The Naked Island

THE NAKED ISLAND

BY RUSSELL BRADDON

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC., GARDEN CITY, N.Y,, 1953

FIRST PUBLISHED, 1953, IN THE UNITED STATES
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 52-13375
1952, by Russell Reading Braddon Reserved in the United States At the Country Life Press, Garden City, N.Y.

AUTHOR S NOTE

This book is written as one man's fear of things that lie ahead. It is also written as one man's tribute to the Britishers capacity for living fearlessly and gently.
It is especially a tribute to two men--Padre Noel Duckworth and Major Kevin Pagan--who lived more fearlessly and more gently than all others.
It is dedicated to a Welshman called "Mush."
R.B.

BOOK ONE
1 THE FOURTEENTH STEP
2 INSANITY IN THE FAMILY?
3 FIVE-BOB-A-DAY BUTCHERS
4 "NOW IS THE HOUR"
5 "BAD DAMES"
6 "HOW TO LIVE IN MALAYA"
7 "HULLO, JOE"
8 "BATTLE STATIONS"
9 AIRBORNE INVASION

BOOK TWO
1 OUR FIRST GAOL
2 "SHANGRI-LA"
3 "PUDU S GROWING PAINS"
4 HOW TO BE A P.O.W.
5 TOJO NUMBER TEN
6 THE PHONY CAPTIVITY
7 SINGAPORE INTERLUDE
8 BORE-HOLES
BOOK THREE
1 "BRING YOUR PIANO"
2 KANEMOTOSAN
3 "ULCERS AND, BUSHIDO"

BOOK FOUR
1 A HOME TO BE BUILT
2 THE AERODROME
3 THEATRE
4 "HARRY THE HAWK"
5 THE FOURTH YEAR
6 ON OUR RETURN
THE HIROSHIMA INCIDENT
POSTSCRIPT

1 THE FOURTEENTH STEP
There were twenty-two steps altogether from the courtyard of the gaol up to the cells. I had got into the habit of counting those steps. Made them seem shorter, or easier. Anyway I had got into the habit of counting. And at the fourteenth I stopped, done. Because I could go no further, I lowered myself onto the step above me and took stock of my surroundings.
At the foot of the stairs, barely visible in the gloom, sat the sentry steel-helmeted, knees wide apart, rifle and bayonet across his knees. Silent, unintelligent, unfriendly. Beyond him a small courtyard about thirty yards square. Round the courtyard ran a high prison wall-sheer and made unscalable by five or six rows of loose-piled bricks balanced twenty feet up on its top.
Above my head, all along the balcony which ran from the top of the stairs round three sides of the ancient block of cells, the darkness was restless with the small sounds of men who slept neither comfortably nor well. And at my feet, also on the staircase, lying doubled up over three or four steps, sprawled a half -naked soldier an Argyll, I recognized from his cap which, last of his possessions, he wore even at night.
I had passed him on the way down to the latrines. Then, he had writhed on the stairs with the griping pains of dysentery; and, having lost all control of his bowels, his legs were fouled and his pride outraged.
"Anything I can do, Jock?" I had asked him.
"Och, man, leave me alone!" he had exclaimed. I regretted my intrusion. That was the trouble nowadays; one was never alone, not even on a prison staircase in the early hours of the morning.
"Sorry," I muttered, and, stepping over him, continued on down to the sentry.
"Benjo-ka?" I asked him.
"Benjo hei" he grunted. Permission granted, I crossed the twenty feet of maggot-ridden mud to the latrine. Soon I returned. In accord ance with instructions, I thanked the sentry.
"Aringato? I said, to which he replied, disinterestedly, "Okayga."
I had walked to the stairs; climbed them slowly; passed the young Argyll (without speaking) and then stopped exhausted at the fourteenth step.
I looked at the sprawled figure again. Even in the gloom I could see fair hair under the black cap with its check colours: sturdy legs: one hand clenched tightly over the back edge of the step on which my feet rested: head on one side and a clean-cut jaw.
A Scot of the best type. I hoped no one would come down the stairs and see either of us at that moment. I decided then that, since I too was incapable of moving, I could now decently address him.
"How are you doing, Jock?" I asked. He didn't answer. He didn't seem resentful of the intrusion, however, so I persisted, with a feeble attempt at humour:
"Toss you for who carries who up the rest of the stairs," I said and again he didn't answer.
I knew then what had happened: knew without looking. The Argyll was dead. Within a week of arriving in the gaol, the first man in our seven hundred had died not of wounds, not in battle, but from exhaustion and privation.
Weaker then ever, I leant back. This was something I could not easily understand. Death in war was an unpleasant event which must befall many not oneself, naturally: but many others, even one's friends. One regretted the fact, but one did not bewail it.
But this this death due to lack of food and drugs, both of which were plentiful this was something against which one could not steel oneself. A week, I thought, and one'd ead already. A young, sturdy Scot There must be lots of weeks to go yet