‘You’ll be alright, Archie old mate,’ Harry kept saying as he panted with the effort of carrying him. ‘Stay with us, lad.’
Tom looked at Archie’s face anxiously. Behind the cuts and bruises it was deathly pale. But he could tell from the way Archie’s eyes flickered that he was still alive.
The walk back to camp was a laborious struggle for Tom and Harry. Archie was like a dead-weight between them. They each held an arm and dragged him along. His body was heavy, slippery with sweat. He was virtually unconscious and unable to support his own weight or help them in any way. In their exhaustion, it was an almost impossible task for Tom and Harry. Occasionally, Archie would open his lips and utter a low moan.
‘Do you think he’s going to make it?’ Tom asked Harry.
‘I hope so. But he’s in a terrible state. We’ll take him straight to the hospital hut. The docs can work miracles sometimes. And at least he’s young.’
The prisoners made their way down the dusty track, barefoot and treading earth still hot from the sun, some limping from tropical ulcers, some so weak from illness or starvation that they had to be supported by others. The jungle was teeming with life, even louder now that darkness had fallen; the trees and bushes came alive at night with the squawking and chattering of insects and birds.
Camp was a muddy clearing in the jungle, with rows of long bamboo huts thatched with palm leaves standing beside the wide fast-flowing river. Most of the men made straight for the water and splashed off the dust and sweat of the day from their bodies. Tom and Harry made their painful way with Archie dragging between them, straight along the bank to the last hut in the clearing – the hospital hut.
The smell of rotting flesh and the sight of hollow-eyed men, sick with dysentery or malaria, recovering from an amputation, or their bodies bloated with beri-beri, made Tom’s stomach turn. It also struck icy fear into him. Fear that it would soon be him. That like so many of these men he would not recover. That he would end up in the fast-growing cemetery at the edge of the camp.
The camp doctor, Colonel Bell, and two orderlies rushed to help them lay Archie out on one of the bamboo platforms at the far end of the hut.
Colonel Bell leaned over and examined him, shaking his head. Then he called for some boiled water and began to clean and dress Archie’s wounds. The orderlies assisted him. One passed him old rags to use as dressings, and the other held a lamp overhead. Tom avoided their eyes. He’d often seen the short one, Leech, trading the possessions of dead patients in the camp.
They had soon cleaned the blood and dirt from Archie’s face, but his eyes were two swollen puffballs and his nose still cut and bloody. Tom shivered at the grey pallor on his features.
‘He’s unconscious, and in a bad way,’ said the doctor, picking gravel out of the wounds on Archie’s stomach with a pair of tweezers.
‘Do you think he’s going to pull through, Doc?’ asked Tom.
The doctor looked up. His face was lined with exhaustion. In it Tom saw the weariness and resignation brought on by months of seeing men die, of not having the equipment or drugs to be able to save them.
‘God knows, Ellis. He was bad enough this morning, before he was beaten up by those savages. Now, I just can’t say. It all depends on his will to live.’
Tom flinched. Archie was a fragile lad, vulnerable and easily daunted, prone to despair. It would be easy for him to just give up the fight.
‘Is there anything we can do?’ asked Harry.
‘No,’ the doctor said wearily. ‘Why don’t you come back tomorrow morning and see if he’s come round?’
Tom and Harry left the hut, trying not to look at all the other broken men lying there on bamboo struts, waiting for death. Then they made for the river. Tom gasped as he entered the cold water, but felt instant relief as it soothed his wounds and bathed his aching muscles. He lay on his back and stared at the dark sky with its sprinkling of stars, listening to the gentle lapping of the water and the distant hum of the jungle around him. For a few exquisite moments he emptied his mind of the horrors of the day.
Soon his hunger forced him out of the water. He flicked the droplets off his skin and joined the men forming an untidy queue outside the cookhouse. When Tom’s turn came he held out his tin, and the cook ladled a spoonful of watery rice into it, weevils floating amongst the soggy grains.
‘Steak and caviar tonight, Ellis,’ joked the cook, adding a spoonful of stew, consisting of a few plant leaves and a couple of lumps of fatty meat. Tom forced a smile.
Someone had lit a small fire outside one of the huts to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and despite the steamy heat of the evening, men were drawn to it. Subdued groups of men sat around it, smoking and eating. Tom took his place amongst them and began eating his rations as slowly as he could, chewing each mouthful many times despite the hunger that gnawed away inside him. Over the months of starvation, he’d trained himself to do this. He hardly tasted the food. He simply knew that if he didn’t eat what he was given, everything, no matter how his stomach turned at the sight of it, he would not survive.
Harry eased himself down beside Tom, and soon Ian Ryan joined them. Ian, naturally tall and thin, looked even more emaciated now.
Settling
