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admit. Moreover, it is completely irrational. The North Koreans in particular – or even the Chinese – would not have increased my ration by a spoonful had all the men around me perished. But logic plays no part in one’s sensibilities when pain and starvation conspire to rob you of life.
    In such circumstances, where each wounded man in captivity is in great pain and hanging on for grim death, conspiring to keep himself alive at any cost, it takes a strong leader to hold men together and to prevent them from descending into a dog-eat-dog environment. I regret to say that leader wasn’t me. At twenty-five I was the oldest among the equally ranked prisoners of war and, as veteran of another war, I should have done better. My gammy leg was no excuse, I should have assumed control. Instead, Private Jimmy Oldcorn, three years my junior and with a leg as bad as my own, was the man who pulled us through. He gave us the leadership we so badly needed and, in the process, forced us to keep our collective nerve while giving us hope when death seemed a far more certain outcome than the prospect of staying alive.
    For reasons I shall never understand he chose me as his offsider. It may simply have been that he was a coloured man from a segregated regiment and his fellow American prisoners were all Caucasians. Perhaps he feared racial prejudice would forbid any of them acting as his offsider. I was the stray dog without a collar – by choosing me he avoided confrontation. Whatever his reason, I count myself fortunate. Despite my own self-preserving instincts, Jimmy forced me to behave rationally and with a concern for the welfare of our fellow prisoners. In the process, the leader of a New York street gang turned a pack of near-animals back into humans and undoubtedly saved my life and the lives of a great many others.
    You see, humans are essentially tribal. Such is the strength of tribal bonds generated in the military system that soldiers will conform to the hierarchical demands of their army unit even in the face of probable death. The wanton slaughter of the 8th and 10th Light Horse regiments that took place at the Nek on Gallipoli is a classic example, the charge of the Light Brigade at Crimea yet another.
    Captors intent on destroying the morale of prisoners in order to crack their resistance must first break up the tribal structure by separating the officers, senior noncommissioned officers and soldiers. They must also break up any sub-units they may have captured intact. Without the leadership to organise and direct and the solidarity created by time and habit, soldiers suffering mistreatment become more vulnerable to capitulation and death.
    Even when rank is present and taking responsibility, in circumstances where men are constantly harangued, neglected, weakened and dying of their wounds or starvation, it takes a very talented leader to keep them mentally steady and determined to hold out. That Jimmy, a buck private and coloured soldier from a segregated regiment, had the fortitude and character to step forward and take control rather than give in to his own self-preserving instincts was, to say the least, unexpected. He’d endured a lifetime of discrimination, was very much a loner and with his orphanage and reform-school background, where initiative and original thinking would have been beaten out of him, he might have been expected to just look after himself. Yet, here he was, taking control when we needed it most. I found this little short of remarkable.
    By the time we were transferred to the POW camp, the bond formed between Jimmy Oldcorn and myself had grown very strong. I had come to trust him like a brother. More than this he was my mate and, in the arcane and inarticulate way Australian males have of expressing their emotions, your mate is for life, come hell or high water.
    This is how we might have been described when we first joined our respective armies. In the red corner, Jack McKenzie,