Thew muttered under his breath once: I can’t think of anything to think about.’ Fred Smith hissed back: ‘Have you thought about everything already?’ ‘Yes,’ said Thew. Well, start again,’ Fred suggested. But after a time recycling your memories is beyond a joke, and the mind chews itself painfully over and over, cud without nutrition.
The exercise period was always a relief because there was plenty of water, and we could wash out there in the sun. They even gave us a hosepipe, which in that yard had almost certainly seen some strange uses, and the others would turn the gush of water on to me because I could not lift the hose with my bound arms. The cold water swilling over me washed out some of the sweat and a little of the tension.
On the morning of 22nd November we were abruptly told to smarten ourselves up. They gave us what was left of our kit and we had to get into uniform, as far as that was possible any more, an instruction that rattled us. This sudden formality was disturbing, as change of any kind had become to us in our helpless situation.
We were taken into the main building and into a large room with long windows. Several Japanese officers sat along a table with their backs to the light. They clearly formed a court martial. The president of the court appeared to be a lieutenant-general, wearing the most remarkable whiskers I have ever seen, drooping down far below his chin. Our reception at the railway station was indeed intentional; we were a prize catch.
There was an interpreter, but his English was more halting than my interrogator’s had been at Kanburi. He read out the charges. The prosecuting officer wished to make it clear to the judge that the seven tattered characters standing in front of him were the most dangerous anti-Japanese group they had ever had to deal with, that the group was experienced in and had been involved in subversion, sabotage, secret radio-operation, illegal trading with Siamese civilians, organization of escapes, theft, dissemination of British propaganda – and so on. The ultimate accusation was read out with great melodramatic expressions of indignation: we were, collectively, accused of being a ‘bad influence’. This catalogue was flattering, and had we not felt sure that they were about to shoot us we would have enjoyed the compliment even more. A stenographer carefully recorded the prosecutor’s speech.
An officer representing the defence, who was a complete stranger to us, gave a rather half-hearted address which seemed to be to the effect that we were sorry for our anti-Japanese activities and had not intended to cause trouble. The defence speech was not recorded for posterity.
The presiding general asked us if we had anything to say. Jim Slater spoke up, with considerable courage, and suggested to the court that whatever conclusion they might come to, we had surely been punished enough already. The judge asked what he meant. Slater attempted to describe quickly and neutrally the beatings at Kanburi, pointing to my broken arms and our still visible cuts, and my torture by the Kempeitai. If the judge had not been aware of our treatment before, he certainly betrayed no interest now.
After conferring with his colleagues, the judge pronounced sentence, his whiskers lending the moment a suitably farcical air of gravity. Thew and Fred Smith, ten years’ imprisonment each; Bill Smith, Slater, Knight, Mackay and Lomax, five years each.
We were taken back to the cell, and resumed our cross-legged squatting. Our relief was so intense that it amounted almost to joy. For the first time since the discovery of the radio in Thew’s bed at Kanburi, the imminent threat of death had been lifted. We sat there no longer like condemned men, and Slater’s elation at our reprieve was almost palpable in the stuffy air of the cell. For the first time, we began to think that for us the physical and mental ill treatment might be over.
A few days after our trial, the radio party was told to get itself ready for another move. The guards did not tell us where we were being taken, but they ordered Thew to stay behind, and no amount of pleading and questioning would make them explain his detention to us. This was the second time he had been separated from us, our radio buff, and we were desperately afraid for him. Fred later told me that Thew had blandly informed the white-haired interpreter at Kanburi that he needed a radio because he worked for the BBC. The man had beaten Thew around the head with the flat of his sword. He might have annoyed them too much, once too often, or perhaps they had singled him out again for additional torture and questioning; or they felt he was, after all, too dangerous to keep alive. It was dreadful to have to walk out of that cell and leave him sitting there alone.
We were put into uniform again; my five comrades were handcuffed; my arms were still in splints and the guards decided that I was sufficiently restricted without the cuffs. Yet another truck rolled up and we were driven back through the dead streets of Bangkok to the railway station. Our weird group once more attracted a certain amount of attention as we were taken to a waiting train. As I walked along the platform I remember looking with pleasure at a perfectly ordinary, shabby passenger train and hoping that we were going to be allowed to sit on seats, like ordinary travellers, now that we were convicted subversives instead of battered prisoners. Instead we were shoved into the guard’s van, which was at least empty and spacious – an improvement on the foul covered goods vans in which we had travelled from Singapore to Ban Pong just over a year before. The escort told us to sit on the floor with our backs to the end of the van. We spread out our kit and settled down. Slater thought we would be taken to Japan; others assumed we would serve out our sentence working, under closer supervision, back at Kanburi or somewhere else on the railway. One of the guards settled the question of our destination by saying: ‘Shonan.’ Singapore. We were starting all over again.
Singapore is 1200 miles from Bangkok, and there are more comfortable ways of travelling between the cities than sitting on the steel floor of a luggage van for three days and nights. But this was a better journey than most in our experience as prisoners, even though my five companions were handcuffed for most of the way. For once, the Japanese administrative arrangements worked well. Food appeared miraculously at certain stops, and it had obviously come from Japanese cookhouses. We ate exactly the same food as the guards. It was among the best we had eaten for two years.
Bill Smith’s frailty singled him out yet again for embarrassment, or perhaps we were simply a little embarrassed by him. He clearly had a slight bladder problem and the regular stops were not enough for him. There was, as usual, no latrine on board to which we were allowed access, and Smith was once in real discomfort. The rest of us immediately began to calculate the speed of the train, the time to the next stop, whether we could risk holding him out the door – a manoeuvre I suggested reluctantly, remembering my own humiliation on the way to Ban Pong – but the train was moving too fast and the other four were afraid of dropping him. Smith interrupted us with great suppressed urgency and begged for a more immediate solution. He could not bear to foul his mug or mess-tin, so someone suggested that he use his footwear. So it was that the poor man urinated into his own boot, which was large enough and watertight enough for the purpose: there was no leakage at all. It is the strangest tribute to the quality of British shoemaking that I can think of.
The journey was monotonous and uneventful, perhaps because we were so exhausted by letting go the tension and uncertainty that had gripped us since our arrest at Kanburi. The guards kept us sitting against the back wall of the coach, so we saw almost nothing of the view, only the occasional glimpse of forest at a sharp angle out of the open door. We tried to sleep as the wagon swayed and rolled, pounding the metal of the rail with the metal of its wheels in that smooth, lunging rhythm of train travel. Unless some violent force intervened, we were as trapped as those flanged wheels on our own iron road.