The Forgotten Highlander (10 page)

Now Singapore was on its own. The only force that could have helped us was lying at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. A mish-mash of eighty thousand men from at least half a dozen nationalities and from both regular and volunteer regiments, some with little or no training, were defending the island with rapidly diminishing air support.

Morale plummeted and when our engineers blew up the huge British naval base to deny its use to the Japanese it plunged even further. The whole point of ‘Fortress Singapore’ had been to protect the giant Keppel naval base that we had just blown up on Churchill’s orders. It was obvious that the game was up and troops began to desert in large numbers. Singapore, which had very few air raid shelters for the civilian population, stood in chaos and an epidemic of lawlessness and looting broke out. There were thousands of deserters, particularly among the Australians, who were more ‘bolshie’ than us and who could see that it was impossible to fight without air cover. Many of these men fought to get on to the ships sent to rescue women and children and the military police were forced to fire over their heads to stop them storming the gangways on to the ships. Dozens swarmed aboard by shimmying up the mooring ropes so desperate were they to get out and escape. Yet incredibly troop ships were still arriving, disgorging into this abyss more young Australians, many of them poorly trained. Some had literally never fired a shot. They were lambs to the slaughter. It was an awful waste.

Fort Canning soon became the prime Japanese target. For the first two weeks of February the Japanese kept up a barrage of bombing and shelling aimed at the underground Battlebox and its surroundings. To us huddled on the hill, ridiculously poorly armed and basically defenceless, the shelling was much worse than the bombing and more accurate too. The shells whistled in all the time and we could only pray that our names were not on them. We were just so vulnerable. The boys were especially scared and stayed below in the basement. Even the normally effervescent Freddie remained uncharacteristically quiet and subdued. It was a terrifying time for all of us.

On 8 February, just two months after the first bombs fell, the Japanese landed on the island and intense fighting ensued. From our hilltop position we could see much of the action. A few days later they entered Singapore City and then on 14 February came the terrible news that Japanese soldiers had committed a massacre at the Alexandra military hospital. Three hundred and twenty-three patients, doctors and nurses were systematically murdered in the shadow of the Red Cross that was meant to protect them. The invaders actually bayoneted some of the patients on the operating table.

When I read the signal about the massacre I could not believe my eyes; it sent my stomach into knots and my mind reeling. But I resolved to keep quiet about it. There was no point in spreading fear and alarm.

Churchill had urged a fight to the end and General Archibald Wavell, our supreme commander, told troops that it would be ‘disgraceful’ if the much hyped fortress of Singapore were lost. But to me it was inevitable that we would fall. All of my previous experiences in Singapore, the arrogance, frivolity and sheer ineptitude suggested we were no match for anyone, let alone a well-organised and determined aggressor.

On 15 February, shortly after the news of the Alexandra massacre arrived, the shelling stopped and a ceasefire was proclaimed. With good reason Percival feared another ‘Rape of Nanking’, the 1937 massacre which had seen the Japanese slaughter three hundred thousand Chinese over a six-week period. With water cut off and no air cover the situation was deemed impossible. During humiliating negotiations in the Ford factory, Percival was bluffed into surrendering to an overstretched and much smaller Japanese force.

Amazingly, for reasons unknown, no order was given to us to destroy the files at Fort Canning and when the Japanese came marching in twenty-four hours later they helped themselves to all of our military secrets.

The end of the shelling came as a relief but we lived in terror of the Japanese arriving and the fear of the unknown gnawed away at us. The boys kept on asking what would happen to us. Naturally I kept the news of the Alexandra Hospital events to myself. I did not want to panic the young lads, who were fearful enough already. After two weeks of shelling and now surrender, we were a bag of nerves. I think that feeling sorry and concerned for the boys prevented me from feeling sorry for myself.

On 16 February the Japanese entered Fort Canning. Sometime during mid-morning I was stood in the office with the boys, when looking out the window I saw Japanese soldiers for the first time. The privates came ahead of the column and rushed buildings, bundling everyone outside. The boys went extremely quiet and retreated into the corner of the office. Barely able to keep my voice from breaking I whispered, ‘Be very quiet and do what they say.’

Then suddenly two Japanese soldiers burst into the office. They were quite young and very volatile – excited and angry, their eyes looked filled with fury and hate. Yammering and screaming in Japanese, they began jabbing their bayonets at our chests. It was so petrifying, I felt as if the bayonet had pierced my heart and I was staring death in the face. The boys behind me looked on in abject, open-mouthed terror. I had no idea what these soldiers in their mud-coloured, oversize uniforms were saying but in a daze I handed over my old rifle and put my hands over my head. Thoughts of Alexandra Hospital raced through my mind.

They punched, slapped and kicked us outside, where an astonishing sight met our eyes: hundreds of men filing out of the underground bunker, their hands above their heads, fear writ large across their ashen faces. They lined up alongside us. Then everyone was rounded up at bayonet point into rows and left standing. As we waited for a long time in the burning midday sun, some of the Japanese privates went down the rows of fearful soldiers snatching watches off wrists, cigarette lighters, packets of cigarettes, pens, money, stealing anything of value. No one had the temerity to object to the thievery. Many officers had their faces slapped indiscriminately and their epaulettes ripped off, their caps thrown to the ground.

A Scouser corporal whom I knew from around the base was standing beside me and the boys. He whispered in my ear, ‘Can’t one of the officers do something? This is looking serious, Alistair.’

‘Just keep your mouth shut. There’s nothing to be done. We’re at their mercy now.’

As we stood there in the blazing sun without food, water or shelter, the horrible reality broke over me in sickening, depressing waves. I was part of Britain’s greatest-ever military disaster, a captive – just like some 120,000 others captured in the Battle of Malaya. I was a prisoner. It was a gut-wrenching realisation to think that my liberty was gone and no telling for how long it would be so. I kept a brave face on for the boys, whose eyes were on stalks but who stayed mute. This was the worst moment of my life.

Hours later the Japanese commander arrived, strutting in front of his car. He looked us over disdainfully, scowling with a mixture of disgust and contempt before barking orders to his officers and promptly leaving. They put us into columns and told us to march. We didn’t know where to; we were little more than cattle to our captors. But it transpired that we were to cover the eighteen miles to Changi. The Changi peninsula housed the famous prison, the Selarang barracks and a sprawling ramshackle complex that would become a vast permanent POW camp for twenty thousand prisoners. I dreaded to think how different Selarang would look and what awaited us.

We were in a very poor state on the march from Fort Canning to Changi. Utterly dejected and deep in despair we trudged along, prodded on by bayonets and with stragglers subjected to vicious treatment by the Japanese. There was no defiant singing and little display of pride. We felt defeated and downtrodden. The sheer uncertainty was the worst thing. What was going to happen to us? The thought kept on returning. In the back of my mind the Alexandra Hospital massacre loomed and I really thought that the same fate awaited us. The boys were as anxious as I was but to begin with they did not really show it. They were still in shock.

Then, as we marched along the dusty road, without warning a horrific sight confronted us. We came face to face with a thicket of severed Chinese heads, speared on poles on both sides of the road. The mutilated bodies of these poor souls lay nearby and the heads, with their eyes rolled back, presented a truly shocking spectacle. The sickly sweet smell of rotting, putrefying flesh smothered us. Retching and fighting the instinct to be sick, I shouted to the boys to keep their eyes to the ground. For the rest of our march spiked heads, mainly Chinese, appeared at intervals in this way. The Japanese had been busy with their samurai swords and had created a hellish avenue to terrify and intimidate. The tactic certainly succeeded.

Unknown to us we had just walked into the middle of the ‘Sook Ching’ massacre, a well-planned Japanese purge of Chinese opponents, both real and potential. More than fifty thousand Chinese were murdered with the sickening sadism that seemed endemic in the Japanese Army. The worst of thoughts now flashed through our minds.

Next I saw a column of at least a hundred Chinese civilians being marched across a pedang in the same direction as us. They wore white shorts and white T-shirts but were blindfolded. It struck me then as strange that we had not also been blindfolded. The future of these hapless Chinese, I thought, looked especially gloomy. It was obvious that they were about to be killed. Paradoxically it made me feel a little better about our own immediate future – after all we were not blindfolded.

About a week later I heard that the Chinese we had seen had indeed been massacred – machine-gunned along with hundreds of others on the beach at Changi. British POWs on a work party had to dig a mass grave for hundreds of bodies. When I heard that news my already diminishing spirits sank even lower. I felt that we were sitting on a time bomb and it would not be long until it went off.

During the march we saw plenty of other frightening and dismal sights. Bloated and shattered bodies of all nationalities, both civilian and military, lay strewn everywhere covered in great blankets of flies. Some of the local population lined the streets, waving Japanese flags, welcoming the invaders with open arms. They sneered and spat and snarled at us. Only the Chinese seemed restrained – they knew only too well what Japan’s offer of ‘Asia for the Asians’ really meant, but many of the Tamils, Malays and Sikhs fell for it. It was heartbreaking to see, yet after what I had witnessed I could understand their predicament. A few days earlier the Union Jack had fluttered proudly over the Cathay Building; now the Japanese ‘Rising Sun’ flew in its place. The sun had well and truly set on Imperial Britain’s Far East hopes. Many locals were left with little choice but to support the latest batch of colonisers. A very brave, mainly Communist, minority fought on.

By the time we got to Changi it was dark and we were in bad shape – exhausted, dehydrated and traumatised. The army buildings on the Changi peninsula were designed to accommodate four thousand men and in those first days of captivity we were over fifty thousand. The camp was already crammed full with thousands of prisoners and the barracks were also beyond capacity – the only space left was standing room in the barracks square. I kept the boys with me and had to be pretty firm with Freddie because he wanted to go off on his own and search for some spare space for us.

The mood was one of complete devastation and total desolation. It was degrading beyond words and humiliation hung over us like a heavy black cloud. There were no toilets, you just had to go where you stood. The Japanese had surrounded the perimeter and had machine guns trained on us. It was hopeless. To try to escape or organise a mass rush would have resulted in a massacre.

More and more POWs kept flooding into the camp. The arrival of each fresh group added to our dejection and bewilderment. We eventually found a space to lie down and get some fitful sleep.

The next morning prisoners came around with pails of food, ladling out servings into the mess tins we had brought with us. It was a kind of stew with green vegetables in it. We had not eaten in twenty-four hours and it tasted delicious. It was the last ‘proper’ meal we would get for some time. There would be only rice from here on in.

Food and the lack of it would swiftly become an obsession for all of us prisoners. The rice we got was sub-standard, quite literally the sweepings off the warehouse floor normally considered inedible, contaminated with vermin droppings, maggots and all sorts. We were grateful for every grain of it. The food was always served outdoors on the parade ground, for breakfast, lunch and tea, from four huge cast-iron pots. The Gordons had their own line and allowed no pushing to the front. We all knew what we were getting and how much of it. It was tough to stomach the plain rice after a while and you really had to force it down.

It was particularly difficult for the boys. But Colonel Graham took an enlightened view and decided that they should get more food than the rest of the POWs. They received a cup and a half of rice to our single cup, which the cooks factored into the total. Had other prisoners known I am sure that there would have been objections to their extra half-cup. But the boys knew they had to keep it to themselves so as not to cause resentment. Had there been any trouble over it, though, I would have stood up for them. They needed the extra sustenance more than we did. They were going through puberty and needed what little extra boost a half-cup of rice could provide.

Once most of the prisoners had moved out to occupy other buildings on the peninsula, we had some more space and moved into our old barracks. It was total chaos. Fights sparked like wildfire over perceived prime positions. Fists flew at the smallest infringement of space. Thankfully the officer in charge of assigning places put the boys and me into a small wooden outhouse building. It had been used for storage previously but it suited us fine, with just enough room for four camp beds and little else. Not that we had any possessions anyway. All I had were the clothes on my back, a cheap wristwatch, a few pencils, my mess tin and my cache of photographs. I was pleased to have our own space and the boys were happy too.