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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

I remember talking with one of these officers about Singapore. I asked him how he liked the town. His only reply was: ‘Too many Chinese!’ I think the Chinese and the English were the two races that gave the Nips their worst inferiority complex: from the one they have borrowed – in theory – a culture; from the other, the fruits of the Industrial Revolution. And yet neither of these borrowings have changed the innate Japanese character in the slightest.

After several requests, the Nips granted us permission to visit our battlefields, and over a week or so we went out in various parties with the padre and a very uninterested Nip soldier as a guard, to try and identify and decently bury our friends and men who had fallen in the battle of Singapore.

CHAPTER 3

THE main battle for Singapore was undoubtedly the battle of Bukit Timah which raged for six days on an arc that withdrew from the racecourse and Forest Reserve Area, taking up last positions round about Adam Road and the Golf Course, a mile or so nearer Singapore. Our battalion had about one-third casualties, many of whom had been left unburied and unidentified. In particular, Henry’s and my best friend was missing, and we wished to be sure that at least he had a decent burial.

The Padre decided that the first party would search for our missing Carrier Platoon crews; then we would visit the place were ‘X’ Company were cut off on the first day; next the racecourse position; and finally the last position we had taken up in a sort of gravel quarry off the Bukit Timah Road.

Before we go to the battlefields, it is necessary to explain that my battalion was part of a Territorial Division that had been training for the Middle East for two years. Owing to the Japanese attacking Malaya, our division, then on its way to the Middle East, was suddenly switched to India, and then on to Singapore, where it arrived on January 29th, precisely 17 days before capitulation. Most of our men were country-bred and born, and had never before been out of their part of England. Now they were, for reasons of policy – for we always regarded our division being sent to Singapore as a sacrifice on the altar of public opinion – horribly pitchforked into the mystery and menace of a tropical jungle.