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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

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

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RAILROAD OF DEATH

CHAPTER 6

OUR truck stopped outside Changi Goal to draw the first month’s pay for officers. A lieutenant received 85 dollars a month, a Japanese ‘dollar’ being equated to the yen at about 1/2d.; but we didn’t, of course, see the 85 dollars. Forty-two dollars a month was deducted for accommodation and rations, which were exactly the same that the troops got for nothing; thirty dollars was paid to us in cash, and the balance was banked with the Yokohama Specie Bank in a mythical account there opened for us. Of the 30 dollars we actually drew, at least ten dollars went very necessarily to help the sick, and another five dollars to the Messing, so that we had the equivalent of one pound a month to spend. We drew our money without incident, returned the waves of the civilian internees’ fluttering handkerchiefs high up among the gaol windows, climbed again on our trucks and drove straight to Singapore station.