Chapter Eight

The hospital cell had been busy from its inception with many cases of beriberi caused by lack of vitamins from a main diet consisting of boiled rice. Dysentery was rife, but not generally needing hospitalisation, and there were some cases of malaria. Generally if someone got malaria and dysentery at the same time there was little hope for them.

One chap did not appear to have any severe illness but his dying seemed to indicate it was heartbreak as he continued to call out for his wife. One patient died trying to rid himself of rings etc. on all his fingers. Another patient from Leeds lay on his back for weeks with his legs wide open, unable to close them because his testicles were swollen almost like a football with beriberi. A civilian doctor from the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean had been imprisoned with us and was treating this chap by draining the excess fluid from his testicles. The treatment ceased when the doctor and his fellows were transferred elsewhere in Burma and the chap consequently passed away.

Another chap with beriberi was left unable to walk. He forced himself upright holding on to the wooden bars of the cell and forcing himself to use his legs. He continued to do this for week after week and eventually it paid off and he became capable of doing a few steps, improving all the time.

After over three years in the Rangoon Jail we were taken out of the compound to load up some hand carts with rice and sundries which were then left near the exit. Next day all the so-called fit men were marched out taking the hand carts with us.

We marched towards Pegu, near where we had been captured. We had been issued with Jap boots before we set off, but I, along with many others, got rid of them. After so long without footwear, though, we just could not wear them.

On the second day we were attacked by our fighter planes and we got off the road into the trees and bushes. I dived into a hedge and when the planes had gone, came out with blood streaming from my forehead. Everyone thought I had been hit but no, I had chosen a bramble bush to dive into. After this the Japs decided to hide up during the day and continue the march at night. We then found that our destination was Thailand to continue work as coolies.

We noticed on our way that the roads were being mined and that, along with the fact that fighter aircraft were frequently over, made us realise that our forces were very near. We stopped for the day at a large clearing surrounded by trees, bushes and hedges. We were hungry, not having eaten for two or three days.

The Japs posted armed guards and the rest of them called to a meeting which included the Brigadier who had been the officer commanding during our time in jail. I overheard a conversation between two sub-conductors, a Burmese-Anglo half-caste and an Indian in which they were discussing making a break for the Chin Hills. I approached them to ask to join them and was accepted. However this did not happen as the Brigadier returned, called us together to tell us that the Japs had gone, realising that they had little, if any, hope of getting away with us in tow.

Some RAF men came round asking for red, white and blue items of clothing and in the adjoining field fashioned a message from this stuff denoting that we were ex-POWs, and then surrounded the message warning to the aircraft crews. Their reply was to swoop down with guns blazing. Fortunately they were not good marksmen and none of the airmen were hit.

It was obvious that we were thought to be Japs because these planes were followed up by fighter bombers which came in and dropped bombs followed by cannon shells. A number of us lay down in a line behind a very big tree. I was the last in a line of ten and decided I would be safer in a bomb crater and tried to make my way to one.

The planes continued to come in, machine gunning, and I went to ground in a hedge trying to dig in with my hands feeling that every round was just missing me. The only person killed was the Brigadier, a travesty after all the years he had done his best for us.

We all scattered from this clearing and I, with half a dozen others, got to a native village and were put in a house on stilts and given some very welcome food. Shortly after a native Burmese came in and told us to be quiet as some Japs were in the space underneath. It was noticed that the attitude of the Burmese had now completely changed. They had had enough of the Japs and were now on our side.

Shortly after a British ex-POW came in to tell us that an American officer had contacted our troops and that we had to meet some paratroops about a mile away. We set off in semi-darkness and as darkness approached we contacted the paras, hefty African troops. One cannot describe our feelings. We were taken aboard open lorries which set off in the semi-darkness and soon passed a field where Japs were set out in battle order behind machine guns, dead to the last man.

Twenty-five of us were assembled at a prepared landing strip to be taken to Chittagong and then to another port in India. From there we were to be taken to the Poona area and a rehabilitation centre where we were to be built up before going home.

Eventually we boarded the aircraft, a twenty-five-seater Dakota. I was the last to board to find that one of the seats was taken up with luggage. I had to sit facing the doors, on the floor.

We set off eventually on our way to India. It was stifling hot in the aircraft so the Canadian crew removed the doors and I was left looking out into the night sky. It was now quite pleasant, but as we neared Akyab just off the Burma coast one of the engines failed and the pilot banked to circle and land at the Akyab airport which adjoined the hospital. I was now looking down through the open door and started sliding towards it. In panic I put my hand behind me and grabbed a strut in time; once again I was lucky that the aircraft walls were not upholstered.

We landed at Akyab airport and were met by one of the medical staff from the adjoining military hospital. When our pilot informed her that we were Jap POWs, she looked straight at my face and declared that I did not look like a Jap, but she was soon put right on that score. The Red Cross there could not do enough for us, especially when they found we had not received a single Red Cross parcel during our three and a quarter years in the Jap hands.

I think I have forgotten to mention about the change of status of the camp from a field prison camp to a proper prison camp. If I have mentioned this before it does not matter as it was indicative of the Japs' attitude and was to my mind at least one of the cruelest of the many cruelties they perpetrated.

When the Jap interpreter and the Jap senior officer attended to inform us of this they also said that this meant they would now be notifying our next of kin, at which everyone was ecstatic. They went on to say that this would be done methodically, one each month starting with Captain Atkinson (?) until all had been informed. As there were about two hundred prisoners it would take a very long time. Until then I had always thought that the worst thing they had done to us was not notifying our capture etc. This was as bad if not worse and it took a long time to rise out of the depths of misery.

At the Akyab hospital the Red Cross supplied us with hundreds of cigarettes and lots of other stuff we had missed for years. We were amazed to find one of our recently released prisoners chatting at the bedside of an injured Jap arranging to communicate with him after the war! We thought he was strange but we just ignored it.

We went back to the airport to be flown to Deolali where we were hospitalised but without having to stay in bed. We were issued with about one hundred cigarettes every couple of days, two pints of beer every day with extra on VE day. We were there to try to recover weight and fitness before our return to Britain with some little success.

Whilst all this was happening the sick prisoners were left by the Japs to fend for themselves. Some of them climbed onto the roof of the main building and painted "JAPS GONE" there.

Aircraft were flown over dropping welcome supplies of food and other necessities.

It is sixty-plus years since all of this happened, so not surprisingly some of the happenings are penned out of order and others momentarily forgotten.

One is that when the African paras left us with the British troops these happened to be our own battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment.

The Regimental Sergeant Major was the former Sergeant Major of one of the companies. He spotted one of his former company wearing only a worn out pair of shorts, ribs sticking out and like all of us in a very poor state. He took him into his arms, so moved as to be in tears. Shortly after a Sergeant reported that they had wounded a Jap sniper and what should they do with him, as he was dying slowly. "After what I have seen let the bugger die slowly" said the RSM.

Meanwhile, Tom and twenty-four others left for India in another Dakota. After a few miles they flew over an area with a few Japs who opened up on the aircraft, the pilot took evading action and dived towards the ground. A young officer standing towards the front of the plane passed out, everybody thinking he and the plane had been hit. Later when they were given the option of a quick flight home or a longer time on a ship all twenty-five elected for the journey by ship. As a consequence I arrived in York three weeks before Tom and possibly the first ex-Jap POW home in the city.

After so long in the captivity there were several problems for me, one being that I was so unaccustomed to female company that I had difficulty in their company, though two or three pints of beer helped to overcome this. I could be walking down the main street in York and a woman may come towards me in the opposite direction, I would stop and look in a shop window until she had gone past. Perhaps I should have gone to one of the rehabilitation centres towards getting accustomed to a much changed England from 1939/40 when I left.