William Trewin: 'Rhoda Mountjoy is my niece. She has been staying with me on a visit for about three weeks

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'When the shelling started again, everyone said: "Right. Let's go!" And they all headed for slit trenches or whatever. I just dropped behind the nearest little tree, up a slope. It was great cover - three inches around. But it was enough for me. I wasn't worrying. I thought I'd just sit this one out. And all of a sudden it was dark, and the shelling stopped.

'There was no noise. It was completely silent. A couple of times I called out, gently, to see if there was anybody about, and I got no answer. And I thought: Well, this is very peculiar. And then all of a sudden 1 heard something coming up the hill. I thought: Godl Well, I just don't know. If that's one of ours, I think he would have answered. But I wasn't going to call out again. So I waited. The footsteps got nearer and nearer and nearer. And I thought: He's going to stand on me in a minute. And I was ready to get up and find out who it was. Anyway he stopped. And I waited, and he fired a Very pistol - or a similar gun to a Very pistol. It was a Jap. Obviously a forward scout. So I shot him with my 303.

'There was no other way. Either I shot him or he shot me. And I didn't want to be shot. I then thought: I better get out of this, I'm in trouble. I reckoned that if he was a forward scout, the others wouldn't be far behind. Obviously none of our boys were there as they would have been firing by now. I was there on my own.

Now there was one track out of that place, running parallel with the coast. It was the only road in and out. So I thought: I'll walk up there and see what happens. And I did. And all of a sudden I heard them, talking to each other not far away. And they started shouting and they were on both sides of the road. Japanese on this side and Japanese on that side and Clemence in the middle. So I took off. I lifted up the old feet and ran. I thought: There's got to be somebody on our side back here. And I must have gone about 200 yards when I was challenged by an Australian voice. I thought: Thank God for thatl I hope he doesn't shoot me. I told him who I was and he said: "Right. Well, come on, mate. But don't make any mistakes." I said: "I won't!" When he saw me I was OK.

'So I joined this infantry battalion, and I stayed with them, and all night we were in and out of skirmishes. All we were doing was firing at gunshots coming our way. They'd fire, and we'd fire. They knew where we were by the shots, and we knew where they were. All we did was fire into the jungle all night where we saw flashes in the dark.

Towards dawn, one of the officers said: "I want you." He told me and another chap to pick up a wounded bloke who had been shot in the chest, and we took him back to the Regimental Aid Post and dropped him there. And I thought: Well, it's getting close to morning -1 better try and find out where my regiment is and get back to it. And finally, one way or another, I did find out where a couple of our guns were and then joined up with them.

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'After that I eventually got back to Battery Headquarters, and then they gave me a gun of my own, put me in charge.

'There were five in a gun crew, and of the five of us who were with that gun on the beach, I never saw the other four again. One of them probably walked into the Japs. He was in a slit trench with me during that first bombardment, and a shell that was lobbed at us exploded about three feet away from the trench. Both of us had out heads up against the side of the trench, and he must have taken more of the blast than I did, because he went half silly. He wanted to stand up and get out of the trench. An hour or so later he did get out and wandered off. I never saw him again. I didn't see the other three either. They must have been either killed by the shelling or have walked into those Japs that night.1

Further landings were made by the Japanese on 10 February, and dive-bombing and machine-gunning by Japanese aircraft continued during the day. Big fires raged in the north of the island, and despite some allied counter-attacks and the forays of a few Hurricanes and salvos from British naval vessels offshore, Japanese tanks crossed the repaired causeway, the Japanese advance now being directed at Singapore city itself. The capture of two main reservoirs and the cutting of the island's water supply, sealed Singapore's fate.

To prevent further loss of life, the island surrendered unconditionally on 15 February - just as the Japanese whose numbers were about half those of the defending forces, were running out of supplies. About 60,000 allied troops were made prisoner, including 32,000 Indians and 13,000 Australians, one of whom was 20-year-old Bill.

'An officer would come around and tell me and my gun crew: "We want you on such and such a road, just in case any Jap tanks come through there." And we were switched around for a couple of days from spot to spot. All we were doing was pushing from one road to another. We didn't know what was going on, again. All we did was do what we were told.

'We ended up in the Botanical Gardens - that was our last spot. We heard that they were talking about a surrender. And then the word just came around - lay down your arms. And that was it.

'I threw my rifle in the lake -1 took the bolt out first. It's probably still there. It was only a gesture, but I thought: They're not going to get it.

468 ,

'Well, the officers came around and brought us in and formed us into a regiment again as far as they could. They did it quite well. For a couple of nights we remained in the Botanical Gardens, and then we were told we were going to march out to Changi. We didn't know where Changi was, or what it was, and naturally it was a bit of a worry. You didn't know what was going to happen or how the Japs were going to act. But there wasn't any real problem at that time. They weren't looking for any extra trouble. We were marched off, keeping to our original regiments or battalions as far as possible. Some were a bit mixed, but we were never mixed up with the English very much. The Japs didn't have to organise us at all. We did all that. In fact the whole thing was better organised than the war.

We didn't have to do a great deal. We sometimes had to pull a vehicle with ropes down to the beach and fill 24 gallon drums with saltwater. These we then brought back to the cookhouses for conversion into salt. We weren't issued with any salt. Some of the boys were ordered to pick up bodies lying about the place and bury then, Chinese mainly. They were enemies and saboteurs, the Japanese said, and the Japs just shot them willy-nilly. One detail was down at the beach one day -1 wasn't among them - and there were 20 to 30 Chinese bodies bobbing about out in the sea. They'd been shot. Our boys had to bring them in and bury them.

'It didn't seem real. We still didn't know what was going to happen next. We thought the Japs would do something else with us. And then they started taking people away from Changi on working parties. Some were away for several months.

'When we were first taken back into Singapore we had to clean up a lot of rubble from bombed buildings, and jobs like that. And then we were taken down to the wharves. The main job there was carting rice, from ships to godowns, or from godowns to trucks. Or to ships going somewhere else. This was pretty rough - because we had 220 pound bags on our backs, and we were wearing just shorts and a hat, and boots. If we were lucky, we carried 100 pound bags of flour instead. The Japanese guarded us, all around the docks, and marched us to and from.

'The Chinese in Singapore were marvellous to us. They went out of their way to give us food. They used to stand along the road when we were being marched down to the docks, and they'd hand us breadrolls, butter, a bit of jam, all sorts of things. And the Japanese would rush up and bash them. But they'd still be back the next day. We said: "Go away! We don't want you to be bashed." And they still came back. Men, women and children, even little Chinese babies. I think they were giving away their own food. The kiddies didn't get bashed. But the Japs bashed the Chinese women. They used to hit you

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Things started to get quite rough from then on. Maybe part of it was our own fault. When we were working down on the wharves we were short of food, and by this time we were getting very hungry. You'd set off in the morning after a feed of rice and sugared water. That was your breakfast, and it was supposed to last you all day. So naturally you looked around for something to steal to eat. You stole to live, and you took terrible chances, because you really would get a bashing out of that. In the evenings you'd usually get a cup of rice and a mixture like a cup of soup with a bit of meat and vegetables in it. It varied. Sometimes it would be quite satisfying, but mostly it wasn't. But with what we were stealing we didn't worry too much, and we became quite adept at stealing as time went on.

'I was on a working party when I met up with my cousin, Len Allen. He was a captain in the AIF and in charge of a transport group. He arranged for me and a number of Anti-Tankers to join his group, and we became the best lot of scroungers you would ever meet.

'If they caught someone stealing, they'd make him stand for several hours holding a couple of bricks or a chunk of wood. And naturally you could only hold whatever it was for a certain time. But if you dropped it, you'd be bashed. Once we were going out the gates of the wharves and there were two Chinese strung up by the gates on barbed wire. They'd been caught stealing. They were tied up with barbed wire and it was wrapped around them. They were still alive. The Japs did this mainly to the Chinese. The Indians very rarely got into any trouble because basically they went over to the Japs - particularly the Sikhs. The Sikh civilian police were a foul mob, absolutely foul. The Sikhs were supposed to be the elite of the Indian army. But they still went over to the Japanese. The Brits didn't like it at all.

'Another time, when we marched down to the wharves past the railway station, we saw about half a dozen Chinese heads sitting on the spikes on top of a fence. They were supposed to have been saboteurs or whatever.

'None of us were treated like this, but two or three were shot at Changi for trying to escape. Which was stupid - there was nowhere to go.

'We were living and working in Singapore when this happened, working on the wharves and living in the Great World. This had originally been an amusement park. There were three or four of these places in Singapore. They were something like what we have in Melbourne. Like Luna Park, with sideshows. Some of us slept in a Chinese theatre, wherever you could make up a bed. We had managed to get some Indian charpoys, wooden frames strung with rope. The others were living in little sideshows throughout the Great World, and it was there we started getting skin diseases. I got a very bad one there, a type of tinea. It was all over my buttocks and the inside of the thigh, and all over my face. I couldn't shave. I'd wake in the morning and I couldn't open my mouth. There was a medical officer but he couldn't do anything because he didn't have anything. He just had a look at me every morning and said: "Well,

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'We were back in Changi by Christmas 1942. I was 21 by then. It wasn't bad. I made a Christmas pudding which was an absolute mess. I mixed up what we had, maize flour and some sort of fruit. But it didn't lock together, and when I took the material off the outside it collapsed. It tasted all right. They had concert parties at Changi, so we probably sang some carols that night. Actually, Changi was a reasonably civilised place. But by then it was mainly made up of the sick and the injured and the ones who couldn't work. If you could work, you went out on a working party. If you couldn't work your rations were cut, so some blokes were quite thin. But there wasn't any ill-treatment in Changi. We got a lot of bashings in Singapore, but they weren't getting them in there.'

Lt Col Edward Dunlop, aged 35, who had been captured in March 1942 when in command of the Allied General Hospital in Java, was brought with other prisoners by ship to Singapore, arriving there on 7 January 1943. They were then transported by truck from Keppel Harbour across the island to Changi.

In his War Diaries, 'Weary' Dunlop wrote: 'There was a bad moment when we stopped outside a large, forbidding structure with high walls (Changi Gaol) and cheers when we started again. Actually we have since found out that this gaol contains British civilians including women and children, who have all been there for months. As we moved on we noticed splendid stone buildings in a beautiful part of the island filled with British and Australian troops and - an astonishing sight - diggers on guard controlling traffic at points! All these troops were well dressed, very spick and span, officers with sticks and ever so much saluting. It was a clean and beautiful sight, with the sea sparkling away to the north across the Straits of Johore. The camp sites are hilly areas close to the shore... We were set down in a large square (parade-ground) and... after about a mile of marching we reached our destination... Magnificent stone barracks of three storeys with red-tiled roofs occupy a lovely bluff overlooking the sea. They will take 200 troops to each floor with ease, using also the spacious balconies.

'14 January 1943. Troops now organised and domestic routine is satisfactory. Parades, however, are a great worry to me, as the troops fidget continuously and move about with a constant buzz of conversation. The weather is simply lovely and the nights cool enough to require a raincoat in addition to my canvas. This is a delightful spot with the sparkling sea of the Straits stretching across to the green jungle of the mainland and the perfume of frangipani and hibiscus, both of which abound here. The one thing missing is enough food: all the time one feels ravenously hungry... There are quite a few admissions to hospital.'

On 20 January, Lt Col Dunlop was among three groups of 850 prisoners sent north to Thailand by train, travelling in freight or box cars.

He wrote: 'Filthy dirty and smelly humanity massed approximately 30 to a box about 3m x 6.4m with all equipment. No room for everyone to lie down, so

we must try to sleep in a squatting position with a horrible aching in the bent knees. As people get uncontrollably sleepy, their legs and arms tumble onto other forms... Morning - an almost incredible effort of the spine required to get up... and everyone is black with soot and looking like chimney sweeps... The weather is hot and fine... Last night was rather hellish, what with fidgeting, movements, cramped positions, legs and arms exploring your body in a horrid way... It was cold for the first time, with resultant shivering... In spite of the shortage of water, I and some of the officers shave almost every day... After five days of appalling travel and sleeplessness I was shocked to see my face in a shaving mirror - just a pair of haggard eyes looking out of caked dust and sweat.'

They travelled via Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh to Padang Besar, a border town, then on to Bampong, where they left the train, proceeding on foot and by truck to Tarsau and then on to Konyu, where Dunlop's group were ordered to build a new camp half a mile from an English POW camp. They arrived at Konyu on 25 January 1943.

Lance-bombardier Bill Clemence made the same journey, possibly at the same time, though probably not in the same group as Dunlop. He left the train at Bampong.

'The rumour came through that there was a party going north, which we guessed was to Thailand. Or Siam, at it was then. The Japs said there was a big rest camp up there, with sports and better food, and so on. We didn't believe it. Nobody particularly wanted to go. I really dreaded going on that one. I had never worried before that, but I just didn't want to go. I had a feeling something was going to go wrong.

'It started on the train. Basically, the whole train was full of Australians. They put us into these railway trucks with sliding doors. We started off from Singapore with the doors closed. But they had to open them, as none of us would have arrived alive - it was so stinking hot. And there were so many of us in each truck, about 28 men in each - which meant that you could only have a few lying down, while the others were sitting or standing up. We used to take it in turns to lie down, sit down and stand up. We relieved ourselves when the train was moving by urinating out of the open doors. When the train stopped we were allowed out. And if it was a station where they filled the engine with water, we were allowed to stand under the hose and have a bit of a shower. I never felt so dreadful in all my life! At the time I had a bad throat -1 had pellagra - and it was very sore. When we arrived at Kuala Lumpur they served an Indian curry. My gosh! I ate it, but I've never been through so much pain in all my life. It was like pouring boiling water down my throat. Otherwise, it was the usual rice and soup, once a day.

'We arrived at Bampong, which was a dreadful place, a dreadful camp. We had to clean it up. Itwasff/fhy. There was excreta and God knows what all over the place. Some other working parties had been living there, native working parties. All the British and Australian troops were very strong on

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'I was in a hospital hut in Bampong -1 now had tonsilitis - and one of my friends came and said: 'We're going away the day after tomorrow and you're not on the list." So I streaked out of hospital, went to the major and said: "I've got to go with the boys." He said: "You can't. You're not well." And I said: "I don't care. Get me out. I want to go." I didn't want to be left behind. He said: "It can't be done." And I said: "Well, ask somebody who wants to stay behind. I'll go in his place." "No, no. I won't allow that either." I couldn't do anything about it -1 was left behind. Actually, five of my unit had to stay behind.

'Two or three days later we were sent up to Kanchanaburi [about half way up the railway line between Bangkok and Konyu, and beside the River Kwai]. There we mainly worked on shovelling gravel ballast from the side of the river into big open-topped railway trucks. Another troop train had come up the line by this time, and our group now probably numbered about 300 men. The tonsilitis had gone - it cured itself. The medical orderlies said: 'You'll be all right, mate." They couldn't do much else. There was no point in being sorry for yourself. That didn't do any good at all.

'We were at Kanchanaburi for about two months. We then entrained up the line, spiking the sleepers - putting rails on the sleepers and then spiking them. Using big hammers. This was a very tough job, particularly in the condition we were in by then. We hadn't been eating at all well, and naturally, as your weight goes down you lose a lot of strength. Trains would bring up these bogeys - which were just platforms with four wheels and had lines of rails laid on top of them. The engines would push the bogeys - they'd be at the back. The rails would be run out onto the sleepers and then spiked, and then they'd throw the bogey onto its side, push it off the line. So that the next one could be brought up and the next lot of rails be laid. Some bogeys might drop down a slope for 20 feet or so, and then we had to get them back up and onto the rails, so that they could be sent back for more, or to bring up the next set of bogeys with rails on them. There were about 10 pairs of bogeys with rails on them in a set. The sleepers were usually brought up earlier on a separate train.

'While working on the railway line [which would connect Bangkok to Moulmein in Burma and thus to Rangoon], we lived in tents. We'd build a sort of camp and work up the line, coming back to the camp each night. When we'd gone about 15 or 20 km they'd move the tents up, and so on. The working day varied. The minimum we worked would have been eight or nine hours, and the maximum about 18. Soup was the basic meal, twice a day, with now and then a bit of meat in it or some extra vegetables.

'I had hung on to my hat, my slouch hat, but it wore out around the top. So I tore a bit off the bottom of one of the tents and patched it up. It was still patched when I got back to Singapore at the end of the war. But I ran out of boots.

'It was when I was on the line-laying gang that one of the Japs threatened me with a bayonet. It was my own fault. We'd been out for about 20 hours and

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'A lot of them understood more English than we thought. Early on we had a lot of fun, calling them all sorts of names and making remarks. And then all of a sudden one of them would walk up and say "Sergeant" -1 was made a sergeant in Singapore - and he'd speak to you in English and then clout you. So we learned to be a bit more careful after a while.

They learned more English than we learned Japanese. They put me in charge of a roll-call one night and I had to call out, in Japanese, how many Australians were present, and I didn't have the faintest idea what to say. Not the faintest. So I got well bashed that night. But I still didn't learn Japanese.

'If they hit you with their fists or slapped you with their hands, it didn't really worry you. You might get a bit of a bruise or a black eye, or something. It wasn't like one of us hitting each other. They had no idea really - no idea how to punch. So long as they didn't have anything heavy in their hands. If you saw a Jap with something heavy in his hands you steered clear of him - didn't get too close.