大象传媒

Our troopship docked at Durbam sometime before Christmas. It was enroute for Bombay and hopefully a meeting with my brother Bill, a Staff Sergeant. Our ultimate destination was Basra. However, whilst we were in Durban, the Japanese air force bombed Pearl Harbour and created a new theatre of war, an event that would change my life forever, for our new destination was Singapore. From being a timorous youth I was fast becoming an overly anxious adult, hosting a Bette Noire that would dog my footsteps for many years. Fortunate was I that my terror of the time left little room in my mind for thoughts of what lay ahead of me; starvation and suffering that would try the courage of the bravest of persons. We left Durban in the early hours Christmas Day 1941.
En route to the Far East, our ship anchored off the Maldives Isles. A group of us leaned on the ship's rail and gazed longingly at the shore. Mason a quiet spoken individual asked "Isn't that the Exeter?" We concurred and he continued, "I have a brother aboard her." We told our Sergeant, he told the company commander and within the hour Mason was in a jolly boat and heading for the destroyer. What an incredible piece of luck for the two brothers. Nice things can and do happen in wartime. Though Mason was a loner, he was not antisocial, just self effacing and throughout those years of near starvation that befell us, he remained very fit. He was a naturalist, able to find edible herbs in any patch of scrubland.
Jap bombers targeted our ships the Narkunda, Orangie and New Amsterdam as they entered Singapore Harbour. Waiting below decks brought a return of the dread that my demise was near. Being a non swimmer I had scant chance of survival.
Once ashore, we exhulted at our escape from injury. However wiser persons among us maintained that we had journeyed into a nightmare from which few of us would awaken. With supreme confidence, embolded by ignorance, the rest of us cried them down. We were British and this island fortress was impregnable. Later we realised that huge guns were ony effective against a sea borne attack. In the event, the sly, unsporting Jap army swept down the Malay peninsular like a plague in a matter of weeks. In what seemed no time at all after we had reached our British fortress, the fighting ended and Arthur, he who had volunteered for the Army determined to wreak vengence on the Germans, was a captive of the so called little yellow men from Japan.
In truth, the first Japanese soldiers I saw close at hand were about six feet tall as brown as berries and fit as Olympic athletes.

This story was submitted to the People's War website by a volunteer of the Stoke CSV Action Desk on behalf of Arthur Lowe and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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