Escape to Pagan (21 page)

The beginning of this journey was not pleasant for all prisoners who were immobile. The sufferers of beri-beri did not sleep at night. They moaned and cried with pain and were forced to walk around all night (just one light bulb lit the lower level of No 2 hold) despite the lack of space and curses from their comrades; in the morning they fell into exhausted sleep, often missing their rations. By now all holds of the
Lisbon Maru
were awash with filth that sloshed around with the ship's movement. Many of the dysentery sufferers could not make it to the heads in time. The toilet facilities were makeshift, unstable bamboo structures slung over the side of the ship and lashed with rope that loosened with the ships movement. When the lucky few did reach these toilets, their ordeal was not as yet over; first they had to keep their balance on a pitching and rolling ship.

To add to their humiliation they were intently watched by the front line Japanese troops who crowded the rails above the deck; this was their kind of humour. They leaned on the handrail and waited expectantly, their crude interest quickly turning to laughter at the monkey-like antics of the skeletal prisoners as they struggled to keep their balance on the swaying unstable structure, desperately trying not to fall over into the foamy drink. All prisoners knew that if they fell there would be no rescue, only the sounds of fading laughter from the warriors of Nippon high up in the Gods. And to make the show more interesting for the watchers, a long sinister shadow took up post below the squatting men. For the unobservant prisoners, the watching Japanese troops took great pleasure in pointing out the predator's arrival. It does not take much imagination to visualize the horror of a prisoner with failing strength sitting on this swaying toilet seat, looking down between his scrawny legs and seeing a large solitary shark eying him expectantly. The watching Japanese soldiers always seemed disappointed when the prisoner made it safely back on to the deck.

Far to the distant south the new American submarine
Grouper
was heading for the seas between Shanghai and Japan. Here the submarine would wait in ambush for any Japanese ship heading back to the homeland or any vessel heading out westward. Although it was the ambition of every submarine crew to sink an enemy aircraft carrier or a battleship, it was America's stranglehold on Japan's merchant shipping that crippled their war production. Unfortunately this situation encouraged the building of the notorious Burma Siam railway, a project believed impossible by western engineers. The building of this railway is a tribute to both Nippon ingenuity and cruelty. Thousands of lives (both civilians and military) were lost in this jungle hell. After all, the Japanese had more than enough live prisoners to spare.

CHAPTER 13

The Toddy Drinkers

BURMA

“At Yu, the De Souza family had tried to persuade your grandmother to make the journey to Moulmein with them. We also had relatives in Moulmein. But my mother had other plans. Perhaps she realized the De Souzas' menfolk would not arrive or maybe she felt we would be more obvious if our numbers swelled and be a more tempting target to Burmese Dacoits. I tried to convince my mother to travel with the De Souza's, as it would be nice to have company of my own age, but my mother would not listen. She said that if the Japanese arrived at Yu, the De Souzas would not be harmed as they were residents of Portuguese Marco and if the Chinese arrived first, they would not be harmed as they had trading connections with the Chinese. She also observed that the three De Souza sisters often argued and sometimes ended up screaming and pulling each other's hair; this could also be dangerous.”

Grandmother may have also considered that finding accommodation and food for two adults and a child was far easier than for an extra six adults. But this is only a guess on my part. We were to meet the De Souzas again at Tada u.

“One morning after many tearful farewells, our little group left Yu with our pram loaded down with looted stores and as much water as we could carry. I think we stayed there for about nine days. My mother warned the De Souzas not to make their presence obvious. They now had plenty of food and were looking forward to the arrival of their menfolk.

“We headed further into the dry belt. You were walking for longer periods which made the pram easier to push. Dressed as Burmese, we felt less conspicuous. As we continued, we picked up small dry pieces of wood for the fire that night and collected sweet prickly pear fruit that were now fully ripe and falling to the ground. We carried on further inland into the real dry country. Even though the monsoon may not reach the dry belt, flash floods from the distant hills turned the chaungs
[watercourse]
into rivers. In the dry belt, villages are protected by tall cactus hedges which made it difficult to know if they were populated, for at the hottest time of the day there was little activity as everyone rested or slept.

“Some pro-Japanese villages were ordered to deny retreating British soldiers water by removing the pulleys, ropes and buckets. For us to obtain water we would have to enter the village; this could be dangerous. This practice was new to my mother and was against Buddhist principles to deny water to travellers, for Buddha himself was a traveller. We always kept some water for emergencies and to fill your bottle. The water shortage would continue till the coming mango showers. Until then we had to make do. We travelled two or three miles a day. The pram was heavy to push; the land we crossed was full of deep cracks and ruts. Sometimes we were forced to cross dry sandy chaungs. The heavy pram had to be heaved and shoved, it was very hot and we tired quickly. We also had to keep an eye on you. When we were distracted you ran off laughing. Although we saw no dangerous wildlife during the day, the sandy beds of the chaungs were full of animal tracks – mostly snakes, deer, jungle fowl and peacocks.

“As soon as we saw a tree or a big bush providing shade we stopped and rested and cooked our main meal. Now that my mother had all the right ingredients, the food was always lovely. We saved the kungi water
[water the rice was cooked in]
for you. Mother always cooked more than
enough lunch, leaving some for the evening, which we ate cold; that way we did not always have to light a fire that could attract unwelcome attention. Villagers usually investigated fires that were nearby. Some of the big trees had large noisy bats in them that we called flying foxes; we never slept under these trees. Crossing a well used bullock track, my mother spotted a stone water trough that was used to water bullocks. The water in the trough was undrinkable but the thin trickle that fed it was clear. We filled our tin cups and drank, but only half-filled our containers as we were so nervous that Japanese soldiers or Burmese dacoits could appear at any moment.

“One hot furnace-like afternoon we stopped in the shade of a tree surrounded by bushes; we hid the pram full of food out of sight. Sitting in the shade, Mother began cooking a Burmese curry. We noticed people walking nearby and realized we were near another bullock track. Then a young pretty Burmese girl came into view; noticing us, she left the track and began walking towards us. My mother told me to keep my mouth shut and let her do all the talking.

“In Burma it is not unusual to be approached by strangers who may politely enquire as to your destination and place of departure; in return they will give you their opinion on the route you have chosen. They may even enquire about your marital status and occupation etc.

“The smiling Burmese girl greeted my mother politely and sat down. She started a conversation about the coming monsoon. She said she was a student from Rangoon, heading to her village a few miles away for the coming water festival. Like all hungry students worldwide, she was anti-this and anti-that, in fact anti-everything, favouring anarchy. Students in Burma were anti-British. They desired self-rule and independence. And like all students she had strong political opinions.

“'The long nose “Meow phue” (white monkeys), have left Burma – Burma is now free. The Japanese are Buddhists and rice eaters like us. Soon Burma will be independent and govern itself' the girl said.

“'Where are the British now?' asked my mother.

“'Running to India' she answered.

“This was terrible news. Even though we knew the war was going badly, we always hoped for a miracle. India was such a long way away.
It was hard to believe there was no British Army left in Burma after all those years. The young female student was obviously hungry and enquired about all the ingredients my mother was using, as if testing her knowledge of Burmese cooking. We invited her to join us and share our food. The young student was impressed with mother's curry.

“'Stay the night at my village' offered the pretty Burmese girl, ‘we have plenty of water and empty huts. My uncle is the headman.'

“I hoped my mother would accept this offer but she said we had to cross the dry belt before the rains; her mind was made up. It was such a shame; I was looking forward to sleeping under a roof and drinking fresh well water.

“'You speak excellent Burmese' said the girl to my mother.

“'I am Burmese' said my mother, ‘from the south west.'

“'Ahhh … then you are more Mons than Khmer' said the girl knowingly, ‘but why are you here in the hot season?'

“'We came here to escape the Chinese Army' answered my mother.

“You were quite taken by this pretty Burmese girl and kept trying to lift up her longyi, she found this quite amusing because of your age. Thank goodness she did not ask any more awkward questions. After eating and thanking my mother, the pretty young Burmese student left. We packed our things and crossed the bullock track immediately after the girl was out of sight, picking up as many mangoes as we could along the way. These mangoes were small and very sweet; they were our favourite and called ‘Alfonzo mangoes', first brought to Burma from Goa by the Portuguese. We moved away from the direction of the girl's village. My mother was not taking any chances as we were now carrying a great deal of money.

“We walked as far as possible that afternoon and were thinking of finding a place to sleep when we noticed palm trees in the distance. This was now the real dry belt; water would be extremely scarce. Before we could reach the palms, peacocks informed us of the approaching night with their weird calls. That night we slept in the middle of a cactus thicket; the ground was so hard. We eventually fell asleep to the calls of the roosting peacocks. The following morning we walked towards the tall palms to seek water. There were no wells or springs above ground, but all the tall sugar palm trees were being tapped high
up in the canopy by somebody for their juice. It would have been lovely to be able to drink fresh palm juice, but the trees were too high to climb.

“After two or three days travelling we had no water left and were very thirsty again. My mother tried cutting cactus plants; some cacti stored water but all we got was an inedible sticky milky substance that was poisonous. Eating the sweet mangoes now only added to our thirst.

“That afternoon we came to a small village surrounded by palm and coconut trees. Where there's a village, there is always water. While I waited, Mother took out small rice bags from the pram and hid them among the cactus plants to be picked up later. As we got nearer to the village we could see it was by the side of a large dirt road. On the far side of the village there were many guava trees growing around a massive banyan tree that gave plenty of shade. Under the palm trees were women making palm toddy. Further back from the track stood several huts, under which lay many large earthenware containers full of fermenting palm juice. These huts belonged to toddy makers. These people had darker skin and came from the hills; they were gypsies. As usual it was the village dogs that spotted us first and raised the alarm. The women and children stopped their work and came out to watch us. We approached them slowly, looking forward to sitting in the shade. Seeing we were only two females and a child the toddy makers relaxed. They were pleased when my mother asked to buy their toddy and some palm fruit. She then offered to buy water. Water was given freely. To charge strangers for water is considered taboo.

“There were two types of toddy, sweet or dry; you always loved sweet toddy and could not get enough. The native women used to keep giving you sips of sweet toddy when we were not looking. They were also selling blocks of lovely ‘guava cheese' also known as ‘guava jelly'. The large fruit of the palm trees were also for sale. This fruit called ‘nungue' by the Burmese had a soft, firm opaque jelly-like centre that was full of sweet water and was very tasty. Although they spoke Burmese, these native traders looked different and had their own language that my mother did not understand. They were small in build without tribal tattoo markings like most hill tribes and their dress was unfamiliar to us. As they used the word ‘paani', Indian for water, perhaps they
were of Indian descent. It was never wise to enquire as to where these tribes were from. While their men travelled to the main bullock tracks and the distant main roads to sell toddy to the passing travellers, the women stayed and brewed the alcoholic palm juice, made the guava cheese, and baskets from palm fronds. They seemed totally unaware that a major war was going on.

“There was a boulder strewn spring nearby where these people drew their water. We asked permission to drink. The pool was not very big and these tribespeople had earthenware jars collecting water as it fell from the rocks in a thin trickle so it took us some time to collect water, but the water was cool and clear. Several red-faced working macaque monkeys were chained to the trees and pulled faces at us. We had to keep you away from these vicious monkeys, even the dogs were afraid of them. These big primates were trained to climb the trees and bring down the cup of tapped palm juice without spilling a drop; they would be closely watched by their owners. The monkeys would also be watching their owners; if distracted for one moment, the monkey would take a quick drink. I used to love watching the monkeys and the faces they pulled at their owners, when their backs were turned.