“He just wants to get rid of us,” Jean said wearily. “They don’t want to bother with us—just get us out of the way.”
They left next morning with a sergeant and a private as a guard. Gemas is a railway junction and the East Coast railway runs north from there; the railway was not being used at all at that time, and there was a rumour that the track was being taken up and sent to some unknown strategic destination in the north. The women were not concerned with that; what concerned them was that they had to walk along the railway line, which meant walking in the sun most of each day, and there was no possibility of getting a ride in a train.
They went on for a week, marching about ten miles every other day; then fever broke out among the children. They never really knew what it was; it sta
