APPENDIX FOUR:

From M.I.9 POW Questionnaire, 1945. National Archives (TNA), W0344/404/1 Lieutenant Leslie William (George) Sully – Escape Attempt

2.ESCAPES OR ATTEMPTED ESCAPES (Additional paper will be supplied on request if required)

(a)Give full description and approx. date of each attempt you made to escape, showing how you left the camp, and from which camp each attempt was made. State whether there was air-raid in progress at the time or not. If an escape was made from a train or vehicle the approx. speed and how it was guarded should be included.

I regret that such notes as I had of my own escape attempt and those of others were found in a Japanese spot search at TARSAO. Until that time the Japanese had inspected private correspondence, notes, etc. The dates can thus only be highly approximate. I suffered from ‘Malaysian Memory’.

(b)Were you physically fit when you made these attempts?

As well as could be expected of the P.O.W.

(c)Give Regimental particulars of anyone who accompanied you on each attempt.

Lt R.L.JACKSON 1/MANCH Lt J.H.M. GUTCH 1/MANCH What happened to them?

Returned safely.

(d)Give briefly your experiences during periods of freedom.

See appended

(e)How were you recaptured and on what date?

[Not completed]

(f)Do you know of any attempts made by other people to escape? Give their Regimental particulars and full description of their experiences.

Cannot supply owing to loss of notes.

4.Sabotage. Did you do any sabotage or destruction of enemy factory plant, war material, communications. etc. while employed in working parties or during escape?

(Give details, places and names)

NO I was never in a position to do so to any worthwhile extent.

5.Did you observe any courageous acts performed by allied personnel? (Give details, places and names, etc.)

NO

6.Have you any other matter of any kind which you wish to bring to notice?

Two officers of the Malay Regt brothers by the name of Webber displayed . . . [during] the period in Siam the utmost resolve and courage in maintaining a wireless . . . underground news service with AT. R. Sigs . . . With them . . . Lt. T.D.Douglas . . .

Appendix to M.I. 9/JAP/ No 13629 A

Lieut. L.W. Sully

Towards the end of January 1943 with Lieutenants R.L. JACKSON and J.H.M. GUTCH, both of 1/Manch, I made an attempt to escape from CHUNGKAI CAMP, SIAM.

Raids

There were no air raids being made in this area either by Jap or Allied aircraft at this time.

  1. Planned Escape
    There was no difficulty in getting out of camp. There was no fence or ditch. Not until late ’44 did the Japs attempt to ring the camps with other than delimiting fences which were easily passed. The Japs appeared to believe that the rigours of an attempt to escape were a sufficient deterrent in themselves.
  2. Route
    We decided that the most practicable route would be to avoid the valleys, keeping to the crests and ridges, where no Japs and few Thais ever went, and where we might find pools of water (the hills in Siam are of limestone, often weathered into small hollows) subsidiary streams, fewer snakes and other fauna, sparse bamboo and probably easier going. After studying such maps as were available (few and bad. No proper survey of this part of Siam has yet been made, according to Lt RICHARDSON, Intelligence Corps) and with the assistance of Lt RICHARDSON, a Malayan Govt geologist, we decided that hills with streams answering our purpose lay between our camp, via the SHAN STATES, up to the SALWEEN valley, when we hoped to meet Chinese troops who would assist us in to YUNNAN PROVINCE, a distance of 970 miles from CHUNGKAI, where we understood to be a Chinese HQ in touch with INDIA. There was only one major interruption to this series of heights, the northern Siamese plain stretching S.W. of CHIENGMAI. On this plain we understood the Japs to have an aerodrome, and to be in control of the four roads which met roughly in the centre of this district. Lt RICHARDSON considered that this area should be negotiable by night. (He had travelled in Siam before the war.)

    The plan was not very elastic, depending entirely upon a 30-day hustle in order to keep clear of Thais and Japs until we were sufficiently far north-west and away from the railway trace to make it unlikely that any Jap party sent out to get us would stand a reasonable chance.

    Note: By far the great majority of Thai were . . . , but the nomadic peasantry were little interested in the war, very poor, and there was a price on the heads of escaped P.O.W.s

  3. Supplies and Equipment
    • (a) We had little medical kit.
    • (b)We carried approximately 40lb food and 20lb bedding. The food was tinned fish, dry rice and salt. The bedding included blankets and small squares of mosquito netting to cover our faces at night. We decided that we could not support the cold on the heights at night without blankets.
    • (c) We carried a compass, parang (jungle knife) and clasp-knife apiece.
    • (d) We had one small cooking-pot for the rice and one mess tin a piece. We carried as many matches as we could.
    • (e) We wore sleeved shirts, slacks, puttees and boots, and rubber soled boots for crossing inhabited areas.
    • (f) We had only sufficient paper and ink to make one enlarged map of the route (kept in a stoppered length of bamboo against wet) though each man carried a card marked with distances, landmarks and compass-bearings.
    • (g) We had one Army water-bottle and one [latex?] bottle for water.
  4. Languages
    Lt Jackson spoke sufficient Thai for our needs. I myself learnt a few phrases of a Chinese dialect. We mustered between us a few words of Urdu. We could find nobody who knew Burmese.
  5. Training
    At the time we started the Japs had suddenly decided to give the officers’ working party a 5 day holiday prior to sending them up-country. Although our plans were not fully matured, and we had been unable to have practise pack (all food had to be smuggled out of camp and cached in order that the initial get-away could be swift) we decided that we could not miss this opportunity at the end of the first day the Japs took a roll-call of the up-country party. On the morning of the second day, while it was still dark (07.30hrs, Jap time, 2hrs in advance of British or Thai time) we left, having made this arrangement with Major M.P.E. Evans, our senior battalion officer. We made our way to our food cache, near the first bridge towards WAN LUNG (roughly south from the camp and 1 Km away) loaded up and started off straight through the jungle going northwest. After about two and a half hours of alternate crawling under male bamboo (male bamboo has thorns) clearing through secondary jungle, and hill climbing, we found ourselves very near exhaustion. We held a conference and decided:-
  1. We could not go on with existing load and keep up sufficient energy.
  2. We could not jettison any more (We had already jettisoned the rice) and still be able to maintain the 30 day hustle.
  3. We could not travel at night unless we severely decreased our hamper.
  4. With even a light load we still required much more water.
  5. Our parangs were too light to cut the jungle growth effectively.
  6. Our progress, even lightly laden, was going to be slower than anticipated – about 5 kms a day.
  7. If we could return to camp undetected, we might be to exchange our tinned fish (which was all we could buy) with individual officers who still might have concentrated foods, and obtain more bottles for water, and if possible heavy parangs. We should still have three days start. We accordingly returned to the jungle behind the camp. Here Lt JACKSON, the least exhausted, made a recce into camp and returned with the news that the Japs had got wind of our absence, and that search parties were now patrolling the railway line (which we had to cross) and the area around the camp. We held a quick conference and decided :-
  1. We could not make sufficient speed to get away in our condition.
  2. We could get back into camp from where we were without running much risk of being caught, as the interior area of the camp was not being searched.
  3. If we returned, and took what punishment the Japs deemed proper for ‘taking an unauthorised walk’ we might still be able to take another opportunity to get away with improved rations and any necessary alterations in plan and equipment.

    We accordingly returned and were given three days cells. We were sent up-country on the day of the expiry of this term.

    I did not make another attempt to escape for the following reasons: -

  1. Lts JACKSON, GUTCH and myself preferred to get away together
  2. Within three weeks (after considerable warning, and work on the railway bridge at BAN KAU) I was separated from the other two, sent down sick with tropical ales [ails], and did not meet them again until the period had elapsed during which suitable supplies might possibly have been acquired and a new plan formed.
  3. All three of us were forced to eat our store of original supplies in order to keep our health going in any supportable state, besides any other food we could find.
  4. My own health, though not bad, was never again quite up to the mark.
  5. The more we saw of the nature of the country further north, the more we were convinced that only a party organised from outside and supplied with elephant transport and with everything possible laid on (and the best of its kind) could get through. No external contact that I ever made with the Thais offered even a reasonable chance.
  6. The Japs were prone to visit the sins of the few upon the many, and it would not be reasonable to cause any further degradation of the already deplorable condition of our troops, unless an escape scheme were absolutely watertight and could carry useful information to the Allies. It was for this reason, and the absence of opportunity . . . at any rate to my knowledge, no Escape Committees were functioning.

Lieut 1/Manch

Editor’ s Note

Appendices Four to Seven are transcriptions from original questionnaires that POWs were asked to complete on their return from Japanese or German camps. Most were completed in pencil, which has faded in the years since 1945. There was little standardisation of the spelling of place-names. Question 1. simply asked prisoners to list the camps in which they had spent time. Ellipses are used to show where the text has been either edited or else is unreadable.