The Sandakan Death March

After a couple hours of trekking through the water our group rests at the base of a massive old-growth tree. It’s distinctive for the series of giant buttresses that radiate from its trunk, and because it marks the start of our most arduous climb.

The Tavio hill was a notoriously difficult section of the trail, the final resting place for a number of the Sandakan marchers. Reconnaissance teams in 1946 felt this section was too difficult for their recovery efforts, and never searched it, leaving behind the remains of an unknown number of dead. It had remained untouched until Tham and his guides scouted a route through it four months ago.

I clamber up the riverbank grappling with a series of vines, and immediately find myself in a natural environment that’s more claustrophobic than anything I’ve ever experienced. The jungle has already reclaimed Tham’s earlier exploratory route. Tham begins once again slashing ahead, following an almost invisible path that only he can make out.

A leech finds a home on my cheek. No more than the size of a large grain of rice when they first latch on, these thirsty bloodsuckers will swell to the thickness of a pencil when given the chance. A few years back, a friend of mine had an unfortunate encounter with a leech while racing the Eco-Challenge here in Sabah. As he was making a quick pee stop an intrepid leech landed on his penis and, before he could flick it off, made its way up his urethra. Poor bastard.

The PoWs called the jungle a green cage and you can see why. Surrounded by an impenetrable web of vegetation, we’re hooked and grabbed, scraped and poked, as we struggle to find our way through. I’m looking intently for any evidence of the soldiers that died here, but the jungle has erased any indication of their passing. I’m so engrossed in my efforts that I don’t notice the viper beneath my feet. It’s a small, luminous green snake with a distinctive triangular head—as beautiful as it is deadly. Half of our group has passed it without noticing. Intrigued, we huddle around it. Then Tham intervenes. “Very dangerous snake,” he says gravely, motioning us to step back. “If it bites you, you die in three minutes. There’s no antidote.”

I’m surprised at how quickly we reach the summit. The damage: 5 leeches, a couple of cuts, and my poor aching feet. Not bad. The remainder of the afternoon is an unfortunate parade down the non-existent shoulder of a well-travelled local highway. Like much of Southeast Asia, the drivers here enjoy exploring the limits of vehicular performance and we often find ourselves leaping out of the way of some overzealous motorist who has decided to overtake a slower vehicle on that blind corner.

We’re doing well until big Russ Galloway is clipped in the elbow by an errant side mirror. At 46, Russ is the oldest guy in the group, but you’d never know it. His 6’7” frame, carrying a body that’s a physiological showcase of muscle, utterly astounds people, but his charismatic presence holds even greater sway. Fortunately, the mirror was the loser in battle, but the incident has made us all the more wary. It’s another hour before we find the large gravel pullout which will be our camp for the night. The area, about the size of a football field, is home to several tractors being used for local road construction. As I enter the site I see a tiny man and his wife sitting quietly beneath a tarp on the far side of the machinery. We trade friendly nods and after finding a sliver of shade beneath a tractors wheel, the elderly fellow comes over and presents me with a fresh cucumber. A shiver runs through me as I thank him for his gift. Richard Murray, Keith Botterill and the other PoWs would have still been trying to survive on those six cucumbers at this point. I take my knife out and cut a piece for everyone.

We make it to Paginatan the following afternoon and bunk down on the floor of an unused gymnasium. It’s not paradise but it’s far cry better than last night’s tryst with the highway and its noisy truck traffic. Today’s march took us through a little of everything: from a steaming jungle to an overheated tarmac, from a dusty cart track to a wonderfully aromatic tea plantation. There’s a little less jungle travel than I originally anticipated, but this is the reality of the march. After the war, the route was transformed; some of it was reclaimed by nature, other parts staked for human development.

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