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Ray Wheeler Transcript of interview by Ina Bertrand 11th December 2000 - tape 2 (90 mins)
Ray Wheeler interviewed at Pearcedale on 11th December 2000. Right, can you start with some of your very early life, like when were you born for instance? My name is Ray Wheeler, I was born at Swan Hill on 27th October 1923. I lived all my early years on Castle Donnington Station which was a rather large station, about 26,000 acres bordering on the township. My early education was at Swan Hill State School and Swan Hill High School up to second form - I think it was Merit in those days. From there, in the middle of the Depression, we went off there down on to some irrigation … an irrigation block at Swan Hill and later in 193 … about 1934 or 35, later that we came down to the Yarra Valley, onto a farm in the Yarra Valley and were still there when war broke out in 1939. My father enlisted very early in the piece. He worked round the Darwin DOM Force and that … before I was old enough to even consider joining the army. I nicked off and joined when I was 17 in 1941. My sister, by that time, she was married, her husband went off into the Middle East in the early days with an artillery unit. My brother, after me, he was in the Air League and after I had gone overseas, he went into the Air Force and flew in Liberators. My youngest brother was too young. Mum worked for the Red Cross most of the war and em, as you will hear later, I had a … I suppose a unique army experience. I think every experience is unique isn't it? Can you tell me precisely where you were when war broke out? How did you hear that war had broken out? Yes, I can remember it well. I was down the main street at Lilydale, it was a shopping night, the shops were open and I can remember going past one of the shops and they had their loud speaker … their radio going quite loud and you could hear Bob Menzies saying that England was now at war with Germany and because of that, Australia was now at war. And how did you feel about that? You would have been a young lad then? I would have been about 16, 15/16 and at that stage I was worried about it. I think it was something none of us had ever contemplated at my age. So you weren't aware of the build-up to the war? Oh, we knew something about the build-up to the war and what Germany was doing. We didn’t like Hitler or anything like that, but it was so far away from us we didn’t think it would affect us. So you were working, weren't you, when you joined up? Yes, I was an apprentice to … in the country printing and I was doing the whole of the printing and journalism eh - I think I had about 4&#frac12 years still of the apprenticeship under the old Shop and Factories Act which is highly different to the apprenticeship of today. Yes, so, now why did you chose the army and how did you manage to get round your age? Well I tried to join up first in Lilydale and got through the fitness test all right and the doctor who was doing the examinations was our own family doctor and he told me to get … And I had another try down at Ringwood, which was the regional centre, and I passed everything there and the man that did the attesting, he was a local JP from Lilydale and had a shop in the town and he just told me to get too. The next time I went to Melbourne, never told anyone, just went to Melbourne and … That shows considerable determination. Now, why were you so determined? What made you so determined? Well, I had been brought up I suppose... Dad and his brothers were all in the army in the First World War, though Dad was too young to leave Australia, but we have uncles laying in … still buried in France and eh the other … older ones of eh - cousins and that, they were joining. I had one cousin had joined the Air Force and was sent to England, and was flying over there. And I thought well, it is not going to last for long, they can't beat us, so I had better do something about it now and get into the army. Were you … did you think it was sort of going to be romantic and exciting? No. Were you full of patriotic feeling about it? I was patriotic, but I think the general feeling of us young ones in those days, we were very patriotic and very pro-British and we considered ourself and the Queen as, you know, as the top - or the King as it was in those days - was the top echelon, that we would look to, and we believed if they were in trouble, it was our duty to help. Ok, did you mother try to stop you when she found out that you had enlisted? Mum said she wouldn’t sign the papers unless Dad okayed it and she sent a telegram - he was in Alice Springs or somewhere at the time - and that was on the Saturday that she sent this telegram up and eh she got a reply on the Monday when I had to report back to camp and get kitted out, and I can remember it, his reply, I think he rang her up or something, he said, "Well it is no good trying to stop him, let the little bugger do as he likes." Something along those lines. Ok. All right, so then you went to training. Puckapunyal? Yes, I was allotted to the Armoured Division. I think everyone that had had some sort of education, you know, up to secondary or had completed secondary education, they got sent to the armoured division because it was very technical. Right. And did all my training there. The only time I was not in Puckapunyal was back at Caulfield racecourse where we were doing very quick courses at the RMIT, as it was called in those days, in Signals Electricians. A quick crash course in turning and fitting and that was so we could keep tanks … repair tanks on the job if we were stopped out in the desert or anywhere, that was our thoughts in those days. Right, so how long was your training? Eh, it would have been 6 months at least intensive training. But by the time it finished I had qualified in all of the 4 positions on a tank and done a quick infantry course as well. Well, that was pretty good preparation then. Oh yes, the eh … we had 3 final leaves and we looked like going to the Middle East. At one stage General Blamey came out to Australia, this was while we were doing the course down at RMIT at the Caulfield Racecourse. And we all went on parade in - there is still a sports ground there, it is near part of the Monash University there at Caulfield - and eh addressed us and said he would be welcoming us soon over in the desert, but I don’t know what happened then. I think the Japanese thing was looming and eh they said no. Right, so you were sent north? Yes, we weren't sent as an Armoured Division unit, they called … coming round Christmas, towards Christmas 1941, they called on the regiment … we were with in the Armoured Division to … for volunteers to go … sail without any final leave. And of course the whole regiment volunteered and they whittled it down to those who were proficient in all 4 positions on the tank and had other specialist qualifications. And they picked the top 80 of them and they were nearly all young blokes like myself and we were told we were going to Malaya with full support, ordnance support to form a Tank Unit and when we got there, just after Christmas, we were told straight out that there was no hope of ever getting the tanks, they had been sunk, and eh, after a couple of weeks up in Tampoi in Malay. Ee were told we were going to form one company of an infantry … special infantry battalion they formed, and that is what we entered the war in. Em. What was your first experience of war conditions? Of bombing and … Eh, everything seemed quite normal in Singapore when we landed there. There had been a bit of bombing, you know, around Singapore, but it wasn’t evident and eh the first night I think we were up in Tampoi, we went up from Malaya, I think there was a bombing in the camp just alongside us and that was our first introduction to warfare. So, it was a quick learning curve from there on, coming back to Singapore to get a part for a Bren carrier that an English group asked us to repair, we were amazed what sort of a war it was because we got back to Marlborough or rang Marlborough Ordnance Depot -there is a big ordnance depot there - and they said yes, they had one, we could pick it up so we went down. It was Sunday, you couldn’t get into the camp, it was locked up and everyone was on leave and the war was 45 mile away. That was a British camp? That was the British camp and we wondered what we had let ourselves in for. As a matter of fact it was only about 8 days or 10 days later we were doing a rear guard while they blew the place up. And you think people knew that this was coming do you? I don’t know that they knew it was coming, I think they were treating it that, oh no, they will never get there, they still believed that the Japanese couldn’t see in the dark. That is the type of thing we were fed on. Japanese had very poor eyesight, couldn’t see in the dark and which we found out very quickly they could. Right, so when you said you were fed on this … during training you were told this? No, when you got over there we were told that, we were told that um. So where were you when Singapore actually was Surrendered? … surrendered? I was at a … we were holding a salient out .. in the … AIF had a perimeter to defend and eh … we were about 2 or 3 hours from headquarters where we were. There was 3 of us at that time. A runner came through and said "You have got to report back to headquarters," and we knew something was on because the noise had stopped. There was only a little bit of scattered small armed fire that we ever heard and we came back and we got back to eh … Tanglin, or just by Tanglin Hill where the headquarters was and eh … an officer we didn’t know, an English officer, came forward and said, "You chaps have just arrived in," and he said, "And I have got to tell you, you are now prisoners of war of the Japanese. You will not destroy your weapons, you will not attempt to escape, and that is an order." How did you feel about that? Lousy. Wrapped my gun butt around a rubber tree and smashed it, put the firing pin in the gas port in the rifle and snapped it off. Disobeyed orders in other words? And we had a truck, I used to always travel on the … with the ammunition truck, or the ordnance truck - you had the bombs, the mortar bombs and all that on it - and eh the driver of that and myself, we put a couple of hand grenades, and a note on the steering wheel, "Don’t drive this. You’ll blow up". Left it for them. First time they pressed the brake, they’d go up. That’s what we did with our weapons. Meanwhile, you had been reported dead. Reported dead because about 3 or 4 days before there was … we were still in that sector and eh we had a proper forded up dug-out that was built and we could, by that time we had learned to watch for mortar fire. They had these little 2 inch mortars and you could see them reach the top of their trajectory and then they would turn over up in the air and wag and start to come down. You could just about pick where they were going to fall, so we were shifting around and we said, well the next lot is going to get us, so we shifted from there over into a house which we had previously known that it had been mortared and all the roof and that was gone and we were under there when that was blown up completely and the smoke and dust - someone at headquarters had … wasn’t that far away had seen it and come and eh had a quick look and said no, there was no-one alive under there, they are all dead and of course no-one thought to come over to the house and when we really realised there was no-one around, we were cut off, the Japs were behind us. It took us a couple of days to get back to them and then we were sent up to where we ended up during the war. What was the process of surrender? I mean, how did you get from smashing your rifle butt to being actually under Japanese control? We never saw a Jap for about 2 days, only in the distance and we were scrounging around looking for food and this Jap officer came out of the side of the road and he spoke good English, wanted to talk and told us that we weren't going to be too welcome by the Japanese army to have to look after. And eh told us to get back to where we were supposed to be - we weren't that far away, only a few hundred yards - and then from then on we started to see more and more of them and I think it was about the 16th or 18th, somewhere around that date, that we were marched out to Changi and we had to march through the city for everyone to see and it was an eye opener. The amount of civilians - and you could believe the story they told us, they surrendered because of the death of the civilian population - because there was large blocks where the building there had been completely demolished and they were packed ten deep with bodies and every now and then a big truck would go past with the remains of people on it going away and you’d find when you got out of the city into the suburbs heading towards Selerang, eh great big pits dug and quick limed and bodies that were just thrown willy nilly into the pits. Where was Changi? Changi was at Selerang and it took us the best part of a day to march out - I think it was about a 16 or 18 mile march. And you saw the evidence of the war - the war that parts you hadn’t seen before, which just reinforced they had really, really sent Singapore right down to the bottom. Um, now you were in Changi for about 3 months. What was it like when you arrived? And what was it like when you left? Changi, when we arrived, we were placed into .. our unit was put into a … one of the officer’s house s at Selerang Barracks itself, not in the Changi eh … In the compound More towards the sea, we could see the sea from where we were. We didn’t have enough room for beds or anything like that, we just slept on the floor side by side. It was a good … good eh starter to what was to come, living in cramped quarters. It is hard to get used to anything at all … the first few days we lived on just what we had carried, a bit of bully beef and stuff and eh then we started to get the rice ration and switching over to rice, it was … oh it played tricks with everyone’s health, you are constipated and some blokes never went to the toilet and evacuated for over 16 days. I myself was 14 days. I remember going to the doctor and he said, "Well", he said, "There is plenty have gone on longer than you", he said "If you go another couple of days, come back and see me," and about 2 days late I woke up with a terrible pain. I went from the sublime to the ridiculous, I couldn’t get back from the field latrines which were down the hill, I had dysentery, that was par for the course for many of them out there. Was it diet or the water or what that produced this? It was diet and lack of hygiene and there was no toilets as such, we had to dig field latrines down the hill on what had previously been lawns. We followed the best accepted practices and covered everything over after you had used it, but the flies and that round there were terrible and there was a lot of bodies still down around the beach area, because that was where some of the Japs landed down there, not far away. In the barracks themselves, the Selerang barracks, the top floor of the big buildings that would have, oh I suppose they would have been able to keep about eh 5 or 6,000 troops there, they’d all been severely bombed or shelled and they were in one mess. The houses where we were, with a few exceptions, were relatively whole, there was nothing much wrong with them. The water didn’t run, we had to sort of have one point to draw the water from, there were no toilet facilities and the prospects of getting any food that we were used to would just about vanish, we were just eating a bit of rice. Uha. We learned to get out through the wire and pinch coconuts off the coconut palms and that is where we first started learning that you have got to use your own wits, go out of a night time and get down amongst the Chinese village nearby and buy a pig or buy stuff from them. So you still had money? We still had money that they honoured. There was the Singapore dollars and then some of the change we got … the first we saw of the Japanese occupation currency I suppose you would call it, and we knew that was around because there was plenty of evidence that the Japanese were coming to Australia, taken off Japanese bodies. They had pounds, shillings, pounds and shillings or that notes in their pocket - occupation currency the same size and that, as was used right throughout Asia. Uha. So we were worried about that. You know if they got to Australia what they would do, having seen what they were doing there. They started bringing a lot of, mainly women and children and older men, Chinese, ethnic Chinese down on to the beach … and Changi to us, Changi beach as it was then, became known to us as Red Beach. They just used to bring them out in truck loads with their hands tied behind their back and joined together with signal wire. And then just machine gun them down and sometimes you would be unlucky, you’d be on the party to have to go and bury them, they would just use road graders to make shallow graves on the beach and put them in there and cover them over. And eh, if you ever land at Changi Airport today about, the first, I suppose, about half a kilometre or a kilometre up, because it has all been extended, you are running over where there is thousands and thousands of those Chinese were buried there. But at the beginning they treated POWs better? They didn’t treat us that bad, because we didn’t see that many of them inside the camp. They didn’t come into the camp, they put Indians … Indian turncoat troops were guarding us in the main and you were more likely to get shot by an Indian guard than you would be by a Japanese at that stage. How difficult was it to get in and out through the perimeter? Oh the perimeter was barbed wired quickly with a double apron barbed wire and it wasn’t hard to get in under that and go out. And there was plenty, it was quite a large area and they couldn’t have a guard everywhere, you knew where the blinds spots were and you could spriggle out and go out. And there wasn’t too many that didn’t try it. And was the camp well supplied? What about things like em medical supplies and a radio and … ? We had no radios. Radios were confiscated from us straight away. Most of us, especially with any signals training … I myself eh hoarded a couple of valves and a few bits and pieces out of a radio when we were burying Japanese dead, down where they’d landed. They had already had their identification taken, they were just mummified remains and on this day it rained and we went into this smashed house, and eh the Japanese they went into another house that was in better repair and they just left us to ourselves and we got quite a few parts and that was made into a radio up in Burma, the parts we pinched there. Uha. So by the time you left Changi camp 3 months later had you done a lot of work on it, repaired it? No, we were never, where we were there was no call to repair it, but what we had done, we asked for permission because when we had to get the rice and that it was a long way to walk to get it, and there were still a lot of our old trucks around and they let us make, and I think everyone called them, we called them the Changi Chariots. They were stripped of their engine and that and it was just virtually the base of an old army truck which we pulled along and you could carry a big load, but what was better still, coming down hill, if you could let it roll it wasn’t so bad and eh. And you used those when you had to move on? No, we didn’t use them at all. When we had to move on we were put in proper army … Japanese army trucks and shifted into Singapore or marched - they preferred marching you than carrying you anywhere. So, you went to Tavoy after Changi? After Changi, we weren't in Changi that long. To me it only seemed like weeks. It says 4th May, you arrived in Changi on 18th February. February, March, April, May. Yes, less than 3 months. You marched out of Changi then? No, we went to … we were taken by trucks and we were let off on the go-downs near the wharfs at Singapore waiting for this Toyhasi Maru, that was the name of it, to arrive and eh … a lot of us pilfered stuff out of the warehouses there. We became pretty experts, you had to do it to live. Scrounging? Scrounging. It’s an Australian talent isn't it? It was Australian pilfering, but I suppose that is the convict past coming out in us. And we had to wait there for quite a while and there were a few caught and got pretty severe hidings from the Japanese for pinching stuff, but in the main we got enough to eat, and it made the trip more bearable on the ship, because we went from there across to Madang in Sumatra and I don’t know whether they picked up supplies or what there, but they also picked up some … another ship with Indonesian troops on, that was the native Indonesians and Dutch troops. We learned quickly that there was 3 different types from there. There was the Dutch that were born in Holland and belonged to the permanent army - they were known as Hollanders. And the Indonesian Dutch off the plantations and that, especially those born there, were called Dutchmen, and even the half caste Dutch Indonesian ones were called Dutchmen. And then you had the native troops. And after leaving on the Toyhasi Maru from Madang we went across to Victoria Point which is about the southernmost part of Burma and 1,000 Australians were disembarked there, then we went on up to em Mergui, where another 1,000 were disembarked and then proceeded up the coast to the Port of Tavoy. We didn’t go right up the River Tavoy, we were unloaded right at the entrance to the harbour. We had to take all our gear off, all the gear that was going with us had to go off and there were some trucks there that were going to transport us. The only buildings there was a big rice mill and we can safely say that we had plenty of rice while we were at that place till the next morning. Also, one of the things I remember clearly there, they had a steamroller, which they wanted taken off that was to be use in building roads and that there and we had to get this off this Toyhasi Maru. They got it off by using their cranes on the ship and we had to steady it and pull with ropes and somehow or other everyone slipped over at the wrong time and to my knowledge that steamroller is still at the bottom of the harbour there. So that was the first experience of deliberate sabotage? Eh, yes, that would be one of the first ones I can remember. We became pretty proficient at sabotage, and the quieter and more silent it was the better. I will tell you later on about some of the sabotage attempts. Ok, so when you landed in Tavoy there were 3,000 of you … No, 1,000 Australians. Just 1,000 Australians and they were joined by others. And we were joined by others later on up at Moulmein and Thanbyuzayat. The 1,000 of us there worked on air field repair, reconstruction, making sure there was no landmines left and filling in bomb craters and extending the runway and we were camped on the air field in the huts that were on the air field. We drew … when we did draw a hut, the first few days or weeks we were in an aircraft hanger and our sleeping space was about 3 inch aggregate rock on the floor. And you had to burrow a place to keep your hip in and very little bed clothing and that and when we were shifted to huts to sleep in or underneath huts, it was quite a lot better because we managed to get rice bags and made hammocks - we slung underneath the huts and it was a little better. And the work was hurry, hurry, hurry, because they wanted planes to land there and having got the runway extended, all excitement the next day, this first Japanese plane was coming in to land. It turned out to be one of our own captured Hudsons - not the Hudson bomber, but the Hudson passenger type plane - and everyone is standing there watching it. We were all singing out, "Crash, crash, crash you so and so," and he came in and hit a big cross wind and then bounced a couple of times, spun round, the undercarriage collapsed and there was one heck of a mess and eh we all cheered and we were fortunate enough … some of us, I had a bit of perspex I got out of that plane that I built a cribbage board out of and I carried all the way till I was sunk later on and eh it had all those sort of things and had been working up that end of the aerodrome. It had one spin off. We found a 44 gallon drum of Avgas - aviation fuel - which had been tainted because the lid had been ruptured and the Japs didn’t want to use it so we asked the doctors would it be any good. At that time we were all, because we were crawling around on our hands and knees and that we had a lot of tinea and dermatitis and that over us and they couldn’t get their hands on it quick enough. And growing around the airfield, there was lots of cotton, wild cotton, so we had the cotton and bits of bamboo to make swabs of and this Avgas, you went in and wherever you had it contaminated with dermatitis and that, you were swabbed with it and it was hilarious and it will tell you the type of humour - we call it black humour - which was developing even then. You would go into the doctor and "Where have you got it? - Oh in the scrotum Come on, drop your daks," and you would drop your daks, bend over and quick as a flash he would have this cotton ball or 2 or 3 of them swabs into this stuff and paint you all over and oh the burning was agony, and you’d take off back - at that stage we were still in the aircraft hangar - and you would skid into where you little bit of belongings and your allocated space was, and you would sit down and you would grab your slouch hat and you would start patting it and the tears would be running down your face and then someone else would come and do the same thing alongside you. Your tears would turn to laughter, hilarious laughter because yours was cooling down by that stage and his was only just starting. And eh … you know, normally, no one would ever have laughed at that. We were developing a different brand of what we call black humour. What would a normal day be like? A normal day there was long hours working. Some of the things I can … are still clear in the memory. A fellow prisoner of war of mine, Herman, I won't say his other name because he has passed on now, him and I were about the same height and same stature and he and I were the two selected to see how much earth 2 prisoners of war could carry in a 44 gallon drum with a couple of big bamboo poles wired onto the side. So being Japanese, they don’t do things our way. We would put a little bit in and try it and so on. They fill it up first and you get under these shards and try to lift it and they jab you with bayonets to try and get you to lift it and it is impossible for 2 men in our condition to lift that. We finally got it down to about a third of one of these and we managed to get it up and that was the set norm - how much it had to be carried in them, and some of the blokes thought it was hilarious but I will tell you what, Herman and I didn’t think it was too hilarious. I had scars on my tail for a long time after that. What time did you get up in the morning? Did you have clocks by that stage? No, most of us by that stage - oh there was still a few that kept their watches - had sold their watches to buy food. Any valuables like that, if you could get near natives, they would give you a better price. The Japs, if they knew you had it, would possibly take it and you would get nothing. So how did you know when to get up in the morning? Oh, the Japanese had their own buglers and in some camps they designated our own buglers to learn Japanese calls. In fact at Thanbyuzayat, they had a competition with 3 or 4 that were buglers and there were American troops in that camp as well and amongst one of them was one of Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra’s buglers or trumpeters and I can still remember his name - I won't mention that either - but he was pretty good and he got the job and it lasted for quite a while for him until one morning he thought he’d have a bit of a lark and instead of blowing their wakey, wakey call, as it was set to the Japanese time, he jazzed it up. There was heck to pay after that for him. Did he survive that? Yes, he survived it. I think he survived the war and went back to America. Still back in Tavoy, so you were awakened by a bugler? Bugle calls. You had to learn the Japanese bugle calls. Right. Was there time to wash or eat before you left for work or? In the main, if you were quick, eh, and there was buckets of water handy, you could have a quick wash and prepare yourself to go to work or rush down and get a bowl of rice. You see, by that time we were starting to get set on the Japanese rations we were to get used to, and for breakfast eh we used the Dutch name Papala, which was watery, gruelly rice, a bit like porridge and you got a little bit of that and nothing else with it and then at the midday meal, which would be brought out to wherever you were working as a rule, you got some eh … about half a cup of ordinary white steamed rice and sometimes that would have a bit of eh dried fish … eh very little, dried fish and a few vegetables eh … a bit like cucumbers and some of those melon type things that they grow up there in profusion. Then your evening feed would be much of the same. Generally they would like to make a sort of a soupy stew, but never any meat in it, we never got meat. Were the Australians cooking for themselves? Yes, they made us declare our own cooks and that lead to a lot of humour in different cases and that. Everyone was pretty fair minded and it was hard to feed, say 1,000 men and give them that allocated half scoop of rice or whatever it was. So if they were too heavy handed, some missed out, so they came up with this thing, the backup queue, and everyone got a number and each evening meal, for the backup the numbers would be called, and what was over, they would say that will feed another 20, you can get a bit extra tonight. And they would call the numbers, it might run from 215 to 235 and those 20 would be the fortunate ones and that’s the way it worked. And I don’t know where it come from, but that was called "leggy, leggy". Japanese, from one of the other, corrupted from one of the other languages. Yes. Was it a cushy job to be a cook? Eh, it could be a cushy job, but the cooks were known to get some thundering hidings from the Japanese because the Japanese accused them of using too much rice and things like that. Right, so you didn’t for instance allow men who were not well enough to go out on work parties to work in the kitchen as a way out? No, in the main, they were cooks that had been cooks in the army. Right. And what time did you get back at night? Oh, your hours varied. You generally had an allotted task, eh you had to do so much in that day and when that was finished you went back.. Like when the railway line started, I think we started off, each man had to shift 1 metre of earth a day, be it to carry on to an embankment or to take out of a cutting and dispose of it. And you worked in teams of 3 and the Japs pegged out the amount that had to be shifted. Well you stayed there until you finished. But the metre of earth in some places was very easy to shift and we learnt quickly, don’t do it too fast, otherwise they increased it, which they did. Went from 1 metre to 1.3 and at the height of the thing when they were racing to finish the railway line, I think it got up to an amount that would never be carted. 10 metres of mound a day or something like that, where you went out at 6.00 o’clock in the morning and you would come back at midnight. So on the airfield in Tavoy was your quota in metres cleared? No, it was the type of work we were doing, they wouldn’t know how much had to be shifted and generally it was from piles of earth somewhere to build up their runway and things like that, or clearing to extend the runway and filling in bomb craters and that. There was no known way they could have worked out how much, but they had an allocated task, they were going to extend it that much and you stayed there until you did it. And you mentioned making a crib board. That means there must have been time for you to do things to … even to play cards. Well you got a yusme - every 7 days - yusme is a day off. That is Japanese for a sort of holiday type thing and we made crib boards, we made cards out of bits of cardboard and old pens and that, we made packs of cards because no one had them. Eh lots of things like that, we learned to make for ourselves. When our boots wore out we made clogs, like Dutch clogs, which were sort of wooden sandals and things like that. Well you were 2 months in Tavoy and then you went to Ye? Um. How far away was that? Ye was a long trip. That was about half way roughly from Tavoy to Moulmein and it was a harrowing trip because they took these trucks up there for building the motor road and all the bridges had been blown by the troops defending Burma and we had to go through fords that they quickly constructed and we had to get out, pull the trucks through and take them up, you know, to where they could be driven safely again and then perhaps another 5 miles down the road there is another troop bridge blown and conversely on the way back, the troops that were in Burma with us, only 30 of us were picked out to bring all the records back - Japanese records and the trucks down to Tavoy - and the others went down the river to where the railway line from Moulmein finished, and they marched up the railway line. Some were fortunate enough to even get a train to take them up there. But we had to come back, the 30 of us and ford each, as we come to one river they’d pull us out, we’d have to pull these trucks and that through and get them down to Tavoy. Was the camp at Ye similar to the one at Tavoy? Ye was perhaps the best camp we were at. They quartered off a part of the village to one side of it and eh opposite us there was a little bit of a track or a road, was a big Buddhist monastery and a teaching monastery for the little kids. They’d start at 7, at age 7 they’d go in and don the yellow robes and they’re there till they’re 12. That’s the only education they receive, and eh we learned to respect those old Buddhist monks and the kids - we made good friends with them and we just barbed wire in a lot of huts that were village huts that they had been kicked out of. At the back of the huts there was the village well where the people used to come and bathe. And we made friends with them. Some of them even took risks and supplied us with a bit of food. Moublas, like the japati of the Indians or there is a sweeter version of it, something like our pancakes. They would love to smuggle them in because they knew we enjoyed them and things like that and eh … there was 2 of us picked out at random by the Japs to go - and they’d give us a badge thing which you put on your arm which allowed you about 2 to 3 miles from the camp - to beg, borrow or scrounge food and we learned that down the valley, where this river flowed, a very big rice growing area, the natives were very pro-British and in fact they had … even when we were at Jungle House, the same group, we had this em this pride that they showed. One day they brought out to us a copy of the London Post, like the periodical, printed in Burmese with English sub-titles and it was one of their proudest possessions. That valley had raised enough money to buy a spitfire for the Burmese spitfire squadron in Britain. They were very proud of it. One of their sons was still away fighting with the Burma Rifles up near the Indian border, and they were worried about him because he was due to be married and his marriage date was approaching, and when he did get back … of course they were just about wiped out up there … when he did get back he came back … got back in time for his wedding and the 2 of us that were doing the scrounging were invited to the wedding, which we had to contrive and get there at the right time and that and it was a wonderful experience to see the customs and that. The worst part of it was that we had to chew betel nut and I tell you I’d never chewed it again. And you’ve still got your teeth, that’s a … Oh yes, they didn’t go red, not with one. How did that young man get back if this was an occupied country presumably? He walked back, he was Burmese, he just walked back and came … managed to get right back there. And I think he was still there when we left there, so no one detected he’d been … he didn’t have any army uniform, he just looked like an ordinary Burmese in his sarong shirt, that’s all. But they were wonderful people. They looked after us. And then you went out along the road from Ye to Jungle House? Yeah, that was the road, we were building a road from Ye, which had a … deep water ships could get right up there and they would get material up to the Burma railway which they intended to build very quickly from there because it was only 60 - 80 kilometres to the border of Burma and Thailand and reasonably flat terrain till the last bit where it rose pretty steeply and eh Jungle House was … I don’t know how far … 12 to 18, maybe 20 kilometres out from Ye and they’d built this big Jungle House and that’s where we were based, with cooking facilities and that, that still wasn’t too bad, we were able to do a day’s work, but we learnt a lot how to scrounge and live off the country there, was something that I think pulled a lot of us through. That was when you met the tiger? Yeah, I had a confrontation one night with at tiger. They used to allow us on our yusme to walk anywhere within about 2 or 3 miles of the Jungle House and beg, borrow or steal anything you could, they didn’t worry and those guards at that time had all fought us in the Malayan schmozzle and most of them had been wounded by Australian troops and they had a bit of respect for us. They didn’t respect the Dutch. They said the Dutch ran away, but we were good soldiers. And eh so on this yasmay we got a bit bolder and went past the normal ones. We actually found a salt mine over towards the coast where we used to bring back some salt which was in short supply, but we also got into this same valley, we used to go down seeking vegetables and that. And they … those people there, it was a different lot of them that was further down the valley of course, and they made friends of us and they used to give us some good food. And they came up … they said the Japanese periodically came out on patrols down that way and if there was any washing hanging out on a certain window on the day … you know, they knew the days we’d be off, so don’t come down, the Japs were there. And this day we went over, 2 of us, and eh the washing is out. So we watched that there for a while and some hours later about an hour and a half, or something later, 3 Japanese rode off on their bikes and the washing went in so we made our way down there. Of course it was getting late when we left there. Our track back to where we were - we had to go into the next valley virtually - was an animal pad and we used to always leave a big leaf there with a bit of oh a bit of … clod of earth on it as a rule, and one side was white, had whitish hairs and the other was really green and we used to put the white side up so if the light was failing and you were around there you could see it easily. This night we missed it and we walked from half light, it was dark. At last we found it, the wind had blown it over itself and all was the green part of it. We found the animal pad and we headed down there and at that time there was a lot of wild elephant and tigers in that country and the elephants were trumpeting and the tigers were starting to roar in the distance, so we set off down this trail the 2 of us and we knew when we got to where we had to take the one that branched to the left. There is a split in the trail. The one to the right went further back to where the .. you know, where we hadn’t been and we knew that the one to the left headed back down to the camp. And we got up there and there was one persistent tiger. His roaring was getting closer. Gunga in front of me all of a sudden oh, oh, he started to stutter, "Look at that!" and there was eyes - they seemed to be 8 inches apart and they seemed to get wider apart as you got near it. And the stench - halitosis - don’t tell me tigers smell sweet. I experienced the smell several times. They’ve got halitosis. I don’t know what they live on and survive on and eh … we were just transfixed with fear I suppose and all of a sudden Gunga said "Boom" and away he shot down the trail. I thought, oh God, and the next thing the tiger turned round, he had ran back down the other trail and I am left at the junction laughing hilariously at the two of them. And I just ambled back to camp, I got back and Gunga was trying to get the blokes into a search party to go out and get the pieces that the tiger has left. We had several experiences. I got chased by a Water Buffalo one day and things like that. END OF SIDE A, TAPE 1 SIDE B, TAPE 1 And still at Jungle Camp you were working on the road? Yes, they were still building the road. And this was a supply road? It is a supply road. To supply the railway? Yes. When the monsoon broke it washed out the cuttings and the bridges and a lot of things … I don’t think the Japanese, I think they learnt from what they did there, just how heavy it could rain. And they abandoned it - that’s when they shifted us back to Ye, and we went from Ye back to Tavoy. Ok. But Tavoy then, that time, was just a stopping point wasn’t it on your way to Moulmein? No, Tavoy was quite a big, a big eh a big port. Yes, but you didn’t stay there long? Oh no, we only did the airfield construction there. One thing I didn’t mention about Tavoy, 8 of our chaps tried to escape from there. They were members of the 4th Anti Tank.. They were out about 4 days. There was about 12 of us going. I was in the group and eh anything you could give to the group … I know my prismatic compass was with them - and they were out 4 or 5 days before we heard they had been picked up. They had been dobbed in by Tamil Indians or something like that and the Japs brought them back to the camp, they had a "kangaroo court", to which only some of our senior officers were allowed to go to and from what we heard it was just a, you know, just a farce and they were sentenced to be executed and they took them out and I had the misfortune to get on the burial party. They were knelt in front of their graves which they made them dig and just shot out of hand. They all refused blindfolds, and they were just shot. And that made a lot of us think, a second time about we have got to plan a lot better if we want to get away from them. And it was never, in the camps I was in, I believe there was one successful escape from down … by a Britisher, but none of our blokes, they all got caught and most of them were executed. The main problem would be where would you go when you did escape? Well our plans were to get up near the Burma Thai border and follow the trails … we knew there were trails in there. We had a few that had been surveyors in Burma and things like that, and we had some plans to get up and over the hump into China that way, and there wouldn’t be many Jap troops up there because it was inhospitable country and not many people lived there, not enough to cause any damage to their war effort. But eh … at that stage we were too weak to even attempt to escape, when we got up into that territory, so eh … altogether about 28 were shot in different camps over there. You got to Moulmein on the 6th October. That is about 6 months it took you to get there? Yeah. So in that time you’d already lost a lot of your … ? Oh yes, we started to lose people in Tavoy. Some went from starvation, but a lot of it was caused from the disease we picked up, the dysentery and all that. I remember the first one that died was one from our own unit. He had a brain tumour and Colonel Coates operated on him, using the crudest of material. He had to make an incision to try and release this tumour and he used an ordinary brace and bit, it was all he had, and no way of telling exactly, and he was only an eighth of an inch out. Did save the bloke, he would have been dead that night, but he lasted for another fortnight and didn’t have the back up stuff to give him, he died … he was our first casualty there and from then on there was a lot died and buried down there. We lost quite a few at Ye, although it was one of the better camps. And eh … we had one bloke there, I know I had to hold him while he was operated on for appendicitis and the doctor there, he was quite a skilled surgeon, and he had 2 old scalpels, a couple of old artery forceps, and very little else to use. No anaesthetic, all he had was that ether you spray, numbs the skin, and he was on a camp stretcher in part of what had been an old school at Ye and he made, he put a little mark, made his incision, only about half and inch, an inch long and of course there was no fat or anything left, made his cut through and he used a bent spoon, about a dessert spoon, he had sterilised all this equipment, and went down in and actually got the appendix and brought it up with that. And I remember … I released the tension by saying it looks more like a bloody witchetty grub to me and that released … even the poor bloke on the stretcher being operated on … he laughed too, till it hurt. But he did the appropriate ... cut it off and did the sealing up stitching and that with just ordinary needle and thread. And the bloke was so good that he was back off the sick list in 3 days. But he died later of something else, I think he got dysentery or something and he died there. He was buried there. I know we lost about half a dozen or something out of the 200 there. How did you get to Moulmein? Moulmein, we came back … I said we came back down to Tavoy and we - there were 30 of us - and we were put on a little coastal steamer, about 1000 tonnes, we couldn’t decipher any name on it but there was a number on the bows that, from the rust you couldn’t decipher what that number was and eh taken up to Moulmein. It was a lovely trip because we were deck cargo and we got fed reasonably well, and we didn’t have to … there were only 2 or 3 guards with us, and the ship’s crew, and got into Moulmein from a lovely trip. We watched all the water spouts that form with regularity in the Bay of Bengal and got there and ended up in the civilian jail, which was horrible. Describe it. Describe what the place looked like? Well it was rather big, I think the first thing we became aware of that the old Moulmein pagoda of Kipling fame is there. And it doesn’t - you know "looking lazy out to sea", it looks the other way and this used to look down over the prison and it was all in segments. It was a great big sort of a hexagonal type thing - oh, I don’t know how many sides it had - we were never around it, we only went in through the front gate and came out there, but, where we were was all … about 30 of us and there was a few other English and that … prisoners that had been put in there. You had a bench, wooden bench type bed of about 18" x 6’ with a curved wooden pillow attached to it. No sanitation at all. There was no toilets, you had to use buckets and you had to go into the next compound to get water, which you were only allowed to do at certain times of the day, but if you were in there and they brought in Chinese - mainly for execution - they might close the gate through to your place and you were forced to watch them chop their heads off and eh … it was a harrowing experience that left you drained emotionally, and I used to always wonder why these people came in so meek and just knelt down and didn’t put up a fight or anything. But it wasn’t … after a few weeks there we were shipped out to eh … Thanbyuzayat. We were marched out there actually. And that … It was quite a short time in Moulmein actually, from October 6th to October 23rd. Yeah. It must have struck you very strongly. It was a hard, hard breaking into a different phase where all of a sudden … they never executed anyone with … by beheading them of our troops. They always gave them a military firing party and that part I think, you know, sort of made us think, well why do the civilian population not rise up against them, you know, and what can we do to help. But there was nothing you could do. There were only a few of you at that stage weren’t there? Yeah, at that stage there were only 30 of us, but when they finally marched us out to Thanbyuzayat, I think it had swollen in number, but there wasn’t that many and what I learnt on that march, that is the first time we had seen a place where there was a large populace and they were cheering us. They were very pro-British, even there. And they hastily pushed a banana into your hand or something like that. And it was about, I suppose a 20 kilometre march down to Thanbyuzayat,. What was there when you got there? Oh, a big camp, that was a staging camp for the railway. Was it a town as well or just a camp? There was a town, the township of Thanbyuzayat, it wasn’t a big township, they had … that’s where the railway line came round and where the railway line branched off from there to go up to Burma and continued on the other down to Moulmein and then straight through down to Ye, that’s as far as it went. And they were going to build a branch line from Thanbyuzayat, straight into Thailand? The line from … we started from Thanbyuzayat, it went to the Thai border and then down through Thailand and hooked into the railway line that existed from Singapore to Bangkok, at a place called Bampong in Thailand. So you started at the northern end of that to work down? Northern end and worked till … we worked through into Thailand to a place near where the railway joined Kyoto or a name like that. Did you see them join up the road? No, we were back … we were back at that stage, we did a bit of clearing of where the line was and that, that’s all we did down there. Right. And they. What was the camp like Thanbyuzayat? It was a rather big camp, it was a staging camp as well as a big hospital camp. All the hospital cases were kept there for a long time afterwards, until the line got sort of halfway to the border and then they shifted the main hospital case eh camp, under Colonel Coates to what became known as the 55 kilometre camp to start with, and then because of the lack of medical care and because of the type of patients they had, it became known as "Death Camp" And scared … one thing if the Doc said, "I think I had better shift you down to the 55 kilometre camp and let Coates have a look at you", you got better quick, because you knew that your chances getting out of there alive was pretty dim. So, you stayed in the Thanbyuzayat main camp from October 23rd until January 23rd. You were there over Christmas. I was there because I got crook. I can't remember much but I had one of the worst bouts of malaria and that that I had ever had there and I can't remember much about that time. I was crook for about 2 or 3 weeks with malaria and also I got a bad case of dermatitis and that, I wasn’t too well at all. Right, so you can't remember whether they celebrated Christmas? I can't remember Christmas at all. Whether I even had anything that day at Christmas. It just came and went. Yeah, I was pretty non-plussed at that particular stage. I can remember them bombing the camp one day. Who? The allies. That was the first time we saw our planes close up. I can remember … I was strapped to the bamboo floor with this dermatitis so I couldn’t move and cracked it open again and get it weeping, and I can remember seeing out through the side of hut, where we were was the hospital and over the other side of the big red cross. The Japanese were cunning, they used the international Red Cross sign on the parade ground and that was built in with clay, red clay and white clay, and the bombs started dropping and then I could see the planes, they were very low and I learned later that they were Lancasters and Liberators - planes we had never seen before, these big 4 engine bombers, and I can remember a Dutchman breaking from the eh convalescent camp and racing across towards the hospital, where he thought it would be safer, I suppose. I remember this plane coming round very slowly and the chappie, he was that low that you could actually see that he had goggles on and a leather cap in the tail gun. As it went past he just hosed down, the bullets chased him and got him in the middle of the red cross. And we had mixed feelings about that. So this is a prisoner who was killed? Yeah, we had mixed feelings, but they had anti aircraft guns in the hospital ground firing at them. Yes And eh … So they had no reason to believe … They had no reason to believe, at that stage, they didn’t know till late in the war that they were building the railway line. Right. So a lot of it was well built … and once it started, it was about on the border of Burma and Thailand, we used to see these planes come over we had never seen before. One was known as 'The Black Widow’. It was the twin boom plane for night fighting and they used it as a reconnaissance plane there. The Japs used to say "Ah Japan, Japan, number one plane," to us, but we knew different, it was an observation plane. And from then on, once they started that, mainly up near the border and around there, it was not unexpected to get your own camp bombed. We were bombed a couple of times at the 105 and great losses. They never knew that we were prisoners there. So, you moved, from the time you landed in Thanbyuzayat in October until you left for Camp Tamakan in March of the following year. March 1944. 44 yes. So that’s 18 months you were working on the railway and you moved several times didn’t you, you moved along the route? Oh yes, we would be in 14, 19, 23, 50, 75, 105, 110 - about 6 camps, 7 camps in the construction of the line. And were they all very similar? Yeah, very similar, depending on … some camps we had to build ourselves. One up near the border, the 105 kilometre camp. The area was known as Aunkanaunk in Burmese. We had to march from the eh … was it the 75 camp or the 80 camp, I am not sure to the 105 and it was a night … a night march. We set off late in the day and marched through the night and we got up there after midnight, to this camp had already been built. It had been built and had been used by natives doing some work on, or preparing the line to be built or something. And then we were all sat down on the bamboo slats, the floor was about 2 or 3 feet off the ground and all of a sudden someone says, "Sh .., sh … quiet!" And you could hear this rustling sound and it was the bed bugs and that moving, coming to devour us, and we quickly got dried bamboo and torches and underneath were the flame … you could hear them cracking and smelling … to get rid of most of them. It took us weeks to get rid of the bugs and the lice in that camp. In fact they used to reappear regularly. So what had it been used for before you … ? Well the natives, I think they had started building the motor road Oh I see ..that they used before the railway line was built. And eh, the nearest water, we had to go down the hill to a river, and I suppose it was a good 20 minutes hike there and back or more, and quite a steep climb back to bring water up. There was never any running water in that camp and eh … Did you move the camp … did you pull huts down and carry stuff with you from one camp to the next? No, they left it for the people coming behind. Because you have to … the ones that were laying the line … first the ones laying the sleepers, and then the line, they would be coming along after you and they would be used by them. So you were in the parties that were just doing the clearing and building the embankments and cuttings? The cuttings, bridges and embankments. Right. And then when we finished that, just before they joined the line up, we were put on the task of quarrying rock to keep a good supply of ballast up for the railway and cutting wood for the fire engines. And eh, we learnt very quickly which trees to use for the firings. There is a form of tree up there, we call it the balsawood. It was very light wood, very easy to saw down and chop up, until the Japanese realised it didn’t burn too well for the engines, so then we got back and we had to cut down these rosewood and teak. What was used to fire those engines made you cry, rosewood and teak and things like that. Oh dear. END OF SIDE B, TAPE 1 Note: Tape 2 interview continues on this tape, but a new document has been started titled "Ray Wheeler-2.doc"
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Victorians at War - Oral History Project