Fergus Anckorn: The Conjurer on the Kwai (Part 3)
The third of four blogs telling the incredible wartime experiences of Fergus Anckorn, an amateur magician who used magic to survive captivity and slavery as a POW in the Far East during World War Two.
Recuperating at Chungkai
After Fergus Anckorn received burns injuries while forced to build the Wampoo Viaduct on the Thai-Burma Railway, medical staff sent him to a convalescent camp at Chungkai. He arrived there in around April 1943.
Like most other POW camps in Thailand, Chungkai was overcrowded and the living arrangements were primitive. The Japanese sent sick POWs there to either die or recuperate. Survivors, once healed, were put to work nearby, or sent ‘up country’ to build the railway.
This is a description of Chungkai by one of its occupants:
“In the huts, conditions were terrible. Most men were unable to move through weakness. They were without clothing. Bedding consisted of perhaps a rice sack, millions of flies and bedbugs, and running with human lice. Whilst at night, the POWs were eaten to death with malaria breeding mosquitos. In all huts, the POWs were just skeletons.”
“The whole place bore an air of overpowering gloom and misery,” reported another. “That’s where the Englishmen come to die!,” said the locals.
Dysentery hut, Chungkai (1943)
(Source: Jack Chalker)
Anckorn spent eight months at Chungkai, through to early January 1944. He recovered from his burns injuries within a few weeks but still struggled with his other injuries. He was put to work in the hospital hut and later took on the role of preparing corpses for burial. Gradually he was able to pick his conjuring back up, performing close-up tricks for other POWs on an impromptu basis; and the occasional demonstration to benefit his fellow prisoners. Sleight of hand was difficult owing to his injured right hand, but he was able to use both hands for general magic tricks.
“During the months since I had recovered from the creosote burns, I had begun to do magic again. The guards at Chungkai were not so driving on the work parties as those up at the railhead, and so during our ten-minute breaks, which we got every couple of hours, it was possible to distract them with magic tricks. I would pick up stones and make them disappear or turn little ones into bigger ones or make sticks pass through each other. It was just the run of the mill stuff I could do using mainly my left hand for the action and the injured right hand and forearm simply for holding things. They loved it and often we could make a break last for twenty minutes.”
Magic for food
Anckorn’s skill as a magician came to the attention of the Japanese head of the camp, Commander O’Soto. One night, O’Soto summoned Anckorn to come to his hut to perform for him and his colleagues. This became a regular occurrence, so Anckorn decided to use it as an opportunity to get hold of extra food:
“I would make objects vanish and the discover them hidden in items of food around the hut. I knew that once I had touched a tin of fish or a piece of fruit during my trick, the Japanese would refuse to eat it for fear of disease. As a reward for my efforts, I was allowed to take these away with me, and the extra scraps of food I got this way helped me and my friends avoid diseases like beriberi, caused by lack of vitamins. If I couldn't see any food about, I would vanish things into a packet of cigarettes, which again I could keep - cigarettes were highly valued in the camps and a very good currency. Men died from malnutrition, either directly or because their weakened state made them vulnerable to other diseases, so the extra food I earned from these magic shows really did help my survival.”
For one of these forced performances, O’Soto demanded a special trick to impress a visiting General. Anckorn said he could do a trick with an egg, but he didn’t have any eggs. So, Commandant O’Soto signed a chit for Anckorn to take to the camp’s supply department. When Anckorn presented the chit at the store, the Japanese guard asked Anckorn how many eggs he wanted, as the chit hadn’t specified a quantity. On the spur of the moment, the magician-POW said “fifty”. To Anckorn’s amazement, fifty eggs were handed off. That evening, the POWs enjoyed some lovely omelettes. But, this ploy almost cost Anckorn his life.
“At my performance the egg trick went down very well. I started by rustling a cloth between my hands, and made it get smaller and smaller until it disappeared and I held up an egg. I turned the egg around to show there was a hole in it where I'd stuffed the cloth. I showed them the egg with the cloth inside. But then I cracked the egg into a glass to show it was a proper egg. It’s a good trick involving quite a bit of skulduggery with two eggs, one previously prepared with a hole in it.”
“But the next day Commandant O’Soto ordered me to his hut to explain about the fifty eggs. He said ‘You do the trick with one egg. Where the other forty-nine eggs?’ I really thought this was it, because if they caught you thieving that was the end of you. He was wearing his sword and I thought ‘I’ m dead, my heads coming off any minute.’ I was staring at the weave of the sacking which lined his walls and thinking. ‘This is the last thing I’ ll ever see.’ But then, almost without thinking, I suddenly said, ‘It was such an important show for your guest, I needed the other eggs to rehearse all day. I wanted to make sure the trick went well.’”
The Commandant, whether he believed Anckorn or not, let him go.
Fergus Anckorn recreating his version of the ‘Silk to Egg’ trick
(Source: Fergus Anckorn)
Listen to Norman Pritchard explain how Anckorn got hold of the egg for the Egg Trick here.
The brotherhood of magic
Also at Chungkai, a remarkable incident took place which showed the ability of magic to transcend war and cultures. It involved one of the Korean soldiers who worked alongside the Japanese guarding the Allied POWs. Sadly, it ended in tragedy:
“One day, a Korean guard whom I’d never seen before came up to me in the camp. He must have seen me up-country or back at Tamarkan. Anyway, he said in broken English, ‘You have beautiful hands,’ and I felt immediately apprehensive. He went on, ‘You magic man.’ And I replied, ‘Yes’. ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘You come our hut tonight and do magic.’”
“Still very apprehensive but not wanting to upset the Korean guards unnecessarily, having felt the results at Wampo, I duly went to the hut that night. It was on stilts, 10 feet off the ground to avoid the flooding that we had now found the camp was prone to in the monsoons. I was given food and cigarettes and, sure enough, we exchanged tricks. Tomimoto was the guard’s name and he turned out to be a very decent chap in every way.”
A hut at Chungkai POW camp
(Source: IWM - George Stanley Gimson)
“Things were going well until late in the evening when we heard the loud voices of some Japs coming towards the hut. They’d obviously got happy on something and were now returning to this hut that Tomimoto shared with them.”
“‘I’ll go,’ I said, but he insisted, ‘No, you stay, you are my guest!’ Well, his hut mates arrived and of course, a furious row broke out over my being there. Tomimoto gave as good as he got, which enraged the Japs to the point where one of them took his bayonet and rammed it straight though him.”
“In a split second, I took a giant leap out of the window into the pitch-black night. From 10-feet up and with still only one leg working properly, I somehow landed safely and scampered back to my hut as fast as I could. That night I lay listening for the repercussions. Nothing happened and nothing was said by anyone to anyone. Until sometime later.”
“I was outside my hut getting the bugs out of my bed blanket when a guard came over and stood near me. He seemed to be just watching what I was doing but then he spoke quietly to me. ‘Your friend, he paradise go.’ Then he just mooched off and that was that.”
Listen to this audio file to hear Fergus tell the Korean guard story in his own words:
The return of Wizardus
In the latter half of 1943, attempts were made to try to alleviate the boredom and despair at Chungkai. The Japanese commandant gave the POWs approval to form a small concert party that would perform twice weekly, once in the hospital wards and once for the whole camp.
For Christmas Day 1943, a group of prisoners put together an elaborate two-hour variety show, accompanied by a POW orchestra. The show took place in a camp theatre built by the POWs. Among the cast was a fully recovered Fergus Anckorn, who gave his first and only Chungkai performance as the magician ‘Wizardus.’
New Camp Theatre at Chungkai (1944)
(Source: IWM - George Stanley Gimson)
A fellow POW wrote about the show in his diary:
“Went to concert at 7.30. Stage had been erected under a big tree in clearing. Audience on floor [ground]. Quite a good show. Orchestra of five with ‘maestro,’ two female impersonators, two close harmonists, and a conjurer [Fergus Anckorn]. Nips present appeared to enjoy show… Female impersonators well-dressed—brought small wardrobe from Changi. At 9 p.m. lights did not appear as arranged and audience dispersed, but met lights as we returned, so reassembled and saw rest of show.”
Off to Nong Pladuk
Fit for further labouring duties, Anckorn was transferred to Nong Pladuk in early 1944. Laying within paddy fields and banana plantations, Nong Pladuk was a relocation camp (or rather two camps at the same site) at what had been the starting point for the Thailand end of the Thai-Burma railway.
By this stage in the war, the Thai-Burma Railway had been largely finished. Allied POWs who’d worked on the railway were transferred from forward work camps to relocation camps, like Nong Pladuk, where they were easier to administrate.
There was some respite from hard labour at the relocation camps but the fate of the POWs who’d survived their roles in building the Death Railway was still very much in doubt…
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog article and look out for Part 4 to find out how Anckorn used magic to survive captivity.
For further information on Fergus Anckorn’s life in magic and wartime experiences, read Captivity, Slavery and Survival as a Far East POW: The Conjuror on the Kwai by Peter Fyans and Surviving by Magic by Monty Parkin. Also see, Captive Audiences / Captive Performers: Music and theatre as strategies for survival on the Thailand-Burma Railway 1942-1945 by Sears A. Eldredge.
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