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2/20th Battalion

A.I.F.

This page contains some extra incidents of interest that I have recalled randomly.

BARGES

When we shifted south from Chumphon [I can't remember the name of the place] we were billeted underneath a house on piles, about 5 or 6 feet high. It was in the midst of paddy fields, surrounded by a few coconut palms.

Another large bridge was destroyed here and the Japs were using barges to transport rail cargoes across a fairly fast-flowing river.

The line elevated as part of the  bridge-approach on each side of the  river. The Japs had constructed a wooden rail-line, using small trolleys on which cargoes were transferred from rail trucks to the river bank, then loaded onto the barges for crossing.

It being two-way traffic, barges crossed the fast-flowing stream, attached to steel hawser tied across the river with a fair bight in the hawser.

Once barge-poled out from the bank, the flow of the steam would swing the barges across the river quite rapidly. Their bows were attached to hawsers and the stream-flow was powerful enough to transfer the barge across the stream, and close enough to the far bank, to be poled in and berthed.

NAKED FLAME AND PETROL

One night, we were working in a steel box car, the only door was midship on each side. The cargo was precious drums of petrol, many apparently leaking.

We were standing in almost 2 inches of petrol.

I remember I was at the back of the load with others getting the top drums down, ready to roll them to the doors and down the embankment, when a stupid idiot of a Jap guard came along with flaming naked torch to see what we were doing.

Before anyone realised, he stuck flaring torch in the door to see how many more to come out. With so much petrol sloshing about, I thought: -

"This is it - cooked alive!"

Strangely, no! Apparently, the petrol was so diluted it was not volatile and we lived to see another day.

ESPIONAGE

On another day, we were unloading petrol drums again, on southern side of river this time and well away from our area.

The drums were only small [about 20 gallons] and the Japs were so pushed for steel at this stage, we were amazed to find the drums were made of plywood.

They were unloaded by rolling them down a couple of long planks from a truck on a high embankment, then rolling them further back to a cleared, grassed area.

I discovered that the bungs on the drums only hand-tight, so I suggested we practise a bit of espionage by loosening each bung and up-ending every second drum. We hoped we weren't there to load them and not if some Jap came around smoking.

We got away with it and never ever heard of any repercussions. 

DUTCHY BAYONETED

One day, when working on a canal job out from Nakhon Pathom, a Jap guard demanded a "tanko" (count of all men).

After a short break, all was correct, but stupid Dutchy who was in the party that day and in the back line, thought he couldn't be seen and didn't "stand to" correctly ("yodski"), not having his heels together.

Suddenly the Jap guard knocked me sideways as he dived through the ranks, to drive his bayonet at Dutchy, screaming as he went. Dutchy went down.

We all roared menacingly at the Jap who withdrew and a medical orderly examined and arranged for stretcher party to carry him back to camp, where our doctors discovered how lucky he was. The point of the bayonet just nicked heart. Had it gone through his ribs another inch and too bad!

RICE BAG CARRYING CONTEST

Whilst at Tanglin Barracks, Singapore, where we were initially engaged to work for the Japs, in early days there in I942, I was (as previously stated) working in kitchen, along with about five others, feeding 300 meals three times a day - basically rice and little else, though most of us had acquired all sorts of additives.

One day, the rice ration arrived in I00 kilogram bags and we had to carry them down to the store in the kitchen. This involved walking down about four steps as the kitchen was on the side of a hill. Whilst upright and walking on level ground I could manage (just) to carry a bag, but the steps were fatal and I could end up at bottom of steps with bag on top of head and face pushed into cement path.

Lads working on the docks, stacking rice, were required to carry I00 kg bags of rice. The Japs demanded, one man one bag. So some lads, ex wheat-lumpers, challenged the Japs to see how many bags a man could carry.

Jack Bradley, an ex Walgett lumper, had other lads place three bags across his shoulders and he carried them across to the shed.

The Japs couldn't lose face and admit inferiority, so they called for one to be loaded. As bags were loaded onto the Jap's shoulders, Jack told the lads doing the loading - not that they needed telling - to drop last bag about 6 inches, resulting of course, in the Jap having his face pushed into floor.

A RAILWAY ENGINE

There was another incident at Banpong, Thailand, in I944. I think we were a working party from Tamuang.

We had the task of relocating back onto the rails (of large railway junction, Singapore - Bangkok line and Burma railway to Moulmien, and eventually Rangoon), a 50 ton diesel-electric railway engine which had been blown off by an air-raid but was intact.

We had no mechanical aids to relocate the engine. We were eventually successful, using raw man-power and a few heavy railway screw jacks. I remember being required to use I8 foot rails, weighing I80 pounds per foot, as levers, and skidding the loco wheels on sleepers across intervening lines - eventually achieving success.

I doubt though if they had much available diesel fuel to operate it at that stage. At least the tracks were cleared for steam use.

FIRST MAIL FROM HOME

I have remembered another incident from when we were back up the line, either at Rin Tin or Tampi.

I received my first mail, scoring a letter from Dad.

It was relatively brief, but told me that he had entered a portion of the left-hand point paddock's crop of corn, that I had planted late I940, before enlisting in April I94I, in a maize growing competition.

Lo and behold, it had been judged runner-up in the New South Wales' State Championships. We were beaten for State Champion only by a Dungog [a nearby town] entry.

Whilst the news was a bit late, it gave me quite a thrill and feeling of pride in the achievement.

That year I had planted I5 acres, all told, for the war effort, and Dad reckoned another 6 acre patch was actually higher-yielding but he had not entered it.

Also, the letter had news of my cousins, Don and Ada Miles' twins, lan and Richard.

Copyright © 2002, Elliott McMaster, "Glen Ora", Nabiac, New South Wales, Australia, 2428.  Original content in these Web pages is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be produced by any process or any other exclusive right exercised without written permission from the copyright holder.