Prisoner from Penang

1. Singapore-1

1

Singapore

Four years earlier, December 1941

Singapore was utter chaos the morning we arrived. The island was already bursting with people retreating from the steady advance of the imperial Japanese army down the Malayan peninsula. Refugees like us, who still believed the promises from the authorities that the island of Singapore was impregnable.

But it was not only the civilian refugees who were deluded. The military and the powers-that-be all persisted in that delusion – even though the mounting evidence was to the contrary.

There were uniforms everywhere – men convinced they would succeed in defending the place that was the symbol of British imperial power. They were ready to send the j**s off with bloody noses. That was the way they talked – all bluff, bluster and bravado, like schoolboys getting ready for a conker fight.

But those of us who had fled through the night, crammed into train carriages escaping from Penang, knew differently. We had witnessed the bombs falling and the buildings burning and the complete annihilation of the British and Australian air force there. We women were impotent participants in the shameful abandonment of our island home as we were herded onto the ferries and trains to escape. So much for the supposedly indomitable white population – we were all scuttling away, abandoning our Malay and Chinese friends, our colleagues and servants, to their fate. And the j**s knew differently too. After they had taken possession of our beautiful island, hoisting their flag to replace the white one, which the locals had no choice but to fly after we’d run away, we heard their taunting radio broadcast. ‘Hello, Singapore, this is Penang calling. Do you like our bombing?’ That was when I knew nowhere was safe. Not even Fortress Singapore.

That December morning, Mum and I, along with the other women without children, were ordered to leave the train as soon as we reached Singapore. Those with children, including my friend, Evie Barrington, with her two, were told to remain on board, ready to be evacuated by ship immediately. Most of those mothers had been separated from their husbands when we got on the train, expecting to meet them again in Singapore in a couple of days. As soon as they found out they’d be going straight to board a ship, some of them started wailing and crying while others gave vent to anger. Not Evie. Her husband was already dead, months earlier. Not from bombs or battles, but from blood poisoning after a fall down a disused mine shaft in the jungle.

Funny isn’t it, that both Evie and I had lost the men we loved before the war in Malaya had really got going. I’d lost two. Though my fiancé, Frank’s death was still unconfirmed, I’d stood and watched the j**s shoot down our RAF boys over the strait. I’d seen the airplanes explode in the sky, or catch fire, rolling into a spin and plummeting into the sea. I probably even saw Frank die. He’d warned me death was a strong possibility. The old Brewster Buffalos were ancient, underpowered and inadequate – no match for the Japanese with their faster, fleeter Mitsubishi fighter planes.

Frank and I had become engaged to marry just days before the bombing of Penang. He gave me the ring over a romantic dinner at the Runnymede. As the train moved through the dark Malayan night, I twisted that ring round and round on my finger, cursing God for once again dangling happiness in front of me, only to snatch it away as soon as my hands had closed around it.

Frank had known he was risking his life every time he climbed into the cockpit, every time the order to scramble came. But I didn’t. I believed lightning never struck twice in the same place. I’d already had one fiancé die on me, so this time – surely – my happiness was going to last. Life couldn’t be that cruel, could it? The man I’d been engaged to before, Ralph, had taken his own life after betraying me with a married woman who cast him off as soon as he’d dumped me. But I was soon to discover a depth of cruelty so extreme that back then I’d never have believed it.

That morning when I arrived in Singapore, I thought death had singled me out by taking both the men I’d wanted to marry. Now, I know better. Death doesn’t discriminate. It takes its victims whenever a chance arises. And war gives death so many chances. A veritable feast of opportunities to harvest people and to do so in cruel and unendingly creative ways.