The Story of Danny Dunn (44 page)

However, the call to go to Burma was welcomed by the men in Danny's company, because Japanese propaganda had led them to believe that the Burma internment camps were a reward for the work they'd done in Singapore. In fact, they sounded almost like holiday camps, with plenty of food and a little light agricultural work. Previous detachments had been sent to Burma to what later became known as the death camps in horribly crowded cargo ships, but this time they were to proceed to the other end of the railway – to the Thai border – by train. Danny had inspected his men, who were lined up along the railway tracks prior to boarding the waiting trucks. By most standards they were not too badly equipped. A group in from Java, destined for Burma, had mostly been reduced to going barefoot, wearing only loincloths, while most of Danny's men still retained a half-decent pair of shorts and a shirt and, most importantly, their boots. So it had come as some surprise when he saw that Private Owen Denmeade was the only one of his men who stood barefoot on the hot stones that formed the track ballast.

Denmeade's nickname was ‘Glossy', because he was renowned throughout the battalion for the magnificent shine on his now missing boots. He'd explain to anyone prepared to listen that a mirror finish to the toecaps of your army boots allowed you, when standing close to a good-looking sort, to glance down at your toecaps and see up her skirt. The fact that there was no way of testing this theory because there were no women wearing skirts in Changi Prison seemed not to matter to him; it was this deliciously lascivious notion that kept him polishing his boots for hours on end. It was also true to say that the result wasn't far short of being a work of art, and while they'd been stationed in Malaya, Danny had given Glossy permission to have a local leatherworker emboss the initials OD on the inside ankle area of both boots.

‘Private Denmeade, why are you not wearing your boots?' Danny asked, thinking he might have put them in his kitbag for safekeeping.

‘Confiscated, Sergeant Major!' came the reply.

‘Confiscated by whom?'

‘Captain Riley, Sergeant Major!'

Danny had difficulty containing his surprise. ‘From C Company?'

‘Yes, Sergeant Major.'

‘And he didn't swap them . . . give you his?'

‘They was fucked . . . er, beyond repair, Sergeant Major.'

‘He didn't offer to buy them?'

‘No, Sergeant Major. I wouldn't sell them for all the tea in China!'

‘Tell me exactly what happened.'

‘He come up to me and I come to attention and salute and he touches his cap and says right off, “Private, what size are your boots?”

‘“Ten, sir,” I tell him. “Good. Remove them. I'm appropriating them,” he says.'

‘And then?'

‘“Please no, sir,” I beg him. I'm pretty choked see.' Glossy looked up at Danny. ‘Them boots took more'n two year to get perfect, Sergeant Major . . . they was begun when we was in Malaya.'

‘Yes, I remember. Did you explain this to Captain Riley?'

‘Yeah, but he weren't interested. “That's an order, private, unless you want to be put on a charge,” he said t' me, sarg.'

‘Why didn't you report this to me, Glossy?' Danny asked, dropping the formality, which gave the hapless Glossy permission to do the same.

‘Yeah, Danny, I'm sorry, but we was going to this holiday camp. If I didn't give the bastard me boots, he'd put me on a charge like he said, maybe insubordination, then they'd keep me in Singapore and youse would go without me! I'd miss out . . . be left behind without me mates,' Glossy said, his voice quavering.

Danny was angry. Glossy was one of his men and Danny knew that if he'd reported the appropriation of his boots before they'd left Changi Prison for the docks, he could have made an issue of the matter and almost certainly got them back. A sergeant major is not without power in the Australian army, and on a moral issue involving his men, it is a brave officer indeed who ignores his opinion. In taking his boots the bastard had taken away Glossy's self-respect, and that simply wasn't on. But, as they were about to board the train, there wasn't much Danny could do.

They'd eventually arrived at the Hin Tok death camp, one of the most notorious places on the Thai–Burma Railway. It hadn't taken them long to realise that they'd been tricked and had descended into a veritable hell on earth. The workers they joined were starved, beaten and suffering from chronic malaria, dengue fever, dysentery, tropical ulcers and cholera. On top of this, they were forced to work beyond the limits of human endurance by the constantly apoplectic screaming of the Japanese engineers. Already weakened, Danny and his men soon became indistinguishable from the legion of walking ghosts building a railway through some of the worst terrain in the world, a task the pre-war colonial authorities had rejected as impossible.

Because he'd lost his boots, Glossy Denmeade died at Hin Tok – like Hell Fire Pass, one of the many nightmare locations on the railway. Constantly harangued with the cry of ‘Speedo!', after nearly fifteen continuous hours of backbreaking work, too exhausted to watch where he stepped while clearing the jungle, the barefooted Glossy trod on a bamboo spike. His left foot became infected, and the camp surgeon, Lieutenant Colonel Albert Coates, lacking sulphur drugs or any other medicines, could do little to halt the infection, finally resorting to amputation without anaesthesia. Glossy's frail, work-beaten and poisoned body couldn't withstand the shock, and he died in agony.

The Reverend John Ayliffe, shaking from a bout of malaria, conducted the burial service over Glossy's wasted corpse, in the midst of a tropical downpour when work became impossible, so Danny and his men could attend. The roar of the rain drowned his words, but it didn't matter; each of the men carried the eulogy in his head. Glossy's body was thrown into a huge covered bonfire kept continuously alight to consume the endless supply of bodies. As it does in the tropics, the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started, and the cries of ‘Speedo!' were heard from every corner. But not before Danny and his men stood at attention while the company bugler, Corporal Steve Reiber, blew the Last Post. Glossy would never get the opportunity to test his boot-cap mirror theory.

Glossy Denmeade was just one of the 106 000 victims of the Thai–Burma Railway; 16 000 of them were Allied prisoners, and a further 90 000 were Asian labourers. It has been claimed that a prisoner of war or an impressed Asian coolie died for every wooden sleeper laid along its length.

At the completion of the Thai–Burma Railway, the men who'd survived, along with some of the officers from their separate camps, travelled over the railways they had built to a large camp in Kanchanaburi province on the banks of the River Kwai in Thailand.

Word reached Danny that Captain
Riley was among the contingent of officers housed in huts in a small nearby village and he set off to see him.

Helen would hear
the rest of the story after the first Anzac Day parade in 1946 when Danny returned pissed and she'd asked him how the day had gone. ‘Yeah, great. Most of the boys were there, but still no sign of that bastard Riley,' he'd remarked.

Danny seldom spoke of the prison camp, even to Helen, and while she'd been able to piece together a fair bit, including the story of Glossy's stolen boots and his subsequent death, Danny had always stopped short of telling her too much about building the Burma Railway. What she did know came through casual comments, which she'd be quick to question in the hope that Danny would follow them up with more information. She'd always assumed that the story of Glossy's boots had ended with his death from septicaemia. Now she sensed there was more to come. ‘Riley? The captain
who stole Glossy's boots?'

‘Yeah, the same deadshit.'

‘What? You hope to meet him and confront him on an Anzac Day march?'

‘Not confront him – I've already done that.'

‘Oh? When was that?'

Danny had proceeded to tell Helen the rest of the story, explaining that when they'd been taken to the camp on the banks of the River Kwai, he'd heard of Riley's whereabouts in a separate officers' compound, nearby but sufficiently far away to avoid contamination from the human detritus that formed the sick and starving rank and file who had survived the horror of the railway.

‘I got to the officers' compound and was directed to a central hut where I was told a card game was in progress. The hut turned out to be a platform on stilts with a post at each corner supporting a thatch-leaf attap
roof, the open sides designed to catch any passing breeze. Six men, presumably officers, were seated on wooden stools around a roughly hewn table playing cards. I didn't recognise any of them except for Riley.

‘Like all of us, I was skin and bone, brown as a berry and shirtless, wearing only a ragged pair of khaki shorts, my battered slouch hat and a pair of sandals made from a discarded truck tyre. Unfortunately we hadn't learnt how to make the sandals until after Glossy's death. When my shirt finally wore out I sewed my sleeve chevrons and crown to the side of my hat where the badge usually sat, so that the Jap guards and engineers were aware of my rank and would relay their instructions through me instead of screaming instructions in Japanese at the uncomprehending men,' Danny explained. ‘I climbed the three wooden steps to the platform, saluted and announced, “Sergeant Major Dunn!”

‘Then one of them, a captain, pointed to my slouch hat without even acknowledging me and quipped, “It seems your rank has gone to your head, Sergeant Major. Bloody silly place to put it.”

‘This produced a bit of a titter. Still standing at attention I replied, “With respect, sah! If some officers present hadn't found it necessary to steal our uniforms I might have had a shirt sleeve to wear it on.”'

‘Oh, dear, what happened then?' Helen asked, grinning. Then as an afterthought she added, ‘Be so kind as to remember I held the rank of lieutenant colonel, Sergeant Major Dunn.'

‘Well, with my ugly, broken, one-eyed mug confronting them they were probably somewhat taken aback, but one of them managed to say, “Take it easy, Sergeant Major. What is it you want?”

‘“I've come for Glossy Denmeade's boots, sir.”

‘They all gave me a bemused look, even Riley. I pointed to Riley's boots under the table. Though they'd lost their former glorious shine and were scuffed, I could clearly see the initials OD over the inside ankle of the right boot. “Those.”

‘Riley coloured and started blustering. “What the hell are you talking about?” he stammered. Then, gathering courage, he said, “Be careful, Sergeant Major, or you'll find yourself on a charge.”

‘“Glad to be able to oblige, sir,” I replied.

‘“What's going on here? Perhaps you can explain, Sergeant Major,” a colonel asked.

‘“Ah, glad you asked, sir.” I then told the story of Glossy's boots and ended by pointing a finger at Riley's chest and saying, “You ordered Private Denmeade to give you his boots, and by doing so you killed him as surely as if you'd personally executed him, sir. Now please give me Glossy's boots. B Company requires them as memento mori.”

‘The colonel turned to Riley. “This true, Captain?”

‘I'll say this for Riley – by this time he'd regained his composure. “This man's mad, colonel. No such thing ever happened. These are the boots I was issued with shortly before the battalion left for Singapore.” He looked up at me and said in a sympathetic tone, “Sergeant Major Dunn, I can see you've been through a fair bit. Why don't you just go back to your camp before I am reluctantly forced to put you on a serious charge?”'

Danny smiled at Helen. ‘Sometimes the gods smile down on you. The lace on the right boot was undone and I suddenly dropped to my haunches, grabbed and pulled hard. The boot came loose in my hands just as Riley grabbed frantically at the edge of the table to stop himself from following it. “What the fuck!” he shouted out in alarm.

‘I rose and placed the boot side-on on the table with the embossed OD showing. While the boot was scuffed and dull there were still several patches towards the top that showed it had once been highly polished. “These are the initials of Private Owen Denmeade, known in our company as Glossy,” I said, pushing the boot so it rested in front of the colonel. “I should know as I gave him permission in Malaya to have them embossed on the inside ankles so it wouldn't show on parade. They were stolen from him by this officer and it cost Glossy Denmeade his life!”
I turned to Riley and demanded, “May I have the other one please, sir?”

‘The colonel looked over at Riley. “Hand it over, Captain Riley,” he ordered.

‘Riley hesitated. “He can't talk to me like this. It's blatant insubordination, sir!”

‘“Don't be a bloody fool, man!” the colonel snapped. “If there's a court martial, how do you think this is going to look?”'

‘Smart colonel,' Helen remarked, then asked, ‘Did Riley hand over the other boot?'

‘Yeah. I took it and snapped to attention, then said to the bastard, “Don't ever try to march on Anzac Day. Those of us in B Company who get back home will be waiting for you, and if I'm fortunate enough to be one of them, when we find you, I will personally break every bone in your fucking body, sah!” I did an about-turn and left without saluting. Later we heard that the other officers more or less ostracised him from then on.'