The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart [44]
A Japanese grabbed me, separating me from most of the other Gordons, and hauled me towards a carriage, slapping me around the head. I told him to bugger off. I got wedged into a container of around eighteen feet by ten feet with about thirty other men, near the door as I could get no further in. It was incredibly cramped with no room to sit down. The Japanese screamed and lunged at us with bayonets. We practically had to breathe in collectively to make enough space for the doors to close. When they clanged the doors shut I listened ruefully to the jangling of the chain and padlock being snapped into place across the handles, a sickening sound that became familiar to millions of ordinary men and women during the Second World War. What would have been a depressing sound in any circumstances felt like a death sentence in that stifling steel box.
Animals would not be transported like this, I thought. To make matters worse the sides of the steel carriage were searingly hot. They burned any bare skin that touched them, making life even more difficult because there was so little room as it was. I did not know anyone else in the carriage and it was so dark that you couldn’t make out faces, just shapes and general outlines. I felt completely isolated. All I had was the ragged uniform I was wearing, my Glengarry, mess tin and my beloved photographs from home tucked deep inside my back pocket.
We stood there for hours before the train started moving. The heat was appalling. Dehydration set in quickly and coupled with the malaria I was already suffering from I began to feel extremely ill. None of us knew how long we were going to be like this but I felt I couldn’t take another minute. My despair and depression added to the claustrophobia. It was like being buried alive.
Out of the blue the train lurched forward. It started clacking and clattering and soon picked up some speed. As soon as we were moving some men tried to prise open the doors. They heaved at them, wrenching them every which way, cursing the workmanship and sadistic efficiency of our captors. Where the steel doors met there was an inch gap from ceiling to floor and on either side a half-inch gap, which let in some light, and now that we were moving an ever so slight, life-saving breeze. Realising that being by the door was the prime position, we devised a plan of moving around a place every half an hour. Since the Japanese had stolen our watches we had no way of telling the time, especially in the darkness, but we did the best we could. The gaps in the doors provided a little welcome relief from the torment of the truck.
The smell inside the carriage became unbearably foul. Without toilets the men had to relieve themselves where they stood. Several were very ill with malaria, dysentery and diarrhoea. People vomited and fainted. Dust swirled around the wagon stinging our eyes and adding to our unbearable thirst.
At last after hours of shuffling around like a zombie, trying not to go mad, it was my turn for the gap. I stuck my nose outside the steel tomb in which we were slowly being cooked and breathed in deeply. It was heavenly, the air warm and scented with the pungent dampness of the jungle. It was fresh, and anxious to make the most of it I breathed in great lungfuls. Sadly the pleasure was short-lived and once my time was allegedly up I got shouldered away from the gap, back into the darkness and nauseating stink of a torture chamber on wheels.
We had no idea where we were headed but since Singapore island was at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, surrounded by water, I knew we were going north. That much I knew.
Men became weaker all the time. The lack of fluids especially afflicted those with malaria and dysentery. Prisoners who collapsed were given some precious space, while the rest of us had to bunch up even more. The train was forever stopping in sidings and without any breeze from the movement the temperature soared ever higher. No one spoke. We had nothing to say. Besides, I wanted to save my energy. Who knew what was ahead of us?
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