Digger’s Story: Surviving the Japanese POW camps was just the beginning

by David

  On 16 February the Queen Mary left the convoy and headed for Singapore. Briefings were then given about the Japanese. The men were told, for example, that Japan’s pilots were substandard because they were all myopic.2 This was pure propaganda, of course, and it ought to have been questioned, but the troops took what their officers told them very seriously.

  Digger turned nineteen two days later, although the army thought he was twenty-one. During those two days, the Queen Mary had sailed through the Sunda Strait and passed many Indonesian islands, then turned north-west towards Singapore. They then sailed past the eastern tip of Singapore and into the Straits of Johor. The men saw the cream-painted Changi Barracks and Changi village on their port side. Few paid much attention, although for many it was to become their home. The ship docked at the Seletar naval base, to a great welcome from the locals.

  Within a few hours, the men of the 2/9th Field Ambulance were aboard a train, and as night fell they were on their way to Port Dickson, on the western side of the Malayan peninsula. At sunrise the following morning, everyone was eager to see this new and strange country. Even at this early hour it was already hot and steamy.

  The train travelled slowly and the scenery changed frequently: villages, paddy fields, dense jungle. Every time they passed through a village, they could see vertical plumes of wispy smoke rising from what they presumed were cooking fires, and they savoured the slightly sour but not unpleasant smells that penetrated the carriage through the open windows. Adults squatted around the fires as children rushed towards the train and waved.

  There was great excitement in Joe and Digger’s carriage when the first monkey was spotted in the trees, and gasps of amazement as the train dived through endless green tunnels, where the large-leaved plants formed sheer walls of vegetation. Melbourne lads had never seen growth like this. They soaked it all in, and then noticed that, as they sat back, their shirts were sticking to their backs with sweat. Digger wondered to himself how it would be in the middle of the day if it were this uncomfortable first thing in the morning.

  The train pulled into Bagan Pinang and the troops were soon clambering onto open trucks for the last leg of the journey to their new two-storey barracks at Port Dickson. Here they were accommodated in large concrete dormitories, but each man had a very comfortable canvas stretch bed. There was also a good shower area, which was soon full to capacity. The Victorians, although used to the heat of a Melbourne summer, had never experienced humidity like this before.

  In due course they had other things to get used to, such as having someone called a Dhobi-wallah do all their laundry and ironing, and getting used to the occasional attack of prickly heat and Dhobi’s itch, which some put down to the Dhobi-wallah not changing his washing water often enough. The soldiers quickly learned to take preventative measures against malaria. They wore long-sleeved shirts and rolled their long ‘Bombay bloomer’ shorts all the way down over their knees in the evening. All in all, however, they regarded themselves as being very well looked after.

  Training soon began in earnest. Dressing stations were set up in jungle areas and rubber plantations around Port Dickson. There was also some time for relaxation, and the men got to know the local people, the Malays, the Chinese Malays and of course the expatriate British.

  Digger and Joe took up cycling. They would take off when not on duty, most often at the weekend, to explore the area around Port Dickson. They would stop at roadside stalls for a refreshing drink, and would interact with the local people as much as they could. They were surprised at how many could speak English, and put this down to the fact that many of them worked for British companies or in British households.

  Once, when they were on a street of houses with very large gardens, Joe’s bicycle had a puncture. He and Digger had turned the bicycle upside down and taken off the front wheel when a young Malay girl, also on a bicycle, came up to them. At first she just stood there and smiled.

  ‘Joe’s bike has a puncture,’ said Digger, returning her smile and immediately realising that what he’d said was completely obvious. ‘And we are going to fix it with this postage stamp. See?’ Joe was holding the partially inflated tube up to his face to see if he could feel the air escaping from the hole.

  ‘It would be much better with a rubber patch,’ said the girl, whose name was Angela Siawa. ‘If you like, I could ask our gardener to fix it for you.’

  Within a couple of minutes Digger and Joe were on the veranda with Angela’s mother and father, enjoying a glass of homemade lemonade, while she helped the gardener to fix the puncture. It turned out that her father was Superintendant Siawa, the police chief of Port Dickson.

  Digger felt immediately that he had made a friend, and lemonade on a Sunday afternoon, followed by dinner, became quite a regular occurrence. After dinner, Angela would teach him to play mahjong. Only very occasionally was Digger able to persuade Joe to accompany him. The conversation was often of politics and the coming war, and Joe was never comfortable participating in such talk.

  Digger got on well with most people, regardless of their race, profession or station in life. He had friends in the British army whom he met occasionally at the Navy, Army and Air Force Institute – the NAAFI – which was the equivalent of the Australian army canteen. He also chatted with the Dhobi-wallahs as well as the language barrier would permit. But he did not like the way most British expatriates treated the Malays and Chinese in general. In Digger’s opinion, it was definitely harder to get to know the British in Malaya than any other ethnic or racial group.

  Bill Flowers, a friend of Digger’s, wrote in his personal recollection of the time that ‘the attitude of the British residents caused some resentment, as they treated the newly arrived Australian troops in the same manner as the British troops. They were apparently oblivious to the fact that the Australians were a volunteer force.’3

  The class system that ruled British society – and the British army, in a way – was little understood by the friendly Aussies. While the resident British expatriates might have entertained the officers of the British army, they would rarely associate with the rank and file, regardless of whether they were volunteers or conscripts. Unlike in the Australian army, the British officers tended to be from the upper classes, while the other ranks tended to be from the lower classes.

  Digger learned from one English friend, Private George Lampart, that corporal punishment was still practised in the British army. George insisted that he knew of prisoners who had been flogged. Each battalion had a special sergeant called a ‘provost sergeant’, who was in charge of troop discipline and the battalion’s guardhouse. This was effectively a jail where soldiers – mostly privates – who could not be demoted and who had offended against army rules, would be confined. George knew personally that if the provost sergeant was in a particularly nasty mood, anything could happen.

  For example, the provost sergeant could decree that an offender needed a ‘regimental scrub’. With his clothing removed, he was put in a bathtub filled with cold water, and the hardest of scrubbing brushes were used on him. Alternatively, he might require that the prisoner run on the spot up against a stone wall while dressed in full army kit. The unfortunate individual would be required to bang his knees on the wall until they bled.

  Digger didn’t agree with any of this and explained to George how it couldn’t happen in the Australian army. He advised his British friend that he and his fellow soldiers should get their act into gear and not put up with such treatment. Fortunately, the authorities never found out about Digger’s conversation with Private George Lampart, otherwise he might have been the one facing a charge.

  The British ignorance and racial prejudice may even have been a factor in the eventual success of the Japanese army in Singapore. Their racist attitude was epitomised by the dismissal of Japan’s capabilities by Henry Brooke-Popham, the commander in chief of the British Far East Command. In a letter to the war office in February 1941, Brooke-Popham wrote:

  I had a go
od close up across the barbed wire, of various sub-human specimens dressed in dirty grey uniform, which I was informed, were Japanese soldiers. If these represent the average of the Japanese army the problem of their food and accommodation would be simple but I cannot believe they would form an intelligent fighting force.4

  The Australians of the 2/9th Field Ambulance were drilled in stretcher-bearing, bandaging wounds, marching and tactical manoeuvres, and for the most part they complied willingly. They were all fit and healthy, and they made the best of everything they were asked to do.

  Map-reading and tracking was particularly challenging. Digger and a few others, with a corporal in charge, were dropped off at the side of a road a few miles out of Port Dickson with a compass, a map and a parang (or machete) each. They had to track and hack their way to a point about four miles through the thick jungle.

  The most obvious route through the vegetation – the one that needed the least knocking down – was often nearly, but not always exactly, in the direction they were supposed to travel according to the compass. On one occasion this accumulation of small errors in direction made a difference, and they became less sure of exactly where they were on the map. Within an hour they were completely lost. One of the group then suggested they have a rest, and it was not until they were all sitting down, everyone having had his say about exactly what they should do next – Australian army style – that they heard the sound of a truck in the distance.

  Immediately, they all began talking, but they were soon persuaded by the corporal to be quiet, and luckily they heard another truck – or a car, perhaps. That was it. The exercise with the compass and map was abandoned, and everyone began clearing jungle in earnest in the direction of the noise. The men never found the target location they had aimed at, but they were eventually able to hitch a lift back to Port Dickson.

  Digger also lost his appendix while stationed at Port Dickson. He and Joe were on one of their leisurely cycle trips in July 1941 when he fainted suddenly. Joe quickly found help and Digger was rushed to the 10th Australian General Hospital (AGH) at Malacca, about eighty kilometres to the south. The 10th AGH was very well set up, complete with well-trained nurses who were loved by their patients for the care they provided. But no matter how much the patients loved them, the nurses were always in charge.

  One very warm evening while Digger was at the 10th AGH, Sister Geoffrey came around the ward. She was especially friendly and loved by every patient in her care. As she walked through the ward, Digger was lying there with an erection, which was very obvious under the light sheet that covered him.

  Sister Geoffrey did not back away from the challenge. She marched straight up to Digger’s bed, smiled sweetly and asked him to close his eyes. Digger did so and leaned back on his pillows, not knowing what to expect but with his imagination running wild.

  He suddenly heard a very loud slap and felt a sharp pain in his nether regions as Sister Geoffrey brought both her hands together suddenly and swiftly to create a sandwich. ‘Goodnight, boys,’ she called out as she turned and walked out of the ward.

  The other patients were laughing fit to burst, but Digger lay there gasping, the sheet lying straight across his belly.

  Despite this incident, Digger saw his hospitalisation as the highlight of his stay in Malaya. He got to know all the nurses, most of whom were among the sixty-five nurses evacuated on a small coastal steamer, the Vyner Brooke, the following year, just before the fall of Singapore.5

  By August 1941, the men of the 2/9th Field Ambulance knew that Japan would join Germany and the other European Axis powers in the war, and therefore that its Imperial Army would invade Malaya. The Japanese were continually expanding their empire in China, and now, with the agreement of the Vichy French government in Indochina, they landed 40,000 troops in Indochina (the present-day countries of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam).

  Meanwhile, the Australians, under Major General Gordon Bennett, were made responsible for the defence of Johor and Malacca in the south of the Malayan peninsula. The 2/9th Field Ambulance’s B Company was moved to Mersing on the eastern coast. Digger and Joe, who were with A Company, went with the rest of the 2/9th to Kota Tinggi, eighty kilometres south of Mersing and just north of the big smoke of Singapore.

  The main relaxation activity when we were at Kota Tinggi was the canteen. I guess it is the same for young soldiers the world over. Joe and I would be there most evenings for a beer or three, and for some of the blokes it was a lot more than three. It was strong Tiger beer, served in ten-ounce glasses. Sometimes there would be arguments that ended up in fights.

  One night just such an argument broke out. Now, Hec Graham was a big bloke and was always looking for a fight. Joe, the stupid little bugger, kept looking at Hec – why, I’ve no idea – but Hec naturally asked him what the fuck he was so interested in and grabbed him by his shirt. Without thinking, I shouted at him to pick on someone his own size. He immediately responded with, ‘Right, you’ll do – outside!’

  I followed him outside and down the broad steps of the canteen building. I knew he would thrash me but there was no stopping now, so before we got to the bottom of the steps I threw the hardest punch I could muster at his head. The next thing I remember is being in the barracks with Joe trying to stop my nose bleeding. Hec had belted the shit out of me.

  Poor old Hec was eventually part of a group that was moved from Changi to Sandakan, in northern Borneo, to work on the construction of an airstrip. He died there, or on one of the infamous marches from there to Ranau, in early 1945.

  There were many well-remembered fights in Singapore at this time that did not involve the Japanese. The most famous altercation was the so-called ‘Battle of the Union Jack Club’ between Australian soldiers and the fiery Scotsmen of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. It all started when an Australian made a remark to one of the Argyll men that the Scot considered offensive – the Scot had poured beer over his head. Many soldiers on both sides were injured in the ensuing ruckus. Later, an Australian soldier was killed in a brawl that became known as the ‘Battle of Lavender Street’.6

  On the whole, though, Digger found Kota Tinggi to be a great place. Life went on much as it had in Port Dickson, with a mixture of training and relaxation. Having a haircut was one of the great pleasures in Kota Tinggi. The barber shops were all staffed by beautiful girls, and after you got your hair cut, if the girl liked you she would then ask if there was ‘anything else’ she could do for you. The men very quickly learned that this signalled that she was willing to take you to the back room for sex. The cost was considerably more, but it was well worth it, if the very short hairstyles around the camp were anything to judge by. The troops also had access to Singapore, and so could patronise Miss Lily’s and other similar establishments.7

  ‘Blue-light centres’ were medical establishments that soldiers were encouraged to visit after they had sex with prostitutes, in order to prevent them from getting venereal disease. They were simply rooms in buildings that the army had rented for the purpose, but they were very well signposted. These clinics were manned by Digger and other members of the 2/9th Field Ambulance, and were set up in appropriate areas near the red-light districts, such as Lavender Street, because the sooner treatment was administered, the more likely it was to be effective.

  At the blue-light centre, the soldier was given a small tube with a long, thin nozzle at one end. He was required to push this nozzle up the eye of his penis, and then to squeeze the ointment out of the tube and into the urethra. The arsenic and bismuth ointment was supposed to kill the gonorrhoea or syphilis bacteria before they had time to infect the individual. Soldiers were also given antiseptic soap and water and told to wash themselves thoroughly, in order to get rid of any external parasites.

  You know, the insight you got working at the blue-light centres around Singapore was really something. Number one, of course, was not to bloody get infected. You very soon noticed that it wasn’t the blokes that came to the centre on a regular ba
sis that got infected – it was more likely to be blokes you rarely or never saw. We all knew who had VD because they had to attend special clinics run by the doctors. It never ceased to amaze me what a little arsenic and bismuth could do. I gradually became really interested in the work. Because I talked a lot to the officers – who were the doctors, of course – I began to wonder whether, despite the fact I had left school so early, I might be able one day to become a doctor myself.

  Some of the officers of the 2/9th knew that Digger was developing an ambition to become a doctor, and they organised for him to get as much experience as possible at this time. He was seconded to work in the venereal diseases ward at the British army hospital at Tanglin. Some of the Pommies he treated appeared to have no respect for themselves. They would be cured and then within a few weeks they would be back with another dose. Digger also worked for a short time in the cancer ward at the Malayan hospital in Kuala Lumpur; there many of the patients died from arsenic poisoning, which was a common treatment for cancer at the time.

  Despite the generally good times the soldiers were enjoying in Malaya and Singapore, the war with Japan was creeping closer. Digger was on guard at Kota Tinggi – complete with his .303 rifle, specially issued just for this duty – on 8 December 1941, the night the Japanese first bombed Singapore.

  It was about five a.m. and Digger was on the final round of his guard duty. He was too far from Singapore to have heard the bombing, which had begun at 4:15 a.m. The usual night noises of the tropical jungle and the first calls of birds were shattered by a very loud bang, which was quickly followed by several others a little further away. At the same time, he heard planes flying overhead in a northerly direction.