The Courageous Life Of Weary Dunlop by Peter FitzSimons, book extract
Sometimes, when the conditions are just right, when you wake up at dawn, you can smell familiar forest perfumes such as “cinnamon, chocolate … clematis”; it’s that distinctive scent made by dew on dry bamboo that takes you back home, a dead ringer for the wonderful way you remember the smell of the Australian bush in the days when you didn’t have the brains to appreciate it.
And as always, your dreams are shattered by reveille, at least its awful Japanese version.
Now the Dunlop Power had settled into a regular rhythm: dawn, celebration, roll call in Japanese, breakfast with rice porridge, walk, work, work, work, yasume, work, work, work, walk, eat, sleep, dawn. Add plenty of water from the endless rain, rinse and repeat, sprinkling it all with regular whisks.
The danger of a rifle butt to your head looms large. Wire whips hit backs and draw blood for no reason. Some guards sneak up on you and hit the open tropical ulcers on your legs with a bamboo stick, causing intense pain.
Look, not only is getting to and from the job site constantly painful due to the physical challenges, it’s also deadly dangerous. When it rains and becomes impossibly slippery, you have to concentrate hard to avoid slipping into the abyss.
The work is cruel, brutal and damaging to the health of Australians. Worst of all, Japanese overseers continue to force even the sickest to work; One of Weary Dunlop’s main responsibilities is to care for the sick and oppose Japanese demands.
While working on the railway, violence from Japanese guards was always present.Credit: Jack Chalker/AWM
22 March 1943, Hintokshot in the light
Again, today all “mildly ill” men are drafted to work by Japanese officers. He puts his tired foot on the ground; They are sick and staying in the camp. If they have to work, it will be through sanitation or anti-malarial measures, that’s all. A huge argument breaks out and Weary and his sick men walk over to Number 1 to say it again, pausing only to mentally note Number 1’s countenance, “his dirty face is now like a ham and his bottom lip is sticking out (spoiled child touch).”
What is the objection? They don’t understand, so Weary states it loud and clear. “I strongly oppose sending sick men to work.”
Tired Dunlop just after the battle.Credit: Australian War Museum
Is it simple enough? Ah yes, on Doctor Death’s orders, the rifles are now pointed at Doctor Dunlop as he waits for him to change his diagnosis. Is Doctor Death sure Doctor Dunlop might want to reconsider? The men watch, fascinated, this lopsided duel in the sun. No dice.
“You can shoot me,” Weary says. “But my second in command is as tough a man as I am, and after that you’ll have to shoot them all. Then you’ll have no workers left.”
Exhausted, he can’t help but follow Doctor Death to realize that if he doesn’t hang his head in shame, he has something else on his mind, something he’s working on. “No matter what, one day I took the necessary steps to hang you, because you are a black-hearted bastard.”
Of course, said bastard barks back in a black-hearted manner: “You can stay here as long as you want! You won’t find food or water, the patients will do the work.”
Who else but the guard known to them all as “The Lizard” is called to carry out this mission, and he angrily rounds up the 46 sick men and throws them out while Weary glares at him.
Sergeant Oliver? Would you like to work as a translator? Weary also wants to be extremely clear when insulting the Lizard. “You don’t accept our decisions regarding men’s health after making us administrative officers, and therefore you can go to hell and run the camp yourself.”
A bridge built by prisoners north of Hintok.Credit: unknown
Did you get all of these? Because there is more. “You’re a bunch of murderers and” Weary points to a cross stuck in the ground. “This is the fate of us all! If sick men are forced to work, everyone will row!”
Lizard does not react well when the concept of the strike is explained to him. In fact, he is driven to “violent rage.” “He praised the guys like he was passionately trying to hit me (but I bet he never would have done that if I was looking at him).”
The lizard runs out of breath and ends with a final scream. “Send your troops to work in the camp.”
That was all Weary wanted; Sick men can work in the camp, but they don’t have to go into the hellish hot horrors of the Hintok Section.
So after all this turmoil and trouble, they end up where they started. Weary himself, he goes to the railway to see the usual horrors, including men injured by the spitting of drill bits broken in this impossible rock, but finds himself exhilarated.
“Australia’s resilience is astounding; the men are so cheerful and empathetic, the N’s will never get the better of them and one day they will recover.”
But not today. Today, we have Weary aggressively telling Japanese overseers that some of these men were “too sick to work,” yes actually “Takusan byoki, too sick!” It’s the day to say.
A monument at Hellfire Pass on the Thailand-Burma railway route.
Credit: Alamy
For the most part, Weary can actually get away with using such tone, because even such vicious men realize the unspoken truth: without ichi ban doctor Dunroppo, they will lose untold numbers of workers. They could severely crush and even kill ordinary prisoners of war with impunity, but they might have a case to answer for.
This time, however, the way Weary speaks to the glowering Japanese provokes such an angry response from one of them that the mortally offended officer screams for a log. And make it a big deal!
“He stood on the stump and started hitting Weary in the face with his fist,” one prisoner of war will recount. “It was the only way to get to him. Of course, Weary was a boxer and rolled with the punches.”
Weary once famously ran a feud at the University of Melbourne, sparring with “Young Stribling”, who had been a contender for the World Heavyweight Championship just a few years earlier. Compared to Strib’s hammer blows, the Japanese man hits him with a series of malevolent blasts of gunpowder.
Work on the railway was devastating for the health of prisoners of war.
To be fair, not all Japanese guards along the Line are like this. On another occasion, Weary had so infuriated a Japanese sergeant by not showing sufficient respect and vehemently arguing that his men were too ill to work, that this servant of the emperor charged him directly with his bayonet thrust forward, only to…
Only for “a one-star private, the lowest rank in the army,” as Weary would describe him, to step forward and stand silently between the thrusting bayonet and Dunlop. (Say it all on the card, even.) Not only is the private a decent man, but Yorgun is his special responsibility and is not in the sergeant’s group. To Weary’s astonishment and relief, Er’s bravery and the strict Japanese protocol of not overstepping their bounds of responsibility saved him.
It’s a welcome relief to have such a guard. But at another time, when a prisoner of war points to a very kind guard to one of his companions and says, “I don’t think this guy’s that bad,” the answer is definitive. “I think he’s about to choose between them, too,” his friend grumbles, as straight as the Nullarbor. “But I could still split him from head to ass with a dull razor.”
An edited excerpt The Brave Life of Tired Dunlop Published this week by Peter FitzSimons.
