Chapter 3

On their trip, Jean starts dressing like the native women because it is much more comfortable than the English style clothing she was wearing before.  Along their walk, Mrs. Horsefall, the leader of the group, gets malaria and Jean has to help her. The women are sent to Port Dickson and stay there for a while until the Japanese commander starts seeing the women as a nuisance and sends them to Seremban.At Siliau, which is between Port Dickson and Seremban, Jane Holland dies. This greatly affects her mother, Mrs. Holland, though she tries to be strong in front of the others. As Mrs. Holland got weaker by the day, Jean started to carry baby Robin Holland, and Robin gets very attached to Jean. Lucky for him, he didn’t get sick like the other children because he only ate recently boiled food. Both Jean and baby Robin got browner everyday due to being under the sun. Even with all the walking, jean was in much better health than she was when they were first held captive at Panong. The only other unmarried girl in the group other than Jean, Ellen Forbes, goes missing one night when the other women were sleeping. They didn’t notice her absence until the next morning and they had to leave her behind. Another person dies at Alor Gajah (Judy Thomsome), and on the group’s way to Gemas, Mrs. Horsefall, who had never fully recovered from her sickness, dies as well, leaving the leadership position to Jean. Mrs. Horsefall’s son, Johnnie, is then put under Mrs. Frith’s care. Mrs. Frith is a faded woman over 50 years of age who is constantly complaining and moaning in pain during the night. However, this changes when Mrs. Frith finds a reason to carry on in the form of Johnnie Horsefall. By the time the women get to Gemas, 7 of them had died and no good news awaited them at Gemas either. The Japanese captain there, Captain Nisui, tells the women that he had received strict orders to not bring any more prisoners to Singapore. When the women are away from the Japanese, Mrs. Frith suggests: “’if they’d just let us alone we could find a little place like the one at them villages and live till it’s all over.’” This stays in Jeans mind as they are set in the direction of Kuantan for a women’s camp. Kuantan is hundreds of miles away from Gemas and the women are forced to march every step. Fever breaks out among the children and 4 of them die at Bahau at the height of the sickness. Freddie, Mrs. Holland’s other child, is among the children who die. Since baby Robin is the only child Mrs. Holland has left, Jean tries to give him back to Mrs. Holland but she refuses. This is because the baby, after spending such a long time with Jean, prefers her over his weak mother. Besides, Mrs. Holland points out, she is far too weak to carry him while they march and has no energy to play with him. So Jean works out a plan: the baby would get his food from Mrs. Holland but its play time from Jean. The women found their “…Japanese guards to be humane and reasonable men, uncouth in their habits and mentally far removed from western ideas, but tolerant to the weakness of women and deeply devoted to children” (63).

                Mrs. Frith became an important member of the group since she had vast knowledge of the country and its diseases. She becomes a friend to Jean, especially after Mrs. Holland dies. Before her death, Mrs. Holland tells Jean to give a message to her husband, thanks Jean for all she’d done, and apologizes for being a burden. While going through an extremely unhealthy district called Ayer Kring, baby Robin gets sick and Jean is given some native type of quinine from the wife of the headman of the village. The medicine helps the baby get better.  After Ayer Kring, the women move to Maran, where they meet 2 Australian soldiers also being help captives. One of them is named Joe Harman. The 2 Australians drive railway lines and sleepers from one place to another in trucks under the surveillance of Jap soldiers. Joe and Jean become friends and talk to each other for as long as Joe can sneak out without getting caught. Joe gets the women medicine by trading some things he steals from the Japs with Chinese merchants.  Jean learns that Joe is a stock rider in the Australian backcountry and Jean tells Joe that she is a shorthand typist in England and of her hometown and how after the war she’s going to go to the ice-rink she went to as a child. Joe steals some chickens from the local commanding officer, Captain Sugamo, and gives them to the women. The women share the chickens with their guards. When captain Sugamo finds out his chickens were stolen he is outraged and took it as in insult not only to himself but to the Imperial Japanese Army. He sends guards to look everywhere for the missing chickens and eventually tracks them to jean. Captain Sugamo is known for his violent behavior and shows it when he makes his soldiers hit Jean so she’ll tell him how she got the chickens. Jean however, makes up some story and sticks with it, but then Joe comes to town in his truck and sees jean getting kicked and tells Captain Sugamo that he was the one who stole the chickens. The story then comes back to Jean sitting in Mr. Strachan’s sitting room. She informs him that Captain Sugamo had Joe Harman crucified; they nailed his hands to a tree and beat him to death at Kuantan. Captain Sugamo made Jean and the women and children watch.