ADDRESS BY NEIL MacPHERSON AT THE 2008 ANZAC DAY

WREATH LAYING CEREMONY AT KANCHANABURI WAR CEMETERY

MEMORIES OF THE BURMA SIAM RAILWAY

NEIL MacPHERSON WX 16572, 2/2 ND PIONEERS

This year our Quiet Lion annual pilgrimage party of 100 people includes 43 Juniors/Students bringing to 338 the number of young people we have partly subsidised and brought to Thailand over the past 11 years. It is to them that I dedicate this address. These young Australians, mainly from country towns, who have worked extremely hard to win selection, are typical, though just a few years younger, than many of those who slaved and died on the railway after capture as teen agers by the Japanese

Although only 110 kilometres of the 415 kilometre line is in Burma, prisoners in the Anderson Williams Mobile Force, after working on cuttings and embankments, laid the sleepers and rails through to Konkoita in Thailand in the twelve months after our arrival in Burma. This distance covered represents one third of the railway length.

Of the 60,000 POWs who worked on the railway nearly 12,000 worked from the Burma end, made up of about 10,000 in No 3 Group under Brigadier Varley and 1800 in No 5 Group under U.S. Lt Colonel Thorp. The Burma Force contained about 5000 Australians, 5500 Dutch, 650 Americans and 482 British. The Burma POWs were brought up by sea in Hell ships. William’s and Black Force from Java endured shocking conditions battened down in the holds for three separate voyages in three Hell Ships on their 3 week journey in October 1942

Along with Green and Anderson Force, Williams and Black Force were the first Australians to start work on the railway. Number 3 Group came under the control of Colonel Nagatoma, an arrogant tyrant, later executed as a war criminal. Fortunately for us prisoners he saw the advantage of using Brigadier Varley to control the prisoner’s work force.

Number 5 Group, including most of the Americans, experienced much worse conditions and their death rate was higher as they were kept apart from Varley’s administration. Varley was able to influence Nagatoma in many ways, as well as controlling the movements of the medical staff and senior officers and to rotate the sick. Varley also used his influence on Nagatoma to obtain some concessions for the prisoners and in some instances having extreme cruelty by Korean guards punished.

Unlike Thailand, in Burma we had no river for transportation of supplies, no roads existed in this mainly dense jungle area and the tracks during
the winter became almost impassable so supplies, always in short supply, became critical.

In April 1943 large numbers of Burmese coolies were brought on to the railway to augment the work force, their leaderless camps were unhygienic and breeding places for disease, especially during the Cholera outbreaks where their dead were often left unburied

We in the Williams/Anderson Force were fortunate to have Captain Rowley Richards as our medico; he went out on a limb time and time again to protect the sick. Through Varley’s good relations with Nagatoma, Rowley obtained supplies of the scarce anti-Cholera vaccine and we were twice inoculated before the onset of the cholera epidemic in mid 1943

With Dunlop Force at Hintok, many lives were lost before they created the miracle of a distillation plant that saved hundreds of cholera victims whilst we in our group in Burma benefited from Rowley’s prevention program. Of the 450 Pioneers in William’s Force in Burma not one life was lost through Cholera. Apart from the injections, the strict hygiene applied in our camps helped in achieving this result.

At the end of 1943 Burma prisoners were evacuated from their jungle camps. Most came here to Kanchanaburi. I spent 6 months at the Tamarkan camp close to the bridge while waiting transport to Japan.

13,000 Australians worked on the railway. Of these, 2800 died during and immediately after the construction of the railway. About half of these are buried in Thanbyuzayat and half in Tamarkan. These numbers tend to mislead and do not represent a true comparison between the two area, Burma & Thailand.

When the commonwealth War graves Commission recovered the remains of the prisoners from the many camp cemeteries a line was drawn at Nikki. All those found there and north of Nikki were interred at Thanbyuzayat, those south of Nikki were interred here and Chungkai. The deaths did not end after the prisoners left the Railway area. Many of the survivors moved to Changi and sent to Japan continued to die due to the railway experience.

No prisoner on the railway survived who did not have a mate. Mateship probably saved more lives than any single factor. I can best illustrate that special mate-ship between Australian POWs by once again reciting a poem written by an Australian POW some years after the war. Duncan Butler, born in 1906 at Horsham, Victoria, enlisted in Wagga, NSW, as a member of the 2/12th Field Ambulance. He was 39 years old when the war ended.

Duncan Butler 2/12 th Field Ambulance:

A POW wrote these lines.

I’ve travelled down some lonely roads

Both crooked tracks and straight

An’ I’ve learned life’s noblest creed

Summed up in one word “Mate”

I’m thinking back across the years,

(A thing I do of late)

An’ this word sticks between my ears

You’ve got to have a mate

Someone who’ll take you as you are.

Regardless of your state

An’ stand as firm as Ayers Rock

Because “e” is your mate

Me mind goes back to 43,

To slavery an’ ate,

When man’s one chance to stay alive

Depended on ‘is mate.

With bamboo for a billie-can

An’ bamboo for a plate,

A bamboo paradise for bugs,

Was bed for me and me mate.

You’d slip and slither through the mud

An’ curse your rotten fate:

But then you’d hear a quiet word:

“Don’t drop your bundle mate.

An’ though it’s all so long ago

This truth I ave to state:

A man don’t know what lonely means,

Til ‘e as lost is mate

If there’s a life that follers this,

If there’s a “ Golden Gate”

The welcome that I want to hear

Is just: “Good on y mate”

An so to all who ask us why

We keep these special Dates

Like Anzac day, I answer: “Why”

We’re thinking of our mates”

An when I’ve left the drivers seat

An handed in my plates,

I’ll tell old Peter at the door:

“Ive come to join me MATES”