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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

Very little sleep was thought about that night. A concert was got up at the end of Hut 6 with a band of about half a dozen instruments, and Fizzer sang a song that the Nips had banned called: When Labour wins the Day. Clowning and the crudest of stories gave further expression to our feelings and we bellowed with laughter at jokes that weren’t really in the least funny. The concert went on till the small hours, but only a few people were able to crowd into that hut, and far more were walking up and down and asking: ‘How soon will they get us home? Will there be an endless lot of bullshit and medical inspections under the new Army?’ The most hopeful thought we’d be home in three months.

No one could keep still. We visited every hut and friend and acquaintance. We went and looked up the ‘Gotverdommers’ and congratulated them, and I went and congratulated Bloem and his pals who had been responsible for wheedling some of the first genuine news out of the Koreans who worked in the Nip cookhouse. We sat around and talked and planned, drinking tea in the cookhouse, talk, talk, talk. Not before 1 or 2 a.m. did the crush of people get thinner. Coconut-oil lights flickered in all the huts – no more goddam Lights Out at 9.50! No more maddening ‘P. Picket’, the nightly duty we’d had to do of standing one officer at either end of each hut all night to count the number of people absent relieving themselves! Slowly the camp quietened down, the whispers of conversation grew less and less, and about 3 a.m. the camp slept fitfully.

Next morning we were awake and up at the crack of dawn. What did this day hold for us? The first thing that everybody was glad to hear was that Bill Reeves had been freed last night and, though very ill with suspected Blackwater Fever, he would pull through all right. A friend had spent the night with him in the detention cell where he lay on a mattress and blankets, with milk and all possible medical attention. This morning he was being moved, not to our ragged hospital, but into Nogoochi’s old house. He stayed there for a few days and then went down country where he could get better hospital attention.