大象传媒

A Toddler in Singapore at the Outbreak of WW2.

Or The Early Years of an Urchin in WW2

We were on the high seas in 1939 when war was declared. I was four and a half, accompanying my parents to Singapore, where my father, a Captain in the Royal Engineers had been posted. In fact my earliest memories are of the troopship pulling away from Southampton docks with red, white and blue streamers being thrown from ship to shore, people cheering and waving and bands playing. (My only other memory of that voyage was of my father playing 鈥楬ousie-Housie鈥� 鈥� the present day bingo 鈥� using pieces of orange peel to cover the numbers.)

For a toddler, those early days in Singapore were idyllic. We had a fine quarter in Sherwood Road, near the General HQ, overlooking the golf course and the now famous botanic gardens at Tanglin. As a five year old I was able, and allowed, to wander down to the botanic gardens to play. Those who know the area as it is nowadays will find this incredible! I started school nearby and joy of joys, on the way to school, collected tar from bubbles from the road surface to make tar balls, much to the teacher鈥檚 and my mother鈥檚 annoyance. (Your son is an urchin, Mrs Eagle!)

We often drove to Changi where I learnt to swim and en route passed the now infamous but then foreboding Changi prison. (Little did I know that, not too many months later, my father would be incarcerated at Changi along with thousands of other Commonwealth POWs). At the Changi pool we watched open air films whilst nibbling chips with tomato sauce 鈥� my special treat for completing a few lengths in the pool. The magic of Judy Garland and 鈥極ver the Rainbow鈥�, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope remain with me to this day.

My brother Christopher was born in Alexandra Hospital where later invading Japanese troops ignored the white flag and Red Cross armbands and bayoneted nearly all the patients and medical staff. As 1942 approached I became aware of the increasing tension. At school we practised getting into slit trenches for air-raids and had to kneel on the rough coco-nut matting, very painful. At home my father kept a rifle in the dining room and wore a pistol at his waist. I remember the frequent earnest discussions, and the packing of bags including tins of food. Some ten days before the fall of Singapore my father took us to the docks where we joined many other British families on a French ship 鈥� the Narcunda, I think. As we steamed away from the docks we saw other ships being dive-bombed by Japanese aircraft. The ship later rounded a point to the south of the island and there we saw all husbands and fathers waiting and waving from a long pier stretching towards us. My only other recollection of this voyage is of the wine with water given to us routinely at the children鈥檚 table. Delicious!

As I have said, my father was captured with very many others after the Japanese invaded Malaya and Singapore. He and two close friends (Lt FN Croft and Lt WF Willoughby, all three of them Sappers) were together for most of their captivity and survived the war. Each wrote a diary, which still survives. I find them intensely interesting, moving and sometimes exciting, especially when USAF and USN aircraft find the POW camps in Japan after Jap capitulation and drop supplies and instructions to the POWs by parachute. Fred Croft鈥檚 diary is factual and detailed. He was a talented handyman, and this colours his experiences in the POW camps and his writing. His son tells me that the diary was used as evidence for a war crimes tribunal. Frank Willoughby鈥檚 diary is largely a series of essays, diagrams, fascinating schedules and remarkable sketches of POWs including also his Jap captors. Bob Eagle鈥檚 diary is written as a continuous letter to his family. The diaries are valuable in that all three POWs record their experiences from different viewpoints. The Croft diary has been lodged with the Imperial War and RE Museums. The Willoughby and Eagle diaries have recently been transcribed.

I followed my father into the Royal Engineers. In 1971, whilst serving at Dharan, the then British Gurkha base in Nepal, I was given permission to go to Singapore to select engineering equipment and machinery for Nepal from military establishments and workshops that were being run down prior to the impending closure of the island base. The fine imposing quarter that we had lived in during those troubled years was still standing, now occupied by a British Colonel who, on seeing me with my camera called out from the balcony:
鈥淲hy are you photographing my house?鈥�
鈥淚 am Major Eagle from Nepal. I lived here, Sir, with my parents at the outbreak of war. This house was used as a Jap officer鈥檚 mess, having been ransacked by Australian troops just prior to the invasion鈥�
鈥淥K 鈥� interesting - carry on Major鈥�.

I visited Singapore again recently. The house has been demolished to make way for a clear view from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and perhaps to remove reminders of the Colonial past! The road at the foot of the hill bordering the exotic and colourful botanic gardens (Napier Road) is now a two-lane highway, crossed only by footbridges

The ship taking my mother, my brother and myself sailed to Freemantle in Western Australia, where British evacuees were unpopular since Britain had failed in the defence of Malaya and Singapore. The Australians believed that they too would now be invaded. (My mother was threatened with a broken glass bottle whilst walking in the street). We lived for some months with a few other families crammed into a bungalow on the outskirts of the town. We had large nightly prayer meetings and the especially composed prayers remained with me for many years.

We evacuee children attended the local school but our education was cut short when all evacuee families were taken to a train for a remarkable journey eastwards right across Australia to Melbourne. This was very exciting. When the train stopped in the sun baked bush, miles and miles from anywhere, I was able to pick up baby rabbits but infuriatingly was not allowed to take them back onto the train! There was panic when my infant brother choked on a sweet and went blue. My mother shook him violently by the feet, and yes, in spite of modern warnings not to do such things, the yellow sweet popped out onto the compartment floor. Great relief. No more sweets for Christopher.

We stayed, gratefully, in a run-down hotel in Melbourne, waiting for a ship convoy to take us back to UK. The convoy took us not to UK but to a port in South Africa, from where we travelled overland to Durban. During the voyage we sometimes saw Jap submarines on the horizon, but the convoy was too well armed for them to attack. When a floating mine was spotted, the ships crew fired at it with an anti-aircraft gun to destroy it. There was great excitement as we hoped and waited for an explosion. In Durban we were put up in another hotel that had seen better days 鈥� but 鈥� we were again grateful and it was close to the beach. I was by this time a strong swimmer and spent most of my time swimming and diving in the most enormous breakers I have ever seen, before or since. I became an accomplished beachcomber. I acquired a rake (which I hid in a dense shrubbery) and always managed to find coins and also sufficient sunglasses to supply a regiment. Schooling interrupted my watery and sandy idyll. My brand new shiny red penknife was confiscated. And I was the boy to find a man鈥檚 corpse in the boys鈥� lavatories.

One day, walking back from this awful school, I picked up a small white balloon from the pavement, blew it up and took it into the hotel to show my mother. Suddenly my world erupted 鈥� my hands, face and mouth were washed with Dettol, I was scrubbed from head to toe and walloped for picking up items from the street. (Why, Mummy, why?) So it was with mixed feelings at having to leave my golden beach and to my long-suffering mother鈥檚 great relief that, with her babe in arms and her disgraced urchin, we boarded, with other British families, a train for Cape Town. We gazed at the Table Mountain as the ship pulled away from the docks. My mother glanced at me darkly, wondering openly what the future held in store for her, for Christopher and for the unpredictable urchin in war torn Britain. Our ship joined a convoy bound at last for Liverpool.

We arrived at Liverpool sometime in 1943. A train took us though the beautiful green and lush countryside my mother had often been telling me about. I was spellbound. We arrived in Kent, in Ashford where we were to spend the remainder of the war sharing a house with another family. As an eight year old I was to witness the preparation for D Day, the massing of British and American troops in the surrounding countryside, world heavyweight champion Joe Louis boxing in Victoria park in Ashford, dozens and dozens of gliders overhead, searchlights, bombers operating from the many airfields nearby, sea defences, doodlebugs, ubiquitous shrapnel and what I think is now called chaff (silver paper strips used to confuse radar), Spitfires and Mustangs, dogfights, crashed aircraft, searchlights, Anderson shelters, artillery, and all the exciting miscellaneous paraphernalia of war. All this time my father was a POW in Japan, and we were very worried.

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