H. Robert Charles

Hooray for Dr Henri Hekking.

World war II and the Japanese needed a railroad built from Rangoon to Saigon, so they used prisoners of war for their work slaves. This book, written by one of the work slaves, doesn't tell much of the story of building the railroad, but mostly the story of Dr Henri hekking, a Dutch Dr born in Java, who saved many men by his knowledge of jungle medicine, jungle plants, and tropical diseases.
The Japanese, among most humans, exceed at cruelty. They did not care about taking good care of their prisoners, and kept them on starvation diet: one dirty rice ball a day, along with watery soup. Dr hekking helped find ways to keep them alive: for example, in one village he found where they had pounded rice to remove the husks. He gathered up the husks and put them in the watery soup that was given to the men. Moreover, when he saw Japanese soldiers slaughtering a water buffalo, he asked to take the blood that they were going to throw away. Put that in water, cooked it, and gave it to the work slaves. When you're starving, you'll eat things you think you would never ever eat.
One of the POWs, Glen self, had a leg injury that had ulcified, clear down to the bone. Another doctor said the leg would have to cut off, but Dr hekking said nonsense, I will save it.
With no anesthesia, he got four men to hold Glen down:
"Doc felt the edge of the spoon with his thumb to make sure it was sharp enough. He struck a wooden match the Japanese guard had given him, and he held the spoon to the blaze. He waited a few moments until the spoon cooled, then asked Glen to lie back, motioning at the same time for the four men to take hold of his legs and arms. He scraped lightly at first, removing the pus and loose surface material. He then told Albert to squeeze Glen's leg as hard as he could on both sides of the ulcer. Once the doctor started to probe deeper with the spoon, Glen let out a long, agonizing scream. Then, mercifully, he passed out.
Doc worked in silence, stripping away the rotted flesh, scraping the blackened bone. One of the men they called Gabe walked out of the shack to vomit.
looking at the bone, doc saw more than a tropical ulcer: a part of the bone had been chipped, and soon the infected part of that would have to be removed. He would need a surgical tool that resembled a chisel to take it out. And only one man he knew - the sergeant he called Butch from his staff in tjamplong, who was in another prison camp - would know how to make it. If only he had the piece of metal in a way to shape and sharpen it..
it took a long time to finish removing the pus. He scraped the bone but, none of this was a substitute for removing the piece of infected bone. That was still to come. He used strips of bamboo split with a pocket knife to make the open cagelike contraption to protect the open cavity. The four men used a stretcher made of bamboo poles and rice sacks to carry glen, still unconscious, back to a shelf in the officers' quarters. He would be in pain and would run a temperature for several days. Doc wanted to be near him to offer as much encouragement as possible."

The water buffalo blood scene:
" 'Why are you doing that?' I asked.
He was poking wood beneath the kettle, stoking the fire. He didn't look up. 'It is protein. Our bodies starve for protein.'
'but, you expect us to eat that?'
'of course. You will eat what you must to live. In java, cooked blood is A delicacy.'
'Java is a mighty strange country,' I said.
I watched, ready to vomit, as the blood boiled and turned black.
Finally, as doc stirred it around with a pole, it hardened and became grainy. He dipped some of it out with a spoon, blew on it to cool it, then tasted it, smacking his lips. A pleased look appeared on his face. 'M-m-m-m-m-m,' He said. 'very good! Here. You try it.'
Other prisoners were gathering around, some more repulsed than others. The cooked blood was tough enough to chew. If it was good for us, and I had no reason to doubt that it was, I was determined to chew it and injust it. It tasted a bit like burned rubber with only a bare hint of beef liver. 'Not bad,' I lied, smacking my lips, trying to hold a straight face. 'Excellent,' I said, swallowing it.
Doc's face beamed. "See? I tell you so!'
Bird dog's eyes were like saucers. 'You're kidding! Give me that spoon!' "

The Javanese had been a gentle people before the Japanese took them prisoner. The men turned violent afterward. After the end of the war,
"in fact, the British offered little help to the Dutch women and children on the islands until the peloppors killed a British general. This enraged the british, and they promptly dispatched gurkhas and sikhs to take on the peloppors. Unfortunately, in some instances this was like throwing gasoline on the fire because the sympathies of some of the gurkhas and sikhs were with the indonesians. To this day, there is still bitterness on the part of some Dutch soldiers who claim the British would not allow them to defend their women and children: stories still persist the gurkhas turned their backs while peloppors took women from the camps, raped them, and killed them."
I don't know why the British would think that people from India would help them, after they robbed and raped their own country. That's pretty stupid.

From the "Indo Project":
"Since 1956, the “boys” from Texas have held reunions with fellow ex POW’s. Each time, they passed the hat around to make it possible for Doc Hekking to come from Holland with his wife. Each time, they embraced wholeheartedly at the airport as they saw “Doc”.

On January 28, 1994 Dr. Henri H. Hekking passed away in Holland after a long battle with cancer. His “boys” were at a loss for words of how much he meant to them. He was an expert jungle doctor who saved their lives and became an endearing father figure and great friend."

… (altro)

From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai." One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, including a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author.… (altro)