 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
'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,
470
F
go and wash it with water." That's what I would have done anyway. And gradually it
disappeared.
'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
 |