The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart

Author:Alistair Urquhart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2011-02-23T23:00:00+00:00

A full-time burial party of six men now worked in the camp. It was comprised of the same six souls, who never went out to work on the railway. While digging graves in the jungle was by no means easy work, it was easier, physically at least, than being on the railway. But seeing those poor dead men must have taken a lot of strength and will from the gravediggers.

Just to face the next day required a huge effort for all of us. You did not have the energy to do what our captors demanded. On around a thousand calories a day it was completely beyond our physical being. But it did not matter to them. There were thousands of POWs, not to mention the tens and hundreds of thousands of natives, waiting to replace us. We were slaves to the slaughter and utterly expendable to them.

But even the Japanese eventually realised that some tasks were becoming beyond our physical capabilities. For the previous few months we had been manually dragging huge teak logs to be used as railway sleepers. When we first arrived it would take eight to twelve men to move these hardwood trunks but as we became weaker it took twenty or thirty men to edge them into place. After a while the soldiers introduced two elephants to take over that task, to increase productivity. I had seen elephants when the circus came to Aberdeen and up close these beasts were equally impressive and intimidating. It was pleasing to see them in action, knowing our backs were being saved for another day, but their presence only added to the overall danger of railway life. The logs hung on steel chains around the elephants’ necks. The animals moved them easily but they would swing around dangerously, causing a lot of accidents and broken bones and taking out plenty of men.

My army-issue clothes, shorts and shirt had long since rotted from my frame. In a bid to retain my remaining dignity, I resorted to wearing a ‘Jap-happy’, a simple loincloth that had become popular among the men. It consisted of a long piece of white linen approximately six inches wide. Two pieces of tape or string attached to the ends meant you could tie it around your waist, while the rest of the material was drawn from behind under your groin to cover your bits. The loose end just flapped down in front of you. It would win no fashion awards but it did the job and was surprisingly comfortable. Otherwise I was naked. The more naked I was, the cleaner I felt. But the filth, dirt, crawling lice, the itch, smell and loss of all freedom and dignity were hard for any proud man to bear.

The wall of rock that had started off four hundred yards in front of us was getting closer every day. The thought of using pickaxes, hammers and chisels on this great slab of limestone gave me the horrors. I knew people were dying around me on the railway but I didn’t really want to know.

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