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.

The Mind’s Eye – Oliver Sacks

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I have just finished this book and it addresses so many of the areas that interest me that I struggle to know where to begin. It also highlights the foolishness of my attempt to give my blog six categories. Two major elements in my life and work (as a sculptor and research psychologist) have no assigned category.

Before I become boringly introspective, I should say that The Mind’s Eye is a fascinating book for both layman and those interested in brain function. There are case studies of real people, full of human detail, telling what happens when parts of the brain cease to work as they should. It also contains a thrilling chapter about the discovery of a brain capacity – stereoscopic vision – in a person who had never had it before. The wonder and delight this brings makes you appreciate the world we live in even more. In addition, Dr Sacks uses his personal diaries to talk us through the complex and alarming experience of his own loss of vision in one eye. One of the revelations to me, is the variation in how much people have, or are able to use, visual imagination. Some people have none to speak of, others have continuous, 3D Technicolor images (as I do), simply by reading a description.

The final chapter, titled The Mind’s Eye, looks at the current state of research into vision and imagery. There are multiple examples from individuals who were born or became blind, as well as input from experts on the brain function behind visual imagery. The whole field of imagination, and its visual substrates, is discussed in an accessible way. A great read.

Now for the introspection:

For many years I was a sculptor and for many years a research psychologist and now I write. Yet the roles are not as separate as they appear in my life. From childhood I have performed thought experiments in the hope of deciphering the actions inside my head, and even now, twenty years since I last made a three-dimensional object, my inner imagination is undoubtedly 3D – very handy for writing. And of course I have a penchant for building brick paths and suchlike.

While I have no synesthesia (cross firing of the senses, e.g. Monday is seen as blue, or the number three smells of vanilla), I have long been convinced that beneath the conscious separation of the senses the brain is more promiscuous. I have been aware (just) of the brain touting problems around at another level. So an engineering problem, which starts life as, perhaps, a set of calculations, with some visual aspects (trying to get, say, a pole to stay upright without a hole or visible means of support) is taken on a tour of unlikely brains areas – hearing, sensory, motor, olfactory, emotional etc – in case these can contribute to the solution – which they sometimes do.

Certainly I belong among the people for whom vivid visual imagery is normal, so from childhood, I can sometimes be confused about whether an image in my head is from a book or a film. I am also baffled and irritated by people who assume that to write about something, you must have lived it. In my experience there are no limits to what you can create inside your own head.

How ‘visual’ is inner imagery? Any activity in the brain is made up of cells firing together. In this sense all imagery is the outcome of sets of switches being on or off – cells a,d,f are on, cells g to z are off etc. Yet if you imagine a complex 3D item in your mind’s eye and turn it round, timing and fMRI scans, show that this actions takes place over natural time as would in the physical world. This suggests there is a spatial element in the brain’s instantiation of inner images…

I’d better stop there.

February 15 1942 – Singapore – POWs 4

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On the 8th December 1941 [Pearl Harbour] Barry wrote to his wife Phyllis:

Darling Wife, very darling wife just now. War declared this am. You will have read all      about it in the papers. Bombs on S’pore, landing in Kelantan. All safe so far…

27 Line Section continued to put up communications lines in Malaya for anyone who asked, but found themselves slowly retreating down to the Island of Singapore and eventually, in February 1942, to the city itself. The bombing was continuous but, as signalmen, they worked on through it. While most of them received only minor injuries, one unlucky man, installing a field cable on an airfield, was wounded and died in Singapore. The oil stores and dumps of raw latex were on fire, the reservoir pipeline had been breached, and over a million unarmed civilians were being bombed daily. Singapore fell.

Barry remembers:

Fighting actually stopped on the 15th February 1942. I remember it very clearly as I was up the top of a telephone pole trying to regulate and terminate a new section of open wire, while meantime a brief air raid was going on at ground level. This consisted of the usual small high explosive fragmentation bombs, which killed people and broke shop windows but did little heavy damage except for holes in the road. The bombing and shelling suddenly stopped and one of my NCOs [Non-Comissioned Officers] on the ground shouted, “I think the war is over”. And so it was.

Tolstoy versus Sacks

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I am disconcerted, by my lack of discipline when it comes to reading. I cannot think of a time when I only had one book on the go and though my ‘to read’ pile is enormous, I happily add to it on an almost weekly basis.

Our next book for discussion is Anna Karenina, given its length (and the fact that I requested it), nothing else should intervene. However, I am unable to resist The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks, which I am finding riveting as it has case studies that are connected to the work I used to do. I popped in Smith by Leon Garfield, a Folio Society book which a friend wanted to know whether to bother with. A fast-paced, Dickensian story from the back streets of London in the early nineteenth (?) century. A little soppy perhaps, but very enjoyable. I picked up and started 22 Britannia road by Amanda Hodgkinson and I have been lent WordPress for Dummies which I keep dipping into.

It will, as it always does, sort itself out. I can’t make up my mind whether reading several strands simultaneously is productive or foolish.

The June illusion

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Every year there is a moment when I look at my (miniature) vegetable plot and think – I’ve got it right this year. Last year’s debris and weeds have been cleared, this year’s runner and french beans, courgettes and tomatoes are planted. There are lettuces in various stages and some wild rocket and although the spinach is bolting, there are plenty of edible leaves.

Every year I somehow manage to forget that the beans and tomatoes will topple over or fail to set fruit, or totally outgrow the small space they have been allocated. Every year I forget that there are one or two others waiting for the feast. The mice and pigeons, the slugs and caterpillars, an endless succession of small flies/hoppers and bugs are waiting for the darkness to get munching. My moment of smugness is likely to be short-lived, so I shall enjoy it.

In the Jungle – POWs 3

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Barry and the men of 27 Line Section, arrived in Singapore in the Autumn of 1941. They spent very little time in that teeming, multicultural city, before being posted into mainland Malaya as an independent unit.

This picture shows some of the men in a very relaxed state in Kota Tinggi. Barry and his Lieutenant were familiar with life in Malaya and unfussy about uniforms and the men adapted quickly to the climate and the work.

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They did encounter occasional problems. Barry remembers:

So in late 1941, based at Kota Tinggi in Johore, No. 27 Line Section went on with their job of building telephone lines between the many small headquarters, unmanned but established, “Just in Case”, and the small air strips in Johore and Pahang. I don’t remember much in detail of this period just before the invasion but one incident vividly comes to mind. I was with a small party building a two-pair route in fairly heavy jungle, using trees instead of telephone poles. I had surveyed the route in advance and marked the trees which were to be used for the route. We had a light van to carry our ladders and all the other kit and of course, our packed lunches and drinks. Two members of the working party went ahead with a ladder and a hand augur to bore the four holes required, in the marked trees. The next group climbed up and screwed the L shaped bolts into the holes and fitted the insulators on to them.

Everything went on smoothly except for the odd leech. We were used to them and a touch from the hot end of a cigarette caused them to drop off quite easily. Then one of the forward party came rushing back to the van waving his arms and shouting “hornets”. He was followed by a cloud of very angry hornets eagerly seeking targets. We had no shelter except for the van which fortunately had an enclosed cab into which we all scrambled, about eight of us, a very tight fit but this discomfort was much preferable to being stung by a jungle hornet. They are much bigger than bees or wasps and have a reputation for very aggressive behaviour, and deliver a sting several times as powerful as a wasp. […]

So we sat or stood in the cab on top of one another for an hour or more with the hornets buzzing around looking for a way to get at us, but the windscreen and the windows were a good fit and a thoughtful Signalman had stuffed bits of paper or rags around the holes in the floor of the cab where the pedals came in. When the hornets eventually gave up we drove a circular course around their tree and continued our route building on the next section, taking great care to avoid any hollow trees. A day or two later we returned to the area and built a wide curve around the hornet tree. We had been lucky as three or four stings from jungle hornets could be fatal.

A writer’s responsibilities?

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This is a post that has been sitting in the draft folder for a (long) while. Ever since a rejection for Border Line in April. I guess I should face it now. How much responsibility does the writer have towards the reader when dealing with tricky subject matter?

Border Line is essentially and upbeat novel, yet it has suicide at its core and touches on assisted dying. It is fiction, it is written as a ‘good read’, is upbeat and life affirming and is essentially a love story – but the eleven characters’ main intention is to quit life.

I’m not daft. Suicide is only ever the least worst option for the person who chooses to go. For the people who are left behind it is misery in varying degrees. That does not mean it is never the right choice. The crucial word in this is choice. If I publish this novel, perhaps more particularly, if I self-publish, and if it is read by anyone vulnerable, could I be said to be encouraging them to take that route out?

Some friends, pointing out the range and gruesome subject matter available in print, think my scruples are absurd. I could certainly thin the story out to a ‘will-they-won’t-they’ thriller by taking out all the personality and debate, and it would become a harmless guessing game – I think this is what one agent had in mind. But I am curious about real people, how they deal with internal guilt or the random acts of life. My previous books have tended to deal with real issues and that seems to be what interests the kind of readers who enjoy them.

Drafts of the MS have been requested several times, and revised after each rejection. When do I stop submitting to agents and use those spare ISBNs?

Not an amusing post, but I started this with the aim of using the space as a notepad for writing-related thoughts and dilemmas.