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Chapters (40)
  1. FOREWORD
  2. RAILROAD OF DEATH
  3. REFERENCE LIST:
  4. Railroad of Death
  5. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION (1948)
  6. INTRODUCTION
  7. PART ONE: SINGAPORE
  8. CHAPTER 1
  9. CHAPTER 2
  10. CHAPTER 3
  11. CHAPTER 4
  12. CHAPTER 5
  13. PART TWO: RAILROAD OF DEATH
  14. CHAPTER 6
  15. CHAPTER 7
  16. CHAPTER 8
  17. CHAPTER 9
  18. CHAPTER 10
  19. CHAPTER 11
  20. CHAPTER 12
  21. CHAPTER 13
  22. PART THREE: BASE CAMPS AND LIBERATION
  23. CHAPTER 14
  24. CHAPTER 15
  25. CHAPTER 16
  26. CHAPTER 17
  27. CHAPTER 18
  28. CHAPTER 19
  29. CHAPTER 20
  30. APPENDIX ONE:
  31. APPENDIX TWO:
  32. APPENDIX THREE:
  33. APPENDIX FOUR:
  34. APPENDIX FIVE:
  35. APPENDIX SIX:
  36. APPENDIX SEVEN:
  37. APPENDIX EIGHT:
  38. APPENDIX NINE:
  39. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  40. And The Dawn Came Up Like Thunder

From the start he made our position and his request for officers quite clear to us, and we heard him attentively. Three or four weeks before he had asked Colonel Featherstonhaugh whether he could find any other officers in the Group to replace his sick, because the Officers Battalion was then doing a 13 or 14 hour day on bridging. under a perfect little swine of a Nip Under Officer, Taki, known universally as ‘The Rat’. Out of their original 300, they had less than 40 fit to work. At that time, Colonel Joyce had been prepared to offer no one, for with certain exceptions all his officers were already working on the cutting, and doing 12 hours a day themselves. But now, just when the Officers Battalion had got so small that they had really believed there was a chance of it disappearing altogether as a working force, they were confounded to receive unwanted recruits from other camps, who would just make the battalion up to a sufficient working strength to start again. And why on earth two sick officers among the undesired eight had been sent up, Colonel Finch simply couldn’t imagine. What on earth was Colonel Joyce up to?

However, there was nothing to be done, and we were helped by Johnny Place, the Adjutant, to find accommodation. First we climbed the long slope into the camp to look for a space in one of the tents, there already being 14 people in Colonel Finch’s tent, which was an inner flap only. At the first tent we drew a complete blank. Two officers with obvious jaundice, a normal sequel to malaria, and one of them a fully grey-bearded Public Prosecutor from Malaya, were trying to patch a large rent in the canvas that had left a corner of the tent right in the open the previous night.

At the next tent, down in the hollow again, Gus was fitted in; and I was finally dossed down in a non-Officers Battalion tent, that was really only a large piece of leaky canvas, stretched over an irregular shaped bamboo frame, allegedly large enough to hold five. Old Woolley, not attached to the Officers Battalion, but just plain sick, was in a tent nearby with other sick people.