The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart [51]
Through his interpreter he told us: ‘This is your camp. You make home here. Build own huts. All men work on railway.’
A railway! A railway, here in the middle of nowhere. It seemed mad and it certainly never occurred to me that this would be our task. How would they get the sleepers into the jungle? Not to mention the steel railway lines. The British had considered the construction of a railway to link Burma with Siam many years before but concluded it could not be done. Not without massive loss of life anyway.
Finally we had been told of our purpose but I do not think that it sank in properly. All we cared about was that the march was over. Surely things would start looking up. We could not envisage the enormity, misery or savagery of the challenges ahead. I just felt glad to stop walking.
The soldiers had arranged arc lamps in one corner of the clearing, which they led us to now and instructed us to start construction of our sleeping quarters. We all stared at each other blankly. One of the guards, noticing our bewilderment, pointed to the scattered tools and made an A-frame with his arms, yammering away in a language we did not comprehend.
‘What are we supposed to do? Build the ruddy Ritz?’
The plucky Londoner who had stepped forth to offer his cockney wit quickly retreated when a guard went for him with a pickaxe handle. It was our signal to get on with it. We snatched a tool each and tried to look busy. They wanted us to clear more trees but we were so knackered that it was totally fruitless. I took a scythe and started hacking at some trees. It was pretty hopeless. The blade bounced off the hard bamboo but at least I appeared industrious in the eyes of our masters.
The Japanese wanted us to build five huts for the POWs, forty men to each. They would build their own huts, while the first thing we were required to build was an awning for the cooks to operate under.
They stopped us after about two or three hours, perhaps realising that we were too shattered to make any progress. Allowed to stop I sat down on the spot and curled up. After thirty-six hours of constant activity I could finally rest. The tropical forest sounds didn’t interrupt my sleep that night and I wasn’t visited in my dreams. Tomorrow would be a new dawn.
Five
Hellfire Pass
On that first morning they split us into two groups. Half of the POWs had to finish building our sleeping quarters, while the rest of us cleared trees at the camp. As a guard thrust a pickaxe into my soft hands, I could not remember the last time I had endured any hard labour. And this was going to be a far cry from hoisting cast-iron bathtubs on to lorries bound for Highland mansions.
I positioned myself near the trees, away from the guards, and took a moment to watch the other men in action. Some of them were already getting stuck in, swinging their chunkels, heavy Thai hoes, with apparent ease. They were flailing into the earth, digging up roots and rocks. It looked easy enough and after a few awkward swings, some of which grazed my bare shins, I quickly got the hang of it. It was rhythmic toil and I became almost mechanical in my movements. But within an hour bubbling blisters started to appear on my palms. By lunch my thumbs felt painfully disconnected from their sockets and my back ached at its base from all the unnatural movement. There was no respite. The Japanese had no consideration for our poor health or hunger and beat men across their backs with bamboo or rifles regularly enough to make us keep our heads down. It was a long first day and if I had realised then that it was just the first of 750 days I would spend as a slave in the jungle, I would have broken down and cried like a baby.