Prisoner from Penang by Clare Flynn

Author:Clare Flynn [Flynn, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cranbrook Press

If we had believed that the men’s camp would be our final place of imprisonment until the day we hoped to be liberated, we were to be proved wrong. And we did all believe it, so it came as a terrible shock when we were told that we were to be moved again just over a year after we arrived in the men’s camp.

The increased level of cruelty on the part of our oppressors, the further diminishing rations and the growing number of rumours, fuelled our hope and belief that the war must be drawing to a close and an Allied victory was in sight. Being told we were to be transferred to another place filled us with terror. It could well mean that the Japanese wished to hide us away in some remote area where we might never be found should an Allied victory come. Or worse still, they would take us deep into the jungle and execute us.

We were divided into groups to make the journey separately. I was worried I would be separated from my ailing mother but thanks to Veronica, who swapped with me, I was in the group who would accompany the occupants of the hospital hut and their nurses. We were to be the last of four groups to leave.

After travelling by truck – distressing enough for seriously ill and dying patients – we carried the stretcher-bound patients onto the deck of an old tanker boat. There were no sanitary arrangements on board and the only way anyone could use the lavatory was by passing around a single rice bowl donated by one of the nurses to serve as an inadequate chamber pot among about a hundred of us.

As soon as we moved out into the strait, the ship was caught up in a tropical storm that sent the ancient boat bucking and groaning, filling us with terror and causing many to be violently sick. I lay on the deck, pelted by driving rain and washed by waves, clutching Mum’s hand, convinced that she was going to die while we were still at sea. All around us sick women and children were vomiting and crying out, distressed and terrified as thunder and lightning split the sky. The boat rose rapidly on the swell, then plummeted vertically downwards from the crest of the waves and we all feared for our lives.

Not long after the storm subsided, someone pointed through the thick mist to the long finger of a seemingly endless and all-too familiar pier, appearing in front of the ship. There was a collective intake of breath. We were going back to Banka Island, and that must mean to the miserable Muntok camp where our nightmare had begun. I felt my throat close. Next to me one of the Australian nurses let out a groan that spoke for us all.

Mum was now unconscious. Marjorie was in a worse state, lying next to her, under a filthy sheet, the elephantine swelling of her lower limbs evident through the thin cotton cover.

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