Survival on the Death Railway and Nagasaki by Jim Brigginshaw

Author:Jim Brigginshaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / General
ISBN: 9781526740113
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

TAMARKAN - AN OASIS IN A DESERT OF MISERY

SOONER or later, whatever the circumstances, the Australians would start gambling. When the inevitable game of two-up got under way at the Hundred and Five-Kilo camp, a Korean guard saw money being exchanged and pushed into the ring.

After watching the coins go up in the air and money being grabbed, he pulled a small bill out of a pocket and placed it on the ground. It was covered, the kip was tossed and the Korean lost. The winner just beat him to the money.

Scowling, the guard put a larger note on the ground. It was covered and before the coins came to rest, he’d grabbed the money and taken off. Nobody complained. He had the law on his side.

If the prisoners weren’t gambling, they were scrounging something to sell. Three of them pinched a Japanese army tent and cut it into pieces to sell to the natives for sarongs. They made arrangements for the business transaction to be conducted in the jungle under cover of darkness.

One customer was a Burmese woman who wanted a sarong but had no money, so she made a physical arrangement that was readily agreed to by the sellers. Later, two of the men discovered they had syphilis. The only one to escape the disease had differing sexual preferences, and the woman had held no attraction for him.

The introduction of syphilis into the camp created a problem. There were no medical supplies to treat the many other prevalent diseases, let alone a new and exotic one.

Late 1943 was a bad period for the POWs. They were low in physical condition and morale. All contact had been lost with the outside world. The constant movement further into the jungle and uninhabited areas meant there was no news about what was happening in the war. Wirelesses that had once kept the men informed were a thing of the past, because no parts were available. Despair was everywhere. Sick men had lost the will to live.

Jim Bodero had his first attack of ulcers. Cuts and scratches that had previously healed without infection now flared into vicious skin eruptions. In desperation, he treated them with a snakebite kit he’d been able to hold on to during his imprisonment. The kit consisted of a wooden pencil-shaped phial with a lance at one end and the purplish antiseptic Condy’s Crystals at the other end.

Bodero had no idea how much use a snakebite kit would be in treating ulcers. He used the lance end to cut the ulcer open, and then he’d go down to the river and let tiny fish nibble at the wound. Afterwards, he’d apply the Condy’s crystals. Miraculously, it worked, and the ulcers eventually healed.

However, other men suffered badly from them, and if it wasn’t ulcers, it was some other disease. Still the Japanese pushed them beyond the limit of human endurance. The Burma Railway had to be finished before the end of 1943.

And it was.

A-Force worked on the line until Christmas Day 1943.

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