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The Nightmare Brings Death
Early in the New Year men began to move out in parties of several thousand for unknown destinations. The news spread, however, that they were bound for Bampong, outside of Bangkok, to begin construction of a railway to Burma. The party which had gone Rangoon, having completed the air-strip, had begun work on the railway from the Burma end. It was intention of the Japanese, we learned later, thay these two parties should meet somewhere near the Three Pagoda Pass.
All these men who were transferred from Singapore were placed under the Thailand-Burma Command, but the two parties which left later, and which were known as ‘F’ and ‘H’ Force, were not transferred from Singapore Command, even though they went into Thailand. This fact explains why the Thailand Command took absolutaly no interest in their welfare.
The situation at the time, as far as we could gather from the friendly guards was this: The engineer in charge of the Burma-Thailand railway project had made a pagan boast to the Emperor that he would commit har-kiri if the railway was not finished by September, 1943.
While the tracks were being laid on fairly level ground conditions were not so bad, but engineering problems quickly eropped up when mountainous jungle regions were reached.
Rather than halt to make cuttings and tunnels, the engineer-in-charge decided to by-pass the wordt country and return to it when work on the flat country hsd been completed. He then made an estimate of the manpower at his disposal and the work still to be done, and came to the conclusion that he needed more men. So he sent to Changi for ‘F’ Force and ‘H’ Force to put though about 20 cuttings through as many ridges. OIt was agreed that the men recruited for these forces should be returned to Singapore as soon as the work was finished, and it was estimated that this would take bout three months.
The conditions endured by the first arrivals who had actually been transferred from Singapore to Thailand Command were brutal and primitive, but they were infinitely better than the conditions which faced ‘F’ and ‘H’ Forces, for the very simple reason that the Thailand Command looked upon them as Singapore’s responsibility. Even the Japanese guards who accompanied these two forces were ignored by the Thailand Japs., and had to battle as best they could for their rations. Our own ration consisted of eight ounces of rice a day and someties a little dried fish or dried seaweed. ‘F’ Force and ‘H’ Force left Singapore in groups of 600.
Time and departure from Changi camp was usualy about 2a.m. and the men rode into Singapore in trucks - about 50 to each truck - taking their equipment with them. At the railway station the men were herded into steel trucks used ina for carrying rubber and tin. The trucks were about 5 feet 6 inches wide and 15 feet long, with a small door on each side, and no other ventilation.
The railway itself was of 3 feet 6 inch gauge, which did not exactly make for comfortable travelling. During the day the side of the trucks became unbearably hot, and during the night the men shivered with cold.
Twent-seven men were crowded into each truck, together with their baggage. So congested were the trucks that the men had to sit facing esch other with their legs interlaced. At night they had to take turns in sleeping, but even when strtched out it was practically impossible to sleep.
On the first day our train travelled from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. without a stop. We were then allowed to leave the trucks and buy fruit on the railway platform. The men had been without fruit for many months, and it had a disasterous effect upon them. Sickness broke out, and there were no facilities for coping with it. Many men were in agony bt 11 o’clock that night when we reached Kuala Lumpur. Here we were given a container of cold rice, a small piece of dried fish and a bucket of black tea. We were given 20 minutes to get the food, dish it out, eat it, and return to our trucks.
In those five hideous days and nights we made, T think, only six stops for food, and on each occasion were given only a little rice and fish,
We arrived at Bampong at 3 o’clock in the morning of the sixth day, amd were marched to a transit camp a mile from the station. This camp was used as a staging depot, and all parties came through it on their way to the railway line. None of the ub=nits passing through had any opportunity to exercise Hygene control, and the whole camp was little better than an accumulation of filth.
While we of ‘H’ Force were resting in this camp for two dayes we heard rumours that ‘F’ Force had been started out on a mrch into the jungle of 250 miles, and this proved to be true. With them had gone the amazing Father Dolan, the oldest of our chaplains and an inspiration to all who knew him.
‘F’ Force was at this time made up of comparatively fit troops, and in spite of great hardships reached its destination almost intact.
‘H’ Force was the last asked for at Changi, and included many men who had recoered from battle wounds, and many whose health had been broken by Malaria, dysentery and various forms of beri-beri.
At 10 o’clock on the second night we left Bampong for the rail-head in the jungle. Altogether there were 3000 of us in ‘H’ Force, made up of five trainloads of 600 each. We travelled with an Australian party of 600 under Colonel Oakes, commanding officer of the 26th Battalion. The medical officer was Major K.J. Fagon, of Yass. The senior medical officer of the entire party of 20 doctors and 100 orderlies was Major Marsden, formerly of Prince Alfred Hospital.
One of the first tortures inflicted on the men was the issue of boots. For 12 months they had wandered arounf Changi camp bare-footed, and now they had to set out on a long trek wearing hard new boots. Within an hour men were breaking down with blistered feet; others were caracking up through weakness and general debility.
The Japanese would not allow us to leave any men behind, and Korean guards with fixed bayonets were stationed at the front and rear of the marching columns. Their orders were explicit - The party must be brought intact - and when someone fell out through illness, his comrades had to pick him up and carry him.
On the first night began Major Fagan’s medical problems, and on this, and succeeding nights he gained the respect, admitation and affection of the entire force. By the time the long march had ended Major Fagan’s name had become a by-word among the men, and will never be forgotten by those who survived the desperate hardships of Thailand.
The Japanese orders were that we should march for an hour and spell for 15 minutes, but Major Fagan had no spell at all. Each rest period he spent in tending the sick, and during the hour’s march he was moving up and down the column, helping the men and encouraging them.
Each night we were supposed to cover 20 miles, and for six nights we maintain this pace. Fot the first four nights we enjoyed dry weather, tramping along roads about four inches deep in dust. On the fifth night, at 10 o’clock, while cilimbing the side of a mountain, the monsoon hit us, and the water fell in sheets. The night was pitch black; but the Japanese insisted on going on. The leading guard carried a torch, and our commanding officer followed him, the rest of us trailing behind, in Indian file, one hand touching the man in front of him. At least 20 times during the night some of us fell, and I think I was luckier than most.
At the end of that night’s march we came to a clearing, and the men fell down exhausted in heaps.
‘H’ Force was in a pretty and sad condition when it reached its destination. An area of about two acres, which had been cleared of heavy timber, as allotted to us as a camping site. It was prctically covered with bamboo stumps, which had been cut a foot ot two from the grounf. We were given 22 old tent flys, a few blunt tools, six cooking pots, 15 bags of rice, some dried seaweed and rea. We had to set up tents, control hygienic arrangements, put in a drainage system, build a kitchen, and make a shelter for 40 sick. We were given only a day and a half to complete this job.
At this stage there were 530 men in our party, and on the third day we were ordered to have 500 men ready to start work on the railway-line. The 30 men left in camp for general duties, including officers, doctors, medical orerlies, cooks, hygiene men and chaplains were hopelessly inadequate. Cooking arrangements frquently broke down, hygiene broke down, and the camp was in a state close to complete chaos.
The working parties had to walk three-quarters of a mile to the railway-line. Their task was to put a cutting, 70 yards long by 10 feet wide, across the side of a hill. At its highest point the cutting was 40 feet deep. The whole job was to be finished in three months.
Some of the men were formed into parties to dril holes. The Japanese placed the dynamite and set off the charges. The rest of the men had to move the broken rock, and throw it over an embankment with their bare hands.
It was not unusual for the Japanese to pick out an unusually large rock, and ask three or four men to lift it. They would take no excuses. If the men were unable to move it, they would stand over them and scourge them with bamboo rods until they dropped.
When they had amused themselves sufficiently, the Japa would summon eight or ten men to shift the rock.
On one occasion an Australian soldier fell exhausted by the side of the embankment. The Japs wanted his comrades to push him over, and tip a truck-load pf rock on top of him. The men refused, and several were beaten badly for not obeying the order.
All this time we were afraid of cholera, and felt that an outbreak was inevitable, because it was impossible for the men to eat sterile food, or to drink water that had been boiled; but it was impossible to keep a check on all of them, and we knew that some, when overcome by thurst while at work on the railway, were drinking from jungle pools.
The condition of the men bacame progressively worse. Before leaving the camp at day break they were given about two ounces of rice that had been ground and bouled until it looked and tasted like glue. Their mid-day meal, which they carried in dixies, was a mug of dried rice, and sometimes a little dried fish or dired vegitable. When they returned to camp in the evening they were lined up for a check parade, which took from an hour to an hour and a half. It was always dark when the doctor began his sick parade, and up to 300 men would parade before him. This parade rarely ended before 10.30 p.m. and at its completion the doctor would make up a list of the men wjo could not go to work next day.
The medical list would be handed to the different officers who had to prepare the working parties, and by midnight these officers would have to decide which men would go out and which would be presented to the guards for exemption.
The Japs st first demanded 500 men a day, and we would be able to produce only 470, so sick and axhausted men were forced to go out to th railway-line and were treated by their guards as if they were fit and strong. Inavitbly, and in spite of all manner of threats, the nembers of men able to go to the railway-line fell day by day. The Japanese always demanded about 50 men more than we could supply, and would never be satisfied unless they finally obtained 25 more than could reasonably be expected to go out. These were always, at least, 50 men in the party who could barely drag themselves to work.
The the Japanese decided to work day and night shifts, and I have deen men coming back from a hard day’s work, change places with sick comrades going out to begin a night shift.
The continuous torrential rain was now making conditions at the camp worse than ever. With mud and slush everywhere it was impossible to sleep on the ground. We built platforms of rough bamboo in every tent, and packed 27 men into each. They were so jammed together that if a man wanted to turn over during the night ten men lying with him had to turn over, too.
Some morningsthe men would have to get up an hour earlier than was necessary in order to give their sleeping space to exhausted men coming in from the night shift.
In the veritable hell on earth God was not forgotten. On the first Sunday after our arrival Mass was offered on a table which had been erected the previous day for an acute appendix operation. After that we had Mass every Sunday at a quarter to six, before work started, and every Catholic in the camp who was able to move attended. Apart from the Sunday Mass, daily Mass was celabrated whenever possible, from six in the morning till 10 at night.
One sight I will never forget. It was still dark, and Mass had just begun in the flickering light of two tiny candles when out of the jungle marched a battalion of Japanese fighting troops carrying great flaming torches and singing war songs. They filed through the camp, and passed within two yards of the alter. There we were, a handful of Australian Catholics, worshipping the gentle Christ in the heat of the Thailand jungle, and marching arrogantly past us were 500 pagans chanting to a God of War. The words of the Reemer must have come to other minds than mine; “Go ye, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”.
During this time, due to the shortage of men available for camp duties, it was necessary for all fit personnel in camp, from the commanding officer down, to chop bamboo for hut construction, dig drains and latrine pits, help with the cooking, and general work.
The numbers of sick continued to increase, and then on June 15 we had our first case of cholera. The patient died four hours after reporting sick.
I think that was our worst day in Thailand. We had been hoping against hope that the camp would escape cholera, and we knew that when the first case was reported, others would follow quickly.
A group had gathered round the Regimental Aid Post tent, when Lajor Fagan came out from his examination. He looked more worried than usual, and when I asked what was the trouble, he just said; “I think we have our first cholera case in there”.
The news spread quickly, of course, and it had a distastrous effect on the men’s morale. They had endured the most incredible hardships; they had seen their comrades bashed and beaten; they had atarved and suffered; but they had not lost hope. They could still joke about the Japs, and retain their faith in acentual victory. But you can’t joke about cholera.
To make matters worse, all the men, were getting severe colic pains, and at some stage or other, every man in the afflicted camp felt sure that he had contracted the dread disease.
About this time, the Japanese announced that they proposed to move into our camp 350 British troops - slaves who had completed their own task further along the line. Both the commanding officer and the medical officer did all in their power to dissuade the Japanese. They asked that the British soldiers be left where they were, at least, until the cholera was checked, effective hygiene control established, and all the men given another anti-cholera injection.
The Japanese were completely unsympathetic. They were then asked to hold up work on the railway for one day to allow the entire force to get hygiene under control, and establish sterilisation cetres for food containers. Again the Japanese refused, and only a handful of men in the camp were left in the camp.
In no time cholera was raging. It was quite a common thing for the commanding officer, a few others and myself to go to the cemetery at 9 a.m. and dig a grave for one man. By 10 o’clock a messenger would come to say that another cholera patient had been taken to hospital.
Leaving my pick and shoval I would return to the camp, give the Last Sacraments, if the lad was a Catholic, and if not, say with him the acts of Faith, Hope and Charity, Contrition and an act of Love of God. Then back to the cemetery to help increase the size of the grave.
One morning we began digging in the hard, rocky ground to bury a boy who had died during the night. Seven times during the day I was recalled to the camp, and by dusk we had made the grave big enough and deep enough for eight of our deceased comrades.
The Japanese became so afraid of catching cholera themselves that they insistedon our burning the bodies of the dead. It is hard to know whether the work entailed in chopping up sufficient wood was a greater hardship or a more heart-rendering task than digging the graves. Early every morning, the C.O. officers, and whatever other men could be spared, left the camp and spent the whole day chopping wood. In the evening a great funeral pyre would be built, and the burial service would be read beside the fire. Next morning the remains would be gathered and given a Christian burial.
The first cholera death occurred on June 15, 1943. By September 7. when we had completed our work on the railway, and were about to evacuate the camp, I had buried appoximately 149 Australians and 150 of the British Force which had been moved in with us during the first days of the epidemic.
During the last few days of our work on the railway-line only 50 men out of the original 850 were able to work.
I was fortunate in obtaining one concession from the Japanese which was not granted to other chaplains. I was allowed to visit other camps along the track to which no chaplain was attached, and was, therefore, able to bring the Sacraments to men who otherwise would not have been completely deprived of their graces and consolation.
The Thailand camp was evacuated at the rate of 100 a day. Those who were able to walk had to carry the sick and dying on make-shift bamboo stretches to the railway-line, a mile away, over a muddy precipitous track.
We got little satisfaction from knowing that our work had completed to schedule, and thet the engineer-in-charge would not find it necessary to commit hari-kiri.
During the last stages an additional 400 prisoners of “Don Force had been brought in to speed up the work, and these were not so badly treated. The men of ‘H’ Force, however, having had the heart worked out of them by slave conditions, were kust discarded and left to die.
At the railway line we were picked up and taken in open trucks to a point about a hundred miles away. During this journey, which took three days, 15 men died, and were silently laid to rest beside the railway line that will nring sad and bitter thoughts to families of the 8th Division men for generations to come. A unique memorial stands there in the Thailand jungle, the work of out C.O. Colonel Oakes. With an axe he fashioned a great cross 20 feet high, across the arm he printed an inscription in memory of our deceased Australian and British comrades, and on the upright piece was the Latin incriction “ Amantes eorum Deus aspiciat”. What we wanted was to give expression to our heartfelt wish that God would look with pity upon the relatives of these dead men - particularly the mothers and fathers, then in Australia hoping and praying for their sons’ return.
Majors Marsden and Fagan, with British and Dutch doctors and orderlies, had preceded us to Camburt, outside Bampong, and here they established a base hospital. Within a fortnight we had 3000 hospital cases from ‘F’ and ‘H’ Forces. Many were seriously ill, and for two months after the hospital was opened - during the months of October and November - we lost from five to 15 men a day.
Conditions in the makeshift hospital were appalling. The atap huts were 50 metres long, and were ste in two rows. Onside each hut a bench was built around the walls with bamboo rods, and on these hard, uncomfortable benches the sick were laid. Some had blankets, some had coats, but the majority were clad only in the rags that had survived the terrible conditions on the railway. Each man had only two feet of space; some had less. They were suffering from all manner of tropical diseases - beri-beri, cerebral malaria, tropical ulcers, dysentery and post-cholera inanition.
Our doctors had to make official reports to the Japanese, giving the cause of death; and they did not hesitate, when the facts warranted it, to write “died of starvation”. They merely shrugged threir shoulders.
Hygiene conditions st this hospital were every bit as bad as in the jungle. It seemed the deliberate policy of the Japanese to degrade the white man in front of thre natives. The food in this camp, however, was much better, the intention apparently being to build up the men before they returned to Singapore.
I left this camp towards the end of October with a train-load of 600 men on the journey back to Singapore. Our ‘F’ and ‘H’ Forces wre completely evacuated from Camburi by the middle of January, 1944.
When ‘F’ and ‘H’ Forces went away there were 7000 men in the former, 3000 in the latter. During our absence of less than nine months, ‘F’ Force lost 3000 men and ‘H’ Force lost 992. For another 12 months many other deaths occurred from the after-affects of this terrible experience.
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