Moray POW put to work on the 'Death Railway'

During the Second World War a young volunteer soldier from Elgin spent over four years as a captive in the Far East.

Last week, in the first of our four-part series, we told how Bill Barr Cochrane had been forced to surrender in Singapore along with the rest of his regiment.

The Japanese then crammed them into a railway carriage for the long journey north.

Here is part two:

Bill recalled: "The monsoon rains had been particularly bad with the result that the railway embankment had been washed away and we couldn't get any further.

"The Japs had been caught unprepared and there was no food, there was no nothing, and they used us to repair and rebuild the embankment."

Finally, Bill and the others arrived at a place called Ban Pong.

"We were marched into our camp which was in a dreadful condition. It was underwater. The rats were floating around. It was a dreadful place altogether.

"The Japs wanted half of our party to go north, and I discovered that I wasn't on it and all my pals were on it. Now this was disastrous because maybe you didn't care for a lot of people, but you always found somebody that was not unlike yourself, and you would help each other – and the meant a lot.

"I got hold of the company Sergeant Major, who later became a very good friend of mine, and I pleaded with him to get me onto the party. But he said, 'I can't. They've already got the numbers'.

"Well, it turned out to be to my benefit. This party went north to clear the jungle and they had a dreadful time – an absolute dreadful time. They came back about two or three months later and they were completely decimated.

"Anyway, we weren't in this camp for very long because it was being used as a sort of transit camp and, really, it was a nightmare of a place.

"They moved us to another camp that had recently been built called Nong Pladuk. The living conditions were a lot better although the food wasn't. It was just plain rice and, if you were lucky, a watery stew with maybe a bit of vegetable floating about in it.

"I was then one of the original members of the party that started to lay the metals for the Burma railway."

Later known as the Death Railway, around 60,000 POWs were forced to work in the jungle to connect the capitals of Thailand and Burma.

In addition the Japanese pressed into service more than 200,000 civilians from territories they had conquered.

About 19,000 of the POWs and 90,000 of the civilians were to die in total.

Bill said: "First we laid the wooden sleepers. I don't know if they were teak or what but, by Jove, they were some weight. Then we had to lay the metals. We did a fair distance a day.

"They had a sort of motorised lorry but it had railway wheels on it, and we all had to climb onto that and be taken back after our shift finished.

"I was on that for six weeks, and the thing you had to be terribly careful about was getting nicked in your legs, because before you knew where you were you had ulcers.

"Mine were getting bad and I went sick."

It was while laid up in the camp's sick hut that an incident occurred which probably saved Bill's life.

To give himself something to do, he offered to stitch up the tattered shorts belonging to a British Sergeant Major.

The neat job he managed left this man impressed.

Taking up the story again, Bill recalled: "The next day he said, 'Oh, a runner came from the camp office asking for a tailor, so I put your name down'.

"I said, 'You what? I'm not a tailor'.

"He said, 'If you can repair my shorts so well, you'll be fine. You've got to report on the parade ground tomorrow morning'.

"I said, 'Where will I be going?'

"He said, 'I don't know'."

"Well, quite frankly, I could have murdered him because I'd made pals with another fella at this time and it meant splitting up again."

Bill ended up being taken to the Japanese guards' headquarters.

Here he was put in a room and given a Singer sewing machine which he didn't even know how to thread.

Fortunately, a Korean guard who spoke some English showed him what to do.

Then he was left by himself with the task of making little square or oblong bits of white cloth.

Bill said: "They sewed them onto their shirts, then painted their hieroglyphics onto them – I suppose their rank, their name, or whatever.

"And that's what I had to do. It was no problem eventually. And I realised that if I could hang onto this job I'd probably get out alive."

Next week: A nasty beating and a moment of hope.

Related article: Part one of The Accidental Tailor