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fly problem is now terrific in the hot, moist conditions. The whole camp is just
crawling with them... Men with sores and such lesions are tormented with
them... The camp is a sea of mud, and God knows how the cooks go on keeping
fires going in their open redoubts... Nearly 15 weary interminable months as a
P0W7
On 2 June: 'Private EL Edwards died of dysentery in hospital at
1100 hours. This is the first death in our camp since coming to Siam. God knows the angel's
wings must have been over us in view of the terrible mortality in all other camps up and down
this line... Konyu is a real camp of death these days - at least an average of one death a day,
and five in one day recently.' On 7 June: 'The beginning of severe, acute dermatitis of the feet.
Many have no boots. The feet become red raw with tinea, injury, and secondary infection; they
swell grossly with redness, weeping and loss of skin. The poor wretches stand either in mud or
water or on rocks all day and the feet never get dry. Those suffering the miseries of ever present
diarrhoea and dysentery, of course, are for ever getting up in the mud and slush at night and that
makes things worse. The plight of these men is pitiful. They take hours to walk four to five
kilometres in from work and just about cry with the pain of walking and standing on raw,
bleeding feet. The Nipponese, of course, just bash them for being late to work or too slow.'
Hospital admissions and deaths increased; 35 men died at Konyu in five days. But at the coolie
camp near Tarsau 240 died of cholera in two days. In mid-June cholera broke out in the British
and Australian camps.
Bill Clemence: 'The last camp we were in up the line was Konkoita. I had an ulcer start there, a
leg ulcer, and it got worse and worse. Then they said:
477
"You're going back." They didn't know where. They were now cutting back the working
parties. I didn't much care where I went, so long as I got off the damned line.
'We were moving very slowly one day when we came upon a working party of English, in an
open truck on the train, and one of them, about seven stone, was standing up against a rock
outcrop near the line. And a Jap was belting him with a 14-pound sledgehammer.
"But the one that cut me up more than anything was in Non Pladuk, where I ended up after
coming off the line. I met a young fellow in the latrine area one day and he said: "God, I'm in
trouble, mate." And he was in trouble. His insides were hanging out of his anus. His stomach
lining had gone. He said: "What can I do?" He was about my age 21 or 22. I said: "I'm sorry,
mate. I can't do anything." He said: "No. Neither can the doctors." He wanted to talk to
somebody - that's all he wanted to do. He died two days later. The medics couldn't do a thing.
They couldn't perform miracles. They pushed his insides back into him, but they kept coming
out again.
'A thing like that you can't, you don't, tell anyone. Things like that were like a nightmare.'
In October, Lt Col Dunlop was back in the big hospital at Tarsau, where over 2,400 officers
and ORs lay sick. 364 died in a three month period at this time. In January 1944 he was sent
down the line to the hospital at Chungkai, where about 500 had died in the last three months,
and in May he moved to Nakom Patom.
In June 1944 it was calculated that of 43,000 prisoners of war in Thailand, over 7,600 had
died.
In April 1944 Dunlop wrote: "I seem to have lost all emotional depths these days and am living
in a drab way without much thought, or feeling, or reaction to anything... One can't feel very
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