Four Fires (85 page)

Richie's a real game bugger and he's that good on his feet and at keeping his head out the way, ducking and weaving, I still can't hit him. So Mad Mick comes up from behind and clobbers Richie Murray with the pick handle. After that Richie Murray and me became mates.

'Another little invention of Lieutenant Moritake was known by the men as "Flying Lessons". For no reason whatsoever we'd be stopped and lined up and told to remove our hats and our eye protection and to

stand with our arms extended at shoulder height to either side, like a kid playing at flying, using his arms as wings.

We'd be ordered to stand like this, looking up at the sun, and if a guard copped you with your eyes closed or shoulders slumped, he'd thump you with the pick handle. We'd stand there for an hour without moving, though we'd seldom know the reason for the punishment. This particular exercise would strain your muscles to the point of collapse and even though you closed your eyes every moment there wasn't a guard nearby, the sun would burn the retina of your eyes so you couldn't see properly for hours later and the bloody headache would last all day.

Any bloke who collapsed, and there were a lot of them, myself included on more than one occasion, got the full attention of the basher gang. But you didn't have to do nothing, you copped it anyway, the guards would walk down the ranks hitting out willy-nilly into the rib cage under your extended arms. These whacks left livid marks across the ribs and back and if you only got one, you didn't bother to mention it, two and you could claim corporal status, three and you'd hear blokes saying, "I got me sergeant's stripes at flying practice today." Although there were incidents and constant beatings, while the Japs thought they were winning the war, the first year wasn't too bad. Seven blokes died that year in B Force and none that I recall from torture. But already there were signs of sickness that would later cause havoc among the men.

We'd been in the tropics now nearly a year and POWs more than six months, and the tropics under the conditions we were in is no place for the white man. Some of us were starting to develop tropical ulcers, you've seen the scars on me legs, but there's other things, not bad at first but later, dysentery which I'd copped in Singapore, malaria, beri-beri and, in the heat and humidity, rice balls.' 'Rice balls! What's that?'

Mate, it's a fungus, an infection you get in the tropics and it leaves the skin on your balls raw and bleeding and it's so itchy you'd happily rip them out and throw them to the shithouse if you could! Then later there's deaths from malarial meningitis. Later still, when we're starving and most of us haven't got no boots and walk around barefoot, we pick UP hookworm and various types of intestinal worm as well from trying

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to eat stuff we find. There's bloody nothing good to say about the tropics, the blackfellas can keep all of it as far as I'm concerned.

'Being a bushie I'm a bit interested in the environment and whenever I get a chance I have a bit of a fossick around, seeing what can be et, what can't. I don't mean bandicooting, that's different, I'm looking around in the jungle seeing if there's wild stuff you can eat.'

'What's bandicooting?'

'Bandicooting? Yeah well, after a while we find a way to get under the wire at night and into the vegie garden, which the Japs reckoned belonged to them. We'd go looking for tapioca mostly.

The trick was to dig under the plant and pinch a fair amount of the tapioca root and then cover where we've disturbed the soil so the plant is still standing, and there's no evidence it's been tampered with. That's bandicooting.

'There's been no successful escape from Sandakan but it's always on yer mind. I've took the trouble to learn a fair bit of Malay from the native workers and the blokes who come to trade with us at the airstrip and I'm good enough for some of the other blokes to let me barter for them. So I'm fossicking in the jungle working out what can be et. In the back of me mind is that maybe if things get too bad I may try to escape

someday.

'We're doing okay at the airfield, falling behind schedule, and then in October, there's this big parade, some Jap bigwig, a Major Suga, is due to make an inspection of the airfield. You'd have thought he was a general, the Japs are running around like chooks with their heads cut off, getting everything ready. Hoshijima is shitting himself, thinking something will go wrong and there's warnings every day that if any of us fuck up we're in for the high jump. Well, the major turns up and we're paraded and it's blah-blah-blah but then he says in English, "All Japanese officers - Samurai. All Japanese officers - honnable. You work hard, finish airfield, you be fine!"

'Then next morning at tenko we are told that the airstrip has now been increased to 1400 metres, which is about one mile, and that it still has to be ready for a trial landing before Christmas!

Mate, those of us working on the airstrip don't reckon it's humanly possible. The monsoon season is just about on us and there's no beating that.

'Then the Japs in their wisdom decide we'll work better without our senior officers interfering and trying to look after the welfare of the men. So Colonel Walsh our C.O. and some of the other senior officers are sent to Kuching. Seven majors and officers of middle rank remain. A year later, at the end of 1943, they clear them out as well and all but eight officers from our camp are sent to Kuching, leaving us with one officer for every two hundred and fifty men.

The Japs reckon the best way to work us harder is to beat us harder and we're now working seven days a week and copping more shit than ever. We've built the whole strip layer by layer, a layer of river pebbles and a layer of tufa, but the Jap officers decide that drains are not necessary though Blind Freddy can see what happens every time it rains. Well, it's not our job to tell them, is it? There are blokes among us who know a bit about engineering and reckon as soon as the monsoon season comes it's bye-bye no more aeroplane fly.

'The first early rains come and nature as usual proves who's the boss. It's November, not even the proper monsoon season yet, and there's this dirty great bog appears just where it shouldn't be on the strip and soon it turns into a shallow lake. Tufa is still the boss and the Japs bring in this ancient wood-fired steamroller to try to squeeze the water out and, as well, a Ruston-Bucyrus 10-RB Universal Excavator. It's the first real machinery we've had up to now and, except for the skips and the rails, Sandakan must be the first airstrip of any size in the world that's been built entirely by hand with hoes and shovels, wicker baskets and hand-pushed skips.

'The excavator gives up on the first day. The Japs move it to the boiler house near the camp, hoping one of the POWs can fix it. It gets fixed all right. A POW named Stevens fills its sump
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with sand. The steamroller is then used to try and squeeze the moisture out of the strip. It keeps getting bogged but we manage to pull it free and it's doing all right until it hits the boggy patch.

It's going puff-puff-puff, shooting clouds of blue smoke into the air and then it kind of slows down a bit, but still keeps going and we're all watching cause we know whats going to happen. It hits the boggy patch, falters and stops, and, still upright, sinks slowly into the tufa bog and disappears.

The Japs are ropeable, like it's our fault, and Mad Mick and 18 §ang go troppo, all of us close by cop a bashing and there's more

"sergeants" made instantly from the flying pick handles than at any flying practice I can remember. They beat us until they can't raise their arms. Then they decide they need drains after all, so we're set to work to dig a network of drains across the strip. The steamroller is kaput so now they make us stamp the surface with our feet, which works pretty well.

'Somehow we've completed enough of the first landing strip to allow for the official opening in early December. On the day, a lone bomber lands and you'd have thought the Japs had won the war. There's extra rations all round and we have a sports day to celebrate. Not a rest day, a day of runnin' and jumpin' and boxing and wrestlin' and a crosscountry race around the perimeter of the camp with guards stationed all the way. The trouble was, those blokes who'd been excused from work because they were supposed to be sick couldn't resist joining in, so from then on you had to be bloody sick to stay in the camp.

'There's not a lot more I can say about the airfield/ Tommy continues, 'except we're way behind schedule and even the Japs can see that beating us harder ain't gunna work and that there's more men needed. So in June 1943, just about a year after we come to Sandakan, five hundred blokes from E Force arrive. They've first been sent to an island called Berhala and then later on to us and they've come to work on the airfield as well. They're separated from us in a different camp and in a different work gang on the airfield. Don't know why that is, we're allAussies.

'Hoshijima makes all of them shave their heads so that the guards will know they're members of E Force and not confuse them with us. At the same time, just to make life bloody impossible, guard dogs are introduced. With the dogs patrolling the fences, getting out at night to scrounge for food is now more difficult. In October '43, the Japs move all but eight officers to Kuching and the E Force blokes move in with us.

'One of the E Force blokes in my hut, Nelson Short, is a bit of a songwriter and musician. He's made this ukulele from some scrap three-ply timber and signal wire; he's used part of a broken comb for the frets, and the pegs he's made from ground-down glass. He's got a real good voice like a professional singer and often when we're feeling low he'll reach for his ukulele and sing for us some of the good old songs and some he wrote himself.

One of his own songs was so good that we all learned to sing it. We even got a bit of harmony going/

I know Tommy's got a good ear for poetry so I ask right off, 'Can you remember the song?'

'Of course/

'Couldn't sing it for me, could ya?'

'Christ, mate, you don't want to miss nothing, does yer?' Tommy starts to sing, it ain't much of a voice and I reckons it's probably been a while since he's done any singing.

'I'm dreaming of Australia,

The land we left behind,

Dreaming of the loved ones,

We could always hear in mind.

Although it's only fancy,

Our hearts within us yearn.

But we'll make up for lost moments,

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When to Aussie we return.

'There'd he sailing on the harbour, The Showhoat our first choice.

Or mayhe we'd he dancing, Listening to our sweetheart's voice.

Although it's only fancy,

Our hearts within us yearn,

But ive'll make up for lost moments,

When to Aussie we return.

'We had a few good concerts in the camp right up to July 1944 when things started turning really bad and the Japs banned concerts. by then, we didn't feel much like singing anyhow, apart from Nelson wno seemed to think it was his duty to keep our spirits up. I heard from someone that he was a really crook soldier. If it was true, he made up for it in the camp a hundred times over.

'The officers remaining in the camp after October '43 must have been chosen personal by Hoshijima with the help of the Australian liaison officer, Captain Cook.

The first thing that happens is that some of the senior NCOs who've been receiving extra rations for doing bugger-all are elevated to the status of what the Japs call "Camp Masters".

'What's more, Captain Cook and one or two others are having their tea at night in Hoshijima's quarters. Can you bloody imagine, they're eating tucker from Hoshijima's table! There's no bones showin' through their flesh, I can vouch for that, their stomachs are full, tight as a drum and it ain't from beri-beri neither. Among ourselves we refer to them as "White Japs" and we're not gunna take orders from scum like them.

'There's Brit officers done the same before they were moved to Kuching. Twenty-five o' them would march out of the camp with polished boots and best khaki drill to eat at Hoshijima's canteen. It's like they're on their way to the regular officer's mess in peacetime. They get stuck into bananas, pineapples, doughnuts, toffee, coffee and lots of other good tucker and this feast costs them the grand total of seventy-five cents each and at the end they do a mass salute to a Jap second lieutenant who's on canteen duty.' Tommy turns to me, 'I must say it wasn't all their officers done that, some o' them refused Hoshijima's invitation to use his "Friendship Garden", which is the Japanese canteen.

'The worst of our lot is Captain Cook, he's as plump as a Christmas chook and the longer he stays fat, the less authority he commands among the men. Cook isn't an officer's backside, he's never been to battle and has a temporary rank, he's an administrator, a pen-pusher. He was originally the liaison officer but now he's the commandant of the camp, selected personal by Hoshijima to the disgust of the officers who were sent to Kuching. He can't get the respect of the men and in July '44 he starts reporting his own men to Hoshijima for punishment. Next thing the toadying bastard does is ask Hoshijima to build a bigger punishment cage to be positioned next to Esau.'

'Esau? What's that?'

'Oh, I forgot to say about that, didn't I. Esau is the original punishment cage and you could be put into it for doing the smallest bloody thing wrong. It was an agonising form of punishment too. They

placed it near the big tree facing the guardhouse. All it is, is a little oblong wooden cage made of wooden slats so you can see out. It's on stilts about two feet off the ground with a solid floor and a solid ceiling made of planks, there's a little door on one side you have to crawl through and once you're inside, all you can do is sit with your knees up against your chest. The ceiling is so low you can't stand up, you have to sit at attention through the heat of the day. At night the mosquitoes bite the living daylights out of you. Do something to annoy the Japs and you'd find yourself in Esau. They even put Padre Wardale-Greenwood in.' 'Oops! Here comes another VC,' I say to myself. 'He's caught taking the place of one of the blokes in the work gang at the