The Camp. A short story by Charles Roberts

 

Mike could feel the pebbles and stones digging into his knees, calves and the tops of his feet, the spikes of the barbed wire, wrapped round a fence post, against the back of his knees.  The sun relentlessly beating down on his bare back, if he fell forward he would be impaled on bamboo spikes, and the barbs of some wire would tighten across his throat and round his wrists which were tied behind his back; if he went backwards, not only would the barbs on the wire dig into the backs of his legs, but there were more bamboo spikes to impale him.  The only thing he had done wrong was not to bow down to one of the guards.

Why was this happening to him, he thought, he wasn’t in the armed forces, he’d never even touched a rifle or gun.  He was on the islands to try and find new plant and insect species, then all this blew up around him and he was caught in the middle.  “Why me!” he called, “Why am…..”  His cry was cut short by a blow from a rifle butt which hit him on the right side of his head.

“No talk or I punish,” he heard.

The barbed wire dug into the backs of his legs and neck, he felt something trickling down his right cheek and drip from his chin onto his naked chest to mingle with the sweat which ran down his emaciated body.

Don’t cry out, he told himself, don’t give them the satisfaction of hearing you cry out.  Make the bastards think that they’ve not hurt you, then they might let you go.  Let you go back to the forest and the search for new plants and insects. He’d been telling himself that for the last three years and just knew that it wasn’t going to happen, the only thing that may happen is that one of the guards would shoot him, or if this stupid war ever comes to an end then they would shoot everyone in the compound so that there wouldn’t be any witnesses.  Or better still to go back home, go back to his nice little cottage in the country surrounded by woodland where he could watch the woodpeckers and owls.  He bit his lip to stifle any cry of pain and looked, through a half closed and swollen eye at the guard who stood, smiling, near him.  Punish me you sadistic bastard, what the hell do you think I’m like this for?  he thought.

He’d gone out to Malaya in nineteen thirty two. Four years later he moved from Malaya to the islands around Sumatra, he’d heard of Rhinoceros being there.  A few years later, he couldn’t remember how many, a Dutch plantation owner told him that there was a war in Europe, but that wouldn’t affect them out there.  Now here he was, trussed up like a turkey at Christmas, only with barbed wire and not string, kneeling in the baking sun in the middle of a compound somewhere on the island of Java.

Mike had been taken in the June of nineteen forty two, he’d just stumbled into a Japanese patrol, and they dragged him off for interrogation.  He couldn’t tell them anything, but they kept asking how many more were there, where were they hiding, what was their mission, how long had they been on the island, when and how were they going to be picked up.  All he could say was that he was on his own and was a botanist, not a soldier; that just brought about a beating and being thrown into a small hut the size of a large dog kennel, with his hands tied behind him to his ankles, without food or sanitation.  They kept calling him a spy and he would be shot if he didn’t tell them what they wanted to know, but he couldn’t tell them because he didn’t know anything. 

They pulled his finger nails out, slowly, one each day for two weeks, then threw him into a stinking cell with an earth floor and water running down the walls.  They threatened him with a hand gun until one day he shouted at them to shoot him and have done with it; they shot him through his left hand, then beat him across the soles of his feet with a bamboo cane, then they had to half carry and half drag him back to his cell. There was plenty of water because it rained some afternoons.  But they would drag him out and question him, then beat him when he didn’t tell them what they wanted to know, answers he simply didn’t know, this would take place at any time of day or night.

He endured months of this, well he thought that it must have been months because they caught him in the June and the monsoon had hit the island when they finally took him to the compound, by this time he was so badly beaten that even his own mother wouldn’t have recognised him; and the monsoon usually started in November.  When he’d arrived there he was thrown into another dog kennel for a month.  This was made from metal sheeting which got so hot that you burnt if you touched them, again he was trussed up, with his hands behind him and tied to his ankles; then released into the main compound and put with the British prisoners.  He quickly found out that the Brits and Dutch didn’t really mix much, the Dutch had their leader, some Major or other, he was in sick bay dying of dysentery, and the British had another Major as their leader.  Mike had helped to bury them both as well as all the other leaders up to Captain Smyth.

The rest of the occupants of the camp were mostly servicemen, there were a few Dutch civilians, but not many, and a Spanish doctor who had been caught up in the Japanese invasion.  He protested that his country was neutral and that he should be set free, but all that brought about was a beating and a cut in rations for a month, for everyone.  The nurses were from Australia, well he thought that they were nurses, but in reality they were just stretcher-bearers who had had a rudimentary training in first aid.

Mike knew that between the hospital hut and the wire, was the graveyard, and he was determined not to end up being just another mound with a lashed up, makeshift wooden cross at his head.  He’d helped bury too many men in that ground, too many to remember all their names.  Someone had said a few prayers at first, a service padre he thought, but he’d gone the way of the others after about a year, either through starvation, dysentery, or malaria.  Mike had never had malaria for some reason, even now without the quinine tablets, the mosquitos just didn’t bite him; the doctor said it could because of something in his sweat.  Others would run their hands across his chest and then rub themselves with his sweat in the hope that they wouldn’t be bitten.  Some wise guy said that it was because he stank and the mossies’ didn’t like the smell, but everyone stank out there, just some more than others and you soon got used to it.  However the men on either side of him went down with malaria, there was just no reason for it.

The compound was void of all wildlife, anything rash enough to stray in there would be pounced upon and, either taken to the cookhouse, in the case of rats and snakes, or consumed there and then, grasshoppers were a delicacy, and these days, a rarity.  Mike reckoned that it was now nineteen forty five, the monsoon had finished so it must have been sometime in the middle of the year.  The monsoon hit them about November and lasted to March turning the compound into a quagmire and stopping all sleep as the rain pounded on the metal sheeted rooves of the huts, still it was the same for the guards whose huts were outside the wire.

He felt the barbs digging into the backs of his legs as he relaxed momentarily, he straightened up and glanced across to the huts with his half closed eye to see the rest of his hut in the doorway watching him.  Suddenly there was a commotion by the gate, he couldn’t see, but could hear the guards calling and shouting to one-another.  Then he felt someone holding him and removing the barbed wire from round his neck, someone else, the barbed wire fence post from behind his knees.  They then helped him to stand, his legs gave way, but someone caught him and half dragged him into a line with everyone else.  He caught one word, ‘Tenko quick.’

Mike felt himself being held up by men on either side of him.

“The war is over,” a voice said in a thick Japanese accent, “you are now free men, but there is violence on the island so we have been ordered to keep you safe in the compound until either the British or Americans come.”  There was a murmuring in the ranks of men.  “I ask Captain Smyth to come with me to my office, that is all, you are dismissed.”

His hut mates half carried Mike to the hospital hut where the doctor gave him a quick once over, nothing that a rest and some good food shouldn’t put right, the doctor said.  Some other wise guy said that they would all feel better with some good food inside them.