes by the bush that Judy had directed him to, a whispered deal was struck.
In exchange for the ring, the prisoner received what to him was a king’s ransom in tobacco and coffee, plus a clutch of eggs and bananas to boot. Tobacco and coffee were highly valued because they were the unofficial tender of the camps. They could be traded with others for whatever they might have on offer, ideally edible and nourishing food.
Barter and scavenging were vital to staving off starvation and death. Sabotage was vital to staving off the death of the spirit, after which the body would surely die. But all such activities were punishable by death in the eyes of the worst of the guards.
Skeletons laboring under a merciless sun—this had become the life of the Van Waerwijck shipwreck survivors. The weeks became months, and the inhuman conditions took an increasing toll. As the prisoners weakened, normal bodily functions began to fail.
Yet illness was no excuse for avoiding the never-ending toil on the hell railroad.
Chapter Twenty
One sick prisoner, Tom “Geordie” Scott, found himself on the rail-laying gang under the watchful eye of Judy, plus Frank and their fellows. But they were cursed with the very worst of guards as their overseer—the Black Corporal. In his emaciated, weakened condition Tom Scott was desperate for a pee. He was forced to do it right where he was standing, on the rail embankment. Unfortunately, the Black Corporal caught him in the act and flew into a terrible rage.
“The prisoner has desecrated the emperor’s railroad,” the Black Corporal howled. “For that he deserves to die!”
The enraged guard took his rifle in the one hand, and brandishing a thick bamboo pole in the other, he charged toward the guilty figure, murder in his eyes. Tom Scott stood there petrified, believing that his last hour on earth had come. His knees were shaking, and he felt utterly unable to move. But the Black Corporal charged right past him and pounced instead on the gang’s honcho, whose responsibility it was to stop his prisoners from urinating on the esteemed emperor’s railroad.
The Black Corporal set about the honcho—a sergeant in the RAF—with wild yells of rage, repeated blows from his bamboo pole slamming into head and shoulders. He was screaming invective as he evoked the name of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces, plus His Imperial Majesty Emperor Hirohito himself, both of whom had been irrevocably insulted by such
an act of wanton desecration.
Once he was sweaty and breathless from his exertions, the Black Corporal demanded that the honcho in turn beat the offending prisoner. British POW was forced to face up to British POW as an enraged Korean guard continued to crack the honcho over the head while demanding that he in turn punch the living daylights out of his fellow prisoner. The honcho made a few halfhearted swipes at Tom Scott, but this only served to enrage the Black Corporal still further, and he redoubled his blows with the bamboo stave. In the Black Corporal’s eyes the honcho was supposed to deliver his beating with the greatest possible enthusiasm, for he had the honor of punishing the offender.
If something wasn’t done soon to save him, the honcho was in danger of buckling under the blows, and everyone knew what happened to prisoners who went down. If you couldn’t stand and take it, a guard like the Black Corporal would very likely proceed to kick you in the head until you lost all consciousness.
Tom Scott stepped closer to the bloodied, swaying victim. “Hit me, Sarge!” he yelled. “For Christ’s sake, hit me!”
At last the RAF sergeant began to respond as the Black Corporal intended, landing powerful blows on his fellow prisoner with clenched fists. Now it was Tom Scott who went staggering backward under the onslaught. It was clear that someone was going to end up very badly injured or even dead unless . . .
To one side of all of this a figure was watching. Judy was growing increasingly agitated. Her lips had curled into their signature snarl, and her eyes glowed red at the horrors she was being forced to witness and her fellow prisoners were being forced to endure. All of a sudden she whirled around and darted off into the bush. Moments later there was that unmistakable bark—aroof-roof-roof-roof-roof—the one she reserved for when she came up against a large animal and needed a guard with a gun to help her bring it down.
Somehow, the fierce yelping seemed to cut through the Black Corporal’s blind rage. The blood-smeared bamboo pole froze in midair. The Black Corporal glanced off into the bush, his brain trying to process the new information that was reaching him and to make a choice between competing priorities: to uphold the emperor’s honor by beating the prisoner to death or to shoot the animal for meat.
His sense of hunger clearly won over his sense of duty to the emperor, for he dashed off into the bush in the direction of the barking, rifle at the ready. The two victims of the beating needed no further urging. Covered in blood and badly bruised as they were, they stumbled off toward the railhead, aiming to get as far away from the Black Corporal’s savagery as humanly possible.
Of course, there was no large animal in the bush. There never had been. Judy had witnessed the savage beating, realized a diversion was needed to save the victims, and decided to provide it. She’d taken a major risk in doing so. A guard like the Black Corporal might opt to shoot her once he realized that she’d put one over on him. But it was in her nature to come to the aid of the little guy, and here on the hell railway the underdogs were very much her fellow prisoners of war.
This time at least Judy managed to dart through the jungle unseen. She gave the Black Corporal the slip and was soon back with her work gang. But here on the trans-Sumatran railroad it felt as if she was very much living on borrowed time. She had cheated death in so many ways and for so long, and eventually everybody’s luck runs out. It always does some day.
Judy had first defied death as a tiny puppy when she’d snuck under the Shanghai kennel wire; she’d done so next as an adolescent dog tumbling from the deck of the Gnat into the Yangtze. She’d done so again in Hankow harbor, at the wrong end of a Japanese sentry’s rifle; when trapped in the Grasshopper’s flooded mess deck; when gnashed by a crocodile’s hungry jaws on the Indragiri River; when smuggled out of Gloegoer One in a sack, under pain of death; when posted out of the porthole of a sinking SS Van Waerwijck; and upon arrival in Singapore harbor, when she was spotted by Captain Nissi’s murderous eye.
By anyone’s reckoning she was eight lives down by now, and it was anyone’s guess as to how much longer she could keep cheating death along this railroad steeped in blood.
As if to remind the SS Van Waerwijck survivors of all that they had endured, another group of shipwreck victims was about to join them. If anything their story was even darker and more replete with tragedy. In mid-September 1944 the Japanese cargo ship the Junyo Maru had set sail from neighboring Java with around 2,300 Allied POWs crammed into its hold, plus some 4,200 romushas. All told there were some 6,500 slave laborers packed into that rusting relic of a hell ship, more than nine times the number that had boarded the Van Waerwijck.
On September 18, 1944, the Junyo Maru was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Tradewind off the coast of Sumatra. The ship, hit by two torpedoes, sank stern first in a matter of minutes. Some 5,600 POWs and romushas perished, making this the single greatest maritime disaster in terms of confirmed loss of life to this day.
On September 22 just over 400 of the Junyo Maru survivors turned up at Camp 4 to join their fellow shipwreck victims as slave labor on the hell railroad. They stumbled into camp like a legion of the damned. Among their number was one Rouse Voisey, a young British soldier captured at Singapore. Rouse had already served as a POW-slave under the Japanese on the island of Haruku in the Moluccas—the so-called Spice Islands—hacking a runway out of the bare, dust-enshrouded, sandpaperlike coral terrain.
He had survived the Junyo Maru sinking by hanging on to a raft cobbled together from a glass-fronted cabinet that had floated free of the ship with some planks lashed to its sides. He’d looped his arms around a length of rope and tied himself to the raft as the only way to keep afloat. After forty-eight hours at sea, the rope had rubbed him raw under the armpits and he was hallucinating. He swore that he could see a vision of an earthly paradise calling him—bright lights ashore, with music and laughter and dancing. He was finally saved by a Japanese ship, on which he was brought to Pakan Baroe and the railway.
On seeing the terrible state of Rouse and the hundreds of other shipwreck victims at Camp 4, the established POWs volunteered to take the heavier workload out on the railhead. The Junyo Maru survivors were given lighter duties around camp—fetching water, cutting wood for the fires, and digging latrines. It gave Rouse plenty of time to get accustomed to his new surroundings, which in some ways resembled the jungle-clad island of Haruku that he’d come from. The one thing that amazed him about Camp 4, however, was that they had a dog.
Rouse, like Frank Williams, was an incurable devotee of animals, and even the recent hell that he’d suffered hadn’t managed to kill his greatest love of all. But to see such a striking, comparatively healthy-looking, and so clearly edible dog still alive here in this hellish camp—well, it defied all comprehension. How on earth her protectors had kept her from someone’s cooking pot Rouse didn’t know. It was such a daily struggle for survival that anything on four legs was being eaten, and that made Judy a walking miracle.
Back on Haruku, to his eternal regret, Rouse himself had eaten a cat. The gnawing hunger had driven all normal considerations out of a man’s mind. Here on the hell railway prisoners were being forced to eat anything that came to hand. In Camp 4 every living thing had its price, no matter how small and seemingly inedible. A mouse was worth one guilder (the local Dutch currency), a rat two and a half guilders, and in an extreme perversion of the natural order of things, even flies had their price.
In the topsy-turvy nightmare world of the prison camps, the Japanese had decreed that those too sick to work had to catch two hundred flies per day to receive a half ration of food. The Japanese reasoned that sick men needed less sustenance, for they were doing no work—hence the reduced calories. Flies spread many of the diseases that were rife in the camps, and so the sick were tasked with making themselves useful and catching their allotted quota—or no food.
A sick man who needed proper rest had to buy his peace by paying another to catch his allotment of flies. Some prisoners had even managed to cobble together ingenio
us fly traps so as to have excess bugs to sell. Others made a little money on the side by carving whatever a fellow prisoner might need—wooden-soled sandals being the most common item. Several of the Junyo Maru survivors had lost their dentures during the sinking. A certain prisoner became an expert at carving custom-made dentures out of lumps of hardwood cut from the forest.
Shortly after the Junyo Maru survivors joined the railway gangs, Les Searle was taken off the forward camp construction and rejoined his old colleagues. He was shocked by the scenes of horror that he found at the railhead. Dreadful skeletal figures heaved, toiled, sweated, and groaned until the day was done or they dropped where they worked. Those injured on the construction or rendered too sick to continue were sent to the dreaded Camp 2—the so-called Death Camp.
In the terrible conditions and with such extreme levels of malnutrition, the slightest injury or cut failed to heal. Practically every prisoner had developed ghastly tropical ulcers, some as big as saucers. They ate flesh right through to the bone. Malaria, dysentery, beriberi, and heat exhaustion were rife. But at Camp 2 there were few if any medical supplies, and in spite of Wing Commander Davis repeatedly pointing out to the Japanese how desperately they were needed, nothing was ever done.
In fact, the Japanese commanders appeared perfectly content for the injured and sick prisoners to die. This led many to suspect that the Sumatran railway was as much an extermination project as it was a construction one. By October 1944 POWs were dying at a rate of ten or more a day. On average, each kilometer of the cursed track claimed another twenty Allied lives and those of some four hundred romushas.
Yet incredibly, some four months into their time on the railroad the spirit of the Allied POWs had yet to be broken. As Les Searle observed, “We grimly joked, and we encouraged each other. Somehow we hung on to the slender thread of life.” And as luck would have it a much-needed morale boost was about to fall into the laps of those slaving in that living hell.
