大象传媒

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Each night too, our good old Wildebeest bombers would chug out under cover of darkness, doing really amazing work in view of their performance limitations. They had been declared obsolete 12 months before and spares were no longer available.

On January 26th came an event which would seal the fate of Malaya.. A considerable Japanese naval force was sighted about 20 miles beyond Endau. The actual strength of it was four cruisers, an aircraft carrier, six destroyers, to be transporters and a dozen auxiliary craft. Due to wireless jamming no signals were received at Singapore and it wasn鈥檛 till our recce plane landed at 9:30 AM that we were alerted. Our total strike force only numbered 36 and the Wildebeests had only just returned from another mission and weren't refueled or rearmed. It was past midday when the first flights took off. It consisted of 12 Wildebeests and nine Hudsons escorted by 15 Buffaloes and 8 Hurricanes (our total number of serviceable Hurricanes at the time).

It was of course, suicide to send our Wildebeests on such a mission in daytime, but if the Japanese landings were successful then that was the end of Malaya so they had to go. What a pitiful tragedy it was. We didn't stop the landing -- no one in their right senses could have expected them to do so.

In spite of the efforts of the escorting planes, Navy Os swarmed round our Wildebeests and destroyed five of them. Our second wave was even more expensive. We lost five more Wildebeests out of nine and two Albacores out of three. Not much damage was done to the enemy but our own air striking force in Malaya had now been practically wiped out.

A few days later I was lying awake in bed turning events over in my mind and thinking that the prospects weren't very favourable. I heard, almost subconsciously, the drone of a bomber returning from night duties. The drone became louder -- it wasn't the right sound -- and all at once I was filled with a sudden fear although the sirens hadn't sounded.

All at once there was a terrific crash, followed by another even louder and another. The billet shook and seemed about to collapse. Plaster flew all over the place, doors crashed in and then there was silence again for a few seconds. Dust of smoke filled the air and then shouts and cries came from the ground floor of the billet. The bombs didn't actually hit the billet but fell in a line outside it doing a fair amount of damage with flying shrapnel etc. Three men were killed, all on the ground floor and some others injured. I was on the third floor and completely unharmed -- unless you count a small "sting" on the back of my leg which left a bare, smooth patch about the size of a thumbnail which was still visible 20 years later. Just after the plane departed the sirens sounded. If they had sounded in time we should all have been caught in the trenches outside, all on the way to them and things would have been a lot worse. The fact that we were no longer safe, even at night, was now apparent. Brian Wilson, one of my friends, was on the floor below and he was in quite a state. I had to walk him round the drome for an hour or so before he became his normal self again.

These billets were far too big and conspicuous and the authorities realised it. The following day our unit was moved back to the transit camp and brought to work at Seletar in lorries each morning.

On January 29th 1942, the last organised evacuation of civilians from Singapore took place. The "Wakefield鈥� sailed from Keppel harbour.

Those of our forces still left in Malaya were in a desperate position. It was now just a matter of how many we could get back to Singapore safely. Between nightfall on January 30th and 5:30 a.m. next morning 111 corps passed without any traffic hold ups through much feared bottlenecks in the streets of Johore Bahru. Bright moonlight helped and strangely, hardly a Japanese aircraft hindered it.

By 7 AM the two remaining pipers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were playing the troops of the outer bridgehead over the causeway (the Australians and the Gordons) an hour later there followed the Argylls themselves, last guard of the inner bridgehead, led by those same pipers making the very last steps to Singapore to the skirl of "Hielen Laddie鈥�. As the skirl died away, there sounded a clap of thunder. It was the causeway, 1100 yards long and 75 foot wide gaps the waterline, with a steel road and railway bridge, going up in explosion. There followed the momentous silence and then the roar of water pouring through a 70 foot gap. Once more Singapore was a real island again. But only just. For at low tide, the causeway gaps were not more than four feet deep.

Of our Far Eastern Empire, Singapore alone still held. Apparently people at home didn't realise the hopelessness of it all, as over 20 new planes were flown out to us - in two days about four remained.

Japanese bombs tore up our runways and made them u/s. We worked far into the night filling up the holes. The next day they came again and repeated the treatment. We filled them up again. The Japs obligingly swaddled another stack of bombs across them. No one felt like filling them up the third time, but someone contrived to mark out a usable runway with white lines. The Japs came again the next morning and with a usual accuracy planted a stack of bombs plumb between the white lines. The Japanese were able to operate from Kluang, of course, which was only 60 to 70 miles away. In an attempt to damage their bombing strength and to put the landing strip out of action we made a last desperate throw. Blenheims and Hudsons (from Sumatra) raided Kluang. The result was disastrous. They had no fighter escort and the Japanese were waiting.

Seletar was finished as an effective RAF aerodrome. Not only were Japanese bombers stationed not far away, but, with the loss of Malaya the Japanese were able to bring up artillery close to us just the other side of the water and shells were soon pounding the drome and naval base. Part of our squadron (232) joined 258 squadron to operate from Kluang. The rest of our four remaining planes and pilots flew to Palembang (Sumatra).

For two days we sat around in the transit camp -- waiting and wondering. Will they try to evacuate us, or shall we stay here to be killed or taken prisoner? We were still the only Hurricane squadron in the Far Eastern Theatre of war, so far as we knew -- and therein lay our only hope. Because we knew that very few could hope to get away -- hardly any ships -- hardly any Navy. Against our chances was the fact that we had only a handful of planes left. Evacuation promised to be very risky and hazardous -- but it was a chance, and there was no chance at all in Singapore. Apart from inferiority in effective numbers (there were a minority of effective and experienced fighters in Singapore) and equipment. Singapore鈥檚 water supply came by pipeline (never cut) from the mainland.

We were called out of bed at 11 o'clock the night of February 4th 1942 and our adjutant spoke to us. (F/O Wilson). We were to get all our kit packed with all necessities in our side packs. This we did, and all through the next day we waited. The following night we went to bed again. I shall never forget that night. Guns booming across the causeway -- explosions as our engineers blew up vital installations, thick black smoke from oil installations and naval dockyard, the sky alight with fires. It seemed like an illustration for Dante's Vision of Hell. The Japanese had a number of foothills on the island. Somehow or other, I managed to fall asleep. Then, at about three o'clock in the morning, we were called out again -- we were to move in a few hours time. We were far too relieved to think of the danger of the journey.

When we got to the docks and saw the boat that was to take us, we didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was a Chinese riverboat, painted a bright salmon and light blue with large Chinese characters on the side. All day, we worked to load up the "WANGPU鈥� until finally we were ready to go.

The captain hadn't got a wireless operator. So six of us were delegated to perform that duty (I can always say that I've been a wireless operator in the Merchant Navy). We found the wireless equipment, examined it and found it useless and damaged beyond repair. This was all the more serious because two alternative routes lay before us and at a certain time we were to be told by radio which one to use -- after our aircraft had had a snoop around.

Indeed the whole ship was a shambles, looking as if it had either been in a hurricane or some pretty rough action.

However, the captain found an Aldis lamp and we were to use that to signal to such ships as we may meet. Our other duties included running up the flags as per the captain's instructions. Most of the time I found myself on the bridge with the captain and an Aldis lamp.

He was a grand fellow and I got along with him like a house on fire. He had the normal merchant seaman's disrespect for the Royal Navy. Shortly after we sailed, I noticed that we were on our own and asked him rather anxiously when our escort was meeting us -- -- "They can't give us an escort. Just as well really -- they aren't much use and we shall draw less attention to ourselves alone".

As we approached the mouth of the river that leads to Palembang we saw the masts of two ships sticking out of the water. Two ships carrying Army personnel had left the Singapore the day before us. Now we could see what had happened to them. Incidentally -- they had the benefit of naval escort (one destroyer). Fortunately, most of them had been take off safely before the ships sank.

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