However, the meat was successfully smuggled into camp wrapped in a tattered oilskin cape hidden among the fencing timber. That night, the prisoners’ cooking pots were busy, with goat on the menu.
Native yaks, too, were fair game, so long as the owners weren’t around. When one of these beasts wandered too close to a work party outside the aerodrome perimeter, Zac Watts, a grazier from Texas in south-west Queensland, pointed it out to the Japanese guard. ‘Takusan meshi ichi ban (plenty number one food)’, he told him. ‘We catch.’
The guard disappeared and returned with a long length of rope. Zac made it into a lasso, handed the end to the guard and told him the yak was likely to take off when he lassoed it. ‘You’ll have to hold on to the end of the rope. Don’t let go. If you do we’ll lose the bugger.’
Zac expertly tossed the noose over the yak’s head. At first, it didn’t object, but when the rope tightened around its neck it took off. As instructed, the guard didn’t let go of the rope, which meant he was dragged along by the stampeding animal, his short Japanese legs touching the ground only now and then.
The prisoners were as short of entertainment as they were of food, and this was the best entertainment they’d had in years. At first, they didn’t know whether to barrack for the guard or the yak, but their stomachs won. ‘Don’t let the bastard go’, they yelled at the flying Japanese, and groaned when he finally dropped the rope.
Not only was it the end of a great circus act, it was the end of their hopes for a yak stew.
The Burmese were prepared to barter for food, but the Australians had little to barter with. When word got around that a soda-water bottle of petrol was worth five rupees, the prisoners whose job it was to refuel the Japanese aircraft by hand-pumping petrol out of forty-four-gallon drums suddenly had access to a source of income. Many small bottles were filled when the guards weren’t looking, and they found a ready market.
Bodero got greedy, figuring that a bigger container would bring bigger rewards. He found a one-gallon steel jerry can in one of the hangars and managed to fill it. He then arranged to meet a Burmese buyer that night outside the wire between nine and ten o’clock. Bodero arrived on time, but there was no sign of the Burmese. Unbeknown to Bodero, the buyer had been alerted that the Japanese guards were out and about that night looking for prisoners outside the wire, so he wasn’t about to turn up.
Bodero was still waiting when, from out of the darkness, a guard screaming in Japanese charged at him with a fixed bayonet. He parried the bayonet thrust with the can of petrol and swung it wildly. It hit the guard in the forehead. He went down, blood streaming from a big gash.
Jim got rid of the guard’s rifle by throwing it into a water tong, a Burmese well. The Japanese guard hadn’t moved, although it wasn’t clear if he was dead or merely unconscious. The bayonet thrust had slashed the can and petrol was leaking from it, so Jim threw it at the Japanese and ran for his life.
Back on his sleeping platform, he waited for the inevitable uproar. It didn’t take long before the Japanese were rushing about with fixed bayonets shouting ‘All men out! All men out!’
The prisoners were lined up, and a kempeitai officer, almost frantic with rage, told them a guard had been found unconscious and injured, with a can containing stolen petrol lying beside him. The attack on the guard could only have been made by a prisoner, and the guard’s rifle was missing. ‘If rifle here, we will find it’, the officer fumed. ‘Whoever did this will be punished. Very bad hitting guard, taking rifle.’
The prisoners were lined up and their building was searched. When no rifle was found, the men were ordered to hold out their hands to be examined for bayonet cuts and were smelt for any trace of petrol. The kempeitai had decided that no Japanese would allow his rifle and bayonet to be taken without at least inflicting some cuts, so petrol leaking from the slashed can would have left an incriminating smell on whoever had attacked the guard.
While the hand investigation went on, Bodero’s mind was in turmoil. What would he do if one of his mates was found to have a fresh cut on his hand or had been handling petrol? Would he be man enough to confess, knowing he’d be executed?
Fortunately, he didn’t have to make that decision. The kempeitai found no hand cuts and no smell of petrol, and left in anger.
However, the incident put an end to petrol pilfering. The guards, determined to catch someone, were now more alert during refuelling.
Bodero later told his mates what had happened, that he was the one responsible for the attack on the guard. They didn’t thank him, though. He’d ruined the petrol-trading caper, which had been a useful income earner.
‘Speedo! Speedo! Hyaku mena shigoto!’ The Japanese guard wanted a work party of a hundred men in a hurry.
The chosen prisoners were loaded into trucks and taken to a cluster of jungle huts a couple of hundred yards apart. There, they were ordered to form a human chain and transfer British army mosquito nets, cases of tinned coffee and low-grade soap from one hut to another.
After the job was finished, the prisoners were taken back to the Tavoy camp, but had no time to rest. The kempeitai appeared and ordered everyone to line up beside their gear. A case of tinned coffee, three mosquito nets and seven cases of soap had been stolen.
The men were as guilty as hell, but they were confident the search wouldn’t turn up any of the pilfered goods. They had been well-hidden in the jungle before the prisoners returned to camp.
When they were ordered to empty out their kitbags, a variety of items tumbled onto the floor, among them cameras, field glasses and compasses… even a revolver.
Possession of a firearm meant immediate death, but the single-minded Japanese weren’t looking for guns. They were looking for coffee, mosquito nets and soap. When they didn’t find any, they told the prisoners to put their gear away and left, but soon returned.
Apparently, what they’d seen falling from the kitbags had finally registered, and they ordered the kitbags to be emptied out again. However, by now, there was nothing to be found. The revolver and other illegal goods had quickly been hidden elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the guards did find a few lumps of soap. These hadn’t come from the missing cases, but were what the prisoners had been carrying on the day they were captured. Frugal use of the precious commodity had made it last.
However, the guards were looking for soap, and this was soap. The prisoners who had some were made to kneel with a three-cornered piece of timber between their calves and buttocks. The prisoners’ shoulders were forced downwards so that the weight of their body was on the timber, which the Japanese would then roll back and forth. The pain was excruciating, and prisoners who were tortured in this way had difficulty walking for a long time afterwards.
When the punishment had been meted out, the camp commandant, Sergeant Ashino, ordered the Australian officer in charge, Colonel Ramsay, to parade his men and give them a lecture on dishonourable stealing.
‘One case of soap, okay; two cases, okay. Even three okay’, Ashino told Ramsay. ‘But SEVEN cases of soap!’
The Australian colonel, tongue in cheek, addressed the parade on the evils of thievery. While the colonel was doing this, Ashino saw a prisoner talking. He bounded from the dais and hit the man on the jaw with an open hand.
He immediately seemed sorry for what he had done. Afterwards, he sought out the man he had hit and apologised, saying he had never struck a prisoner before. ‘But you must remember’, he told the man, ‘that when your colonel is speaking you must not talk.’ He gave the man a tin of condensed milk, apparently as compensation.