He was quite a philosopher and argued that we should put our real selves beyond being hurt or hungered by the Jap. We should stand back and regard our bodies as something apart. Something that could be exploited and battered but which we would not let affect our true selves. One time when Allister was pretty low, having been given a slap over the head with a rifle butt causing a nasty wound, I said, “What about your philosophy. Can the mind get away from the suffering of the body?”
He replied, “ I can only try.”
I think my association with Allister kept me sane. We talked about everything. We diagnosed the character of others and ourselves, and he said this about me, “You remind me of the typical volunteer British soldier. Your thinking is a hundred years out of date. You see glory in the arms and in war. That went out at Waterloo with the bright uniforms. You have a militia mind that wants to march in step over the precipice.”
I replied, “Do not these modern wars prove that it is your thinking that is out of wrong? Are we not still back a thousand years? Does not our survival and liberation depend on the so called militia mind of thousands of young Canadians, Americans, and Britishers, who are ready and willing to march in their country’s defense.”
He replied “ Perhaps.”
Still, although we sometimes disagreed, we were fast friends and I trust that the world is now treating him more gently.
Tom Marsh - Chapter 14 - The Ghost of Christmas at Yokohama.
Everyone, if they live long enough, can tell a ghost story and I tell this one for what its worth. At Yokohama we were housed in a long hut divided into bays. Each bay was like a room. There were about ten of them. When we first arrived there were eight men in my bay and I came to know them well. Too well in some cases as constant companions in misery often bored one and I could have screamed at the sameness and the pettiness. The same man at the same day after day would make the same complaint about his rice, upbraiding the cook with the same string of oaths. Another would take his bowl at every meal and compare for quantity with every other in the bay. Another sat mute and glum and said nothing to anyone, sullen, surly, starving. I often took my bowl of rice and ate elsewhere and was benefited by the change.
Gradually the number in our section declined. One at a time they sickened and were removed to the hospital, never to return. We were down to four. A chap named Roy Robinson, who was a particular friend as he came from my home district. Another named Lavarie (Lavriere?) and one other made up our group. We four discussed the demise of the others and one day, feeling miserable, I predicted that I would be the next to go. Roy would not have it and urged hanging on although he was actually weaker then myself. Lavarie said very little and soon after sickened and was taken away and died. This left only three in our bay.
One night I had occasion to go to the washroom. The two others were asleep. Returning to the gloom I entered our room and was surprised to see a figure sitting at the foot of the platform that had held the beds of those who had died. It was Lavarie. Startled I stopped. Lavarie was dead. He seemed to turn his head towards me and I beat it and awoke a friend in another bay. He was skeptical and obviously thought I was sickening from fever and was already seeing things. I got him to accompany me back to my bed. The ghost had gone. I told Rob Robinson and he regarded me suspiciously but as he later admitted felt a little squeamish. I never saw the ghost again and no doubt a figment of the imagination but that night Lavarie was very real and I felt that he wanted to give me a message.
