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Anzac Day Address 2004 at Kanchanaburi Thailand |
Recollections of Neil MacPherson WX16572 of 2/2nd
Pioneer Battalion, Williams Force Burma Railway |
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In February 1942, 3000 Australians,
the vanguard of the 7th Division, returning to Australia from the
Middle East on the SS Orcades, were diverted to help slow the invaders
sweeping all in front of them towards Australia. On the 15th February
an attempt to land the two fighting units, Pioneers and Machine
Gunners at Oosthaven Sumatra was aborted when on landing it was
found that the enemy was only 12 miles away. The force next day
disembarked at Batavia, their places aboard the Orcades taken by
the evacuating Wavell’s Headquarter staff.
In Java despite lack of air and sea support our lightly equipped
force inflicted severe losses on the invaders but at a cost. In
my company alone we lost our Company C.O. two platoon officers and
many others. |
On the 8th March the Dutch authorities surrendered the
island along with all allied forces. At 19 years of age I became a prisoner
of a cruel and brutal enemy and joined over 22,000 fellow Australians
in captivity. Of these over 8,000 or 36%, were to pay the supreme sacrifice.
Most were to suffer an intolerable cruel and lingering death.
In September 1942 under the command of our legendary Pioneer
C.O. Lt Colonel Williams, 1800 prisoners from Java were shipped to Burma
in conditions that today we would not allow sheep to travel. This involved
three separate journeys, in three Hell Ships. Arriving in Thanbyuzayat
in October 1942, we joined the first of Brigadier Varley’s A Force
of Australians just arrived from Tavoy, with them we were the first Australians
to start work on the Burma Thailand railway. The next Australians to arrive
in Burma, in January 1943, also from Java, No 5 Group. The first Australians
to commence work on the Thailand end were also from Java, Dunlop Force
in January 1943.
The following 15 months were to test the metal, the morale,
and the Anzac spirit of the Australian prisoners in Burma. We labored
on a starvation diet of a hand full of rice and watery usually meatless
stew, clearing the jungle, on embankments, on cuttings, on bridges. In
the heat of the dry, and the misery and slush of the wet. Then, we survivors,
along with Anderson Force, were selected as No 1 Mobile Force, to carry
out the arduous and demanding task of laying the sleepers and rails, along
our previously worked ground. We worked continually through the wet, from
Thanbyuzayat right through into Thailand where the two ends were joined
on 17th October 1943. Our clothes and footwear, long destroyed in the
fetid jungle, left our only protection from the burning heat and the rain,
a loin cloth. Bed bugs and lice left by native workers made for harrowing
and restless nights. From the start deaths were continuous and as our
numbers dwindled so our work hours grew With no drugs whatsoever, malaria,
dysentery, beri beri, pellagra, tropical ulcers, smallpox, and finally
cholera took its toll. The dedicated Doctors and medical staff were supermen.
Working with make-shift instruments and few drugs, without their efforts
our losses would have doubled. Our torment continued till January 1944
when the survivors, wrecks of men, in rags, staggered out of their jungle
camps to be transported to the well organised better-equipped camps in
Tamarkan & Kanburi (Kanchanaburi).
Despite a continuing death rate from the results of our
ordeal, after six months of improved food and lighter work we survivors
regained some semblance of health, little did we know that this was part
of a well designed plan by our captors.
Thousands of Railway workers, Australians in a majority
were selected for shipment to Japan as slave labour, to work in mines,
factories and on the docks. Thousands of them were to die in Hell Ships
sunk by US submarines. My luck as a survivor continued, I was on the last
ship, the Awa Maru, my fourth Hell Ship, to successfully make the journey.
We arrived in Japan in January 1945, the coldest winter Japan experienced
in 40 years, to spend the remaining months working in a coalmine.
An unknown author described conditions on board these Hell
Ships thus
“Crowded onto cramped platforms, with barely enough space to turn
around, a mass of unwashed bodies struggling to survive in a sea of sweat
and revolting smells in the stifling heat of the holds. Initially in the
tropical heat near the equator, but the ensuing month was to see us making
our way across snow covered decks for our l toilet functions”
Today we remember those who paid the supreme sacrifice,
some of them rest in this well kept garden setting. But we must also remember
those survivors who returned home. They took up life where they left off,
brought up families, helped build a great nation, most drew a curtain
on the horrors through which they had lived. But for many the hidden horrors
surfaced in the unguarded hours of sleep, and to this day many still suffer
the trauma of repeated night mares along with the ravages of the diseases
they suffered.
Now, what were the positives that came out of our experiences,
we the lucky ones, the survivors, discovered the will to survive, we discovered
mate ship, we discovered compassion, a caring and a bond for our fellow
prisoners that transcends that, and is different to that we have for the
opposite sex. For us teenagers, and there were many of us, just walk along
the line of graves here and read the ages, we matured quickly, we adapted,
we found a maturity far above our age, we learned self discipline, most
importantly we discovered mate ship.
“No prisoner on the railway survived who did
not have a mate” I can best illustrate that special mate ship between
Australian POWs by reciting a poem written by an Australian ex POW, Duncan
Butler 2/12th Field Ambulance.
MATES
I've travelled down some lonely roads
Both crooked tracks and straight
An' I've learned life's noblest creed
Summed up in one word "Mate"
I’m thinking back across the years,
(A thing I do of late)
An’ this word sticks between my ears
You’ve got to have a mate
Someone who'll take you as you are.
Regardless of your state
An' stand as firm as Ayers Rock
Because "e" is your mate
Me mind goes back to 43,
To slavery an' ate,
When man's one chance to stay alive
Depended on 'is mate.
With bamboo for a billie-can
An' bamboo for a plate,
A bamboo paradise for bugs,
Was bed for me and me mate.
You'd slip and slither through the mud
An' curse your rotten fate:
But then you’d hear a quiet word:
“Don’t drop your bundle mate.”
An' though it's all so long ago
This truth I ave to state:
A man don't know what lonely means,
Til 'e ‘as lost ‘is mate
If there's a life that follers this,
If there's a "Golden Gate"
The welcome that I want to hear
Is just: "Good on y mate"
An so to all who ask us why
We keep these special Dates
Like Anzac day, I answer: "Why"
We're thinking of our mates
An when I've left the drivers seat
An handed in me plates,
I'll tell old Peter at the door:
"I’ve come to join me….MATES”...
Address Anzac Day 2004 Kanchanaburi, Thailand
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