Chapter Three

In these early days one of our good friends, Laurie Scarborough, became ill, diagnosed by the Japs as suffering from TB. This scared them so they moved him and four of us into isolation in an adjoining cell, where, after a week or so, Laurie passed away. We had to take him out of the jail to a field where a trench had been dug, filled with bamboo and a metal grille placed on top with his body on that. The lot was soused with petrol and set alight. It was not burning fast enough so we were made to get bamboo poles to keep turning the body to speed up the decomposition. This has caused me to have nightmares over many years, and no doubt did the same to the rest of the party.

One day the Japs came to the compound with some squares of white cloth with Japanese script round the edges and a large central Japanese number in the centre. These were to sew onto our shorts for identification. The difficulty was deciding which way up they should go. I had a good laugh at their quandary because my number, eleven, was unmistakable as follows: 11. I got a shock when a Jap came up and belted me, calling me stupid (bugaro). The Jap eleven is actually (=).

We did not have a doctor with us but decided we ought to have something akin to a medical room but the only person with any medical experience was a sergeant named Smeraldo, of Italian descent. He changed his name to Esmerald, being afraid of the Japs' reaction to him being on the opposite side to their allies. He refused to have anything to do with a sick bay or anything like it.

A tank crew was brought in to the camp one day, one of whom had a broken ankle which we attempted to set, totally incorrectly, and his foot was set at about ninety degrees from where it should have been. He was lame for the three years of his captivity, though, no doubt, the leg could be re-set when he got home. His leg had been broken when he had jumped from the tank which had had a Molotov cocktail thrown into it. His wound was full of maggots; we took them out, leaving just a few of them to clean out the wound.