The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart [108]
Before long we were ‘walking out’, and seeing each other as much as possible. One of our favourite things was a stroll along the beach. On one such occasion, memorable for its cloudless sky, I took an attack of malaria. It came on quickly, forcing me to sit on a bench, sending me into hot, sweaty shivers. Mary was terrified as she did not know what was happening, and when I went into a tense rigor she helped me to a taxi and we rushed home. Dr Rice came, with his quinine, and gave me a dose in bed, which sorted me out. But it took me a fortnight to recover because of an enlarged spleen. I considered it a minor setback and got back to the dancing straight away, though by now struggling to breathe through my nose properly – it had been broken so often during all of those beatings on the railway. I went in for an operation to have a hole bored through my nose bone, and while I was in I took another malaria attack, which laid me out again, this time for a month.
As a couple Mary and I soon made friends at the various dance places. One of Mary’s best friends and her boyfriend often joined us to make up a foursome. I enjoyed getting out but I must have been awkward and possibly miserable company. In reality I had little or no conversation. I did not wish to talk about my six and a half years in the Far East, especially as the others had not been abroad or on active service. If someone asked about my time in the war, I regurgitated my stock answer of, ‘It was so bad that I don’t want to talk about it.’ If the war came up in conversation, I would keep quiet or steer the topic elsewhere. At the outbreak of the war Mary and her pal had gone to Glasgow to enlist and got caught in the blitz on Clydeside. They had been in the thick of it and while physically unharmed, they were mentally shaken. We just wanted to move on from the war.
Still painfully thin and very unfit I was unable to keep up with my new-found friends, especially in the dance halls, which put me at a disadvantage as Mary was pursued by several rivals. One particularly keen would-be suitor, who had been in a reserved occupation in Aberdeen and had never suffered during the war, really annoyed me. I became defensive and jealous. I suppose that being very self-conscious about my frail appearance and the fact that I was not earning did not help either. However, Mary and I still went out together; perhaps she sensed there was an ember smouldering within and at some stage it would turn to flame – I really do not know. I felt happy in her company because only then did I find some peace of mind.
No one other than one of us POWs could imagine the turmoil of the recurring nightmares that so many of us suffered. It seemed that every time I shut my eyes I was back in the camps. It all came back to life so vividly that my body would suddenly pour with sweat and fear. I was always glad when the morning light came.
During that period I was very pleased to hear of justice being meted out to some of the worst Japanese war criminals. The Japanese press lionised General Yamashita as ‘The Tiger of Malaya’ but he should have been known as ‘The Butcher of Malaya’. He was hanged after a lengthy trial. Major General Shimpei Fukuye, the architect of the Selarang Incident, went on trial and was subsequently taken to the same spot where he had brutally executed the four escaped prisoners and shot. Disgracefully, General Takuma Nishimura, who had ordered the massacre of the Australian wounded at Parit Sulong, received only ten years imprisonment from the British. Later he would be arrested by the Australians in Hong Kong as he travelled home after completing his sentence. He was subsequently tried by an Australian military court and hanged.
As the trials went on it became obvious just how much bunkum all of the bushido code had been. The so-called ‘Way of the Warrior’ precluded capture yet so many of these ring leaders had been captured