The Forgotten Highlander (7 page)

I stopped in my tracks, stunned. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Who are you talking to?’

‘You. Who else?’ one of them sneered.

Bristling with rage I replied, ‘Why do you think I’m here? I didn’t want to come to Singapore but we’re here to defend you and there’s no way I’m getting off the pavement for you or anyone else.’

Greatly affronted they threatened to report me to my commanding officer and stormed off pompously. I stood there shaking my fist at them. ‘You do that! But I’m not moving off this sidewalk!’

I was still cursing them as they disappeared from view. If this was how they treated us, goodness knows what they meted out to the native rubber-tappers. It was a miracle that there was not more trouble, I thought, as I marched to the cinema. I had never been treated like that before and it was disgusting to witness these English and Scottish colonials and their diabolically superior attitude to all and sundry. I swore never to become like them and arrived at the cinema only to discover that the screening had been cancelled – which did nothing for my mood.

A few weeks later I received an unexpected invitation to lunch from a chap called Ian, who was engaged to my cousin Cathie Kynoch. He was a fellow Aberdonian – a very large proportion of the colonials were Scottish – and managed a rubber plantation in the Singapore area. I was pleased to have been remembered and excited at the prospect of meeting people outside the stultifying confines of the military. Naturally I dressed immaculately in Army ‘whites’, my formal attire, and made my way to the exclusive club in the middle of Singapore City. I clutched my invitation to a club usually out of bounds to the likes of me and as I approached suddenly felt extremely poor. The club was housed in a huge white building that had been converted from a former mansion house. I walked up the palm-lined pavement and, finally plucking up the courage, entered the teak-panelled drinking club popular with expat traders, rubber planters and their guests. As I went in I felt the welcoming cool of the air-conditioning and the swish-swish of the ceiling fans. The louvred blinds kept out the heat of the sun and white-jacketed bar tenders were shaking cocktails. It was another, well-heeled world. I could sense all the men in the room sizing me up, the only non-civilian there, and felt extremely uncomfortable under their disdainful stares. I walked up to the long bar beside the vacant snooker table and under the swooping of the fans took my bearings. The all-male clientele were standing, drinking brandy and gin slings in equally copious measures and smoking cigars and expensive filtered cigarettes. Shouting at the Chinese waiters and making derogatory comments, they were much the same arrogant characters I had seen abusing the rickshaw drivers in the streets of Singapore.

I was wondering whether to turn around and leave when a large man with a bloated face and stomach came forward and introduced himself as Ian, my cousin Cathie’s fiancé.

To my horror the man was one of the two planters who had tried to chuck me off the sidewalk. If he recognised me, he concealed it well and offered a sweaty palm. I shook his hand automatically. In a loud and artificially acquired pukka accent, he asked, ‘What’ll you be having to drink, good fellow?’

‘Iced lemonade,’ I replied, noticing the smell of alcohol on his breath and the red lines that webbed his eyes.

‘What? Iced lemonade?’ he roared, as if I had just asked for Hitler’s barber.

‘Yes, just iced lemonade, thank you.’

He tossed his head back laughing, shouted to a waiter to fix my drink, and went back to his pals, who were in stitches. A few of his drinking buddies came over and attempted some forced small talk. Ian came back over and said, ‘So you’re
just
a private, then?’ in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.

My lemonade arrived and despite not being particularly sour, it certainly went over that way. I downed it rather quickly, made my excuses and left. On the bus journey back to barracks I kicked myself for not having asked Ian if he had yet volunteered for the Malay Volunteer Force. He would be roped in eventually and I doubted that he would fare very well.

When I got back to the barracks I immediately sat down and wrote a letter to my cousin: ‘Dearest Cathie, I had never met your fiancé before I came to Singapore, but now that I have, I urge you in the strongest manner possible not to marry him. He is no good for you. He will ruin your life.’

I will never know whether it was my letter that changed her mind but I was delighted when she called off the engagement soon after.

During this period the news coming from home was worrying. Dunkirk, especially among the Highland regiments, was viewed as an unmitigated disaster. Churchill had ordered the 51st Highland Division to undertake a rearguard action to allow the beaches to be cleared of allied soldiers. Three hundred thousand men got off the beaches but forty-one thousand, including virtually the entire Scottish army in Europe, had been killed or captured at St Valery. The Black Watch, the Seaforth Highlanders, the Cameronians, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and two battalions of our own Gordon Highlanders were all either wiped out or marched into Germany as captives. It was a terrible thought. But in Singapore it was business as usual – still very much a ‘phoney war’. We never even had a blackout.

Somehow even the good news that came from home in late summer, when the RAF and our allies got the upper hand in the Battle of Britain, had a downside for us. The home islands were under attack and planes were needed to defend Britain. But where did that leave Singapore? There were mutterings in the barracks that we could be the ‘next Dunkirk’, a sitting duck without adequate air cover. Singapore was known as the ‘Naked Isle’ and that is exactly how it felt without a sizeable RAF contingent.

When I wasn’t taking part in athletics or exploring Singapore on the cheap, I threw myself into the training. The various companies of 112 men alternated guard duties at the barracks with stints at the governor’s house across the causeway on the Malaya Peninsula in Johore, and Blakang Mati – the small island at the foot of Singapore where the mighty British guns pointed out to sea. Each guard posting was for one week. The most sought-after duty was guarding the governor’s house and only the best men got selected. I did more than one stint at his house and I welcomed it like a vacation. It was a great number. The governor had a beautiful, lush nine-hole golf course as smooth as a billiard table, which we were allowed to play in the evenings, and the pace of life was even slower and more relaxed. At night, like something out of a Hollywood movie, huge chrome-plated limousines would pull up at the house and glamorous diamond-clad ladies in long, flowing dresses would step out and set our hearts aflutter, their escorts resplendent in white bow-tied evening wear and full regimental dress. In this idyllic existence, as the strains of the latest dance numbers drifted across the impeccable lawns, it seemed unthinkable to the governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, and his entourage that it might all come to a sudden and dramatic end.

Once in a while the battalion was ordered up-country to Port Dickson for jungle warfare training. On my first manoeuvre I walked straight into a tree that was home to a colony of red ants. Hordes of inch-long stingers swarmed all over me and were completely crazed at my sudden interference with their natural habitat. They were biting like mad all over my body, especially around my head and face. I cried out in pain and danced around like a mad man. I was in such a state that other men rushed to get the ants off me. I was in pretty bad shape and was taken off to hospital at Port Dickson where I was given antihistamine and took days to recover.

Aside from the armies of angry ants I enjoyed jungle manoeuvres. It was a welcome change from the humdrum existence of camp life. It was good too to put your training into action, even if I found the premise and the practice somewhat childish. We were supposed to attack a certain target and the officers would send us on the most ridiculous routes. Their tactics seemed antiquated and obvious, and would have us weaving through the jungle – the enemy would have seen us coming from miles away. The officers were completely out of their depth and just playing at soldiers. They had no jungle warfare expert on hand to assist them. They would have us setting off on manoeuvres and tell us to report back to a certain point by 3 p.m. – but you would never do that if you were fighting an enemy, you wouldn’t stop until you reached your objective. We were short of supplies and fuel, which meant that exercises sometimes had to be curtailed. There were times when it was quite farcical, a cross between
Dad’s Army
and
It Ain’t Half Hot Mum
. I kept my mouth shut of course.

Mail from home was slow and heavily censored but the local newspaper, the
Singapore Times
, kept us up to date with how the war in Europe was progressing. Almost daily it featured a headline announcing, ‘Singapore Impregnable’, and ran lengthy articles on ‘Fortress Singapore’. But the more our impregnability was trumpeted, the more I began to doubt it.

The regular soldiers never dreamed that there would be a war in the East. I used to shudder when I thought about it because I knew it would be a calamity. Our officers were in a situation beyond their understanding and our training lacked both skill and urgency. We had no tanks because in its wisdom High Command believed that they were not suited to the terrain. This was all too laboured, too tired, with too much hanging about wondering what was to be happening next. You cannot afford to do that when you are fighting someone.

After fifteen months at Selarang I was taking part in weapons training when I was summoned to the orderly room. Scratching my head I could not begin to imagine what I had done wrong. I arrived at the office and the lieutenant in charge quickly put me out of my misery. He said that I had ten minutes to pack up all my gear and report to the guardroom. I was being given a compulsory transfer to the Royal Army Service Corp, specifically the garrison adjutant’s office at Fort Canning, overlooking the city of Singapore. Fort Canning was the headquarters of the general staff and the Royal Corps of Signals. I was to take over from Lance Corporal Mackie, who was being returned to the regiment. Someone at the company must have looked at my CV and seen that I had office experience from civvy street.

A platoon truck was ready and waiting when I reached the guardroom and I was soon on the way to my new home at Fort Canning. I had only vaguely heard of it before and I didn’t know where it was. As the truck rumbled back in the direction of Singapore City, I was filled with excitement as well as apprehension and not too sad to leave Selarang. I saw the move as something of a promotion, even if there had been no mention of my gaining a corporal’s stripe or more money.

After crossing the island and heading up the hill that led to the headquarters we arrived at Fort Canning, occupying a commanding position on what was the original site of Sir Stamford Raffles’s first mansion. A complex warren of tunnels and underground bunkers, the so-called ‘Battlebox’ of Britain’s South-East Asia command, was largely situated underneath the reservoir that provided Singapore City with much of its water supply. It had all been constructed during the 1920s when Singapore was transformed into a fortress complex to counter growing Japanese ambitions that even then were perceived as a threat.

We reported to the guardroom where the garrison sergeant major came down and met me. He was a remarkable sight and did not instil a great deal of confidence to say the least. He reeked of drink and, bent over like a hunchback, suffered from some kind of degenerative deterioration of the spine. To cap it all he wore rimless glasses and sported a huge white ten-gallon cowboy hat. This bizarre spectacle left me speechless. I certainly would never have guessed he was a sergeant major, if it were not for his insignia. He grumbled a welcome and sent for someone else to take me to my sleeping quarters, a hut by the reservoir. A ramshackle affair standing away on its own, the cabin was incredibly cramped, having barely enough room for me to stand with my kit bag, but it was my own space with its own key. After living alongside other men for so long it was such a welcome change.

I dumped my stuff and was taken to the office, where the garrison sergeant major tried to explain what my role would be but was incredibly vague. I wasn’t completely sure he knew what I was to do either. He mentioned something about dealing with ‘general correspondence’ and typing up Part 1 and Part 2 orders that came from HQ.

My official title was Garrison Adjutant’s Clerk and apart from Garrison Adjutant Fowler in the office the only other worker there was a Tamil. I could not understand why the Army would employ a Tamil to do the payroll of the garrison when there were people like myself able to do the job. He had access to our strength and manning levels. He spoke very good English but we never got on. He had worked in the office for several years and I was extremely suspicious of him. As concern over Japanese agents and their fifth column activity grew, I made my suspicions known but was told to forget about it. Typically I was told he was ‘OK’ and ‘had been with us for years’.

I had a heavy workload and things were made more difficult by the garrison adjutant and the garrison sergeant major, who were both unreliable and often completely absent from their posts. Frankly they were a couple of imperious boozers. Adjutant Fowler would disappear around lunchtime and I would be lucky if I saw him back again. If he did come back in, he was usually drunk and incapable. He would shut himself in his office, lock the door and fall asleep. This became an embarrassment on many occasions when HQ telephoned for one or the other to go across to the underground headquarters – the labyrinth of corridors and offices, operations rooms and corps of signals under the reservoir.

On my first day I sat down to type at my desk below the only window in the office. The first piece of paper I had to deal with stopped me in my tracks. By a strange coincidence I saw my own name written at the top. I had to type up the official papers of my own promotion: to acting unpaid lance corporal. The next day I dealt with another item of personal interest: my company transfer and promotion to paid corporal, which took effect from that date. It was a significant pay rise and my monetary woes were suddenly resolved.