Forgiveness Read online

  The second week that Ralph was at North Point, the men were awoken in the middle of the night by an alarm over the camp’s speaker. Everyone thought at first it was an air raid alarm. A Japanese guard kicked their door in. He slowly walked the hall. He was counting.

  “Out!” he ordered.

  The men lined up in the parade square as they did every morning and evening. They were counted. They were counted again. And again. And again. Whispers down the line made it clear Sergeant Payne and a few others were missing. They had hopped the fence and disappeared into the water basin. The men they’d left behind spent all night in the pouring rain being counted.

  Those who had tried to escape didn’t make it far. After six hours, as dawn was breaking, five gunshots rang out from behind the mess hall.

  As the remaining men made their way through the line for their morning serving of rice stew, the cooks noticed there were five fewer men from the Winnipeg Grenadiers.

  A commanding officer approached Ralph’s table. He spoke to the men, passing word down that the Japanese had instituted a new plan. Each man would be assigned to a group of ten. Should any man within the ten attempt to escape, the nine others would be summarily executed.

  This rule, and the fact that there really was nowhere for a tall white soldier to hide on the island of Hong Kong, largely put an end to any further escape attempts. The men had seen too many pointless deaths. Nobody wanted nine more on their conscience.

  Everyone at North Point was dying. The Japanese authorities were withholding adequate food and necessary medicine. They forced the men to grovel in filth, to wade in bare feet into human excrement to relieve themselves. Men were aging days by the minute, weeks by the hour. The days dragged on. The only thing that happened quickly was weight loss.

  Daily scenes of violence ate away at their souls. Starving Chinese beggars would risk death to approach the fence line in hopes of selling an orange or a pair of sandals. Ralph saw one boy, maybe eight or nine, approach the fence with what looked like a dirty blanket. He held it out to two prisoners as they walked along the well-worn path around the parade square. The soldiers tried to shoo him away before the tower guard saw him. He raised the blanket as they passed him, trying to speak. His tiny voice was drowned out by gunfire. Ralph ducked. When he looked up again, the boy was slumped on top of his blanket. A few minutes later, an elderly Chinese lady came running towards him, howling. She pulled the dead boy away on the bloodied blanket.

  Some men could not accept the new reality. Ralph feared that his buddy Deighton was one of them. Bedbugs were not falling onto their heads from the ceiling, they were not eating maggots and rice, they had not lost twenty pounds in a few short weeks. They were not POWs. They were not dying. They could not transition into survival mode.

  Ralph knew self-preservation cold. It was the only gift his father had ever given him. From the moment he was captured, survival was the only thing on his mind. He took no unnecessary risks. He kept his head down and ate everything and anything that was put in front of him.

  No one was spared. By the summer of 1942, Ralph, like the rest of the men, was wasting away. Their skin stuck to their bones; their faces were drawn and gaunt. The weakened men could not ward off the terrible diseases that lurked in the filth and grime around them. By summer, the worst enemy was not hunger or their Japanese captors—it was dysentery and diphtheria.

  Sleep was impossible. Most of the men had long since stopped sleeping in their infested beds, opting to huddle together in groups of six or seven on the cold concrete floor. The bedbugs would still get them, but the lice bit less on the floor. The men’s feet radiated pain all night. They called it electric feet. Ralph tried soaking his feet in cold water for some relief but the shooting pain would always be back before he made his way from the front of the hut to his group of companions on the floor. The shooting pain was so bad the men felt like they were being electrocuted from the toes up.

  One day Deighton held his spoon to his mouth, stared at the milky white slop, closed his eyes tight, and forced it in. Two slow bites was all he could handle. His gag reflex kicked in and the rice dropped onto his lap. It was his fourth try. He choked and dry-heaved. He would have vomited, but there was nothing in his stomach to throw up.

  He sat at the table and wept. He knew if he didn’t eat he would perish. Diphtheria had taken hold of him. His throat was so inflamed it was almost completely shut. Some men choked to death in their sleep. The infections had run rampant through Deighton’s body: his nose, cheeks, neck, and scrotum were covered in gaping ulcers. Ralph had fallen asleep every night for the past week to the wheezing gasps of his buddy as he tried his best to keep him warm on the miserable concrete floor.

  Each morning, Deighton’s eyes had become more distant. The faraway look was the beginning of the end. It was the look of the living staring into the realm of the dead. The eyes always went first. The body quickly followed.

  Deighton dropped his spoon. He kept his head slouched over his clay bowl.

  “I’m gone, Ralph. I’m gone,” he whispered.

  Ralph knew his buddy needed out. He would not last another night. Straight away, he went to the infirmary to plead with the doctor.

  “There is a truck taking some of the worst out tomorrow. Let me take a look at you too, Rifleman,” the doctor said.

  “I’m fine,” Ralph lied as he opened his mouth. He was not there for himself. The orderly took one look and rushed out of the room. He came back out of breath, holding a bottle full of white powder.

  “Take this now.”

  “I’m fine,” Ralph repeated, but he did as he was told.

  “You are both going. Be at the front gate at oh-eight-hundred hours with Deighton.”

  Ralph hoped Deighton would still be alive in nineteen hours.

  Electric feet kept Ralph awake that whole night. It felt as though his nerves were hooked up to a car battery. He was huddled right beside Deighton, who didn’t move at all. Ralph looked hard in the dark to see if his friend’s chest was moving up and down. He couldn’t tell. He could hear a man choking at the other end of the hut. The man wheezed loudly and struggled, and Ralph heard him take his last gasp. He was one of eight men to die that night alone.

  Prisoners at North Point POW camp

  Ralph and Deighton lined up at the front gate right after breakfast. Deighton had gone another meal without eating. Five men in stretchers had already been placed there. One had not survived the fifty-yard journey from the infirmary to the front gate. Six other men strong enough to stand were behind them, all waiting for the transport truck. Ralph and Deighton stood side by side at the rear. A few men fell into line behind them.

  Ralph heard the truck roar up to the front gate but had to turn to his left to see it. It was then he noticed he could no longer see out of his right eye.

  The truck was a military transport. The cab was covered with canvas. One Japanese soldier opened the tailgate and jumped out of the back, followed by another. They loaded the four stretchers, dumping the dead man’s body onto the ground and loading that empty stretcher.

  “In!” the Japanese soldier ordered the first man as he held onto the ladder and tried to drag his weak body up the required four feet.

  Ralph did a quick calculation. With the men in stretchers taking up space, it was going to be a tight fit.

  “Next!”

  A second soldier tried to board, but he slipped and cracked his jaw on the open tailgate. He was out cold. Ralph and two others lifted him in. They were the only men strong enough to hike themselves into the cab unassisted.

  Deighton and Ralph slowly made their way to the front of the line. The guard pointed at Ralph. “You next!” he said, giving Ralph a hard shove as he climbed in.

  Ralph scrambled into the truck and turned with his hand outstretched for his friend. “That’s it!” the guard yelled as he closed the tailgate.

  Ralph’s left eye locked onto Deighton’s. “Grab my hand!”

  Deighton
raised his hand and took a step forward. The guard cross-checked him with his rifle, sending him sprawling into the men in line behind him. They all fell. Ralph’s hand was still out when the back door slammed shut.

  “There’s room! There’s room in here!” Ralph pleaded. His one good eye was trained on Deighton. The truck’s motor revved to life. Both guards were now in the front cabin. The truck started to pull away.

  “Hurry!” Ralph’s body was half out the back as he screamed at Deighton. With a gasp, Deighton got up and made a lunge for Ralph’s hand. Their hands met and he got one foot on the truck’s back ladder.

  “C’mon, Deighton!” Ralph cried.

  Their faces were now inches apart. He could hear Deighton wheeze as he struggled to get his second foot off the ground. Their hands clutched each other. Then the truck hit a bump and Deighton slipped away. Ralph watched his friend hit the ground and roll to a stop. His face was buried in the dirt. He didn’t move.

  “Deighton!” Ralph cried, as two of the men in the truck pulled him back into the safety of his seat.

  “There was room. You bastards. There was room!” Tears of rage burned Ralph’s eyes.

  When he came to, Ralph didn’t know if he was alive or dead, awake or dreaming. He could hear what sounded like nurses tending to wounded men. But he could neither move nor see anything. His world was completely black. He was unsure of where he was. He lay there like that for some time, listening, then lost consciousness again.

  He woke again to someone bandaging his feet. A nurse? The pain seared up his legs. But he was relieved—at least the pain confirmed he was alive. His mind immediately went to Deighton. He could feel tears roll down his cheeks.

  “Doctor, this one is conscious, I think,” he heard a nurse say.

  Ralph waited in anticipation, unable to respond or ask what had happened to him, unable to ask if they knew anything about Deighton—though he didn’t want to know the answer.

  A doctor was by his side. “Son, diphtheria has blinded you. Can you move your right toe for me?”

  Ralph tried with all his might, to no avail.

  “We are going to give you some medicine,” the doctor informed him. A needle was plunged into his thigh. He didn’t feel a thing.

  “We’ve giving you a shot. You should know we’re only giving it to the ones that have a fighting chance. You do, son. So fight, boy. Fight with all your might.” Ralph did just that.

  After three weeks of darkness, Ralph awoke and could make out the number “3” on the foot of his bed. It was—and continued to be—the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Letting out a moan was his way of saying: I’m alive. A tiny circle of light slowly became blurred beds and a window, which eventually became the ward he was in. It consisted of fourteen beds, seven to each side, with one window between the third and fourth beds. Each bed had a skeleton of a man in it.

  Two nurses approached. Ralph could only make out their white blouses and long hair. An angelic voice informed him he was in the Bowen Road Military Hospital on Hong Kong Island. Ralph thought the next time he’d hear such a beautiful voice would be when he reached the pearly gates.

  But Bowen Hospital was no heavenly palace. It was a series of four five-storey buildings that had been heavily shelled during the battle. The building had withstood the bombardment, but when it was overrun, most of the patients were bayonetted in their beds. The two nurses who stood in front of Ralph had been brutally raped and beaten. Some nurses had died. Those who lived continued to assist the wounded soldiers.

  Ralph was in and out of consciousness for some time. His memory later was of a series of fleeting objects and sounds. A bedpan. A needle. A cry. Over time, the daily injections brought life back to his limbs. The dishes of mutton, oranges, peach jam on bread, and hard-boiled duck eggs dimmed the bolts of pain that spiralled through his feet and legs. He would learn to walk all over again, one step at a time.

  Ralph was back from the dead.

  After eight weeks in Bowen, Ralph was told that he was going to be sent back. He would be receiving his last injection. The doctor was apologetic. He knew what he was sending his patient back to, but Ralph was at a distance from death now. Many others were not. They needed the beds.

  The doctor wished desperately that he could do more. Ralph could see that much in his eyes. He’d been playing God since the outbreak of the war, deciding which man got the medicine and which man was too far gone. His decisions saved some men and condemned others. Ralph could see the weight of this on his slouching shoulders.

  “This should hold you over. The Japs won’t let us send the meds into the camps. I hope I don’t see you again, Ralph,” the doctor said in a thick Scottish accent that reminded Ralph of the folks back home.

  Ralph left Bowen Hospital with a heavy heart. He felt like he was set to face the cold, bitter North Atlantic wind after a brief reprieve by a warm fire. He knew the rest of his journey was going to be nasty and brutish. His only salvation was that it might be short.

  He was sent back to Shamshuipo.

  Ralph got off the truck. He knew everything that was about to hit him. He walked through the front gate with eyes wide open. He knew the lice would be back. He knew the pangs of hunger were a few days away. He knew he’d likely contract another deficiency-related disease: beriberi, dysentery, or ulcers. He knew he’d see more brutality. He knew each step he took brought him closer to that very real hell. What he didn’t know was just how devastatingly lonely life would be without Deighton.

  He had come full circle, but the camp was a rundown shell of its former self, as were the men who inhabited it. It had been looted after the Japanese took it. Barbed wire had been strung all around the huts, and machine guns were set up on all four corners. The only familiar sights at the camp were the Chinese barbers and shoe shiners. Most now wore Japanese military uniforms.

  Ralph approached the first group of men he saw. “Did you hear anything about Deighton?” he asked no one in particular. The men were glad to see Ralph alive. Everyone knew how he and Deighton had been separated. The other men in line that day had seen Ralph reach out to save his buddy. Nobody wanted to be the one to let him know.

  Deighton Aitken’s grave

  There was a long silence. “He died the night you left. His body just gave out,” said a voice from the back of the group.

  Ralph closed his eyes and nodded. He remembered the promise they had made to each other after enlisting. Deighton had made good on it. Even in death, he’d had his buddy’s back. Without his tears for Deighton, Ralph would have been carried out of Bowen Hospital in a bodybag.

  That night he huddled on the cement floor of his hut with five other guys. He hoped they thought his shivers were from the cold. He didn’t fool anyone. He’d been a prisoner for almost a year. In that time, he had lost half his weight, his sight, the ability to move, and now, his very best friend. And yet, he knew there was more to lose.

  Almost immediately, the pangs of hunger revisited him, though he was in much better shape than most. During three of the eight weeks at Bowen he had had at least two square meals a day.

  Combining North Point and Shamshuipo into one camp had created a desperate situation. While the dysentery had abated, all the men were in the throes of starvation. They scavenged for anything they could find. If a man could get his hands on a rat, he was lucky. To make matters worse, the men’s minds dwelled on home cooking. It was the worst form of self-torture. They’d relive memories of meals, review recipes, and rebuke others’ pronouncements that their momma made the best Shepherd’s pie. They’d choke back tears recounting the smells and tastes of home. Ralph stubbornly refused to partake in this. There was nothing to be gained by it.

  When survival is at stake, non-essentials are callously jettisoned. You just keep your heart beating, keep air flowing in and out of your lungs. Put something—anything—into your belly. You can do a lot of things when dignity is set aside. You wrap your dignity up and gently place it in the back of your min
d, like a cherished heirloom. It may not see the light of day for months, but the knowledge that it is there is the most important thing you have.

  That, and cigarettes.

  For Ralph, the need for dignity and the desire for cigarettes collided. Well past the point of having any cigarettes of his own, he would sit day after day watching the Japanese guards and Canadian officers walk the parade grounds pulling on their cigarettes and dropping their butts. To hell with it, he thought, and made his way over to a tossed butt. He got halfway across the field. He could see the tobacco burning itself out in the grass. It was still good for at least two or three pulls. Five paces away, he stopped dead in his tracks. To hell with it, he thought again, and sat down. He watched the cigarette burn down and out.

  It was one of the most important decisions he made during the war.

  The next morning, Ralph and the others were visited by angels. He would later swear on a stack of bibles that he knew exactly what angels looked like. They came wrapped with a red cross. At perhaps the lowest point in camp morale, when a dozen men were dying every day, angels arrived from the Red Cross. The Japanese kept most of the packages, but each man received one.

  Ralph knew that the parcels were from England—the Treacle syrup gave that away. Each parcel weighed fifteen pounds. His was packed with canned meat, dried fruit, condensed milk, and chocolate.

  The milk reminded Ralph of the old jersey cow he had back home. He could see her chewing away with her head down, the ocean as a backdrop. The bacon—even dried—reminded him of his mother, standing erect above the old skillet early in the morning, coffee brewing on the stove, quiet so as to not wake the others. A dutiful kiss on the cheek.

  The chocolate he saved. He allowed himself one half-inch piece a day. Not for the taste, but for the memories. One bite transported him to the front of the Sumarah General Store with the Uproaders and the Downroaders. Another put him at his aunt’s Christmas table, wiping his hands naughtily on her white hand-sewn doily. He saved the last piece for his first memory: skipping rocks and eating chocolate in Charlottetown, just before he and his brother crossed paths with the Chinese launderer. He relished each memory, licking his fingers clean.