Descent into Hell: The fall of Singapore - Pudu and Changi - the Thai Burma railway

by Peter Brune

  . . . sunken eyes, tight skin over shrunken bodies and stringy muscles, they are little more than skeletons . . . Some have the muck of dysentery and raddled bowels trickling down their legs, washed away by the pouring rain. They don’t pay any heed to it. It has been their condition for so long, they are past caring and can’t stop it anyway. And they simply have nothing to wipe the mess away—not a bit of rag or anything else.62

  The British camp at Tonchan therefore suffered from a complete breakdown of command. McKellar and his junior officers did not enforce discipline and demonstrated neither courage nor compassion. Peek records the determined efforts of the RMO to sterilise cooking utensils and the men’s pannikins, and his efforts to treat his sick with virtually no drugs or instruments, much less with any assistance from the officers in matters of camp hygiene and discipline. In all this, the RMO was virtually a lone hand operating in an tragic environment of indifference. It is little wonder, therefore, that when the killer called cholera hit Tonchan South the British camp was decimated. Such hopelessness and despair caused a number of men of all nationalities on the Railway to quite simply give up on life.

  The men of ‘U’ Battalion were witnesses to the plight of the British. Frank Baker actually treated a number of them during the cholera outbreak:

  . . . this particular Pommy came in, I put him in the tent, and I thought he had cholera too, and he was filthy dirty! His clothes were stiff! . . . I got two of our blokes to wash him. They took him around the back of the tent and they scrubbed hell out of him. He was crying! He hadn’t had a wash . . . and there were lots of them like that! So the clothes, I wasn’t going to do anything with them, I sent them back to his unit. And the bloody Pommy [officer] was over to see Reggie Newton! Who was I, a miserable sergeant, to send these clothes back to him! . . . And Reggie looked at the clothes and said, ‘Would you wash ’em?’ He said, ‘That’s not the point!’ And he [Newton] said, ‘That is the point! You take ’em and wash ’em!’ Because Reggie Newton was that sort of bloke. And he came to me afterwards and he said, ‘What did you do to this Pommy?’ And I explained, and the matter was closed.63

  In separate interviews with the author, Privates Gus Halloran and Jim Stewart both recounted the story of the infamous ‘Rin Tin Tin’. Halloran:

  We had two blokes . . . we had a tent there at Tonchan, and we had tents generally, and we had the Pommies across the creek from us. Now we, Newton and Hinder ran a very tight ship; everything was boiled, if you were using spoons, forks or ladles they were all sterilized. You had boiling water the whole time. And we lost, I think, six or seven people. But the Poms really . . . we had the classic case of a SergeantMajor______it was really raining, it was the wet season . . . he and other sergeants were living in a tent and they had those round mess tins and Sergeant-Major________ had an urgent call of nature and shat in his mate’s mess tin and used his towel to wipe this [sic] at night. And the Poms knew about it and everyone in camp knew about it . . . the Poms’ hygiene was very, very low. He was a very tough Sar-Major, but he wasn’t very disciplined!

  It all comes back to your shoko. Halloran: ‘. . . he [McKellar] was a very polished sort of British officer who didn’t do anything for his troops—that’s why, even the Poms referred to him as ‘Peanut’ McKellar.’64

  Peek’s book raises a further issue of importance to us. Prior to his arrival at Tonchan, he had been at Wampo (Lieutenant-Colonel McKellar had not been in command of this camp). Whilst there, Peek had seen British officers involved in purchasing and carrying parties to the River to meet barges.65 Given that the great majority of British officers avoided camp work and administration, Peek concluded that they were busy buying barge supplies of food—and one suspects very limited supplies of drugs—and were then running a canteen. Some items were not available to the ORs. He also recorded the occasional trip by officers to Tarsau for the purpose of ‘camp business’ and ‘to meet officers and parties from other camps’.66 Given that many of these officers lived and ate separately from their men; that the purchase and transport of supplies were undertaken by them and them alone; and that ‘occasional trips to Tarsau’ were made, it is obvious that these officers were organising their supplies through Boon Pong—and possibly others—at Tarsau, and then strictly supervising the control of such goods. We have stated that the barge supplies were much less likely to be pilfered in transit than those moved by road and therefore susceptible to ‘middlemen’. It is rather heinous therefore, that on occasions the ‘pilfering’ took place at the end of the journey and at times, not by the enemy, but by one’s own countrymen.

  If the British camp at Tonchan suffered horribly from a lack of leadership, then the coolie camp further upstream was a nightmare. We have discussed the severe handicaps encountered by the coolies all along the Railway. There was a lack of camp infrastructure and no leadership in matters of basic hygiene. Often a coolie’s family accompanied him in the camps. And once the ravages of a multitude of diseases hit them, the mortality rate was catastrophic.

  At Tonchan the British and Australians were detailed to dig mass graves for the coolies, heave or swing the corpses into those pits, and then cover them over. Denys Peek recorded the same shameful behaviour of the Japanese as did our ‘U’ Battalion veterans. When the numerous corpses were thrown in, the odd ‘corpse’ would attempt to slowly crawl out—a Japanese rifle butt or a blow with a spade was the solution. Peek noted the Japanese medical orderly sent from Tarsau ‘dressed all in white, with a face mask and gumboots’, and that his medical aid consisted of having the coolies ‘carried to our side of the road and left there for us to bury’.67 Newton noted that ‘we still had room in our hearts to pity them’ with their camps ‘rotten with the poisoned excrement of all the foul diseases that had struck them . . .’.68

  The story of ‘U’ Battalion’s low mortality rate on the Railway is, to a large extent, embodied in the uncompromising hygiene standards planned by Captain Hinder and executed by Newton. But surely one of Newton’s greatest triumphs was his relationship with the Tiger. This took two forms. The first was his day-by-day persistent attempts to gain any meagre concession from Hiramatsu. Whilst McKellar considered it beneath his dignity to communicate with, or stand up to the Tiger, Newton impressed him with his soldierly qualities, his discipline and, most likely, his sheer presence. Gus Halloran:

  He [the Tiger] had a good loud voice but nothing like Newton’s . . . he couldn’t match Newton’s! . . . Newton had a battalion voice the whole time, and that would’ve impressed the Tiger . . . he obviously was a well-trained soldier, and he would have had a regard for another well trained soldier.69

  But appearances were not everything. There was often a price to pay. Private Len Gooley, ‘U’ Battalion: ‘Reg would go in and be arguing with the Tiger, and he’d be getting belted out the door, and he’d go back again, and go back again . . . the Tiger used to get sick of it before him. Newton could be such a stubborn bugger, he wouldn’t give in.’70 However, if Newton played this daily role with the Tiger with great success, then his business acumen—which amounted to sheer bribery—was even more effective. When cholera descended on Tonchan, the Japanese guards ‘kept out of the way’ and spent their time gambling with the engineers. Newton and his officers soon discovered that the Tiger had lost very heavily and devised a master stroke. After being given permission to send a party to Tonchan Central to purchase extra canteen supplies, Newton ordered that the party attempt to discover when Boon Pong’s next visit was to occur. When his bargeload of supplies arrived four days later, Newton persuaded him [Boon Pong] to offer the Tiger a ten per cent ‘levy’ on the invoice for the supplies. It was simple bribery.71 While the Tiger had not a clue that ‘U’ Battalion was actually helping to pay off his gambling debts, the presence of the Tiger at the barge drop-offs assured Newton of his supplies—unhindered. Not many of the men of ‘U’ Battalion knew about the Tiger’s ‘commission’, but many knew that he had run up gambling debts with the engineers, and they won
dered why the Tiger accompanied Newton to the barges and seemed so ‘interested’ and compliant with the transactions. Sergeant Frank Baker:

  Oh Yes! See this was an arrangement Reggie had. He and Hiramatsu used to go down to the barges. Now Boon Pong was involved . . . well and truly. They used to go down and they used to do the deals down there . . . then they’d call for a working party to come and pick up . . . and there were large quantities! We did pretty well, very well . . . all due to Reggie’s negotiation with him [The Tiger]. Our administration was top! . . . I don’t know of anyone who did better.72

  When Rod Beattie took us not far along the present day highway from Newton’s Tonchan South camp and into the ‘bush’, we spent an afternoon examining a stretch of about a kilometre of ‘U’ Battalion’s work (as the crow flies). It is composed of four cuttings, one large and three small bridge sites, and the accompanying embankments and ledges. And once again, Beattie was at pains to point out that most of the labour had been provided by the British battalions over months of tedious work, and that ‘U’ Battalion’s job was to add to, or complete, a number of the projects. Yet again there was a recurring message: the quality of the Railway construction engineering is, on the whole, most impressive.

  It was eerie walking through the cuttings. The walls are only about five metres high but the methods employed are fascinating: when rock was encountered, the men had to hammer and tap a passage in the rock for dynamite, explode it (often a traumatic experience) and gather the rocks from inside the cutting. Then they had to lift them, or hand them up, or throw them up to the top of the cutting, and then repeat the seemingly never-ending process. ‘Hammer and tap’ was a slave labour device employed as a substitute for compressors and jackhammers. The work was done in pairs, one man on the crowbar and the other with a sledgehammer. Private Gus Halloran:

  . . . and hammer and tap is no joy . . . you see you turn it [the crowbar] as you go . . . each time he hits it you turn it . . . you’re working chips out of the granite . . . usually it was a metre a day . . . it just depends on how good your hammer and tap man was . . . you’d sometimes have to ask the hammer bloke to kindly go away . . . [skinned knuckles or smashed fingers] . . . for embankments, you’d dig holes and shovel that into baskets and the baskets would be carried, or in some cases slings, bags strung between two bamboos, and you’d cart the dirt to the embankment . . .73

  Rod showed us a cross-section of an embankment where it joined a former bridge, and you can see the quality of the workmanship—over sixty years later, each rock remains in place and fits perfectly into the embankment. Painstaking and accurate work. There is ample evidence along this stretch that the ledges were far easier going, as much of the dirt and rock was simply thrown over the side of the ledge.

  From June 1943 until its arrival at Tamuang near the beginning of the Railway in April 1944, Newton’s ‘U’ Battalion would work variously at Konyu No. 3 Camp, Hintok, back to Tonchan, Rin Tin and Tampie camps. In all this, Newton’s men were essentially used as ‘pinch hitters’ to bolster the numbers of workers needed along a given part of the line. And during most of these moves, contact with Boon Pong was maintained, camp sites were strictly administered and supervised, and, at each move, a trusted officer was left behind with funds and equipment to attend to the needs of the sick, until they could be recovered to the next occupied ‘U’ Battalion camp.

  In discussing the plight of POWs in the infamous Hellfire Pass area on the Railway, the Australian Official History has recorded that:

  . . . the mortality among troops in the Konyu-Hintok area varied from between 12 per cent in the battalions of Dunlop Force to as high as 50 per cent in others. In the period of unrelenting pressure men of various races and differing physiques suffered approximately the same mortality, because, no matter what reserve of physical strength and fortitude an individual possessed, in the long run he was driven to the same level of complete exhaustion and breakdown.74

  The second sentence contradicts the first. While there were a number of common elements of suffering which influenced the mortality rate for any given area on the Railway, there were other key survival factors.

  One of the most important was the duration of time spent on the Railway. Hellfire Pass is a case in point. Rod Beattie: ‘The Brits were already working there from November ’42, and they were dying from November ’42. Dunlop came up in January ’43 and then [moved] on, and then the D Force men, Quick, they turned up there in April.’75 Clearly, the British mortality rate was strongly influenced by the duration of time spent there: two months before Dunlop Force arrived. Further, Dunlop Force was exposed to work on the Railway three months before elements of ‘D’ Force arrived. Another factor was the utterly obscene one of fate: an individual POW had little or no control over cholera, dysentery, a ravaging tropical ulcer, beriberi, oedema, or a whole host of other medical afflictions; he was subject to accidents and working under harsh physical conditions; he was at the total mercy of unpredictable Japanese or Korean guards.

  But the two overriding survival factors on the Railway came down to food and drug supplements, and command competence. The first factor is a complicated one. We have discussed the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in Changi, on Singapore work parties and on the Railway. The ability of some POWs to enter Changi with funds or goods, to engage in the black market, to go ‘under the wire’—and for that matter to engage in lending schemes—has been discussed. Many of these activities were both fair and understandable. Driver Joe Nimbs is a Changi example. We have also noted Private ‘Shorty’ Cooper’s exploits in scrounging on a large scale with Newton’s ‘U’ Battalion. Again, such exploits were obviously for the individual’s good, but they also benefited his mates and sometimes the battalion as a whole.

  But what of the plight of the many who could not engage in such ventures for the want of funds, or items for sale, or who lacked the ‘street savvy’ qualities of others? The answer is that they were totally dependent on the competence of their commanders. We have noted the horrendous plight of the British at Tonchan, caused to a very large degree by a complete and utter breakdown of any sort of command structure. ‘D’ Force is reckoned to have had a low mortality rate amongst Australian forces on the Railway. It certainly had some advantages over others. When raised, Thompson recorded that it was to be manned by ‘only fit men capable of doing heavy manual work’;76 Newton’s Battalion was transported forward from Kanchanaburi by rail, and was not therefore subjected to exhausting marches as were some other forces; and there can be little doubt that the River Kwai provided a lifeline of supply that was denied ‘A’ Force. But underpinning all of this was Newton’s dynamic leadership—and that of other resourceful officers such as ‘Weary’ Dunlop elsewhere.

  A tragic illustration of the influence of command is a ‘D’ Force comparison between Newton’s ‘U’ Battalion and Quick’s ‘T’ Battalion. In his book, POW Prisoners of War, Australians Under Nippon, Hank Nelson quotes the experiences of VX 37051 Sergeant Don Moore of the 4th Anti-tank Regiment. Moore does not cite his ‘D’ Force Battalion, nor his commanding officer by name, but is quoted in the book as saying:

  There was one officer known as the White Jap. He was entirely dedicated to his own self-preservation. He was affluent by POW standards. He had money that he could lend where he’d be paid double or three times the price in English currency when he came back. This money had come from the proceeds of a canteen which he ran at a camp of which he was the commander. In this case it was a private enterprise purely and simply for himself. This fellow I speak of has never been back to any reunion that I know of.77

  Moore was a member of Major Quick’s ‘T’ Battalion.78 When Newton’s Battalion passed through Quick’s unit who were with ‘Australians from H Force’ at a camp called ‘Malayan Hamlet’, they were confronted by what Newton would later describe as ‘some of the first Australian no-hopers we had encountered . . .’79 They were ‘no-hopers’ because they had little hope and poor morale—they lack
ed leadership.

  There can be little doubt that conditions around the Konyu–Hintok (Hellfire Pass) area were tough, and that all battalions from all nationalities who camped there had a horrendous time, but the fact remains that Quick’s abysmal leadership compounded the problem. Newton’s men also served for a time at Hellfire Pass. Further, POWs who did not work there are somewhat—understandably—annoyed that the general public perceive that Hellfire Pass was in some way unique. Their point would seem entirely fair. When you stand in any number of Burmese or Thai railway cuttings, or climb any number of embankments, it is difficult to imagine that a day’s work in any of them would have been easier than in Hellfire Pass. Further, the horrendous speedo period was not confined to that venue.

  The mortality rates of ‘U’ Battalion and ‘T’ Battalion bear ample testimony to the issue of leadership. Rod Beattie has extensive records of the Australian Thai–Burma Railway mortality rates: each man’s army number; full name; original unit; Railway force; work areas; date of death; place of death; cause(s) of death; his age; next of kin; and his cemetery and plot identification.

  Beattie’s records show that Newton’s ‘U’ Battalion had 37 deaths on the Railway. The breakdown is intriguing. One man died by accident—a fractured skull caused by a falling tree. Of the 36 who died of sickness, nine died of amoebic dysentery, and three are listed as ‘dysentery’. Of the remaining deaths, four cited dysentery as a partial cause. Therefore, dysentery directly claimed 25 per cent of Newton’s fatalities and was a partial cause of death in another 11 per cent—dysentery therefore had an influence in 36 per cent of Newton’s sickness casualties.80