Bolt joined fellow POWs at Changi in February 1944 and wrote every week to Usa, but without response. He suspected she was not receiving his letters. He had tried to let her know that they had made the correct decision not to take Red Lead with him. Rats had become a major problem at Changi and at first he regretted not having her there, where she would have been effective in countering the infestation. Seventy-five cats were introduced into the prison but within two months they had all disappeared. The food was so poor and scarce in Changi that the cats were being caught and eaten.
Bolt was in recovery from malaria, and was still having bouts of extreme fatigue but they were becoming fewer. It saw him in hospital a couple of times but soon he was a permanent fixture there at the request of Cahill and Dunlop in dealing with the illnesses suffered by a majority of the inmates. They had him doing every possible medical job and treated him like a fellow doctor. He became intrigued with all aspects of medicine, including psychiatry, which was under the direction of Major (Dr) John Cade. Before the war Cade had been a senior psychiatric specialist in Melbourne. During his Changi years he witnessed firsthand how mental health was affected by chemical imbalances in the brain, and nutrition.
Cade showed Bolt how to experiment with certain foods to see if they had an impact on the minds of the hundreds of patients they had to deal with.
After a month of tests, they examined the results.
‘What does that tell you about one particular nutritional group?’ Cade asked him.
‘Blind Freddie could answer that,’ Bolt said. ‘The worst cases of mental illness lack plain old salt.’
‘Correct. After the war I am going to specialise in the development of lithium, a naturally occurring salt, in the treatment of psychiatric disorders such as manic depression.’ He waved a hand at the room full of patients. ‘All of this lot have got varying degrees of these medical issues.’
‘So the old diagnoses of “madness” and “lunatic” are …’
‘Largely primitive, like burning witches at the stake. I want to change all that.’ Cade paused and added, ‘As for your remark about Blind Freddie, there are a lot of eye problems in here. They’re not getting enough carrots and oranges for a start.’
‘Luxuries!’
‘Non-existent in Changi.’
In September and October 1944 the Japanese officers and guards at the prison began to show signs of strain. They were tetchier, even more likely to deliver bashings, and never relaxed.
On breaks from the hospital, Bolt would gaze up and notice more activity in the skies. Small Japanese planes were using the nearest aerodrome with greater frequency. Air-raid sirens and drills came more often. Blackouts were common. There was a ban of all sports, music, entertainment and community singing. Gatherings of more than six of any kind were stopped. Bolt often ran around the prisoner camp perimeter with Peter Chitty, winner of the unofficial Changi Brownlow for the Australian Rules competition in the prison in 1942, and four others. Guards stopped them and would only allow them to jog two at a time.
A telltale sign that the Japanese feared attacks, even invasion, was that the guards now wore tin hats at all times. Armistice Day—11 November—brought the greatest joy to the entire POW camp to that point. Forty US B-17 four-engine bombers rumbled overhead. Air alarms sounded. Guards ran for cover while POWs stood, cheered and waved. Bolt and other medicos heard the crushing, thunder-like sound and ran outside to see the massive planes pass low over the camp, and then climb high to avoid Japanese fighters.
Guards yelled admonition from safe places. When the bombers were out of sight and only their diminishing boom could be heard, the guards came out waving rifles, forcing men to cower and go back to their appointed jobs. The planes returned the next day, and became a daily event, much to the joy of the POWs.
‘They’re flying too high to be challenged by any Jap planes,’ Bolt said to Cade one morning in the hospital.
‘The Japs don’t even bother to take off,’ Cade said.
‘It’s an indicator. The Americans are closing in.’
Japanese officers began to step up the digging and deepening of trenches. They feared invasion. Bolt joined hospital staff to mark out a big red cross close to the building, hoping this would mean it avoided attacks. The act increased consternation among the Japanese, who were now paranoid about the Allies coming at them from the air, land and sea.
On 8 January 1945, their fears seemed less irrational when at 1 p.m. a US air raid of B-29 Superfortress bombers loomed over Singapore and unloaded on the Seletar naval base on the north-east coast in full view of the POWs. They were awesome flying machines, the biggest ever built. Prisoners with radios were able to report that 4000 were pouring out of American production lines. At the risk of bashings, POWs began to chide the guards with the figures, implying that the end of Japanese rule in the region was nigh.
By early 1945, Bolt had still not heard from Usa. They had only known each other for a month, but he had begun to fantasise about her. He wondered if this was irrational, and if his mind was slipping a little. Yet every time he pictured her in his mind, he felt she was perfect for him, even his soulmate. Bolt tried to compare the feelings he had for his former fiancée with those he now had for Usa. He even scribbled a list of characteristics, such as intelligence, empathy, warmth, personality, beauty and sex appeal. Usa was preferred on all counts. It made him both nostalgic and depressed. A year had slipped by since that idealised brief time with her.
Usa’s love for pets and cats was another comparison in which she came out on top. Pamela hated cats. He admitted to himself that his thoughts were a little lopsided after a bare four weeks with the stunning Thai, and nearly two years with the Australian. He knew also that one night of glorious sex, a night of feverish passion, was not a realistic way to judge compatibility. Yet it had been real.
In February 1945, Bolt received letters from his group—Tait, Grout, Farrow, Bright and Noel. They had been shipped to Japan to work as slaves in coalmines. He was delighted to learn they were all still alive, despite a run of illnesses. There was hope in their letters, which had to be guarded and cautious to pass the Japanese censors on small cards, with little room for real expression.
Then in August 1945, everything changed. The Americans dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities and forced them to surrender. Bolt considered going back to Mae Sot to see Usa and Red Lead but he would have been AWOL. The POWs were not yet freed. That took another two months. Leaving before official repatriation and demobilisation would have had repercussions.
In October, Bolt and the emaciated contingent of Changi POWs were freed and shipped home. For most it was a grand moment to see family and friends. Bolt had no close family alive, and no woman to meet him at Spencer Street train station when he arrived there mid-October. It heightened his determination to see Usa and Red Lead again.
This seemed an impossible dream by late 1945. He had no money and there were no boats to Asia straight after the war. He contemplated becoming a sailor on anything that would get him to Bangkok. But he’d had no word at all from Usa and the dream of her began to fade.
Bolt started to think more practically about his life and career. He decided on becoming a qualified doctor. Armed with letters of recommendation from Cahill, Dunlop and Cade, he applied to do the shortened Melbourne University medical course offered to a select few straight after the war. His credits in vet science helped. He was allowed to start in year three of a six-year course that had been truncated for the privileged few to just five years.
He worked as a freelance medical correspondent for Australian papers and magazines from 1946 to the end of 1948 when he finished his basic medical degree. This work gave him a modest income on which to survive while boarding in a one-room Carlton flat close to the medical faculty. Bolt had plans to specialise in tropical medicine or psychiatry, or both. But first there were Usa and Red Lead to consider.
In late 1948, he wrote to her again, and finally, after not having had any communication from her for five years, he received a letter, which explained she had never received any from him. She had sent plenty to him, she noted. Usa spent a page describing Red Lead, which brought Bolt to tears. She was now seven years old, in very good condition, and the best friend to her mother Nuarn, who was ailing at fifteen.
Bolt was due to receive his degree in March 1949, but could not wait for that, and instead arranged for a friend to pick it up on his behalf. He worked hard on all his naval contacts and finally wangled a berth on an army ship heading to Southeast Asia for an unspecified (secret) mission to do with fighting communists on the Korean peninsula.
Bangkok would be a major stop.