Three

Land of Hope and Glory!

One evening Tommy sat down next to me in the mess with a worried look on his face. ‘I think the Japs are coming. Keep it to yourself – the bosses are talking about launching Matador.’

The news was hardly unexpected but having your worst fears confirmed was still pretty grim.

‘I thought they would be coming,’ I said, reading the seriousness etched on Tommy’s face. He was greying at the temples now, the distance between him and his family ageing him more than any number of late-night nappy changes or trips to the park with his young children.

He said, ‘Hopefully we’ll be prepared for them but I doubt it as much as you do. We are going to be in for a rough ride.’

‘Let’s just hope the Nips are as disorganised as we are.’

‘Invaders are always organised,’ he observed glumly, slumping back in his chair.

‘Are you scared, Tommy?’

‘You betcha. You?’

‘You can say that again.’

Britain was on the horns of a dilemma. It wanted to defend Malaya and Singapore but did not want to provoke the Japanese into a war, especially with Britain standing alone against Germany. It was an unenviable position and led to constant dithering and indecision at the top.

Our commander, General Arthur Percival, had an unfortunate appearance and looked like a typical upper-class ‘chinless wonder’. He was nicknamed ‘The Rabbit’ but in fact was a tough and brave soldier who had been heavily decorated in the First World War and had fought in Ireland, where in 1920 the IRA put a price of £1000 on his head. He had also fought in Russia against the Bolsheviks. Percival was fully aware of the Japanese threat and of their likely tactics. Yet Singapore, despite its immense prestige and strategic value, was critically lacking in heavy armour and air power.

I also felt that everything was far too laid-back in Singapore. In one sense it was understandable. Britannia had ruled the waves since the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. And we had defeated the Germans in the 1914 – 18 conflict. Undoubtedly, though, there was an undercurrent of complacency and racial supremacy too. It was inconceivable that the greatest Empire the world had known could be defeated by little yellow men who had poor eyesight and could not see in the dark. All kinds of mumbo-jumbo was repeated in relation to the Japanese and their alleged weaknesses. We were told that they were inferior soldiers and had only ever fought other ‘inadequates’ like the Chinese. We were even told that their pilots were hopeless because they had a poor sense of balance, owing to their being carried on their mothers’ backs as babies! We would soon learn the hard way.

The eighth of December 1941 in Singapore was a balmy summers’ day just like any other. The only unusual thing was the failure of our ‘trusty’ Tamil to show up for work as normal. The tempo of work at the base had really increased and late in the evening I was still dealing with papers in the office when, at around 10 p.m., a tremendous explosion just fifty yards from my small office sent me diving under the desk for cover. Japanese bombs had started raining down on Fort Canning.

The first bomb had exploded on the nearby tennis court, leaving a ten-foot-wide crater on the baseline and rocking my office. Huddled under the desk, scared to death and waiting for the next bomb to drop, I realised this was it. War. I would finally learn why my father’s hands shook during thunderstorms.

I should have known that 8 December was to be the day. The mystery of the Tamil’s non-appearance was now solved. He was never seen again, confirming in my mind my earlier suspicion that he was a spy for the Japanese and had been ciphering secret information and documents out of our office, from beneath our noses.

While the Japanese were targeting Fort Canning and the naval base at Singapore from the air, their army was landing up-country on the eastern coast of Malaysia – on the undefended beaches originally identified in Matador as landing points. Imperial shock troops blooded against Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese nationalist army, Mao Tse-tung’s Communist guerrillas and Marshal Zhukov’s mechanised Red Army in Mongolia strolled ashore in neutral Thailand and walked into Malaya virtually unopposed.

Thousands of miles away on the other side of the Pacific, in a separate time zone, it was still 7 December, a sleepy Sunday morning in Hawaii. The bulk of the United States’ Pacific Fleet was moored at Pearl Harbor when Admiral Yamamoto’s dive-bombers struck without warning on a day that President Roosevelt predicted would ‘live in infamy’.

For the next two days the bombs kept falling. Oddly Fort Canning suffered very little. Whether it was because the fort was situated on a hill or because the Japanese calculated that they could not get to the underground complex, I never knew. But we escaped most of the bombs. They always seemed to fall short and the main buildings bore little actual damage.

Singapore was not so lucky. The city was ill-prepared for this oriental blitz. On that first night no order was issued to black out the lights in the city and from Fort Canning I looked down to witness the incredible sight of Singapore ablaze with street lights, their glow acting as a magnet for Japanese bombers and their fighter escorts, which buzzed around the city like wasps around a jam pot. There was insufficient British air support either. Hopelessly outnumbered our pilots took to the air on suicide missions. Tragically some of our planes were also shot down by our own anti-aircraft batteries. Soon the Japanese had mastery of the skies and a great black pall of smoke hung over the city. Singapore was burning.

At the same time reports came flooding in from up-country in Malaya and most were utterly depressing. Japanese troops under General Yamashita, who would later become known as ‘The Tiger of Malaya’, were storming south at an unbelievable speed, relying on bicycles and the ingenuity of their engineers, who quickly restored sabotaged bridges and roads. Critically the Japanese infantry was supported by three hundred tanks. The war machines that the British Army had decided were unsuitable for conditions in Malaya cut swathes through our lightly armed troops.

On 10 December General Percival issued a special order of the day. He announced, ‘The eyes of the Empire are upon us. Our whole position in the Far East is at stake. The struggle may be long and grim but let us all resolve to stand fast come what may and to prove ourselves worthy of the great trust which has been placed in us.’

On the very same day we received the shocking news that HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse had been sunk by Japanese bombers with heavy loss of life. A vital component in our defence had gone and the loss of these mighty ships had a devastating impact on our morale.

Incredibly, with the enemy bearing down on us, the bungling continued. Colonial civil servants refused the Army use of civilian telephone lines or transport for the wounded from up-country. Railway officials were adamant that civilian passenger trains run as normal while Red Cross and troop trains were shunted into sidings. It was yet another example of the complacent colonials and their snooty attitude towards the Army, Navy and Air Force. Did they think we were out there for a picnic? Their lack of cooperation played right into the hands of the Japanese whose active fifth column was wreaking havoc with our lines of communication and had been working on intelligence for many years prior to the invasion.

The paperwork was dropping on my desk even more frequently than the bombs that fell around us. I had moved a camp bed into the office so I could be there twenty-four hours a day to handle urgent papers. Besides, sleeping in my small wooden hut all on its own, exposed on the banks of the reservoir, was an unattractive option.

On the day the Prince of Wales went down a lance corporal marched into the office and handed me a piece of paper signed by Colonel Graham himself. The Gordon Highlanders were sending three boy soldiers to Fort Canning and I was to be put in charge of them. It ordered me to look after these three boys, two of whom were brothers, for ‘the duration of hostilities’. They had joined the Army as bandsmen and Colonel Graham had given them the option of trading their uniforms for civvies and going with the civilians. To their credit they decided that they had joined the Army as Gordon Highlanders and it was their duty to stay on and fight.

And so fourteen-year-old Freddie Brind, his elder brother James, fifteen, along with sixteen-year-old John Scott were sent to me that very day. It was a bit scary. I had never had the responsibility of looking after anyone other than myself. It would have been bad enough if there hadn’t been a war on! I had no idea why I was chosen to look after them. There must have been some discussion at Selarang as to what they should do with the boys and perhaps they thought they would be safer at Fort Canning than anywhere else. They could hardly have sent them out with the troops.

When the boys arrived they looked as if they had just walked in from the Bridge of Don barracks. Shiny as new pins they were in full Gordon Highlander uniform with kit bags at their sides. They were petrified, like startled rabbits caught in headlights, and twitched nervously at the constant air raids. I had not had a chance to think what to do with them but felt the safest thing was to accommodate them in the basement below the office. It was not very habitable but it was safer than being above ground, especially in my isolated hut just begging to be bombed. At least here I could keep an eye on them. Acquiring three iron bedsteads and an old wooden cabinet, I took the boys down and set them up a makeshift home. I commandeered as many magazines from the mess room as I could and took those to the boys as well – anything to keep their minds busy.

They were pretty relieved to be ensconced in the basement and were so glad to be out of harm’s way, relatively speaking. When the siren sounded to signal a momentary all-clear I let them up into the office and kept them occupied with some work. They were fairly obedient, through sheer terror more than anything else. Freddie, despite being the youngest, was most definitely the ringleader. A little under five feet tall, with hollow cheeks, he was darkskinned with a mop of curly brown hair and brown eyes. He was the dominant personality by far and always getting his older pals to follow him. He was very cheeky and ribbed me endlessly but in quite a likeable way. I could never be mad with Freddie. He had a way of flashing a smile, with big wide eyes that glinted in good humour, or turning a phrase, which made you think butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Even with people telling him to go to hell he would break into a grin and shrug. He was the most charming of rogues and a real artful dodger.

If Freddie was the extrovert, his brother Jim was the exact opposite. He was about the same height but slightly sturdier and had very little to say, to the point where I thought he had a speech difficulty. He did not stutter or stammer yet he was a slow speaker and found the right words hard to come by. Maybe because Freddie spoke so fast and so frequently Jim had allowed himself just to fade into the background.

The Brinds lived in Singapore. Their father had completed a twenty-three-year stint with the Gordon Highlanders and his last posting was in India, where both boys were born. On leaving the Army he moved the family to Singapore where he took over warden duties at Changi jail, the purpose-built prison constructed by the British. He stayed on at his post in Singapore and was subsequently captured by the Japanese. The boys’ mother and sisters successfully escaped from the besieged island on one of the last ships out and returned to the family’s original home in Brentwood, Essex.

Like Jim young John never said a word either. He was an Aberdeenshire farmer’s son, tall and gangling, but dour and rather simple. He followed Freddie around like a lamb and I could not get through to him.

Christmas Day 1941 was a day like any other. Bombs were falling and in Singapore City innocent men, women and children were dying. Up-country in Malaya the fighting was intense. Reports cascaded into the office and the boys were as scared as hell. It was the first time in my life that I had not celebrated Christmas and I smiled to myself as I thought of what it would be like back in snowy Aberdeen. How I longed to be there with my loved ones. It was always my job to polish the silver and set the table, a task over which I took infinite care. After gorging ourselves we would gather round the piano and Mum and Doug would take turns to play our favourite tunes. The festivities always ended the same way, with Auntie Dossie singing her party piece, ‘When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day’. I had a good singing voice too and would join in. I thought of them all that Christmas and wondered when if ever we would meet again. And then I vowed that we would meet again and that I would join in singing with Dossie, at the end of a perfect day.

Across the South China Sea in Hong Kong it was anything but a perfect day. After a seventeen-day siege the British surrendered to the Japanese. Hours earlier Japanese troops had entered the city and celebrated Christmas in their own special way – by torturing and massacring sixty wounded patients and doctors in St Stephen’s College Hospital.

Watching the progress of the war through the correspondence that passed over my desk only heightened my anxiety. It was like a tide that could not be stemmed and the Army was in full retreat, fighting valiant but ultimately doomed rearguard actions. Civilians were fleeing down the Malay Peninsula and heading for Singapore, desperate to escape.

During this time, when boredom had well and truly set in for the boys, they either got hold of my hut key or opened its door by force. Whatever their method of entry they managed to get in and rummage through what few personal possessions I had. They found my gramophone and records and went through all of my photographs. When I found them ransacking the hut I chased them out and ordered them into the basement, where I gave them a hell of a rollicking. I lectured them about respecting other people’s property and privacy. Jim and John were very apologetic while Freddie was typically all milk and honey.

They were lucky lads. Just two days later the hut received a direct hit during an air raid. It was blown to smithereens. Nearly everything I owned, including all of my personal belongings, was lost. Luckily I still had some clothes and personal photographs, including snaps of my family and Hazel, in the office and counted myself lucky not to have lost them.

Up-country, meanwhile, Malaya was the scene of bitter hand-to-hand fighting. Australian, Indian, Gurkha and British units distinguished themselves with heroic but increasingly ineffective resistance. The Japanese were ‘distinguishing’ themselves too, and there were alarming reports of barbaric massacres of civilians and allied prisoners. In Penang the occupying Japanese promptly massacred seven hundred local Chinese, beheading and bayoneting them.

The fighting was getting closer to Singapore all the time. So were the atrocities. On 22 January 1942, after fierce fighting at the village of Parit Sulong in Johore, retreating Australians were forced to leave behind their wounded. What followed became the first of many atrocities against allied prisoners. The Japanese General Takuma Nishimura ordered them killed and his subordinates gleefully obliged, bayoneting, drowning and burning alive the wounded men. Over 160 Australians and Indians died. In a separate incident at Bukit Timah twelve captured Argylls were tied up with barbed wire and bayoneted. One survivor played dead and was helped to safety by friendly Chinese.

At midnight on 31 January 1942 the Australians and Gordons withdrew from the mainland and the ninety remaining survivors of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were ordered by General Percival to retreat across the causeway that linked Malaya to Singapore. Bagpipes defiantly skirled the Argyll tune ‘Hielan Laddie’ as the last men out of Malaya crossed on to the island. Some high-ranking officers used Red Cross ambulances for their retreat over the causeway before it was blown up by the Royal Engineers.

Now Singapore was on its own. The only force that could have helped us was lying at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. A mish-mash of eighty thousand men from at least half a dozen nationalities and from both regular and volunteer regiments, some with little or no training, were defending the island with rapidly diminishing air support.

Morale plummeted and when our engineers blew up the huge British naval base to deny its use to the Japanese it plunged even further. The whole point of ‘Fortress Singapore’ had been to protect the giant Keppel naval base that we had just blown up on Churchill’s orders. It was obvious that the game was up and troops began to desert in large numbers. Singapore, which had very few air raid shelters for the civilian population, stood in chaos and an epidemic of lawlessness and looting broke out. There were thousands of deserters, particularly among the Australians, who were more ‘bolshie’ than us and who could see that it was impossible to fight without air cover. Many of these men fought to get on to the ships sent to rescue women and children and the military police were forced to fire over their heads to stop them storming the gangways on to the ships. Dozens swarmed aboard by shimmying up the mooring ropes so desperate were they to get out and escape. Yet incredibly troop ships were still arriving, disgorging into this abyss more young Australians, many of them poorly trained. Some had literally never fired a shot. They were lambs to the slaughter. It was an awful waste.

Fort Canning soon became the prime Japanese target. For the first two weeks of February the Japanese kept up a barrage of bombing and shelling aimed at the underground Battlebox and its surroundings. To us huddled on the hill, ridiculously poorly armed and basically defenceless, the shelling was much worse than the bombing and more accurate too. The shells whistled in all the time and we could only pray that our names were not on them. We were just so vulnerable. The boys were especially scared and stayed below in the basement. Even the normally effervescent Freddie remained uncharacteristically quiet and subdued. It was a terrifying time for all of us.

On 8 February, just two months after the first bombs fell, the Japanese landed on the island and intense fighting ensued. From our hilltop position we could see much of the action. A few days later they entered Singapore City and then on 14 February came the terrible news that Japanese soldiers had committed a massacre at the Alexandra military hospital. Three hundred and twenty-three patients, doctors and nurses were systematically murdered in the shadow of the Red Cross that was meant to protect them. The invaders actually bayoneted some of the patients on the operating table.

When I read the signal about the massacre I could not believe my eyes; it sent my stomach into knots and my mind reeling. But I resolved to keep quiet about it. There was no point in spreading fear and alarm.

Churchill had urged a fight to the end and General Archibald Wavell, our supreme commander, told troops that it would be ‘disgraceful’ if the much hyped fortress of Singapore were lost. But to me it was inevitable that we would fall. All of my previous experiences in Singapore, the arrogance, frivolity and sheer ineptitude suggested we were no match for anyone, let alone a well-organised and determined aggressor.

On 15 February, shortly after the news of the Alexandra massacre arrived, the shelling stopped and a ceasefire was proclaimed. With good reason Percival feared another ‘Rape of Nanking’, the 1937 massacre which had seen the Japanese slaughter three hundred thousand Chinese over a six-week period. With water cut off and no air cover the situation was deemed impossible. During humiliating negotiations in the Ford factory, Percival was bluffed into surrendering to an overstretched and much smaller Japanese force.

Amazingly, for reasons unknown, no order was given to us to destroy the files at Fort Canning and when the Japanese came marching in twenty-four hours later they helped themselves to all of our military secrets.

The end of the shelling came as a relief but we lived in terror of the Japanese arriving and the fear of the unknown gnawed away at us. The boys kept on asking what would happen to us. Naturally I kept the news of the Alexandra Hospital events to myself. I did not want to panic the young lads, who were fearful enough already. After two weeks of shelling and now surrender, we were a bag of nerves. I think that feeling sorry and concerned for the boys prevented me from feeling sorry for myself.

On 16 February the Japanese entered Fort Canning. Sometime during mid-morning I was stood in the office with the boys, when looking out the window I saw Japanese soldiers for the first time. The privates came ahead of the column and rushed buildings, bundling everyone outside. The boys went extremely quiet and retreated into the corner of the office. Barely able to keep my voice from breaking I whispered, ‘Be very quiet and do what they say.’

Then suddenly two Japanese soldiers burst into the office. They were quite young and very volatile – excited and angry, their eyes looked filled with fury and hate. Yammering and screaming in Japanese, they began jabbing their bayonets at our chests. It was so petrifying, I felt as if the bayonet had pierced my heart and I was staring death in the face. The boys behind me looked on in abject, open-mouthed terror. I had no idea what these soldiers in their mud-coloured, oversize uniforms were saying but in a daze I handed over my old rifle and put my hands over my head. Thoughts of Alexandra Hospital raced through my mind.

They punched, slapped and kicked us outside, where an astonishing sight met our eyes: hundreds of men filing out of the underground bunker, their hands above their heads, fear writ large across their ashen faces. They lined up alongside us. Then everyone was rounded up at bayonet point into rows and left standing. As we waited for a long time in the burning midday sun, some of the Japanese privates went down the rows of fearful soldiers snatching watches off wrists, cigarette lighters, packets of cigarettes, pens, money, stealing anything of value. No one had the temerity to object to the thievery. Many officers had their faces slapped indiscriminately and their epaulettes ripped off, their caps thrown to the ground.

A Scouser corporal whom I knew from around the base was standing beside me and the boys. He whispered in my ear, ‘Can’t one of the officers do something? This is looking serious, Alistair.’

‘Just keep your mouth shut. There’s nothing to be done. We’re at their mercy now.’

As we stood there in the blazing sun without food, water or shelter, the horrible reality broke over me in sickening, depressing waves. I was part of Britain’s greatest-ever military disaster, a captive – just like some 120,000 others captured in the Battle of Malaya. I was a prisoner. It was a gut-wrenching realisation to think that my liberty was gone and no telling for how long it would be so. I kept a brave face on for the boys, whose eyes were on stalks but who stayed mute. This was the worst moment of my life.

Hours later the Japanese commander arrived, strutting in front of his car. He looked us over disdainfully, scowling with a mixture of disgust and contempt before barking orders to his officers and promptly leaving. They put us into columns and told us to march. We didn’t know where to; we were little more than cattle to our captors. But it transpired that we were to cover the eighteen miles to Changi. The Changi peninsula housed the famous prison, the Selarang barracks and a sprawling ramshackle complex that would become a vast permanent POW camp for twenty thousand prisoners. I dreaded to think how different Selarang would look and what awaited us.

We were in a very poor state on the march from Fort Canning to Changi. Utterly dejected and deep in despair we trudged along, prodded on by bayonets and with stragglers subjected to vicious treatment by the Japanese. There was no defiant singing and little display of pride. We felt defeated and downtrodden. The sheer uncertainty was the worst thing. What was going to happen to us? The thought kept on returning. In the back of my mind the Alexandra Hospital massacre loomed and I really thought that the same fate awaited us. The boys were as anxious as I was but to begin with they did not really show it. They were still in shock.

Then, as we marched along the dusty road, without warning a horrific sight confronted us. We came face to face with a thicket of severed Chinese heads, speared on poles on both sides of the road. The mutilated bodies of these poor souls lay nearby and the heads, with their eyes rolled back, presented a truly shocking spectacle. The sickly sweet smell of rotting, putrefying flesh smothered us. Retching and fighting the instinct to be sick, I shouted to the boys to keep their eyes to the ground. For the rest of our march spiked heads, mainly Chinese, appeared at intervals in this way. The Japanese had been busy with their samurai swords and had created a hellish avenue to terrify and intimidate. The tactic certainly succeeded.

Unknown to us we had just walked into the middle of the ‘Sook Ching’ massacre, a well-planned Japanese purge of Chinese opponents, both real and potential. More than fifty thousand Chinese were murdered with the sickening sadism that seemed endemic in the Japanese Army. The worst of thoughts now flashed through our minds.

Next I saw a column of at least a hundred Chinese civilians being marched across a pedang in the same direction as us. They wore white shorts and white T-shirts but were blindfolded. It struck me then as strange that we had not also been blindfolded. The future of these hapless Chinese, I thought, looked especially gloomy. It was obvious that they were about to be killed. Paradoxically it made me feel a little better about our own immediate future – after all we were not blindfolded.

About a week later I heard that the Chinese we had seen had indeed been massacred – machine-gunned along with hundreds of others on the beach at Changi. British POWs on a work party had to dig a mass grave for hundreds of bodies. When I heard that news my already diminishing spirits sank even lower. I felt that we were sitting on a time bomb and it would not be long until it went off.

During the march we saw plenty of other frightening and dismal sights. Bloated and shattered bodies of all nationalities, both civilian and military, lay strewn everywhere covered in great blankets of flies. Some of the local population lined the streets, waving Japanese flags, welcoming the invaders with open arms. They sneered and spat and snarled at us. Only the Chinese seemed restrained – they knew only too well what Japan’s offer of ‘Asia for the Asians’ really meant, but many of the Tamils, Malays and Sikhs fell for it. It was heartbreaking to see, yet after what I had witnessed I could understand their predicament. A few days earlier the Union Jack had fluttered proudly over the Cathay Building; now the Japanese ‘Rising Sun’ flew in its place. The sun had well and truly set on Imperial Britain’s Far East hopes. Many locals were left with little choice but to support the latest batch of colonisers. A very brave, mainly Communist, minority fought on.

By the time we got to Changi it was dark and we were in bad shape – exhausted, dehydrated and traumatised. The army buildings on the Changi peninsula were designed to accommodate four thousand men and in those first days of captivity we were over fifty thousand. The camp was already crammed full with thousands of prisoners and the barracks were also beyond capacity – the only space left was standing room in the barracks square. I kept the boys with me and had to be pretty firm with Freddie because he wanted to go off on his own and search for some spare space for us.

The mood was one of complete devastation and total desolation. It was degrading beyond words and humiliation hung over us like a heavy black cloud. There were no toilets, you just had to go where you stood. The Japanese had surrounded the perimeter and had machine guns trained on us. It was hopeless. To try to escape or organise a mass rush would have resulted in a massacre.

More and more POWs kept flooding into the camp. The arrival of each fresh group added to our dejection and bewilderment. We eventually found a space to lie down and get some fitful sleep.

The next morning prisoners came around with pails of food, ladling out servings into the mess tins we had brought with us. It was a kind of stew with green vegetables in it. We had not eaten in twenty-four hours and it tasted delicious. It was the last ‘proper’ meal we would get for some time. There would be only rice from here on in.

Food and the lack of it would swiftly become an obsession for all of us prisoners. The rice we got was sub-standard, quite literally the sweepings off the warehouse floor normally considered inedible, contaminated with vermin droppings, maggots and all sorts. We were grateful for every grain of it. The food was always served outdoors on the parade ground, for breakfast, lunch and tea, from four huge cast-iron pots. The Gordons had their own line and allowed no pushing to the front. We all knew what we were getting and how much of it. It was tough to stomach the plain rice after a while and you really had to force it down.

It was particularly difficult for the boys. But Colonel Graham took an enlightened view and decided that they should get more food than the rest of the POWs. They received a cup and a half of rice to our single cup, which the cooks factored into the total. Had other prisoners known I am sure that there would have been objections to their extra half-cup. But the boys knew they had to keep it to themselves so as not to cause resentment. Had there been any trouble over it, though, I would have stood up for them. They needed the extra sustenance more than we did. They were going through puberty and needed what little extra boost a half-cup of rice could provide.

Once most of the prisoners had moved out to occupy other buildings on the peninsula, we had some more space and moved into our old barracks. It was total chaos. Fights sparked like wildfire over perceived prime positions. Fists flew at the smallest infringement of space. Thankfully the officer in charge of assigning places put the boys and me into a small wooden outhouse building. It had been used for storage previously but it suited us fine, with just enough room for four camp beds and little else. Not that we had any possessions anyway. All I had were the clothes on my back, a cheap wristwatch, a few pencils, my mess tin and my cache of photographs. I was pleased to have our own space and the boys were happy too.

The shower facilities were based in the main part of the concrete building complex and the cold water was on only briefly – usually for an hour in the morning. You could not drink it because it was not boiled and the risk of getting ill was too great. But it did help to try to wash some of the dirt and grime off and it made us feel better for a short time. I tried to get the boys to wash every day. While the other two took some persuading to shower, Freddie required no prompting. He was always fussy about his appearance. I had one piece of soap, which we shared. We had to make it last, which was very difficult with cold water because it was so difficult to work into a lather. When it came to brushing your teeth there was no toothbrush, just some water and your finger. As for shaving there were of course no razors so most of the POWs were fully bearded.

At first we simply felt relieved that the killing and the shelling had stopped. We had survived and over nine thousand of our comrades had died. But there was a lot of anger in the camp too. Many men had been captured without having the chance to engage the enemy or even fire a shot. Some argued endlessly over who was to blame for our downfall. ‘If only we had been sent tanks. If only we had enough aeroplanes. If only we had launched Matador. If only we had sunk the Japanese Navy before it got too close. If only . . .’

Churchill wanted to keep Singapore British but it was well down the list of priorities when it came to resources – behind the defence of Britain, the campaign in North Africa and the need to send arms to the Russian front. In my view the ‘pukka sahib’ officers, who incredibly still insisted on having their batmen in the prison camp, were partly to blame. The government was more culpable and Churchill even more so. It was a view that I never missed an opportunity to express. Gradually, though, the recriminations subsided and we found another great topic of conversation.

Food. It haunted our dreams and thoughts. Hunger was turning into starvation. We were beginning to waste away, the sensation of taste becoming a distant memory. Some of the men already suffered from debilitating vitamin deficiencies and the quest for food became a matter of life or death. It was at this point that the indomitable Freddie and his fantastic foraging skills came to the rescue. One day after weeks of little more than rice, he rushed in to the hut clutching his Glengarry cap to his stomach: ‘Alistair! Alistair! Look what I’ve got! Look what I’ve got!’

We all hunched over as he carefully opened the Glengarry to reveal his treasure trove – a clutch of gleaming white eggs! Our eyes widened in disbelief and our taste buds went into overdrive. Freddie, our magnanimous provider, was triumphant. We drooled as we fried up the eggs and stared in amazement at them bubbling in the pan, the sizzling sound a symphony to our ears. The familiar smell had us dancing around with excitement. Never, ever did a fried egg taste so good and every succulent mouthful was made to last.

Soon Freddie was so well liked in the camp that he became the unofficial Changi mascot. Darting about the place he refined his scavenging skills and brought smiles to the faces of men who had little to smile about. I had a special, almost paternal relationship with him but others felt protective of Freddie as well. There was something about his nature that you could not help but warm to. Some of the older prisoners, men with families who had sons in their early teens, saw them reincarnated in Freddie. He was a reminder too of our lost youth. I hated to think what Freddie was up to when he was out of my sight. He was such a curious person and never afraid of bursting into a group or conversation. I was always afraid he would fall in with a bad crowd and I would lecture him constantly on the perils of life.

But Freddie was irrepressible and became well known around the camp and well liked by all the men. He had such vitality and could bring energy to any situation. Nobody had a bad word to say about him; he reminded them of life before the camp, of a better world that existed beyond the wire in a different time and place.

Most nights the boys and I went up the grassy hill that dominated Changi to chew the fat. Boredom was a huge problem, not just for the boys but for me too. Invariably it led to depression and we did all we could to fight it. I managed to snaffle a deck of playing cards, which helped pass the time. We played endless games of whist and rummy, while snap seemed to be the boys’ favourite. We chatted about the possibilities of what could happen to us. I would say to them, ‘Look, you’re just young boys. The Nips won’t do anything to you.’ I think the older boys believed me but Freddie would look at me sceptically and keep his concerns to himself.

After enjoying the spectacular sunset we would talk for hours under the moonlight. The Brinds had never been to Scotland and I would tell them all about life in Britain. Freddie would sidle up and grill me about my life. He wanted to know everything, personal, professional and otherwise. He was eager to learn about life and was especially nosy about girls, and Hazel Watson in particular.

One evening hundreds of men milled about our normal spot up the hill. There was to be a concert, a break from the grinding monotony of camp life. As a music lover I was thrilled. The boys were excited too. Somehow, goodness knows how, a piano had been dragged all the way up the hill. It was a brilliant moonlit night and as the musicians arranged themselves total and respectful silence descended on the huge crowd. Had it not been for the sound of the crickets and the tropical breeze, we could have been in the Albert Hall. Then a solo violinist, a professional with the London Philharmonic called Denis East, stepped forward and the plaintive notes of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto reverberated around the hillside. It was the first music we had heard for months. I sat entranced, and the boys, strangers to classical music, were agog – spellbound by Mendelssohn’s magic. For a few minutes the beauty of the music lifted us out of the camp and reminded us of the greatness of the European civilisation that the Japanese militarists despised. Some men wept. When East finished several stunned seconds passed before rapturous applause and cheering broke out. It was so beautiful.

Eventually the Japanese guards present got bored and left. When they had gone an altar was set up and an interdenominational church service held. It proved a welcome morale booster. Even people like me, not especially religious, found it comforting. It was to be my one and only church service during three and a half years of captivity but it struck a real chord and made me think seriously about Christianity for the first time. When the padre finished his sermon on our mount in Changi prison, thousands of miles from home, hundreds of voices joined in a moving rendition of ‘The Old Rugged Cross’.

The first verse seemed so appropriate to all of us caught up in the fall of Singapore:

The Brinds were both devout Roman Catholics. Freddie never talked about his beliefs but the brothers were always missing on Sunday mornings and were friendly with the Roman Catholic padre. The Japanese did not allow church activities yet there were obviously secret masses going on – at considerable risk to all involved. I never enquired because I did not want the boys to think I was spying on them. Freddie always wore a crucifix on a silver chain, which he kept tucked under his shirt. If the guards had discovered it, they would have taken it from him and given him a beating.

During this bleak period when the days dragged on for ever, Freddie scored his greatest triumph. On one of his regular snooping missions around the sprawling camp complex he stumbled upon a clandestine cooking operation run by a Swiss gentleman – the former head chef of Raffles Hotel no less! Along with two or three of his friends the master chef had set up a concealed cooking stove in a basement of one of the buildings. Needless to say, Freddie quickly befriended the chef, who took the boy under his wing, and one evening we were invited for some food.

The endless diet of rice had long lost its appeal and the invitation prompted frenzied speculation as to what would be on the menu. The vegetable stews served in our early days had ceased and the rice rations had already been cut. So we were just incredulous after we nervously entered the basement and the exotic and glorious aromas overwhelmed us. The chef showed us how to make an omelette and then carefully cut it up and served us each with an equal portion. It was a mouth-wateringly magical moment, the omelette delectable in the extreme.

Thanks to Freddie, who spent his days scavenging food to give to the chef to cook, we were invited back regularly. We used to joke about how as Other Ranks we had been banned from Raffles Hotel before the surrender but now had our own personal chef. It was brilliant. We got our ration of rice and eagerly took it to him. He was quite a character, short and stout, not much taller than Freddie. A typical chef, he had a fiery temper but good humour in equal measure. He idolised Freddie, who never failed to cheer him up.

This culinary conjuror would transform our weevilridden rice into mouth-watering kedgeree, delicious risotto and savoury rice balls – it did not mean more food but more variation and taste. One of my favourites was a risotto of plain rice that the chef would add all sorts of spices to – God knows what – and it tasted superb. As prisoners fixated with food your stomach never let you forget that you were hungry. You became obsessed with when the next meal would be and when that time arrived, with the portion sizes. All eyes stared beadily at the pail of rice and the server to ensure that you were not being cheated.

Lack of food and the dire conditions were beginning to take a serious toll on everyone. Myself and the boys all came down with dysentery, which tore at your stomach lining and had you running to the squalid latrines dozens of times a day. Then in May 1942 I suffered my first bout of malaria. With no sprays or mosquito nets the place was alive with insects. I was lucky. At this stage the medical officer still had a little quinine. The boys looked after me and I stayed in the hut, wrestling with the shakes, sweats and fever, while they were delighted to be rewarded for their efforts with the rice ration that I was too ill to eat. As I suffered they grinned and wolfed down the extra spoonfuls of rice.

During this period of camp life Changi was still quite a disciplined and organised place. British and Australian officers were basically in charge of running the camp and the Japanese left us pretty much alone. The only time we saw much of them was when they searched for radios. On these frantic occasions the Japanese turned everything upside down, taking anything that was a benefit or bonus to us. Books, bibles, pens and paper were all taken away.

Our regular guards and sentries were Sikhs, who had served with the British Indian Army. Around thirty thousand of the forty thousand Sikhs serving in Malaya went over to the Japanese, who promised India independence. The Sikhs who refused to switch sides were treated appallingly as prisoners and some were executed.

The Sikh guards dressed in turbans and obviously despised us. You could see the hatred in their eyes. But they were rarely violent towards us. I had heard stories of the brutal treatment they dealt out to other POWs but I never saw it. We had once been their colonial masters, now the boot was on the other foot. I hated the fact that they had sided with the Japanese but that is human nature, I suppose.

One day a few weeks after our arrival at Changi Captain Faulder, the education officer, approached me.

He enquired, ‘Are you the one in charge of these lads?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ve heard a lot about them. Turned down the chance to go with the civilians, eh? Remarkable.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ I said, wondering where this conversation was heading.

Captain Faulder then decreed, ‘Very well. Urquhart, I would like you to take classes so that these lads can get their British Army General Certificate of Education while they’re here. Might as well spend this time wisely.’

‘But I’m not a teacher, sir. I’ve never taught in my life.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’re sufficiently educated to teach them the basics. We’ve got a room for you to start immediately. Come along, I’ll show you.’

I trotted after him to another outhouse building near by. It might once have been used as a type of lecture room because it had a blackboard easel and a tiny stump of chalk, a long trestle table and three chairs.

‘This should do you,’ Captain Faulder said, standing with his hands on his hips, admiring the choice of classroom.

He said, ‘I’ll get you some exercise books and some pencils. You can start straight away.’

I thanked him and he marched off, leaving me scratching my head, wondering how the heck I was going to teach these rascals anything. After the shock had subsided I recognised that it could be a positive thing. At least it would keep my mind busy and away from depressing thoughts.

The following day class started at 9 a.m. With my only previous teaching experience being dance classes for Eric and co. in the living room back home, I decided to concentrate on English and maths, and also Latin, since my father had ensured I was a fairly accomplished scholar. There are so many Latin words that tell you what the English meaning is, I thought the boys would benefit from my personalised syllabus. There were no books or manuals to call on so my own ideas had to suffice. We worked for two hours on the basics and I tried to keep them interested by asking questions relating to the outside world. While Freddie was by far the most intelligent, he was also the most restless. He was forever day-dreaming out of the window or distracting the others, who were slower and inarticulate. Jim was rather backward in his work and his ponderous handwriting was almost unintelligible – like a hen’s scrawl, as I used to tell him. They hated the lessons more than I did but it kept us all occupied.

After two hours we stopped for lunch and a break. We continued in the afternoon for a further two hours but the schedule was flexible. If I got fed up, which occurred frequently, the day would be called off short, much to the boys’ delight.

After three months they were ready to sit their exam. I had high hopes for Freddie but was unsure as to how the other two would fare. Much to my surprise and general delight they all passed and received handwritten certificates, signed by me, that confirmed completion of their British Army General Certificate of Education. Hastily typed up certificates were later presented to the boys and Freddie was extremely proud of his, especially when he learned that his Army pay would now be increased! Not that it did any good in the camp.

Meanwhile most of the men went on work parties during the day. I was very lucky, exempted since I had a duty of care towards the boys. The others went to the very docks where I had landed less than two years earlier or to the aerodrome to clear trees. In the first few months the men could work hard in the tropical heat because they were in relatively good health. But as their health deteriorated and their body weight dropped due to the poor diet, fewer and fewer of them came back from the work parties. Many were visibly withering away and, suffering from dysentery or malaria, dropping like flies. The officers had even to designate a new work party whose sole function was burying bodies.

The work parties taken to Singapore harbour to work on the docks, unloading shipments of rice, sugar, meat and vegetables, plundered as much as they could. For starving men the temptation to help themselves was just too great. The Japanese deemed stealing food the most heinous of crimes. Some paid with their lives for a handful of rice. Guards administered savage beatings with iron bars, staves and pick-axe handles that left men paralysed and blinded and others dead. The dreadful dangers, however, did not stop starving prisoners from taking their chances.

There was constant paranoia in the camp that some men were acting as spies for the Japanese. Anyone seen being called to their offices regularly and who returned unscathed was singled out as suspicious. Of course some men might have been chiropodists or something, called in to work on the officers’ feet or whatever. But it did not stop fevered speculation and tongues wagging among bored men. If there was a particularly strong suspicion that someone was in the pockets of the Japanese, or ‘Jap happy’ as it was known, they would be confronted. I heard rumours that some men were even murdered; their bodies disposed of head first into the latrines. Surprisingly, though, the men who secured jobs working in the Japanese cookhouse or helping in the storerooms were never castigated by the rest of the men. They were obviously better fed but there was no jealousy. It was more a case of ‘fair play to them’.

As the weeks turned into months in 1942, there were plenty of rumours circulating in the camp about the progress of the war. We heard of a huge armada sailing from England with the RAF to save us, of major sea battles, of Japan running rampant through the Pacific and taking island after island. The Russians had reached Greece. The British were winning in North Africa. And so it went on. Through his interpreter the Japanese commander would take great glee in announcing, ‘The mighty Japanese empire is taking over India and Australia.’ It got into your mind and you did not know what to believe. We would ask our officers for any information but they were just as in the dark as we were.

The lack of contact from our families also got us down. Men wondered how their families were surviving the bombing of British cities, if sons and brothers had been conscripted. The lack of letters from home made us feel like a forgotten army and we were anxious that our families knew we were OK. In June the Japanese had allowed us to send a message home. I had filled in my little card with the message: ‘My Dearest Mother, I am in good health and spirits and being well treated. Hope you are well. Much love to all at home. Please do not worry too much. Please let Hazel know and give her my love. With all my love, Alistair.’ But we never knew whether the cards had been sent or not. (In fact I was to send a total of six of these cards during captivity and all of them arrived in Aberdeen after my return home.) By now every prisoner was suffering from depression, and coping with ‘black dog’ was the hardest thing a prisoner ever encountered.

That was why the concert parties were so important. I had been mesmerised by the concert on the hill above the barracks; then one day it was announced that there was to be a stage show on the parade ground of Selarang barracks. We all trooped along on the night to be treated to a burlesque show entitled ‘Tulips From Amsterdam’. It was hilarious and with Japanese guards in the audience, pretty near the knuckle. The concert party had devised all kinds of skits sending our captors up, with great music too and we all sang along to the hits of the day. The indisputable star of the show was a drag artist called Bobby Spong. Dressed up to the nines and positively glamorous, when he came on stage the audience went wild, the boys besides themselves laughing, hooting, yelling and cheering – and no shortage of indecent suggestions. We laughed until our sides nearly split.

It was to be our last laugh at Selarang. A couple of weeks later at the beginning of September, things turned nasty, very nasty. The Japanese had decided to tighten the screw and increase control over the camp. Unbeknown to the prisoners they had plans about what to do with us and blind, terrorised obedience was central to those plans. The strange limbo we inhabited, in which we lived as prisoners but under British authority, was drawing to an end and the Japanese wanted to impose their authority.

A new regime headed by Major General Shimpei Fukuye wanted to transform Changi into a proper prison camp. A few weeks earlier four prisoners, two Australians and two British, had tried to escape from up-country in Malaya and Fukuye demanded that all the allied prisoners should sign an undertaking not to do this. Escape attempts were futile and doomed in my view. But our officers refused to sign as a matter of principle. The first we knew about this row was on being told to report to the Selarang barracks. As we made our way there, thousands of men were doing the same, streaming in to the barracks from all directions. The Japanese had decreed that all prisoners must be inside the barracks by 6 p.m. – anybody outside after that time would be shot. It was the beginning of a terrifying stand-off that became known as the Selarang Incident.

Seventeen and a half thousand men crammed into the Gordon Highlanders’ barracks designed to accommodate fewer than a thousand men. It was appalling. We had no space and what little water we had was for cooking only. Latrines had to be dug in the middle of the barracks square but we could never get near them, the place was so heaving with men. Somebody worked out that the population density was one million men per square mile. Outside of the crammed barracks in the parade ground there was very little cover for the men and we baked in the sun. Our officers warned us that we would face a court martial if we signed and that the Japanese were breaching the Geneva Convention that allows prisoners the right to attempt to escape without facing punishment.

The Japanese could not have cared less about the Geneva Convention and had no intention of observing it. To rack up the pressure they ordered the execution of the escapees and the British and Australian commanding officers were instructed to attend. It was a brutal, botched affair during which the Sikh firing party had to shoot the men several times. They shot some of the prisoners in the groin and the poor chaps had to plead to be finished off. Refusing blindfolds the condemned men displayed fantastic bravery and the British and Australians still refused to give in.

We were playing a dangerous game. The Japanese could not stand to lose face and we knew that they were capable of anything. Crammed into the parade square we were so vulnerable, deprived of all items of war. There was no possibility of an uprising. Personally I was riddled with fear that the situation could escalate into a massacre.

At various points during the stand-off the Japanese would drive in a dozen lorries covered in tarpaulins. These would reverse into strategic positions in front of us covering all points. Then at a signal the tarpaulins would be torn off in unison to reveal machine guns mounted on the trucks, four soldiers at the ready on each. Their guns pointed at us, the Japanese would start screaming. It was all part of the terror tactics they so enjoyed. We responded by singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. The national anthem was banned and this became our theme song, our only weapon and I doubt if it was ever sung with more fervour. The Aussies would pipe up with ‘Waltzing Matilda’, and sometimes a chorus of ‘There Will Always Be an England’ would ring out. As conditions deteriorated and more men went down with dysentery and diphtheria, singing was a way of keeping our spirits up. But I always believed that we were all going to be massacred.

On the third day of the stand-off conditions had become really desperate and men began to die of dysentery. I tried to keep a brave face on things for the sake of the boys but it was an awful ordeal. We were down to half rations, constantly thirsty and had hardly room to lie down – sleeping was a problem.

Still we stuck it out and then the Japanese played their trump card. They threatened to transfer in two and a half thousand sick and wounded men from the hospital in the nearby Roberts barracks. It would have been mass murder and reluctantly our officers agreed to sign but insisted that it be recorded we did so ‘under duress’. At last it was over. We were ordered to sign a piece of paper that read, ‘I the undersigned, hereby solemnly swear on my honour that I will not, under any circumstances, attempt to escape.’

We all lined up to sign and it seemed to take ages. Some men signed as ‘Mickey Mouse’ or ‘Robin Hood’, while ‘Ned Kelly’ was a popular choice with the Australians. After standing in line for hours it finally came to my turn. I signed as ‘AK Urquhart’ but deliberately made it an illegible scrawl so I could deny it if need be.

Once you signed you were moved to your new barracks, or camps as they now were. As Gordon Highlanders we stayed put at our barracks in Selarang, along with some members of the Malay Volunteer Force. The Japanese used Selarang as a propaganda victory. They could tell their population how cowardly we were, how easily they took Singapore and that we were a feeble enemy.

The Selarang Incident was mentally and physically draining. We had been on an emotional roller-coaster, playing for the highest stakes. It also marked a dark new phase in our relationship with our captors.

We were surviving each day at a time. Every day seemed longer and tougher than the previous day. Freddie was the only one who did not seem to be suffering. One steamy October day in 1942 a British officer’s runner found me at my hut and snapped, ‘You’re to report to Lieutenant Emslie’s office straight away!’

‘What for?’ I asked, annoyed at his abrupt manner, which seemed uncalled for.

The runner looked at me and said with a wry smile, ‘You’re down to go to a holiday camp.’

I reported to Lieutenant Emslie’s office. He said, ‘You’ve been selected to go on a draft up-country. Get organised and be ready for parade at 8 a.m. tomorrow.’

He refused to tell me any more but I suspected that even he did not have more information. I trudged back to my hut, trying to compute the information, wondering what he meant by ‘up-country’ and working out how to tell the boys. They would be devastated.

Back at the hut I sat the boys down and relayed the news, emphasising the part about its being a ‘holiday camp’. They were understandably upset.

Jim said, ‘But who will look after us?’

‘An officer will make sure you are looked after,’ I said, reigning in rampant emotions.

While I was only a few years older than the boys, I had become a father figure to them over the last few months. We had formed a strong bond and it was being ripped apart. They felt abandoned and I felt as if I had failed them.