The Forgotten Highlander

by Alistair Urquhart

  I smiled and swung her around, delighted to be back in the saddle, so to speak. I only got halfway around the floor when I was tipped by a woman, who could also dance. Before I knew it I was back in my element. I tried to remember the female faces so I could get another dance with them later.

  At the end of the night on my way out, with the smile still plastered on my face, one of the women collared me to say, ‘I hope you come back, as I enjoyed dancing with you.’

  That broke the ice and I went back two days later for the big Friday night dance. My legs were still aching from all of the unexpected exercise, using different muscles, and muscles that still needed to be built up, but nothing would stop me now. Early in the evening I met a woman called Mary Milne who was wearing a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force uniform. She was a local lassie, three years younger than me, and a very good dancer. I had seen her earlier and she had caught my eye, so I made sure I tipped in later on and we got on well immediately.

  ‘Will you be going to the dance tomorrow?’ she asked, as we tapped out a slow fox-trot.

  ‘Most certainly,’ I said, hardly able to control my delight.

  Dancing was the best rehabilitation I could have asked for, and it was also crucial to my reintegration to society. I slowly came out of my shell and thanks in no small part to Mary. She didn’t ask me any questions and I liked it that way. I told her I had been a prisoner of the Japanese but that was as much detail as I gave. It turned out that in previous years she had courted someone who had been a prisoner of the Germans – so she sure could pick ’em!

  Before long we were ‘walking out’, and seeing each other as much as possible. One of our favourite things was a stroll along the beach. On one such occasion, memorable for its cloudless sky, I took an attack of malaria. It came on quickly, forcing me to sit on a bench, sending me into hot, sweaty shivers. Mary was terrified as she did not know what was happening, and when I went into a tense rigor she helped me to a taxi and we rushed home. Dr Rice came, with his quinine, and gave me a dose in bed, which sorted me out. But it took me a fortnight to recover because of an enlarged spleen. I considered it a minor setback and got back to the dancing straight away, though by now struggling to breathe through my nose properly – it had been broken so often during all of those beatings on the railway. I went in for an operation to have a hole bored through my nose bone, and while I was in I took another malaria attack, which laid me out again, this time for a month.

  As a couple Mary and I soon made friends at the various dance places. One of Mary’s best friends and her boyfriend often joined us to make up a foursome. I enjoyed getting out but I must have been awkward and possibly miserable company. In reality I had little or no conversation. I did not wish to talk about my six and a half years in the Far East, especially as the others had not been abroad or on active service. If someone asked about my time in the war, I regurgitated my stock answer of, ‘It was so bad that I don’t want to talk about it.’ If the war came up in conversation, I would keep quiet or steer the topic elsewhere. At the outbreak of the war Mary and her pal had gone to Glasgow to enlist and got caught in the blitz on Clydeside. They had been in the thick of it and while physically unharmed, they were mentally shaken. We just wanted to move on from the war.

  Still painfully thin and very unfit I was unable to keep up with my new-found friends, especially in the dance halls, which put me at a disadvantage as Mary was pursued by several rivals. One particularly keen would-be suitor, who had been in a reserved occupation in Aberdeen and had never suffered during the war, really annoyed me. I became defensive and jealous. I suppose that being very self-conscious about my frail appearance and the fact that I was not earning did not help either. However, Mary and I still went out together; perhaps she sensed there was an ember smouldering within and at some stage it would turn to flame – I really do not know. I felt happy in her company because only then did I find some peace of mind.

  No one other than one of us POWs could imagine the turmoil of the recurring nightmares that so many of us suffered. It seemed that every time I shut my eyes I was back in the camps. It all came back to life so vividly that my body would suddenly pour with sweat and fear. I was always glad when the morning light came.

  During that period I was very pleased to hear of justice being meted out to some of the worst Japanese war criminals. The Japanese press lionised General Yamashita as ‘The Tiger of Malaya’ but he should have been known as ‘The Butcher of Malaya’. He was hanged after a lengthy trial. Major General Shimpei Fukuye, the architect of the Selarang Incident, went on trial and was subsequently taken to the same spot where he had brutally executed the four escaped prisoners and shot. Disgracefully, General Takuma Nishimura, who had ordered the massacre of the Australian wounded at Parit Sulong, received only ten years imprisonment from the British. Later he would be arrested by the Australians in Hong Kong as he travelled home after completing his sentence. He was subsequently tried by an Australian military court and hanged.

  As the trials went on it became obvious just how much bunkum all of the bushido code had been. The so-called ‘Way of the Warrior’ precluded capture yet so many of these ring leaders had been captured – the shame that to them had made us so despicable now seemed bearable and certainly preferable to the ordained hara-kiri.

  Happily among the 256 Japanese war criminals to be executed were a loathsome duo from the Death Railway. The Black Prince had failed to fall on his samurai sword and revealed himself to be the coward that most swaggering bullies are. He was hanged, as was the Mad Mongrel. Inexplicably, Dr Death received only ten years.

  One day in July 1946 there came a knock at the door and Dossie shouted on to me to get up and come down as I had visitors. I came downstairs, opened the door and almost fell over. Freddie Brind stood there, with his trademark grin and his ever-present buddy, brother Jim. It was just great to see them. I hadn’t heard of them since leaving Chungkai on the other side of the world. Until they had turned up I didn’t even know if they had made it.

  We shook hands and embraced. In the finest British tradition I asked them in for a cup of tea. As Jim stayed silent Freddie recounted their story. After their father had been taken prisoner by the Japanese and taken to Changi at around the same time as us, they hadn’t seen him. He was kept in the prison where he had previously been a warden. Freddie remained stoutly calm as he said that his father died there in that jail. He had never spoken about the man much. His mother, who had escaped, was obviously much closer to the brothers.

  I refilled the teapot and Freddie continued updating me in great detail. He was now working as a plumber’s mate. Jim had a job at the Selo film factory in Brentwood, which he would work at all his days.

  After a while Freddie got around to why they were in Aberdeen. They had arrived for a reunion of the Gordon Highlanders. Once he raised that topic he wanted to talk only about the prison camps. No matter how I tried to divert the subject he would always bring it back, recalling his comical moments, the characters and the scams, but also the horrors and the unspeakable. It was as if he were trying to make sense of it. I got the impression that he was also struggling to readjust to civilian or British life. In the camps we all knew him as a man, or boy really, who could acquire things, get things done. But back in Blighty he was just another veteran despite being still in his teens. In his own eyes he wasn’t special any more.

  I invited them to stay with the family while they were in Aberdeen but they insisted that they would not impose and had booked digs in Crown Street. The next day I went with them to the reunion at the Station Hotel in Aberdeen. It was an emotional affair but one that indeed was necessary. I relaxed finally in the company of others who had suffered as much as I had. They knew my pain. They didn’t ask awkward questions or stare at me as if I were a leper.

  For the rest of his life Freddie would phone me every night, no matter what was happening in either of our lives. He just wanted to talk – always about the camps, which had left a fatal impr
ession on him. He had to be checked in to Roehampton hospital several times, for a month or more at a time, and had even been granted a twenty-four-hour telephone line to a psychologist. Yet he preferred to phone me and chew my ear for an hour every night, sometimes two hours at a time.

  He got married to an Essex girl, Nora, whom he met through his church. But Freddie never came out of the camps. And he drank heavily to forget. Given his experience and his character it should not have been a shock that he became an alcoholic. Despite the love he received from his wife, his family, and me and my family, he would die within ten years of returning to the UK of cirrhosis of the liver – still a young man.

  The reunion had been a cathartic experience for me and by August 1946 I felt fitter both mentally and physically. My thoughts returned to work. I could still hear Mr Grassie in his inimitable tone saying he would always have a job for me, one of ‘his boys’. But I knew that I would never manage the physical job I had done before the war. I paid him a visit anyway.

  At Lawson Turnbull & Co. Ltd’s reception desk a stranger was on duty. I asked to see Mr Grassie and she lifted the phone and dialled his room. Within seconds the old Great War veteran appeared from his office off the main reception area. He ushered me inside and closed the door behind us. I stood, waiting to be seated in front of his large desk that commanded the immaculately tidy room. Before he sat he eyed me up and down, taken aback by my appearance. Mr Grassie wasn’t one to show his feelings at all but I swear that in that instant, for just a fleeting moment, he shed a tear.

  ‘It’s grand to see you,’ he choked. ‘None of us thought we would ever see you again.’

  He called for tea and biscuits to be sent in, as if trying to divert attention from his emotions. I explained to Mr Grassie that I needed to start work again, although my health was not good, which of course he could see for himself.

  ‘You can start back whenever you feel able, Alistair. We’ll find a job for you.’

  Mr Grassie never asked about the war.

  I reported for work in early September 1946 and Mr Grassie assigned me to the office section, where I got a job estimating, controlling contracts and customer services. I was back at work. But life could never get back to normal.

  My experiences at the hands of the Japanese continued to haunt me both physically and mentally – as they still do all of these years later. Even after I married, life could be hell. To this day I suffer pain and the nightmares can be so bad that I fight sleep for fear of the dreams that come with it.

  Yet I owed it to myself and to the others who never made it back to make the most of my life. I threw myself into a career and worked my way up to become managing director of another plumbing supplies business, making health and safety a priority for the staff – after what I had witnessed on the Death Railway. I enjoyed the work.

  My two children grew and I took great pleasure from their success, as I did when my grandchildren came along – and when they went to university!

  Life continued to throw up challenges. After my wife Mary suffered a stroke, losing the power of speech, I nursed her for twelve and a half years during which she was wheelchair-bound. I think that the experiences I had on the railway and the inspirational example of our medics helped me to cope during that difficult period.

  At the age of seventy-five, after Mary’s death, I briefly emigrated to Canada to be close to my daughter, yet I found myself lonely and isolated in a strange country. I decided to return to Scotland. Through all of this my sufferings as a prisoner taught me to be resilient, to appreciate life and all it has to offer.

  Back in Scotland I quickly made new friends in the world of my lifelong passion, ballroom dancing – and at ninety years of age I am still working on my slow fox-trot. I dance an average of five times a week and organise two weekly tea dances. I campaign for the residents of my sheltered housing complex and have managed to persuade the council to give us funds for computer, painting and t’ai chi classes to keep us active. I am pleased to say that the council also came off worse in my battle to have our grass and hedges cut. In recent years my charity fund-raising activities for the complex have raised hundreds of pounds to fund our activities.

  I am a proud member of the Far East Prisoner of War Association (FEPOW) and regularly answer the queries of families anxious to know how their grandfathers and fathers were treated. On behalf of FEPOW I am very pleased to speak to schoolchildren about our experiences.

  My life has been long, rich and rewarding but always, always, the ghosts of the river Kwai have remained with me. The cruel faces of the Black Prince, Dr Death and the Mad Mongrel have stalked my dreams for more than six decades now. And in my thoughts and prayers I will never forget the faces of all those young men who died looking like old men, those prisoners who endured terrible deaths in a distant land.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Kurt Bayer of Scottish News Agency who spent many hours quarrying my memory to make this book possible. Thanks are also due to Graham Ogilvy, our editor at Scottish News Agency, and to ‘Stan’, our agent at Jenny Brown Associates. I am indebted also to Richard Beswick at Little, Brown who recognised the potential of my story.

  The Australian War Memorial and David Martin of Fotopress assisted with photographs. Leslie Bates generously supplied still photographs of the rescue of torpedoed survivors taken by her father Mr Joe Bates, an officer aboard USS Sealion II.

  A number of individuals have done so much to keep alive the memory of what we suffered in the Far East. They include: Ron Taylor and Keith Andrews of the Far East Prisoner of War Association; Roger Mansell in San Francisco, who maintains and updates an excellent website that is invaluable for research; and Rod Beattie, who deserves recognition for his sterling efforts in developing the work of the Burma Thailand Railway Memorial Association. US Navy veteran Sid Mouser helped contact the Bates family and hosts moving film of the rescue of the torpedoed survivors on his SubRescue channel on YouTube.

  The Gordon Highlanders Museum has also been very supportive and helpful.

  My daughter, Joyce, has been a great encouragement and my dear friend Helen Scroggie has been a pillar of strength during the writing of these memoirs. I would like to thank Meg Parkes of the Liverpool Hospital of Tropical Medicine. Last but not least, I would like to thank my consultant and friend Keith Baxby but for whose skill and dedication I would not be here today.

  Index

  Aberdeen

  Alistair’s return

  Bridge of Don barracks

  Capital Theatre

  Highlanders’ reunion

  Palais de Dance

  Woodend hospital

  Aden

  Afghanistan

  Albury, First Lieutenant Charles

  Alfie, Uncle

  Alice, Aunt

  Anderson, Sandy

  Arbroath

  Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

  Ash, Miss

  Aso, Taro

  ‘atap stare’

  atomic bombs

  Auchinyell Brae

  Australia

  Australians

  and clandestine cigarettes

  and cricket

  and Parit Sulong massacre

  and Selarang Incident

  ballroom dancing

  Bam Pong

  Bangkok

  banzai charges

  Barker, Tommy

  Bataan Death March

  Battle of Britain

  Battle of the Somme

  Bay of Bengal

  Beahan, Kermit

  bed bugs

  Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire regiment

  bicycles

  Bissett, Eric

  Black Watch

  Blackpool

  Blakamati

  Bon Accord Swimming Club

  Borneo

  Boy Scouts

  Bradman, Don

  Brechin

  Bren guns

  Brentwood, Essex

  Brind, Freddie
r />   and Chungkai

  and clandestine cigarettes

  and education

  return and early death

  scavenging skills

  Brind, James

  Brind, Nora

  Bukit Timah

  Burma

  bushido code

  Butler, Lady

  Calcutta

  California

  Cameronians

  Canada

  Canberra

  cannibalism

  Chamberlain, Neville

  Changi

  church services

  concert parties

  discipline

  and escape attempts

  food and diet

  and mental health

  and spies

  work parties

  Changi jail

  Cherbourg

  Chiang Kai-shek

  Chicago

  China

  chocolates

  Christianity

  Chungkai hospital camp

  and clandestine cigarettes

  theatrical shows

  Churchill, Winston

  and fall of Singapore

  cigarettes, clandestine

  Clydeside blitz

  coalmines

  Cold War

  Compton, Denis

  Cornwall

  cricket

  Death Railway

  bridge construction

  burial parties

  and cholera epidemic

  doctors

  escapees

  food and diet