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Back Railroad of Death
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

They drove back solemnly, and, of course, no rifle was found. Once again the local inhabitants were blamed, but the Nip was in a blue funk as to what would happen to him when he reported his loss. As he wasn’t a vicious specimen, the driver began to feel quite sorry for him, and suggested a way out. ‘You go your Nippon Quarter Master, Nippon,’ he said, ‘and you keep him talkie-talkie five minutes. I get rifle.’ The Nip, who failed altogether to see the implications but was willing to try anything in his desperation, allowed himself to be driven down to the Nip Q.M. Store, where he went in and kept them talking for a few minutes.

When he came out, on his seat was a rifle which the driver had stolen from the Armoury in those few minutes. The Nip was so overjoyed that nothing was good enough for his friend the driver, and that evening he took him round six tins of condensed milk and 60 dollars in cash!

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So much for the various stories that reached us. It is now time to return to Takanun and continue our daily existence.

CHAPTER 13

A PIECE of bad luck gave us all work to do till Christmas. For some reason or other our rations could no longer come up from the Nip Transit Camp below via the railway as before, and as the old road had been submerged by the monsoon and crossed frequently by the embankment, we were obliged in our own interests to become coolies again. It was no elaborate road that we made, but it meant a lot of cutting through rises here, filling in gullies there and repairing bridges that had almost rotted away. For the month previous to this our work had not been hard, but irritating and boring, although once again to our own interest – that was work making a new garden. Also, the entire camp had been cleaned up and roofed over with atap, and it came as a sort of anti-climax to be out road making again.

In addition to the company of Jim Dixon, George Tilly and the Dutch philosopher, it had looked at one time as if we were going to be joined by Henry, but he passed right through us, looking very fit, had a couple of very bad months indeed at 236 K camp, and managed to get evacuated back to Chungkai again before any of us, having picked up dysentery and several bouts of malaria.