大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Three Counties Action for Mark Barker, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

BACK WITH THE ARMY - AND SNAKES

By now my unit was in a place called Sungei Patani. They were hoping that by the time we arrived there all the huts would be completed. But the day came when I was taken and put on a train and was met at the other end with a truck and taken to the camp - and there it was, but it wasn't quite complete. A few huts had been built, but for a couple of weeks we had to sleep on the ground in the open, which was not very pleasant.

Many of the old rubber trees had been uprooted to make space, and they'd left great big holes and roots. In the evening, when it began to get dusk, you could see lots of snakes coming out of the holes and disappearing into the dark. It was scary. You used to wonder at night, when you lay down, whether you were going to wake up with a couple of them in bed with you under your blankets. Fortunately it didn't happen.

Eventually the camp was finished. I liked the way they used to build the huts, all open at the front, the whole length of it. The ends and the back were closed in - and the roof of course. The roofs were made of hattab, actually palm leaves. It was waterproof - even the monsoon couldn't get through. It shed the water - quite nice! Usual facilities - showers et cetera.

Time off we went to Penang, an island just off the coast. Very nice place there. First thing we did was go for a row. We had a different climate there, really temperate. Lovely after the heat! The town was a busy, bustling place. Most of the shopkeepers were Chinese. Very industrious people!
By now I was fit enough to do my job as dispatch rider again. Every morning for two weeks I'd get up early, have early breakfast, then take lots of letters - all kinds of stuff - up to the border with Thailand... or Siam. They changed it didn't they?... Don't know why they did it.

Quite interesting. Set off in the morning, get there and deliver your mail and stuff, have your lunch, pick up all the stuff to go back - and back you'd go again.
Every morning on that journey you'd see some place with lots of dead snakes, where the night time traffic had run over them. All kinds. Our M.O. officer was very keen on collecting snakes. If he could find some he hadn't already got he was very pleased. A lot of them were poisonous - you had to be careful - very poisonous!

One day, returning, I saw in a field adjoining the road a row of about thirty people, some Indian, some Chinese, some Tamils. I stopped to get a better look, and what they had was a HUGE python. Must have been at least 25 feet long. Chap at one end had a sack over the head of the snake. Even then it was so powerful it was waving about, but they kept control of it. I suppose it was worth a fortune for the skin. They grow to a huge size!

DECEMBER 1941 - JAPANESE ATTACK PEARL HARBOUR AND INVADE MALAYA

That went on till a couple of days before my birthday in December 1941. A parcel from home arrived for me. It had all kinds of things in it, tins of jam, all sorts of things. Very welcome!

Unfortunately, within two days of it arriving the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, and that put the cat among the pigeons! So, for the next two days we were trying to eat up all the cake, instead of spreading it out a little bit.

And then it was all action! You couldn鈥檛 carry very much, so every thing had to be put in your kit-bag and we were told it was going to be sent down to Singapore and back to England. But we knew better. As soon as you would leave the camp the natives would be in there, going through everything. They might as well make use of it as have it go to waste. We knew we'd never see any of that again.

FIGHTING THE JAPANESE

Then we were off and from then on it was non-stop. We never seemed to be anywhere more than three days. The Japanese were not foolish - not like our dinosaurs in Whitehall who tried to carry on in the same way as the 1914 war. There wasn't a single pitched battle, because as soon as the Japanese came in contact with any of our troops, they just withdrew, went off across country to the coast and commandeered any boats of any description that would float. We would all go down the coast, about 15 or 20 miles, then you would find they were behind you, and back we'd go again! And they did that continually.

Time after time the same thing happened. As soon as there was any contact they would break away and off they would go. They'd got no transport. You've got to hand it to them. They lived off the land. They didn't carry what we did - cook houses and all that caper. They lived off the land. If they came across anything they wanted they just took it - chickens - bicycles- They were not stupid!

It was very hairy at times. I remember one particular incident. I'd been given directions to go to Malacca on the coast, and it was a very stormy day at the end of the monsoon season. It was an uncomfortable journey and when I got there it was very hostile. I got black looks from the natives, and when I enquired where the police station was they said, 'All gone! All gone!' Oh dear! No place for me here. I was quite happy to get away from there without any trouble. It felt very hostile!
Then I had the job of finding where my unit had gone to. Probably withdrawn, but where? Eventually, late afternoon, I found them and I was just about shattered! I'd been gone a long time, travelled some hundred miles, and I'd had no food.

Before I had a chance to get a meal I was told to report to a Signals officer. He said, 'I want you to go with these two officers, as escort'. Where? There were acres of rubber plantations everywhere. Miles and miles of them. Get in there and you could get lost for ever. It looks alike every way! They used to plant the trees in rows, so whichever way you looked, in whichever direction, you saw a straight line of trees. The only tracks in them were cinder tracks, for the natives going tapping the rubber trees for the latex.
So we set off without protesting. Off we went! It was all right in the daylight; I could keep up with them. But as soon as it got dusk - and it comes on very quick in the tropics, one minute it's daylight, and the next the sun goes down and it's pretty dark - I had great difficulty keeping up with the vehicle in front. Every time there was a turning they could decelerate and turn and I'd lose their rear lights. I had to go much slower than I wanted to, so that I didn't pass the turning and miss them.

Eventually, after two hours, we got to where we were going, and I could tell by the raised voices that it wasn't a very happy occasion. A lot of shouting and what-not. I suppose we had brought them the bad news that the Japanese were on the way. Anyway, they came out in a hurry, jumped in and off they went, and I followed behind them very quickly.

I had to travel fast, faster than I dared travel on two wheels. Much easier on four. I knew if I lost sight of that rear light God knows where I'd end up. Wander round those plantations for months! But we eventually made it, got back, and that was that! I was very glad to get back. I was starving hungry! Not very comfortable! Saturated! ....That's how it was.

Soon afterwards there was another hairy incident. One of my best friends had been sent somewhere to get the unit to withdraw to another position, and he hadn't returned. It was very suspicious. I said I'd go out look for him. It was dark, very dark, and after about 40 miles of travel - visibility was very poor but I didn't dare put my headlights on... Anyway, I thought I must be past the position I'd been given, and I hadn't seen sight nor sound of anybody or anything, no vehicles' movement or anything.

I propped my bike on its stand and started creeping into the jungle. Suddenly, in front of me I saw a tank on its side. Both sides had holes big enough to walk through. I'd come to where two roads joined - a main road and a small, minor road. I went across to the other side and saw the barrel of an anti-tank gun poking through the bushes. I realised then that it was one of our tanks, but it had been commandeered by the Japanese. It had probably run out of petrol. Anyway, they had been using it, but our chaps prepared for it and blew a hole right through it. I thought, "This is no place for me!" and I started to walk back to the bike.

Within a few paces I felt somebody's arm round my throat and another one holding my arm, hand, wrist... Two little chaps! Anyway, soon there was a flicker of firelight in front of us, and I saw it was a camp of Gurkhas. I found the officer and handed in the notice to move out quick. 'Well', he said, 'you'd better stop and have a couple of chapattis before you go'. The Gurkhas had their big, metal dish sizzling away with chapattis. I was very grateful...

I did finally get back to base, but the friend I had gone searching for never did return. He had been captured by the Japanese and was to spend the next four years as a POW. We did meet again at the end of the war when we all ended up at Singapore.

I was very fortunate in a way. Two or three days before we were taken prisoner we were in a meadow 100 yards away from this little open patch with buildings on both sides. The Japanese began shelling the buildings and it was amazing, you could see the shells dropping on the buildings and the explosions before you heard them. Strange! It's quite true if your name's on a shell, you're dead before you hear it. You don't get any warning.

CAPITULATION

Next day one of our officers came along and said, 'I've got a job for you. There's a group of men down on the coast patrolling the beach. They are posted about a quarter of a mile apart and if anything happens you are to get back to headquarters and notify us'. It was all quiet that day and the next day I was ordered to get back to the camp for a pay parade. I suppose the idea was that there was a lot of pay owing to the men and if it wasn't dished out soon the Japanese could commandeer it. Anyway, it was a lot of money.

We had the pay parade and when it came to my turn the officer said, 'How much do you want?' and I said, '100 dollars'. He nearly fell over. '100 dollars?' 'Yes,' I said. 'I haven't had any pay since November. We're not likely to get any more are we, so you might as well pay out what you can, rather than let the Japanese get it'. So he did! 100 dollars! I was rich! The trouble was to find somewhere to conceal it. I thought I would sort that problem out later.

After I'd finished at the pay parade I went back to where I'd left the soldiers on the beach. I spent half an hour or more looking up and down the coast. Couldn't see any sign of them, so I thought it can't be very healthy hanging about here. I went back where I had come from and couldn't find any of them either. They'd disappeared. So, I put sand in my petrol tank, started the engine up...and just waited.

We had already been told to surrender and the evacuation of civilians had been taking place. A few days before capitulation, somewhere close to the naval base, I saw a lovely area of bungalows and gardens, it was amazing. You walked into the houses and the tables were laid for a meal... The food was on the tables, but they'd never sat down to it. All the houses were the same. They must have been told to get out immediately, without taking anything at all, to get off the island. It was like a ghost town.

They were right to be afraid. The Japanese had quickly gained a reputation for ruthless brutality. The Alexandra Hospital on the Island of Singapore was one of the first places that they came to. It was full of wounded, both civilians and military. They slaughtered the nurses, who were totally defenceless. All they were doing was nursing sick people. Even people who were laying on stretchers in between the beds were shot or bayoneted. The Japanese soldiers enjoyed inflicting pain on people! A lot of them paid for it after the war through the War Crimes people.

Singapore was supposed to be impregnable. Well, it was if you only attacked it from the sea. Unfortunately it couldn't be defended from the Japanese attack from the rear because our big guns were fixed to fight off attacks from the sea. They only had a traverse of about 60 degrees, so they couldn't be turned round to fire on the land side.

Our military men back home didn't have the common sense to realise that everyone wasn't as stupid as them. Why batter yourself against a front door when the back door is open? In the end all we could do with our big guns was blow them up.

Thailand was neutral so the Japanese landed there and came through the jungle on foot. They didn't have the masses of equipment that we carried about, mobile kitchens, break-down vans and so on. They lived off the land and when they came to a town or village they took what they wanted - or there was trouble! More of a guerrilla army.
It was on the cards that they would attack the one naval warship that we had out there, the Prince of Wales. They bombed it and it sunk with massive loss of life. They'd sunk the American navy at Pearl Harbour and capped that by sinking Britain's biggest battle ship at Singapore!
There were ships disembarking troops onto Singapore harbour right up to the capitulation, ships that had been all over the place - Canada, Jamaica, back to South Africa - a convoy of troops from all over the Commonwealth. Finally they were landed in Singapore. I couldn't understand the mentality! That's what happens when the war is directed from thousands of miles away. They don't know what's going on.

Our unit's withdrawal went on until we finished up back where we had started from - on the island of Singapore. We knew that a cease-fire was being negotiated. There was no other choice. Once the Japanese cut off the water supply the thousands of people in Singapore couldn't survive long without it. Water in any quantity all came from the mainland. So they had an easy victory. It was sad to have seen all those thousands of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk troops coming off the troop ships, after being shunted around all over the place. What a waste.

{Singapore was surrendered to the Japanese on 15/2/1942. Olaf, along with thousands of British and Commonwealth troops, became a Prisoner of War. Those who survived remained prisoners for nearly four years.}

For the next instalment go to Olaf Chapman Part Three (A4919619)

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