Soldier's Amazing 3 Year Jungle Ordeal
The Sun Herald
Saturday April 6, 1991
HE lived on cats, dogs, snakes, rats, squirrels and once tasted the heart and liver of a human. Wounded, and with recurring bouts of fever, he was befriended by Chinese-Malay communist guerillas.
He joined their force as they kept one step ahead of the Japanese troops who were constantly searching for them.
Sergeant Arthur Shephard's survival ordeal, and that of other allied soldiers, has been brought to life in Iain Finlay's book, Savage Jungle.
At times, starving and suffering debilitating bouts of disease from his poor diet, Shephard battled to survive as his companions succumbed to their wounds and exhaustion.
He was just 24, from the Melbourne suburb of Coburg, when, as a member of the under-strength 2/29th Battalion, he was one of 600 soldiers pitted against the might of the elite Japanese Imperial Guard in January 1942.
They stopped the 10,000-strong force, but only temporarily, and as the Japanese rolled over them Arthur Shephard and three other wounded men were left to look after themselves.
Shephard survived, taking to the jungle and joining the guerillas. With him were his diaries, painstakingly written in school exercise books, telling of the fight to exist for 1,277 days-a record of heroism and the fight for life.
He died in 1984 from heart disease. Before that he had met and talked with Finlay and those recorded conversations, together with the diaries, are the basis for the book. Some extracts follow.
WOUNDED
ARTHUR Shephard, now in command of his platoon, was hurrying through the grass and rubber trees with the rest of his men strung out behind or beside him when a tremendous blast erupted hardly a dozen feet away, killing two of his men outright.
Several other men, including Arthur, were hurled to the ground wounded.
Amazed and terrified and not really knowing what had happened Arthur scrambled on all fours trying to get up to run for cover.
Close by him "Bomber" Wainwright was moving to do the same but within seconds and before they were even on their feet another shell burst only half a dozen feet away literally lifting them off the ground in a shower of mud and grass and throwing them to one side.
An Indian soldier next to them was blown in two, the torn and bloody halves of his body strewn several yards apart.
Arthur had felt a stunning blow to his neck and his right side but as he continued moving, scrambling desperately back to the shell crater, reasoning instinctively that a shell wouldn't hit the same place twice, the thought flashed through his mind: I'm still conscious. I'm still alive |
But his right arm refused to function and glancing at it he saw that the whole right side of his shirt was soaking in blood-his own blood.
Lying down he gingerly touched his chest with his left hand. Nothing wrong there. And then his hand moved around to his right shoulder. He felt a gaping tear in the back of his neck-a deep hole below and behind his right ear.
LEFT ALONE
SHORTLY afterwards Lieutenant Bill McCure, the commander of the battery of anti-tank guns which had been with the 2/29th, came back to where the wounded were lying.
McCure sat down beside Arthur, clearly embarrassed and upset.
"Look, er, Sergeant Shephard ... " He glanced across at the semicomatose forms of Brown and Boyle. He began slowly and then spoke in a rapid burst-"This Chinese bloke says he can get us through to Parit Sulong. He knows a track through the jungle but it's pretty rough. It'll be tough going, he says."
"He doesn't think we'll make it," Bomber Wainwright put in.
"Well no. That's right. There'll be four of you, yourself, Wainwright, Brown and Boyle. We'll leave as much food as we can and he says he'll be able to feed and hide you until you are rested up enough to make the trip, perhaps in a day or two."
But each of them knew-the departing and those left behind-that there was little chance they would ever see each other alive again.
Arthur continued leaning back against the trunk of the tree as he watched the last man in the group disappear through the lines of rubber trees.
For a few more minutes he and his three companions could still hear the sounds of the party moving away. Then there was silence.
He looked at Bomber and the other two lonely figures, also each leaning against a tree and facing in the direction taken by the departing men, sitting in a rubber plantation surrounded on all sides by bloody Nips and eight thousand miles from home.
They shared the same thought: Fat bloody chance we've got |
FOOD
WHILE the men were in a guerilla camp there were many occasions when they ran short of food. During one such period an old "towkay", a Chinese businessman who, with his family, had left his home to throw his lot in with the guerillas, was required to make a sacrifice for the camp.
He had brought his favourite dog with him, a beautiful Chow, that had been with the family for almost 10 years. On instructions that dog was killed and cooked for the evening meal.
Although Arthur and Bomber and several of the others in their group had befriended the animal and were shocked at the decision, once it had been made and the dog had gone into the pot they all ate it.
"A little strong," Arthur noted in his diary, "but not bad at all. The soup was excellent."
CANNIBALS
NOT long afterwards two Malay traitors were captured. There was enormous hostility towards them from the camp population during their brief trial and their execution was particularly gruesome.
One was bayoneted to death and the other was paranged: tied with his back to a tree the horror-struck man could only shut his eyes as a heavily built Chinese guerilla wielding a large razor-sharp parang literally split the unfortunate man down the middle with one blow.
An explosion of blood and gore splattered the executioner and the bystanders.
Later, in what the guerilla leaders treated as some sort of ritual, the two men's hearts and livers were taken and fried up with onions, flour and pepper and small pieces were handed around to camp members.
Arthur and another Digger felt more than reluctant to participate in the procedure but that evening in the darkness of the jungle broken only by the flickering light of the camp fire they became caught up in what somehow became a base re-enactment of one of the most primitive of human actions, each partaking of the proferred meat.
Both men later agreed that it tasted no different from the heart and liver that one might purchase from a suburban butcher.
LIBERATED
WHEN Arthur presented himself to the debriefing officer in Singapore, it was clear the man knew nothing of Arthur's situation.
"Fill this in, please." He handed Arthur a piece of paper. It was a form for 'Prisoners of War' with headings like: 'Date and place of capture', 'Camps', 'Japanese atrocities witnessed' and so on.
Arthur handed it back to the officer. "Excuse me, sir. I wasn't a POW. I was never captured."
"What's that?" he asked in surprise. "You say you haven't been a prisoner of the Japanese?"
"That's correct, sir."
"Then what ... I mean how ... well, where have you been?"
"In the jungle."
"The jungle? | For the whole time?"
"Yes, sir. Three years and eight months. We've been with the guerillas."
"Gorillas? |"
"The Chinese partisans, sir, guerillas."
"Oh, ah yes," he said, writing the information on a notepad in front of him.
From Arthur's position, in front of the desk, he could read what the officer was writing: " ... spent time with gorrillas in the jungle."
Arthur leant across and pointed at the word. "Excuse me, sir, you've spelt guerillas wrongly."
"What? Oh yes, of course," the officer said. "There's only one 'r' isn't there?" He changed the spelling to 'gorillas'.
* Savage Jungle by Iain Finlay. Simon and Schuster $29.95.
© 1991 The Sun Herald