Malayan Spymaster

by Boris Hembry

  During the trip Lamb and I had discussed our plans for when we reached Djambi. So far as we were concerned we were due to make for the Indragiri River, where we would join Frank Vanrenen and Ronald Graham or to take part in the rescue operations from Johore. The others decided that they would make for Padang, the main port on the north west coast of Sumatra, on the Indian Ocean, from where they hoped to be picked up by the Royal Navy.

  We had not been tied up for long and everyone disembarked when the siren sounded and at least 20 Jap bombers appeared overhead. Our little ship received several direct hits and disintegrated before our eyes. What was left burned furiously. Everything belonging to those who were headed for Padang had been unloaded, but the few possessions that Lamb and I had disappeared up in smoke. I now had nothing in the world except what I stood up in, but having been in a similar predicament before I was not unduly worried. Fate seemed determined that I should not join my planter friends.

  Lamb and I then decided that we would also make for Padang, although I must admit to further doubts about Goodfellow and his sense of responsibility to those under his command when I saw him rushing around attempting to get a car for himself, leaving the rest of us to travel by commandeered lorry. In the event none was available so the poor fellow had to slum it with us.

  By now it had become apparent that of the remnants of 101 STS gathered on the quayside at Djambi probably only Lamb and myself held genuine military ranks and that the others were civilians with army insignia and honorific (some would say bogus) ranks, a state of affairs I was to find throughout my time in clandestine forces.

  I volunteered to drive, certain that I had more experience than anyone else, and not relishing being bumped about in the back. Goodfellow, of course, sat next to me. The drive across Sumatra was uneventful. The countryside was beautiful, less developed even than Malaya. We stayed the first night at a very pleasant little town in the foothills of the mountain range that runs down the western side of the island. It had a clean and comfortable government rest house, so we were able to enjoy hot baths and clean bed linen and good food. The town post office was still functioning so I sent a cable to Jean at the Bank of New South Wales in Perth. She eventually received it, forwarded to Melbourne, some two and a half months later, and was greatly relieved to hear from me for the first time since early December. But, of course, by that time Sumatra had also fallen, so she had to accept that by then I was most probably a POW. The mountains exceed 12,000 feet in places, covered in jungle, and the views were breathtaking. The utter peace, except for our own engine noise, made the war seem very far away. I do not remember seeing any other traffic on the road.

  We reached Padang late the next afternoon and found a well-established transit camp, with a large contingent of Europeans from Malaya in occupation, mainly senior government people, police officers, PWD and other administrators, most a lot better fed, clothed and equipped than Lamb and me, and obviously having been in residence for quite some time. We reported to the camp commandant and were allotted accommodation.

  On checking something in Spencer Chapman’s The Jungle is Neutral I found the following passage: ‘The last of the organisation to leave Malaya was Major Basil Goodfellow who got out of Singapore and made his way to Sumatra by the escape route.’ No mention of Lamb and myself, yet we had done practically everything except steer the blasted ship! I am not blaming Freddy, because he could only have written of what he had been told by Goodfellow or someone else in SOE.

  We spent the first two days at Padang relaxing as best we could, and I drew some pay. On the third day a notice appeared to the effect that a destroyer was expected shortly and all wishing to take their chances should be on the quayside ready for immediate embarkation and departure. All our party duly congregated, with the exception of Basil Goodfellow who, having evidently received prior information – which I do not remember him passing on – would remain until the morrow when there was a cruiser expected. I met him again briefly in Calcutta in late 1944. I was unaware at the time that he had been contacted prior to my recruitment into ISLD and had reported unfavourably on me, suggesting that I should be returned to regimental soldiering as being unsuitable for clandestine forces – this after I had twice been mentioned in despatches for my efforts with V Force in Burma.

  The destroyer HMS Encounter came alongside that evening, embarked all wishing to be taken off, and sailed within the hour. The officers were invited into the wardroom for drinks and a meal, but as there was insufficient cabin space the rescued had to find odd corners on deck to sleep. I had grabbed Goodfellow’s Dunlopillo mattress when he had discarded it on the quayside at Djambi so was quite comfortable on a quiet part of the upper deck, until we were struck by a tropical rain storm. Alongside me was a naval rating sheltering under a large groundsheet, so I suggested that he shared my mattress while I shared his groundsheet. We were comfortable and dry, but the thunder and lightning and the sound of the torrential rain on the deck made sleep impossible, so we talked. He was a ‘writer’ on the Prince of Wales and was one of the few who had been rescued when it was sunk. He had been landed in Singapore from where he had escaped to Sumatra, and now had been rescued again. He said that he had been sunk in the Mediterranean, in the Atlantic and now in the Pacific (actually, it was the South China Sea, but I did not wish to spoil his story) and promised that as long as I was with him I would be safe. Alas, he was to be sunk again when the Encounter went to the bottom less than a week later. I have often wondered whether he survived yet again.

  After sailing we were informed that we were headed for Tanjong Priok, the port for Batavia. On arrival, at about noon the next day, we were met by Colonel Killeray, the head of the SOE Oriental Mission, who had laid on a lorry to take us and our kit (in my case just my Bren gun, toothbrush, razor and Dunlopillo mattress) to the Des Indes Hotel in Batavia. This was luxury indeed. The Des Indes was on par with the Raffles in Singapore and the Runnymede in Penang. I was beginning to learn that those in SOE looked after themselves well. After three months of active service varying from the bearable to the indescribable, the few days I was to spend here, at His Majesty’s expense, were to be enjoyed to the full.

  One of the first people I met on arriving at the Des Indes was Billie Graham, Ronald’s wife. I was able to bring her up to date about Ronald’s activities since early January until I had parted company with him and Frank in Singapore a week or so earlier. I dined with Billie on most evenings, and before I left she gave me a letter addressed to Ronald as she felt that I could well meet up with him again before she did. I kept this in my wallet until I was able to return it to her in London in 1944, although unaware then of his fate.

  I made enquiries about Jean and John, but learned very little other than that they had got off to Australia. I also heard that Pat Martine and her daughters had passed through.

  I became quite friendly with Ian Morrison, The Times’s war correspondent who was to feature in Han Suyin’s autobiographical novel A Many Splendoured Thing, and who was to be killed during the Korean War; also with Jim Gavin and quite a few of the 101 STS staff from Singapore, all fellow residents in the hotel. All the while the Japanese were constantly bombing Tanjong Priok and occasionally Batavia, but we were getting used to it by now, so life went on with daily conferences with Killeray and other senior SOE staff, at which nothing much seemed to be resolved, until one day we were offered the option of getting to Australia, presumably as part of an SOE organisation there, or making our way to Chungking to instruct the Kuomintang Chinese in guerrilla warfare. I thought when I heard this latter suggestion that it was strange that it had not occurred to the powers-that-be that the Chinese had been indulging in guerrilla warfare against the Japs for at least the previous five years, and they could teach us a great deal. My sojourn behind the enemy lines did not involve guerrilla warfare, but I could at least recognise a Jap if I saw one, which was more than could be said for the majority of the other SOE ‘specialists’. Most, including Lamb, opted for A
ustralia and left that night, leaving only three of us to attempt the trip to China – although how we were to get there was not disclosed. I must admit I was sorely tempted by Australia, knowing Jean and John would be there, but pride, in retrospect misplaced, prevailed. However, it must be said that many of those who did go subsequently distinguished themselves.

  The war news was entirely depressing. The Battle of the Java Sea was fought in the final days of February and many fine British and Dutch ships were sunk. The enemy landed on Java at three main beachheads, the nearest to Batavia some 25 miles to the south. Our situation was now critical, and we had to get away immediately. We could no longer rely on the Royal Navy as their ships were mostly on the bottom. The Encounter, together with the cruiser Exeter of River Plate fame, had been discovered by a very much more powerful Japanese fleet in the Sunda Strait, and sunk by overwhelming gunfire.

  Realising that we had been deserted by SOE, in the company of a few equally desperate men I wandered around the dockside at Tanjong Priok looking for a ship capable of making the journey to Ceylon or Australia. There were several steamers moored alongside, some obviously semi-derelict, others very damaged from bombing or shellfire, and yet others seemingly in sound condition but, on closer inspection, discovered to be out of coal or holed below the water line. Shortly after midday we met two Straits Steamship officers who said that they had found a ship, abandoned supposedly as unseaworthy but which, from their rapid survey, seemed capable of getting to Ceylon. Furthermore, it had sufficient coal, water and victuals aboard. They could raise a few more naval officers, but would we like to volunteer as stokers and deck hands? Would we! By now I considered myself a fully fledged member of the National Union of Stokers. It was agreed that we would assemble on board at six that evening, which would give us time to collect as many stragglers as we could find who were prepared to risk a night dash through the Sunda Strait – it would be suicidal to attempt to sail out of Tanjong Priok in daylight. Meanwhile we would have to risk the ship being destroyed at the quayside.

  We hurried back to the Des Indes, gathered about two dozen other escapees from Malaya, and with our few possessions returned to the docks and embarked. The officers were waiting and quickly allotted cabins and duties. The few women volunteered for the galley and the elderly men were appointed deck hands, leaving the young, more able-bodied as stokers and engine room crew. I was also master gunner, my Bren gun being the only weapon we possessed.

  Under my direction we stokers soon got up a good head of steam, and at dusk we slipped out of the harbour to sea. The date was 1 March. The Captain informed us that the only route offering any chance of success was via the Sunda Strait which, with luck, we could be through and out into the Indian Ocean before daylight. We would then steam due west, as far from the normal sea lanes to Ceylon as possible and out of range of shore-based aircraft, before heading for Colombo. We were all well aware that the Japanese navy was in strength in the Sunda Strait. In fact it later transpired that a large contingent of their warships was actually steaming eastwards through the strait at the same time as we were heading westwards, but mercifully the weather was poor so we were not spotted.

  We kept a steady westerly course for five days before turning towards Ceylon, all the time gaining confidence that we had avoided the enemy. We would not have been so complacent had we known that a substantial part of the Imperial Japanese Navy battle fleet was between us and our goal. Admiral Sir James Somerville had lost the cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall and the aircraft carrier Hermes to the enemy. At the same time Jap carrier-based aircraft had bombed Colombo and Trincomalee, and their submarines had taken an enormous toll of our merchant shipping. The Japanese then withdrew into the Bay of Bengal, leaving their submarines to continue with the destruction.

  We zigzagged our way northwards, thankful at the dawn of each day that we had been undetected, carried out our normal watches, and, off-watch, did our best to sleep. I guarded my Dunlopillo mattress almost as fiercely as my Bren gun. The engine room was incredibly hot; I recalled the lascar stokers on the Achilles in the Red Sea, back in 1930. Coming up on deck after a four-hour shift was bliss. Rations were adequate and there was plenty of drinking water, but I do not remember any alcohol. Nor do I remember any unpleasantness between anyone on board. Everyone, including the galley staff and stokers, was required to do their turn at plane spotting duty. One day I spent some time watching four enormous sharks, swimming lazily in our wake, diving and surfacing like dolphins. I remembered being told many years previously that sharks always followed doomed ships, but kept that theory to myself.

  At daybreak on 8 March the Captain told us that he expected to reach Colombo at sunset. We all gave a hooray at this good news. At about three in the afternoon the bow lookout reported sighting a periscope. Immediate alarm and despondency. We had visions of being so near yet so far. We knew that it could only be Japanese. The periscope circled us twice before submerging. Anxious minutes were spent waiting for the torpedo to strike. All eyes were glued to the ocean surface to spot its course so I could attempt to destroy it with my Bren gun. We zigzagged more frequently. After about 10 minutes it reappeared, circled us again, and disappeared. That was the last we saw of it. The most likely explanation, we decided when we had reached Colombo and had heard the latest war news, was that the submarine had used all its torpedoes to sink shipping in the area, had spotted our wireless aerials and, realising that we were only a short flying time from Ceylon, would have reckoned on us radioing for help. The Jap submarine commander was not to know that we did not possess a radio. For the same reason he probably decided against surfacing to shell us. We could think of no other explanation. That very afternoon several merchantmen had been sunk by enemy submarines in the approaches to Colombo.

  Soon after this excitement we saw the outline of Ceylon and just before sunset we reached Colombo roads and dropped anchor. The whole motley crew then gave three cheers for the Captain. ‘Don’t thank me. Thank God,’ was his somewhat over-dramatic reply. We were not permitted to go ashore until the following morning, which we all found particularly irksome, but at least someone sent several bottles of whisky aboard, so we had an enjoyable party and I lay down on my Dunlopillo not entirely sober.

  The next morning, before being allowed ashore, we were interviewed by an officer in naval intelligence. The first thing I did on landing was to make for the post office to send a cable to Jean at the Bank of New South Wales in Perth. This said, ‘Still in the running. Suggest you make for England. All my love.’ I thought that, if she could get there, England would be safer than anywhere in the Pacific area, in spite of the bombing and the food shortages. The whole of South East Asia had fallen, including the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines; Australia looked ripe for the picking, as did India. And if Australia fell, as seemed a distinct possibility at the time, even New Zealand looked vulnerable. I do not know why I did not think of my birthplace South Africa, where I had many cousins. Or Canada. But I knew that if she could not be with me Jean would prefer to be with her own family, and, with typical British arrogance, I did not believe that England would be conquered.

  From December 1941 to October 1942 must have been the bleakest months of the whole war. Singapore and Malaya had fallen, the enemy was sweeping through Burma to the very gates of India, Ceylon had been raided, the British Far Eastern fleet almost wiped out and the remnants withdrawn across the Indian Ocean to Mombasa, the Axis had driven the Eighth Army back to El Alamein in Egypt and now possessed the whole of North Africa, the Germans were pushing down through the Balkans to Greece to threaten our oil supplies in Persia and Iraq, and the Battle of the Atlantic against the U-boats seemed to be going Germany’s way, too. The only bright spot was that the Americans were now in the war. And yet I saw no despondency or alarm in the faces of the British, civilians or military. It really never occurred to anyone that we would lose.

  I reported to army GHQ in Colombo where I was interviewed at length about my Malayan acti
vities, then issued with money and a rail pass to Calcutta, and instructed to leave Colombo that night. And, to my chagrin, I was relieved of my Bren gun. I spent the morning shopping for clothes and toiletries. In those days officers had to purchase every bit of military clothing and personal kit. A second lieutenant’s pay was £274 per annum, and, at one time when she was an ambulance driver in London, Jean was earning more than me.

  We said our farewells to the civilians and the naval officers, and the soldiers in our party caught the night mail to Talaimanar (the rail head at the north of Ceylon), from where we caught the ferry to Rameswaram on the Indian mainland. There we entrained again and slowly wended our way northwards via Madras to Calcutta. I was fascinated to see stations bearing names famous from the time of Clive such as Pondicherry, Madras, Cuttack and Nagapattam. After Malaya, the poverty of India was heartrending. In fact, in all my travels, I have never seen such human degradation as to be found around Howrah, in Calcutta. The journey took three days. The carriage was hot and dirty, meals were taken in station restaurants when the train stopped, usually for about half an hour, for water and coal. Each compartment had a shower and lavatory, and the seats folded down as bunks. Even in 1942 it was quite an adventure to go from Colombo to Calcutta by train.

  When we finally arrived at Howrah Station, Calcutta, the RTO (railway transport officer) sent us to the Great Eastern Hotel on Chowringhee, now an officers’ transit hotel. Not quite the Des Indes, but then, of course, I was no longer with SOE.