DESPERATE MEASURES

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 63, 12 September 1945, Page 7

DESPERATE MEASURES

EFFORTS TO KEEP ALIVE

(R.N.Z.A.F. Official War Correspondent.) SINGAPORE, September 10. Maggots were among the food eaten by starving Japanese-held prisoners in an effort to keep alive.

One of the first prisoners found when Changi camp was entered was Warrant Officer John G. Vibert. of Auckland, who was captured in Java. Warrant Officer Vibert was one of the six pilots of No. 258 Squadron who volunteered to slay behind in Java as aircrew to No. 605 Squadron, whose ground crew arrived from the United Kingdom without aircrew. This was the last desperate effort to hold off the Japanese. "Soon after we were captured." Warrant Officer Vibert said, "we were transported to PaJemb'ang, in Sumatra, to build an airfield. This meant 19 months of pure hell. The daily task allotted to each man was one and a half cubic metres of earth. This meant working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in broiling heat, and the men wera so weak from sickness and starvation that it was an effort to move. The Japs flogged them on with poles. Their diet was chiefly maize, which caused constant diarrhoea. For the meat ration half a dried pig skin was the usual issue for 1500 men.

FOOD FOR THE SICK

"I often saw men chasing pigs from refuse pits and scavenging possible scraps of food. The prisoners were so famished that in order to keep alive volunteers undertook the desperate venture of creeping out at night and negotiating with villagers for eggs, vegetables, or fruit.

"Once there was a whole pig, once a Q'oat —anything that could be bought with their slender pay. These luxuries, which were few and far between, were used to keep alive the sick in the camp hospital. "The prisoners were so debilitated from lack of vitamins that finally they resorted to catching maggots from the camp latrines. These were fed on rice polishing and decayed vegetation for 24 hours, then washed, fried, and eaten in an endeavour to acquire some slight p.liein ration. "Here, again, the sick men were the chief beneficiaries. Maggots were so few and so precious among so many that they were given to the hospital patients. The prisoner-of-war doctors also used maggots to eat out badly-in-fected wounds, and this treatment was most effective in some cases. In spite of the miserable conditions, all of the prisoners of war are amazingly cheerful."

Warrant Officer Vibert was transferred to Changi camp last May. "Pespite the misery there," he said, "it was a paradise compared with Palembang."