1000 Days on the River Kwai

The Secret Diary of a British Camp Commandant

Cary Owtram

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781526772053
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473897823
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

A British officer recounts his harrowing years as a POW in Thailand, including his time as the camp commandant, in this WWII memoir.
Colonel Cary Owtram served with the 137th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, and the 11th Indian Infantry Division in Malaysia. After being captured by the Japanese in Singapore, he was transported to the infamous Burma railway. He went on to spend the next three and a half years in grueling captivity in Thailand, first in Ban Pong Camp and then Chungkai Camp—one of the largest POW camps in the region.
Owtram was appointed the British Camp Commandant at Chungkai, making him responsible for his fellow prisoners—a heavy responsibility added to the general deprivation and hardship suffered by all. During that time, Owtram kept a secret diary in which he recorded the brutal experience of surviving day to day and attempting to deal with their harsh and unpredictable Japanese captors.
It is not only the prisoners who suffered, but also their families at home. The postscript by Owtram's daughters vividly demonstrates the agonies of doubt and worry that loved ones went through and the effect of the experience on all.

Chapter 1

Outward Bound

On a murky, wet Sunday in September 1941, the 137th Field Regiment, in which I was then serving as Second in Command, embarked at Liverpool in SS Dominion Monarch. That evening, we nosed our way down the Mersey to join a large convoy collecting in the Irish Sea and consisting of about twenty liners and cargo boats, with an escort of cruisers and destroyers.

This was the beginning of an active share in the war, for which we had been training for two years, and everyone was, rather naturally, keyed up with a sense of excitement and anticipation, particularly as the majority of us had little idea of our ultimate destination. All we knew was that a ‘tropical’ country was indicated by the kit we had drawn.

Passing slowly down the Mersey and over the bar, we anchored for the night while the rest of the convoy formed up. Next morning, we moved out into the Irish Sea, and as the coastline faded in the distance, the last bit of England we were to see for many a long day was the top of Blackpool Tower disappearing in the haze, a reminder of the early days of the war when many of us had spent the first six months there – the birthplace of the regiment.

Our course took us almost to the North American coast and then south in a wide sweep back to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where we spent two sweltering days gazing from the ship at the sinister-looking coast, clad with Rackham-like trees and thick, tropical jungle. From there we proceeded to Cape Town, where the memory of the welcome we received will remain with us always. The hospitality showered upon us was positively embarrassing, and our four-day stay was all too short.

From Cape Town we sailed across the Indian Ocean, touching for a few hours at Colombo, where we picked up the ill-fated Repulse as part of our escort; and on 29 November we drew alongside the quay in Keppel Harbour at Singapore, our final destination.

After more than eight weeks at sea with little opportunity for exercise, the entire regiment of seventeen hundred excited men hurled themselves at the job of unloading our baggage on to the quayside, to the accompaniment of rattling derrick chains and screaming Chinese dock workers. After the enforced idleness of the sea voyage, sweat poured off us as we heaved and pushed the heavy baggage beneath the blazing heat of a tropical sun until everything was out of the ship.

The same evening, most of the regiment moved by train to a little village called Kajang, just south of Kuala Lumpur, some 250 miles north of Singapore, leaving the drivers and a fatigue party behind to unload our guns, vehicles and stores, which arrived on a slower ship a day or two later.

At Kajang we had a few days in which to begin getting ourselves acclimatized to the tropics. Two months at sea, although it had given us a suntan, had left us all a bit soft.

Events moved quickly after this. On the same day that the party we had left behind started on their 250-mile drive with the guns and trucks, the Japanese bombed Singapore and landed on the north-east coast of Malaya, near Khota Bahru.

The regiment was attached to the 23rd Indian Corps, and the Corps Commander ordered the regiment to proceed, as soon as we had got our guns and equipment, to the north of Malaya.

The gun party arrived in Kajang about dusk on the Sunday evening, and it was a truly astonishing sight to see the entire regiment fall upon guns and trucks like a swarm of ants and, with fires burning all night to provide boiling water, wash the grease and dust off them, oil and service them, sort out the thousand and one bits of equipment and pack them into their appointed trucks.

Working all night and the next morning, we had two batteries ready to move off at 1.00 pm, which was the appointed time for our move. The third battery was to follow by rail the next day.

We did the long trip north in three hops. The first night we arrived at Ipoh about midnight and left again at daybreak, passing through the much more beautiful country of Perak, with its rocky outcrops of white limestone gleaming in the bright sun and set amid the deep green of the jungle splashed with paler greens and yellows.

On again through miles of rubber plantations, with their row upon row of grey trunks; through native villages full of colourfully dressed Tamils waving and raising their fists with thumbs up in a signal of ‘good luck’ as we passed by in a long column of guns, trucks and bren-carriers. Children by the score waved and cheered the British troops who were to drive the invader back from Malaya so easily. Little did we or they know how soon they would see us again, fighting tenaciously and contesting every mile as we withdrew down the peninsula.

The second day’s driving brought us that evening to Sungel Patani, a large camp in the rubber with a most depressing atmosphere under its canopy of green leaves. It is an acknowledged fact that rubber is depressing. Whether it is the monotony of line upon line of grey trunks around one in every direction and the dim twilight under the canopy of green overhead, or whether it is the carbon dioxide which the trees give off, I don’t know; but the fact remains that all troops did find these camps in the rubber plantations had a depressing effect.

That night, I arranged to meet our other battery on its arrival at the station. It was due about midnight but did not arrive until 7.00 am, so I got no sleep again after having had only three hours the previous night and little more the night before.

That day was spent in preparing for the final stage, which was to bring us into our first battle position. The Colonel and the three Battery Commanders went forward during the day to reconnoitre positions, and I was left to bring the regiment up after dark. At six o’clock that evening we moved off, the long column occupying several miles. Rain fell in torrents as we drove with sidelights only along unknown roads, following the route on my map by the aid of a shaded electric torch. About midnight we arrived at Tanjong Pau, some five miles north of Alor Star, where we were met by the Colonel and his party. Batteries were taken over by their Battery Commanders and Regimental Headquarters were piloted into a camp in the ubiquitous rubber. After posting sentries and having something to eat we got a short spell of sleep, either in our trucks or in huts, and awoke at dawn to the sound of firing a mile or so to our front.

At 8.00 am that day, 12 December 1941, the 350th Battery opened up with the first rounds the regiment had fired in real warfare, their target a bridge which the Japanese were crossing.

The Japanese attack pressed forward all along the front in this sector, and by the afternoon all troops were ordered to retire along the Alor Star road to a village some ten miles back. This was easier said than done, as there was only one road and it was a mass of transport and guns withdrawing, while other vehicles were bringing up ammunition or coming up empty for loads of supplies or to transport the infantry back. If the Japanese had used planes at this stage they could have created utter chaos, but they didn’t. Later on, they realized the possibilities open to them and put their planes to good effect.

We got back – at least, most of us did – to the village, which was down a side road, and spent nearly twenty-four hours there waiting for orders, then had to ‘up sticks’ in the middle of the night down a track through the rubber to Gurun. This was a nightmare drive, with guns and vehicles frequently bogged in the deep ruts. We arrived at Gurun in the small hours of the morning to find it impossible to move further as the road was completely blocked by a mass of vehicles heading south.

Having got out of my truck to try and sort out the jam, I remember an irate brigadier putting his head out of the Utility Truck and cursing me up and down for not doing anything. As I had been directing traffic and cursing Indian drivers in fluent English for half an hour with – as I thought – some measure of success, I felt that this accusation was uncalled-for. Eventually we got on the move, and Regimental Headquarters, for which I was responsible, took possession of a vacated camp in the rubber. About 5.00 pm, after seeing the troops were provided for, I decided to have a couple of hours sleep. I lay down on a charpoy (Indian-style bed) with my pack for a pillow, and the next thing I was conscious of was George Holme, the Colonel of the Regiment, telling me it was seven o’clock the next morning. We had both endured about five days and nights with practically no sleep, so perhaps it was not surprising.

From now onwards we seldom spent more than forty-eight hours in one place, but withdrew steadily down the peninsula. More than once the regiment was the last of our troops to withdraw, holding various river bridges while the infantry were pulled back, tired and decimated, to form another line of defence. Poor fellows, they had a tough time, particularly the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, the Leicesters and the Surreys. We did at least move on wheels and when we went into action we did stay put for a time, but they got no rest at all.

One day, Captain Freddie Thompson of the Leicesters turned up in our lines with a handful of men. They had been cut off further north and had made their way over a shoulder of Kedah Peak – the highest mountain in Malaya – to the coast and then down to the mouth of the Muda River by sampan (Malayan canoe). We kept them with us for several days and gave them food and new clothes and kit.

There was a funny incident on our way south at Bagan Serai – at least it was funny for some, though death to others. We had drawn up under the cover of some trees along the right-hand side of the road for a bit of food and rest and were about to move off, when four Japanese bombers flew over. I told my driver not to move until they had gone and was about to tell him to start, which was the signal for the whole column to move, when back they came over some big tin-roofed rice godowns (warehouses) just across the road into which a lot of Tamils had run to cover. The planes, flying low, dropped a stick of bombs right across the godowns. Freddie Thompson was in the back of my Utility Truck, and like one man he and my driver flung open both the offside doors and disappeared with a splash into the waters of a deep, dirty ditch. I was left sitting in the car to watch the bombs crash through the warehouse roofs some fifty yards away. The casualties inside must have been heavy, but luckily none of us in the column were hit, though a few small bits of debris hit my car and some of our trucks. Presently, two dripping figures emerged from the ditch and re-entered the car, and we left in a hurry before anything worse could befall us.

We usually spent the nights in or under our vehicles, but as we moved south we began to find empty houses belonging to planters and took possession of these for the time being. Most of them had been left full of furniture and silver; in fact, they contained everything except their owners and what they could take away in their cars. As we vacated them, they were ransacked by masses of Tamils, who doubtless stripped them bare. It seemed an awful shame, but we couldn’t do anything about it. At some of these bungalows the Chinese ‘boys’ had stayed to look after their masters’ property and used to receive us as though we were guests, putting on their white coats, cooking for us and helping us in our purchases from local shops.

At one place to which I went ahead to reconnoitre before a withdrawal I found the manager of the plantation packing up his belongings preparatory to leaving the place. He was most helpful, insisting on us using his bungalow and all the buildings around. He was in the local defence force and already detailed for duty as a private soldier, but when he asked if we would have him as a liaison officer, it seemed like an excellent idea. The Colonel was a bit dubious, although he finally acquiesced, so Jim Stoker joined us and we gave him a couple of ‘pips’. He was a great asset for the short time he was with us as he could talk Tamil and Malay and knew the country well.

Christmas Eve found Regimental Headquarters at a bungalow appositely named ‘Peacehaven’, about 5 miles north of Ipoh. My job as second in command was largely administrative, and in this capacity I went shopping in the town, though it was being evacuated at the time. I bought quite a good selection of Christmas fare, including some tinned plum pudding. The next day, I thought I would see if I could get enough to make Christmas dinner for all the troops, so returned to the shop where I had been successful before. It was an English store, but the staff had left that day as Ipoh was being evacuated, and I found it barred and shuttered. While I was walking from door to door, a Chinese who had served me the day before, came up and said, ‘You come with me’, led me up the fire-escape at the back, seized an axe and burst open a door leading into a stock room, then said, ‘Evellybody gone – please help yourself.’ I was rather shaken by this generosity with somebody else’s property but, as he pointed out, if I didn’t take it the Japanese would; so with my conscience somewhat salved I descended to the truck and got my driver to help. We filled the Utility with everything one usually associates with Christmas – even to half a dozen bottles of ‘Moet’ – and returned to Regimental Headquarters triumphant. On the way I called at one of the Battery HQs and told them, and they went hot-foot to the shop with a 3-tonner. The following day, when I passed again, the place had been completely ransacked by hordes of natives.

Our air force in Malaya by this time had ceased to exist in the battle area, with the exception of a small convoy of six Brewster Buffaloes – single-engined fighters – which were based on the Ipoh aerodrome. Their intrepid pilots faced a hopeless task, with almost certain death before them. Completely outmatched in speed, armament and numbers by the Japanese ‘Navy O’ fighters and twin-engined bombers, they did what they could to harass the advancing enemy. The last time I saw them in the air was on one of the expeditions to Ipoh which I have just mentioned. I had occasion to go to the railway station about something or other and as I got out of my truck, hearing the sound of aero engines, I looked up and noted with satisfaction they were ‘ours’. Ten minutes later, having driven to the racecourse buildings on another mission, I got out of the truck, hearing what I thought were the Buffaloes again, and smiled with a feeling of superiority at someone about 50yds away who was gesticulating wildly and pointing up in the air above me, as though the planes over my head were ‘Jap’ planes. I walked casually on and, looking up to watch them pass over my head, was a bit startled to see six Japanese fighters just above me. They dived straight down on to the racecourse where the Buffaloes had landed two minutes earlier and shot them up as they sat there defenceless.

After Ipoh we withdrew through the more hilly and picturesque country to the south, down through Bidor, Tapar and Sungkair; our next stop was at Bikam Rubber Estate. From here we sent one Battery down the road to the west to try and repel a seaborne landing on the coast at Teluk Anson. The Artillery Brigadier wanted a telephone wire laying across the base of a triangle about 8 miles long, which would otherwise have meant a line of some 20 miles round, for which we hadn’t enough wire. Our signal section had one try at it and said it was impossible as it meant laying cable through 6 miles of virgin jungle. However, the Brigadier said it was to be done somehow, so I offered to take a party and have a shot at it. I collected Jim Stoker, our planter friend, and some of the Signal section and started off. The first two miles were easy enough as there was a path to a kampong (Malay village). After that there wasn’t any path, but Jim spoke to some natives who said there had been a track and we might still find traces of it. That’s all we did find, but with the aid of a compass we kept our direction, and after about four hours of hacking creepers and undergrowth with the parangs (long-bladed choppers), swimming one or two black and forbidding-looking streams and blazing a trail as we went, we eventually came to cultivated land again, more or less where we intended to arrive.

As I wanted to return to Regimental Headquarters as soon as possible, I went off in one of the Battery vehicles, expecting to be able to ring up the Battery by the time I got back. However, there was no reply and nothing happened for some time; then we heard that two signallers, who had returned for more wire, appeared to have lost themselves in the jungle, as the rest of the party had got through but couldn’t locate these fellows. So I asked if any of the subalterns at RHQ would like a walk through the jungle, and Louis Baume volunteered; he and I duly set off in the dark with a storm lantern to repeat the trip. Of course it wasn’t so bad the second time as we had the trail to follow and the telephone cable whenever we could spot it – which wasn’t often – but it was an eerie feeling in dense blackness in a country which we knew supported a number of the more vicious jungle animals; you must remember, too, that we had only been in the country about a month and hadn’t had time to learn much about it. All the same, it was quite good fun and we got through again, only to find the two missing signallers hadn’t lost themselves; we had miscalculated the time it would take them to do the double journey, and they had got through about two hours early. I was ready for bed all right that night.

I nearly put my car in the ditch the next day: I was driving happily along and heard noises on the right; looking up, I saw a Japanese fighter about 50yds away, the pilot looking out and grinning at me. He couldn’t shoot at me, I suppose, as he couldn’t turn the direction of his guns, so he left me alone and had a few shots at a wretched dispatch rider on his motorbike half a mile ahead, fortunately without doing him any harm.

We stayed about a week in this HQ. While we were there, the civilian authorities, corresponding to our Home Guard, wanted to set fire to the big rubber factory and store sheds; but as we were occupying them and all our vehicles were parked under the rubber trees around about, we took a poor view of this. Fires always attracted Japanese planes to the scene to see what was going on.

Eventually, I undertook to set fire to them when we left and with three matches I started a huge holocaust which destroyed probably about £80,000 worth of sheets of crepe rubber, bales and machinery. It seemed like committing arson, but it had to be done. It is a pity more wasn’t destroyed, as the Japs got a lot of free rubber eventually.

Chapter 2

Slim River

Our next move brought us down to the banks of the Slim River, which was the scene of disaster for the Regiment and other units. Advanced Headquarters was some miles nearer the line, and there the Commanding Officer and the Adjutant remained while I looked after the main party.

On the morning of 7 January, just after daylight, while I was shaving, heavy firing broke out about 2 miles away in the direction of the main road running south, just about where 349 and 501 Batteries were ‘resting’ in the rubber. I threw on some clothes and jumped on a motorbike to try and find out what was happening. As we were about 10 miles behind the supposed line I didn’t know what could be going on, but thought it might be ammunition blowing up. Ju...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Outward Bound
• Chapter 2 Slim River
• Chapter 3 Into Bondage
• Chapter 4 A Poor Exchange
• Chapter 5 The Great Trek
• Chapter 6 Pastures New
• Chapter 7 Promotion and Reorganization
• Chapter 8 Boon Pong
• Chapter 9 Cholera Breaks out
• Chapter 10 Adventures of the ‘Canary’
• Chapter 11 The Pace Hots up
• Chapter 12 A Birthday Party
• Chapter 13 The Stage
• Chapter 14 Keeping Fit
• Chapter 15 Kokobo’s Farm
• Chapter 16 The White Slug
• Chapter 17 I Take a Rest
• Chapter 18 ‘Amputs’
• Chapter 19 The Lighter Side
• Chapter 20 Chungkai Church
• Chapter 21 The Cemetery
• Chapter 22 Mass Hysteria
• Chapter 23 Attack from the Air
• Chapter 24 The Camp Police
• Chapter 25 The Exodus from Chungkai
• Chapter 26 The Drower Incident
• Chapter 27 A New Dawn Breaks
• Chapter 28 Rehabilitation
• Chapter 29 Freedom at Last
• Family Epilogue
• Appendix
• Plate section