One evening George took Tom aside as he was leaving the hut. He pulled him into the shadows.
‘We understand what you did to Leech, Ellis. I realise now what he did. He betrayed you and your friends to the Japs, didn’t he?’
Tom nodded. He felt ashamed to admit his outburst of violence to this kind, mild-mannered man.
‘You were right not to go to the officers about it, though. He’s got so much on most of them. They’d all done dodgy deals with him at some time or another. You wouldn’t have got anywhere with them.’ George pursed his lips together. ‘He had it coming to him. Many’s the time that I’ve stood in that hut watching him and feeling helpless, when he’s half-inched a sick man’s belongings to trade, or even taken things from a dead body. I wanted to stop him, but couldn’t. And that racket he had going with the food – rice today for rice and soup tomorrow – I’ve seen so many men brought down sick because of that. Wicked that was.’
‘Yes, well, he won’t be doing any of it again in a hurry,’ said Tom.
‘You’ve done the whole camp a favour then,’ said George, patting his shoulder.
The days wore on in the same old back-breaking routine, with Tom and Frankie working the hammer and tap in heavy and tiring silence. Tom found himself desperately weak and exhausted. Sometimes he barely had the strength to wield the sledgehammer. His stomach constantly gnawed with hunger, but at least he was not sick, and he felt grateful for that.
At last the day came when the last of the great black rock had been cleared away, and the cutting was finally finished. Engineers arrived in the middle of the afternoon and inspected the work, their faces wreathed in smiles. The men stood and watched, bemused as the engineers and officers strutted about, congratulating themselves. The prisoners felt no sense of achievement. This just meant that the Japanese were one step closer to finishing their railway and being able to supply their troops on the front line in Burma. The men just wondered what awaited them next, as they walked back to camp, released early as a reward for the progress.
They didn’t have to wait long to find out. The next morning, after roll call, the Ripper addressed them and told them that their work here was finished, but that other important work for the Emperor awaited them elsewhere. They were told to pack their things quickly and assemble beside the river.
The same flat-bottomed barges that had brought them here came to collect them and take them down to Kanchanaburi. The men crowded on, uncomfortably aware that their numbers were now severely depleted. As the barge cast off into the current and began its journey downriver, Tom whispered a quiet goodbye to Harry, Ian and Archie, and all the others whose bodies or ashes would remain here in this remote spot in the jungle. Looking around at the sombre faces of his companions, he guessed they were all doing the same.
The camp would soon be abandoned, would rot back into the ground, and the ground would be gradually reclaimed by the voracious creepers and bamboo of the jungle. He imagined future generations coming past on the river, admiring the savage beauty of the place, unaware of the cruelty that had been meted out on this spot and of the lives that had been lost here.
A convoy of army trucks awaited them at Kanchanaburi, and the men were all loaded on to them immediately, hurried on with sticks and bayonets by the jabbering guards. A crowd of bemused locals stood and watched them silently. Some of them even dared to wave as the trucks drew away.
At Ban Pong, they were loaded straight onto trains, the baking hot cattle trucks waiting in the sidings. They were crammed on just as before, thirty to a truck. There was barely enough room to stand. The train stood there in the searing heat for over an hour before setting off. Sweat was pouring off the men, and they were shouting for water. They had not eaten since breakfast, eight hours before, but they were used to hunger. It was thirst that terrified them.
The five-day long journey was a repeat of the ordeal they had endured coming up from Singapore. The train stopped twice a day for the men to be fed rice and slop from buckets. The men had to stand up most of the time because there was simply not enough room to sit down. At night, they took turns to lie down, but it was too uncomfortable for any sleep. The metal truck, which in the daytime burned to the touch, became a freezing ice-box at night, and without warm clothes they shivered. On this journey, though, the train had to make several unscheduled stops to bury the men who had died along the route. These men had survived the starvation and beatings and slavery of the railway, but for them the conditions of the journey had proved too much. Shallow graves were dug quickly beside the tracks. A few hasty words were said by the padre, while the others bowed their heads at the thought of losing another of their own, then the men were bundled back on the train to continue the journey.
As the train rattled south, they watched the countryside through the open door. The rice paddies of Southern Thailand gave way to the plantations and jungle-covered hills of Malaya. This would be beautiful, Tom thought, if only their circumstances were different.
When they felt they could endure no more, the train finally drew into Singapore
