Category Archives: Writing notes

“a small oak hutch”

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I have been smiling all day. This morning I received a letter such as one can only dream of.

The letter notified me that my next door neighbour (for more than thirty years) had made me a specific legacy of “a small oak hutch”. I have no idea what this is exactly, but I am honoured that my neighbour should have thought of me in this context. She was an original, someone for whom both the words feisty and refined seem to be designed. She was never seen without brave lipstick. She was genuine, frank, demanding, warm and sometimes terrifying.

In WWII she worked for the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), by the time we moved in next door she worked in local government. She lived from the age of two in the house her father built – and, with the help of devoted friends, she had her wish and died there at the age of ninety-two.

I shall cherish my hutch whatever it turns out to be.

The pig-sty that was Ban Pong – POWs 9

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In late autumn of 1942 we were told of a new delight to come. We were to be moved north into Siam [Thailand] where we would be engaged in light healthy labour with good food and pleasant sunny weather, housed in well-built camps in open country. We couldn’t wait for this promised treat.

We marched to the station carrying our backpacks and were there entrained in metal-sided cattle trucks, about 40 to each truck. […] We took it in turns to sit in the better places and arranged our packs in rows so that we could sit on them with our legs pointing towards the middle of the truck. […]

There were no latrine arrangements at all, not even a bucket. One could pee through the open sliding door and the train stopped twice a day at some point well away from a village so that we could get out and ease ourselves squatting over a ditch or under a hedge. As many of us were already suffering from dysentery, these two stops were not nearly enough and we got over the problem by rigging a rope across the doorway at a convenient height so that one could hang on with both hands, bottom outwards and shit on to the track.

We arrived at Ban Pong, all 800 of us soon after the start of the rainy season. Ban Pong was a substantial small town of about 5000 and the camp was a very disgusting place. As a transit camp there was no senior British officer in command who could see that the place was kept in order. […] After a few days we marched out of the pigsty of Ban Pong.

Ban Pong in Thailand was the starting point for the railway designed by the Japanese to link Bangkok with Moulmein in Burma. The planned stretch between Ban Pong and Thanbyusayet (roughly 400 km) ran through barely charted territory following the river Kwai Noi. Designing the railway posed an enormous engineering undertaking; building it, in wartime, with no mechanical aids, required enormous manpower and resulted in over 100,000 deaths, the majority of which were forced gangs of Chinese, Indians and Malays, but also included around 13,000 Allied POWs.

Forgotten African heroes

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Last night Griff Rees-Jones had a programme about his father, an army doctor, posted during WWII to The Gold Coast (now Ghana) in West Africa. The African regiments who did much of the fighting to free Burma in WWII are largely forgotten in the films and popular history books. Apparently the British Establishment assumed that all Africans lived in the jungle and would therefore be used to the conditions in Burma. Most of those who enlisted were brought up in grassland areas.  Griff interviewed amazing 90-year-old veterans of the campaign. Very moving and a salutary reminder of the people to whom we owe our freedom.

The programme was called Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army and was on BBC2 on Sunday 7 July

The evening buzz

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I was weeding as the light was fading and became aware of a continuous buzzing noise. The great lime tree next door, covered in blossom, was almost shivering with bees. You could hear the humming right across the garden.

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Swifts were screaming over and round the house and I could hear the nesting martins burbling away under the eaves. A second nest has been inhabited late in the season and is full of young. We are not the only ones enjoying the hot weather. Mind you, I had to rescue some very limp lettuce earlier today.

‘Don’t stand still.’ Changi to Bukit Timah – POWs 8

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In September 1942 Barry’s Line Section was sent by their captors, as a working party, from Changi to Bukit Timah near Singapore town. They were to build a memorial for soldiers of both sides killed during the invasion of Malaya. They marched the 16 miles to the new camp, carrying everything they owned. Barry remembers:

 As our party, No. 27 and the rest of No. 1 Company, arrived at the site one of the POWs already working there whispered to our Commanding Officer, “Just keep the tools moving. Make a noise. Don’t stand still.” We noted guards standing around the site all with fixed bayonets and each of them carrying a stout bamboo rod to encourage the laggards. We had not met this situation before as none of us had yet experienced the sensation of working directly under the eyes of a Jap guard.

Some of my Glasgow men had inevitably been in prison at some time in their careers and we had good advice from them. “Keep your head down, do not be noticed. Do what you are told to do and never give the slightest hint of reluctance. If you are hurt or very tired carry on with every appearance of bravery and co-operation and perhaps a guard will take pity and give you a rest.”

Some men seemed quite unable to grasp the fact that their very survival depended on their maintaining a very humble appearance, obeying orders, combined with eagerness to please our masters. A sour look, a shrug, a turned away shoulder or any such gesture earned an immediate swipe, accompanied by loud shouts.

Butterfly in Venice

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Since EG had three day’s work in Venice, he naturally needed my support. I learnt more than I probably needed to know about managing digital archives (though a session on appraising records was very helpful. I will now write a plan of what needs keeping, set a timetable, then select and delete accordingly. The loft will lose some of it boxes-of-paper insulation, but there will be less to deal with in the long run.)

I love Venice.

Canaletto lives.

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Walk one minute in any direction off the main drags and you find a cool, empty, grey-green world.

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We got lost in one empty quarter and were rescued by a cheerful elderly lady with a trolley who marched us to the vaporetto stop. She explained that she was a little deaf, yet she chatted, coping well with my stumbling Italian, and at the same time guiding my footsteps round every small obstacle (polythene bag, dog mess, loose flagstone).

And then there is La Fenice opera house. We were able to buy (restricted view) tickets for Madame Butterfly and spent a happy evening peering over people’s shoulders and listening to a terrific production. The humming chorus was sung from the back of the auditorium and during Butterfly’s long night of waiting, after she had left the stage, a backdrop came down leaving Suzuki and the boy asleep in view. Then vast and incredible cosmic fireworks were shown while they orchestra played to match. We knew none of the singers, but all were good.

A city you could visit over an over again and still find something new.

Silence in England – POWs 7

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After the Fall of Singapore in February 1942, Phyllis and the other wives and mothers of 27 Line Section wait anxiously to hear what has happened to their men. The silence is absolute. No one in authority can tell them anything, The men of 27 Line Section could be dead, evacuated or prisoners of war. Phyllis has addresses for many of the wives and mothers. She sends out a circular and several write to thank her for: “…your kind letter which has given me new heart at a time when I have nearly made myself ill with anxiety.”

Phyllis starts writing to Barry: “Dear Love, I haven’t written a letter for a fortnight hoping each day may bring me good news  from you…”

Nine months later she is still writing and waiting. So are almost all the other relatives, though there is now a presumption, unless they died in the battle for Singapore, they are now prisoners of the Japanese. The War Office finally thrash out an agreement with Japan to exchange information and send post using the Swiss Red Cross and a complex route across Russia. Relatives can now write – though it is into the blue and they still have no idea where the men are. For the Japanese, overwhelmed by the numbers of prisoners they have captured, the gathering and release of names is very low priority.

Finally, on the 12 December 1942, Phyllis hears that Barry is a prisoner. She writes :

My own dear husband, At last that blessed news has come to me – the assurance that you are a prisoner of war. I am awaiting the letter from the war office now with further details. The relief has left me a little lightheaded, I think. Dear darling, I fear my letters have been dreadful lately – but it was like holding a telephone conversation with a deaf & dumb person. Things have become real again now, & worth while.

Phyllis is lucky and she knows it, because she keeps in touch with the other wives and mothers. Some have to wait several more months for that news. Others hear nothing at all for another two and a half years.

Death and Churchill – POWs 6

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In the Changi POW camps epidemic diseases took hold. In the space of eight days three men of 27 Line Section died, two of dysentery, one of Cerebral Malaria. They were three of Barry’s highly regarded Sergeants.

By summer all the senior officers had been sent away to Japan – supposedly to foil any attempts at an uprising – and the Kempi Tei (special police) cracked down on any whiff of escape plans. The little news the POWs received on secret radios was dire. As Barry remembers:

The general spirit of the POWs was in fact very sad and pessimistic with no serious thoughts of revolt or even of escaping. In a European War once out of the prison camp one may well pass for a native of the country, but in Asia any European is immediately recognisable.

[On the radio] We heard much of the false propaganda, which even then seemed untrue, but once quite unexpectedly, I heard the very recognisable voice of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. It made a lasting impression as he was quoting a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough. The war was going very badly for the Brits. We were out of Europe with not much prospect of getting back again. Rommel was winning all his battles in the desert against Wavell, the Russians were falling back on Moscow overpowered by the Nazi armour, our Fortress Singapore had fallen, our two biggest battleships had been sunk and the US Pacific Fleet almost destroyed at Pearl Harbor. Churchill quoted:

Say not the struggle naught availeth
The labour and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not nor faileth
And as the things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes fears may be liars
It may be, in yon smoke concealed
Your comrades chase e’en now the flyers
And but for you possess the Field.

For while the tired waves vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain
Far back through creek and inlet making
Comes silent, flooding in, the Main.

And not by Eastern windows only
When daylight comes, comes in the light
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward look! The land is bright.

This was obvious reference to the fact that the USA was now at war and on our side.

Hungary to Japan in a weekend

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Wonderful couple of days. Small but international poetry meeting with the theme ‘dwelling’ very freely interpreted. Poems ranged from the romantic to the starkly tragic, with English, Hungarian, Czech, Polish and Bengali contributions, most read in both English and the original. For bonus we had two singers – one operatically trained (who indulged me and delighted us all with the Handel aria Did You Not Hear My Lady unaccompanied), the other a charming cabaret/folk story-teller singing in (?) Turkish. We all regretted that these meetings are so very rare.

Yesterday we went to the Holland Park Opera for Madame Butterfly. The best interpretation and staging of this that I have ever seen. A story of its period, but no longer silly. Anne Sophie Duprels made us believe in Butterfly’s moral outlook, her dilemma and her ultimate choice. She brought out a strangely modern problem – that of the cultural immigrant who accepts a country’s hype at face value, and is fatally damaged as a consequence. Strong stuff, cleanly and simply staged.

Changi prisoners – making boreholes – POWs 5

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After capture, British and Australian soldiers marched across the island of Singapore and joined many thousands of other prisoners in the complex of camps around Changi barracks. Over the next few months they learned to eat rice for breakfast and lunch and supper. Disease, particularly malaria and dysentery, became a serious problem. 27 Line Section turned their expertise in boring post holes to the more urgent need of making latrines. They found some large auger bits and constructed a tall set of sheer legs fitted with a block and tackle.

Barry remembers:

The first hole went well, about fifteen feet deep, say 4 metres. One of our carpenter-and-joiners built a seat with a cover, very civilized. Then we then collected the other big auger bit from the Post Office stores and set up a second team of bore hole makers. We made several holes within our Unit’s area and a few for other regiments, until one day when we were at work the sergeant in charge of the other party came to me to announce a disaster.

The drill head had fallen off and stuck in the shaft. The team had tried everything then decided someone would have to be lowered head first into the hole. Since I was the officer I would, according to the sergeant, naturally volunteer for the job, especially as I was probably the thinnest and lightest man in the section. So I volunteered.

My ankles were tied onto the rope and I was heaved up and then lowered into the hole with my arms stretched out like a diver. I just fitted, but only just. When I reached the bit I found that there was luckily only a little earth in it and I was able to loosen it and get a good grip on it. At my word the team pulled me gently up again and swung me aside onto the spoil heap, untied me and then untied the bit. We found that the fastening bolt was too thin and had sheered under the strain, so we fitted a stouter bolt and restarted the work. I warned them that if it happened again someone else would have to go down. It is not an adventure that I recall with any pleasure.