The Rose of Singapore

by Peter Neville

  Peter Neville

  THE ROSE OF

  SINGAPORE

  Contents

  GLOSSARY

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  PART TWO

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  PART THREE

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  PART FOUR

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  To Rose

  Glossary

  All italicised words are in Bahasa Melayu except where indicated. (Ch.) Chinese, (Hi.) Hindi.

  Amah: Chinese nurse or maidservant

  Atap: roof thatch made from palm leaves

  Baju: traditional blouse worn by Malay women

  Baju kebaya: traditional clothes (specifically the blouse) of the Nyonya or Straits Chinese (Peranakan) woman

  Basha: a simple hut or temporary shelter

  Cheongsam: (Ch.) traditional Chinese long, slender dress worn by women. The dress has a high, closed collar, is buttoned on the right side of the dress, has slits up the sides and hugs the body

  Ikan bilis: small, dried fish eaten as a snack or used as a flavouring ingredient in Malay cuisine

  Kampung: village

  Kebaya: voile fitted blouse, often elaborately embroidered, open fronted and pinned together with gold or silver three-piece broaches (the word kebaya is derived from the Arabic word kaba meaning clothing and was introduced via the Portuguese language)

  Kelong: large marine fish-trap

  Kris: straight or, more commonly, wavy-bladed (usually ceremonial) dagger

  Lalang: a kind of long, coarse, weedy grass

  Parang: machete or cleaver-like knife used to cut through thick vegetation and as a weapon

  Qiu qian: (Ch.) traditional Chinese ritual in which a believer, wishing to know the answer to a question or to know what the future might hold, offers incense to the god of the temple, tells the deity his worries (or asks a question) then throws two semi-circular objects called yao bei on the floor; should each yao bei land on a different side, which is an affirmative result and is known as sheng bei (seng bui in Cantonese), he proceeds to the next stage of shaking a bamboo canister, from which one stick falls to the floor; he must then throw three consecutive sheng bei to ascertain if this numbered stick holds the right advice for him (if three consecutive sheng bei are not achieved, he must shake the canister again for a new stick); with three sheng bei he shows the numbered stick to the temple custodian, who consults an almanac to derive its meaning

  Samfoo: (Ch.) traditional Chinese clothes comprising a jacket and pants, often worn by amahs or maidservants

  Sampan: (Ch.) generic name for any small boat propelled by oars or a scull

  Sari: (Hi.) traditional Indian dress comprising a long piece of material elaborately wrapped around the body

  Sarong: skirt-like garment wrapped around the lower body, worn by men and women

  Songkok: small hat worn by Muslim Malay men

  Tabik: formerly a Malay greeting or salutation, usually to a superior (no longer in common usage)

  Trishaw: three-wheeled vehicle propelled by a man peddling either in front of or from behind the passenger seat

  Ulu: literally upriver, a slang term used by British and Australian military personnel to refer to the jungle

  Wallah: (Hi.) combined with a trade, the person who performs or is associated with that trade

  Part One

  1

  The bombers were returning. Down at the airstrip, with the drone of the approaching aircraft becoming increasingly louder, a bustle of activity ensued. Crash tenders, fire rescue units and speeding ambulances raced to their designated areas of the runway, and there they stopped, with engines running, ready and waiting for the planes to land. From the control tower at RAF Kuala Lumpur, cutting the blackness of the Malayan night, signals blinked. And from beyond the perimeter of the airfield, gunfire, aimed at the incoming planes by Communist terrorists lurking in the nearby jungle, stabbed the darkness.

  The first plane came straight in, the bright beam from her nose searchlight cleaving a passage over the roof of the jungle below. She flew over the railway embankment at the approach end of the runway before her engines were cut. The plane plummeted down and with a screech of tires hit metal, a bounce, more screeching as she hit again, the squeal of brakes, and the twin-engine bomber was running free, heading for the palm grove at the far end of that perilously short runway.

  Before that first bomber came to a standstill, a second bomber roared out of the darkness over the jungle, and came in low and slow, her searchlight flashing on only moments before crossing the railway embankment. She, too, hit metal and bounced up the runway until she ran free; to be followed in procession by three more planes, all running the gauntlet as tracers and more stabs of flame from Communist terrorists’ gunfire greeted them on that final approach.

  The sixth bomber was still out there, in the darkness, with smoke billowing from a dead engine. Blinking lights from the control tower beckoned.

  “Hello KL. Hello KL. This is Red Fox Six. Are you receiving me?” The voice flooding into the control tower was clear and calm. “Come in, KL.”

  “KL control to Red Fox Six. Receiving you. Over.”

  “Red Fox Six to KL. Starboard engine gone. Losing altitude fast. We’re coming in now. Do you read me? Over.” Except for a hint of urgency, the voice remained calm.

  “KL to Red Fox Six. Read you loud and clear. Come on in, but watch out for the embankment. We’re waiting for you. Over.”

  “Roger, KL.”

  From out of the darkness the bomber’s searchlight suddenly shot a piercing beam of brilliant light at the runway, illuminating brightly the many emergency vehicles lining the perimeter, the short strip of perforated steel plate and tarmac that was the runway, and the forever ominous railway embankment. The plane’s alignment was perfect, except she was too low.

  “Red Fox. You’re too low! Pull up! Pull up!” yelled the voice from the control tower.

  “Damn it! Not going to make it,” was the only reply that could be heard; it was as if the pilot was speaking those last few words to himself.

  Everyone looked anxiously towards the source of the approaching bright light and the loud roar of the plane’s one good engine. Suddenly, there was a vivid flash, immediately followed by a thunderous explosion as the twin-engine bomber slammed into the railway embankment and lit up the night sky at the end of the runway.

  Red Fox Six, with its crew of three, was no more. Instead, the remains lay scattered in tiny fiery fragments over the end of the airstrip, the railway embankment, and the surrounding mass of jungle beyond.

  Leading Aircraftman (LAC) Peter Saunders, dressed in cooks’ whites dirtied by working in the camp kitchen, cradled a loaded .303 Enfield rifle in the crook of his right arm, and from a listless left hand there hung a military issue, brown enamel tea mug. Emaciated and weak from his second bout of malaria since being posted to Kuala Lumpur, four and a half months ago, Peter Saunders felt as if he was floating on air. He stood alone, among worn out rubber trees, under
a canopy of green and brown in the old plantation on the hillside overlooking the airstrip. He could not see the railway embankment from where he stood, but he had seen the glaring flash and heard the terrible explosion that followed. As if in a trance he stared at the jumping ghost-like shadows among the trees, an eerie show created by the fiery inferno that now engulfed the scattered remains of the bomber. And above the trees, where the plane had gone down, a red and white glow flickered illuminating the night sky over the jungle. LAC Peter Saunders was just too sick to care.

  Immediately following the explosion, the night noises were silenced in the jungle-overgrown rubber plantation, but only for a brief few moments. Soon, around him, life resumed again, the screams and shrieks of frightened monkeys in the tree tops, squeaks and squeals from smaller animals, the yelping of camp dogs—all mongrels fed and befriended by lonely RAF personnel—the buzz and twitter of ten billion insects and the throaty bellow of bullfrogs. And, of course, there was the ceaseless high-pitched whine from cicadas and the myriad mosquitoes. LAC Peter Saunders heard only the mosquitoes. These he dreaded, for in such a short time they had brought him debilitating ill health. Sweeping a sweaty arm across his perspiration-drenched face, and smearing his glasses as he did so, he turned and walked dejectedly on. With the flickering glow over the railway embankment behind him, he slowly made his way along the half-mile muddy path which separated the cookhouse from the basha, a mud-floor hut constructed of lalang grass and roughly hewn coconut trees in which the RAF catering section personnel lived. The path was lit in places by an occasional light bulb strung up on a rubber tree. These lonesome bulbs created an aura of eerie insect-filled light which dimly illuminated, amid the silver and grey greenery, other huts, shadowy, with some in complete darkness. Originally built to house Malayan rubber tappers, and later, British and Australian prisoners of war during the Japanese occupation, these huts, in primitive and dilapidated condition, now housed British servicemen of the Royal Air Force who were stationed at RAF Kuala Lumpur.

  A new RAF station was on the planning board, a modern camp with a much longer airstrip, but that did not help LAC Peter Saunders; he hated RAF Kuala Lumpur. To him the camp had meant only hard and hot work in the primitive kitchen, and ill health; sickness from malaria, from ringworm, skin diseases, foot rot—he could not remember ever feeling so sick in his whole nineteen years of life.

  He didn’t fear the Communist terrorists who might be lurking nearby as he resumed his walk along the muddy path. He had become used to their presence, for they were everywhere, not only in the jungle, but also in the villages, and even going about their business unnoticed in Kuala Lumpur, the capital itself. If they were out to get him, he knew they would. Anyway, he felt just too sick, too weak and too dispirited to care.

  Eventually he arrived at the cooks’ basha at the left of the path, on a hillside, and almost hidden in the dense undergrowth. Like the kitchen, it was a mud-floored, bug-infested, part lalang grass and part wood hut with four-foot-square openings on one side, which served as glassless windows. There was no mosquito mesh covering these openings, so bugs, winged and wingless made their entry. However, unlike the kitchen, the basha did have a galvanized roof, rusted and with holes in places which let in the rain but it was, at least, rat free.

  The crude wooden door was ajar, so Peter pushed it open to enter into another world, where men slept fitfully, sweating, naked and unashamed, some beneath mosquito nets, others with their net thrown aside, but all with their loaded rifles and Sten guns, cold mistresses, in bed beside them.

  Needing to urinate, Peter went out the back door of the shack, but did not go as far as the screened in ‘desert lily’, a two-inch pipe about the height of a man’s crotch, with a funnel in the top in which one was expected to pee. There would be too many mosquitoes buzzing around the funnel waiting eagerly to bite any exposed dangling appendage. Nor did he visit the primitive latrine twenty or more paces into the undergrowth. Why bother? The latrine was simply a deep, drilled-out hole in the ground covered by a wooden box with a nine-inch-diameter hole cut in its top, placed invitingly over the hole for patrons to sit on when doing number two. The thunderbox, as it was called, was hidden from view on three sides by chest-high atap, the Malay word for dried palm fronds. During the day there were always millions of mosquitoes buzzing around the thunderbox waiting to bite someone’s bare ass, but at night trillions of the little bloodsuckers awaited some poor wretch to come and drop his pants. And worse, on rainy nights black spitting cobras often visited that immediate area searching for frogs. Peter hated frequenting that smelly place and did so only during the daytime and out of sheer necessity. This night he peed up against an old rubber tree growing not too far from the basha’s doorway. Relieved, he returned to the basha, undressed, and then crawled unsteadily into bed to lie alongside his cold, uncaring rifle.

  A party of about eight headhunting Dyak tribesmen, brought in from Borneo by the British government, was returning to the camp when Peter Saunders passed the guardroom on his way to the sick-quarters just before nine the following morning. Clad only in filthy khaki shorts, the short brown men carried no guns, just long knives called parangs, and their trophies of that night’s hunt: the heads and hands of Communist terrorists waltzing grotesquely from grass belts worn around their waists. Peter Saunders felt sickened by the sight. But it had to be. The hands would be fingerprinted and the heads photographed for identification purposes. The Dyaks grinned at Peter and shook their bodies causing the heads and hands to do a grim dance to their movement. A wave of nausea swept over Peter, but he checked himself from throwing up and turned away from the gruesome spectacle.

  He hurried on, towards the overgrown hillside where the sick-quarters, a cluster of three thatch-roofed shacks, was perched. The air was hot and oppressive, but there would be no rain until the afternoon; at RAF Kuala Lumper it rained almost every afternoon. Peter’s khaki drill uniform was already sticking with perspiration to his body when he eventually arrived at the doorway leading into the sick-quarters waiting room. There he was greeted by a very young, very white medical orderly who had obviously only recently stepped off the boat from England. A ‘moon-man’ without a doubt, thought Peter. Bum fluff showed on a face that had never seen a razor and the young airmen had acne too.

  “LAC Saunders,” was all Peter said.

  “Ah, yes. The medical officer is expecting you. I’ll let him know you are here. Please take a seat,” said the medical orderly, smiling in a friendly manner and speaking in precise English. There was none of this Malay and Chinese jive thrown in, which one was apt to do after a few months of being stationed in Malaya.

  “Thank you,” said Peter, and he sat down on a well-worn wicker chair, feeling the seat of his pants and the back of his jacket sticking coldly to his clammy body. The medical orderly returned almost immediately, so Peter stood up and was politely ushered into the medical officer’s domain, a whitewashed room, surprisingly clean, tidy and efficient looking. Considering that it was difficult, nay impossible, to make any of the dirty old shacks at RAF Kuala Lumpur appear clean, tidy and efficient, Peter Saunders was always impressed by the place; as a patient he had certainly seen it often enough. The only difference was that now there was a new medical officer. The one he had come to know so well had become tour ex (tour expired) and had returned to the UK.

  “Good morning, Saunders,” greeted the young flight lieutenant, looking up from where he was seated at a desk.

  Peter noted that the man’s skin was just as lily white as that of the orderly. Another ‘moon-man’, he decided. He replied, “Good morning, sir.”

  The medical officer (MO) beckoned the sickly and emaciated airman standing before him to take a seat in front of the desk, and when Peter was seated he asked in a kindly voice, “How old are you, Saunders?”

  “Nineteen, sir,” Peter replied.

  “Ah, yes. I have it here. You’re not a national serviceman I see. You’re in for five years; hopefully a career man
.”

  Peter did not answer him but instead watched silently as the MO studied the file he held. Finally the MO looked up and said, “So you’re the chap with the malaria problem, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “A bit shaky, sir.”

  The MO, studying the file again, said, “Hmm! Quite impressive!” Then, “Quite impressive!”

  “What is, sir?”

  “Your file. You seem to have had everything in the book during your stay at KL.”

  “I have been sick an awful lot,” acknowledged Peter.

  “Yes,” said the medical officer.

  Peter was not sure what that ‘yes’ meant, so he remained silent.

  A minute or two passed before the MO said, “I see that you broke a few records while at RAF Kai Tak, Hong Kong.”

  “Sir?”

  “Well, there’s a notation here about you. Hmm. Let’s see now. Yes, almost a year ago, and written by the medical officer at Kai Tak, stating that you were the youngest, shortest and lightest airman at that time in the whole Far Eastern Command. That was in mid-fifty-one. It appears that, probably out of curiosity the MO at Kai Tak took the trouble to check out these statistics. Where you aware of his findings?”

  “Yes, sir. He called me to the sick quarters one day and told me.”

  “Yes.” Again silence for a minute or more before the MO continued, “At that time your weight was seven stone, or ninety-eight pounds. But I note that just one week ago you weighed in at just over six and a quarter stone. We can’t have that, Saunders. If you keep this up, soon you’ll be nothing more than skin and bone, a skeleton on my hands.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m aware of that,” said Peter.

  The MO removed his horn-rimmed spectacles and wiped perspiration from them with a clean, very white handkerchief. “Bloody hot, isn’t it?” he said.

  Peter acknowledged that fact with a simple, “Yes, sir.”

  Replacing his spectacles and again looking at the file on his desk, the MO suddenly said, “On medical grounds I’m sending you down to Changi in Singapore, where you can take a rest and recuperate. I’m giving you two weeks sick leave before you report for duty there.” Still studying the file, he paused for a few moments before looking up and saying, “I’ve managed to secure you a posting at Changi. Until you are tour ex, Changi will be your permanent posting.”