Towards the middle of the month most of us, including Henry and myself, were warned for Thailand. We regarded it as a nuisance, but had no idea what was in store for us. First of all, the working parties still in Singapore went up, and then they started from Changi. Many welcomed it as a change. On October 30th, my birthday, we had a big party, for on the morrow we were due to leave. Unfortunately I couldn’t eat as I’d had dysentery for a fortnight, and was gently starving myself in order to make the five day journey less unpleasant.

The skill of the Mess cooks produced an hors d’oeuvre that a good London hotel would have been proud of in war time. Arranged on each plate it was arrayed so colourfully that it almost seemed a shame to eat it; the Red Cross and the garden really did give us one first class meal. And after the meal we had a concert, songs, and local cross talk that went down like velvet. Dear old Gutty sang ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’, and insisted on singing each chorus twice through; the troops were delighted and whistled and laughed till they cried. The pièce de resistance was a solemnly chanted skit on The Policeman’s Lot is not a Happy One – this sort of thing:

When the pestilential bugler is a-bugling, and the whistle is a-piping for P.T.;

When the Sergeant-Major’s shouting, and the Sikhs are up and clouting,

Then you know you’re home in Changi by the sea!

When the elusive little lizard isn’t filling of his gizzard,

He likes to lie a basking in the sun;

But the troops must dig for water,

In a place they didn’t oughter,

And the daily camp fatigues must all be done.

Oooh! When the bull frogs are a-croaking, and the rain comes down a-soaking,

A prisoner’s lot is not a happy one!

Next morning we said farewell to Changi. We paraded on the Gun Park, were packed into trucks in the manner that has made Japanese sardines famous, and once more headed for Singapore; this time to the railway station. Old Gutty was not coming with us as he was waiting for a minor operation in hospital; but we were formed into a battalion with Nuts as our Colonel and a young Brigade Major as adjutant. We left on a note of optimism. We were fed up with Changi boredom, fed up with the wet heat, and eager for any hopeful change. It is perhaps just as well that there was no soothsayer in our midst. We were irrevocably off – to Thailand!

PART TWO: RAILROAD OF DEATH

PART TWO

RAILROAD OF DEATH