Essay Train Station and remarkably Comfortable Life

Submitted By caitnotley
Words: 703
Pages: 3

My father was a very important commander in the first world war and war has been an important part of me my whole life. I always felt he was disappointed that I wasn’t a boy, so I did what I could to be involved in the war. He didn’t pressure me to join up or anything, but I felt it was my responsibility to follow in his footsteps as much as was possible.

It was very different to what I expected, we arrived sometime in February 1941, I was sent to Malacca, where I had a remarkably comfortable life, there weren’t too many injured soldiers at the beginning and although the climate was a severe contrast to my usual weather, I soon became used to the humidity and the tropical climate.

It was later that year, around December that year, it was just after Malaya was over run with Japanese soldiers. Singapore was bombed severely at that stage and there was a flood of injuries, I was moved to Saint Patricks school to help the nurses there, and I remember there was a plan to evacuate the nurses and children. I stayed behind, as did a number of other nurses, that’s when an army of Japanese troops found us. They killed all the male injured soldiers, and then They took us to a truck sort of thing and we were crammed in there with a number of other captive people and taken to some remote camp in somewhere in the jungle.

We stayed in very thin bamboo huts with mud floors, and we had a very basic diet of rice and vegetables. I remember almost everyone there was suffering from some tropical disease, malaria and dysentery and beri beri were the most common, and many people died in poor conditions. We worked long hours in the fields and farm to earn our meals, and very little sleep. I remember people collapsing from malnutrition and sleep deprivation. If anyone stopped working they were punished by no dinner or they were abused. As time went by more and more people were maltreated in this way.

Almost five years, in April 1945 we were forced to undertake a sea voyage to Sumatra. Over 2 thirds of the prisoners were severely ill and more often than not, unconscious and had to be carried on stretchers. The boat trip lasted days, and many peoples condition worsened rapidly in a short amount of time, and this is when people started to drop like flies. Their bodies were unceremoniously dumped over the side and left without a funeral or any form of a goodbye. When we arrived in Sumatra There was a 26 hours walk through mud and tropical jungle to the train station, and if anyone fell