REMEMBER WHEN My teacher was in Changi
MR Palmer taught me at Ouyen State School in Victoria, from 1954-55. He and his family lived across the road from me and I’d often have a yarn with him after school.
Mr Palmer had been a sergeant in the Australian
Army during World War II and was taken prisoner when Singapore fell to the Japanese. He spent the rest of the war in the Changi prisoner of war camp. Mr Palmer often told the class stories about what it was like to be in Changi. He only told us uplifting stories about how prisoners coped and what they had to do to get food to eat; or how they picked grass through the wire fence surrounding the camp to make soup to combat beri-beri.
He also said they ate cats if one was foolish enough to come within cooee of the wire fence. Sometimes the Singaporeans left food just outside the fence at night for the prisoners, but if they were caught it meant either death or prison for them, so they were very brave.
One day as I was getting some wood from the wood heap at home I saw a snake slither out and cross the road.
I followed it as it was heading for Mr Palmer’s yard. I ran down the drive crying out: “Mr Palmer, there’s a snake in your yard!”
When I saw him with his back turned to me, chopping wood, I stopped. He wasn’t wearing a shirt so I could see his back was covered in long red scars. I must have had my mouth open because Mr Palmer put down the axe, grabbed his shirt and put it on.
“I’m sorry you had to see my scars, Carole,” he told me while buttoning up his shirt, “but if you promise not to tell the others I’ll explain”.
He then told me that as he was a sergeant, if any of the men under his command in Changi prison broke the rules he was the one punished by the guards. They hit him with bamboo poles, not only on his back but on his feet as well while all the prisoners had to watch; which explained his strange shuffling gait.
I have kept my promise
not to tell for 60 years, I hope his story might help others to understand what it was like for the prisoners in Changi.