In My Wildest Dreams (26 page)

The conscripts were, in the main, in better condition, although some were far from soldierlike. One had the opposite to a hunched back, a hunched front, his chest rearing like the bill of a pelican under his chin. Another, with faint eyes, spent hours in the chemically laden swimming pool, hoping to infect them badly enough to be sent home. When he was almost blind he was discharged on account of deafness. Judging by photographs of those days I was scarcely a warlike specimen either, thin and little with sunken eyes, like an undersized skeleton.

Each Saturday morning we left the pens and ledgers and played soldiers. We were required to fire our rifles on the range, attend lectures, or take part in military exercises such as riot control. Sometimes the Chinese from the village used to stand on the road watching us and spoil it all by laughing, and it takes quite a lot to make a Chinese laugh.

During one of these manoeuvres half the platoon were sent off over an area of fairly open ground and the other half had to cover their eyes while they hid. The soldiers on the road turned their backs to the hiders and after counting up to fifty they turned around and tried to spot them. I was in the spotting party and we soon picked them out. Then it was our turn to hide. Instead of going off into the distance I merely dropped into a shallow scrub-hidden ditch almost at the feet of the watchers. I crouched there, within a few feet, and they peered beyond me and pointed out the others. They failed to detect me and in the end they gave up because it was NAAFI break. They called me to come out and I emerged from under their noses. Some of my comrades were quite miffed, alleging unfair play. The officer in charge, however, was really impressed by this demonstration of initiative in camouflage. 'Good chap, Thomas,' he enthused. 'We ought to think about transferring you to an infantry mob up-country'

I never did it again.

My military aspirations were nil, although my freelance journalism, undertaken under the cover of dead men's files, was showing promise. I had composed an article about Chinese lanterns and another on the traditional Dragon Festival and these I sent to Charles Mitchell in London where, among his other writing activities, he ran a features agency. The Dragon article was published in the
Liverpool Post
and the one about lanterns in the
LeicesterEvening Mercury.
Proudly I pinned the cut-out pieces inside the door of my locker and people came to read them. I was paid a guinea for each.

Someone must have mentioned my extramural activities to authority because I was summoned before the Adjutant. Yes, I admitted, I had been contributing to newspapers in Britain. Fortunately he did not ask in whose time the articles were composed.

'Do they contain military information?' the Adjutant asked, consulting the thick volume of King's Regulations.

'No sir,' I replied convincingly. 'I don't know any.'

'Not necessarily
secret
information, Thomas,
any
information. We have to be jolly careful out here, you know.'

'Nothing like that, sir. All I wrote about were lanterns and dragons.'

He regarded me steadily from behind the desk. 'Oh, I see,' he said eventually. 'Lanterns and dragons.' He had another deep look at the book. 'Well, that seems to be all right. How much did you get?'

'Ten shillings each,' I lied. I thought the army might want half.

'That's good money,' he nodded. 'Well, all right. There's nothing in King's Regulations to stop you, apparently. But you will have to show the Regimental Sergeant-Major what you write, so he can check it over, just to make sure you're not divulging military secrets. All right?'

'Yes sir,' I readily agreed.

And Thomas . . .'

'Sir?'

'Write a bit for the regimental magazine, will you, there's a good chap. Anything you like. They want me to do it and I can't think of a damned thing to say.'

I wrote the article for him just as I had written as a ghost for the Gaffer a few years before. Its heading was: 'First Impressions of Singapore'. It did not appear under my name but the Adjutant later told me privately that he had received lots of compliments about it.

The articles I continued to write for provincial papers in Britain – 'Secrets of the Opium Smugglers', 'Sacred Snakes of the East', and other grippers were typed out during guard duty. During the four-hour breaks when I was not required to be standing with a fixed bayonet, staring out into the cricket-clicking night, I was busy tapping away in the deserted orderly room.

The office block, with its financial secrets, was always under armed guard through the hours of darkness. Standing on the dog-watch stage, from four to six, the damp, warm night about you, trudging up and down, watching the dawn nose over the crab-like palm trees, was the time you thought of home.

By some outlandish, and admittedly unofficial, logic the armoury guard, which was intended to keep secure the store of garrison weapons, was manned by a detail who traditionally went to sleep. All of them. After eleven o'clock the six-man guard and the corporal in charge would get tucked into camp beds, wish each other goodnight, and snore away sweetly until dawn. This state of affairs shocked a newly arrived officer who marched in at midnight to make sure that everyone was alert. I was guarding the armory that night engulfed, as were my comrades, in dreams when the new broom arrived. Angry and amazed he threw us out of our beds and told the corporal he would be put on a disciplinary charge, at which the corporal burst into tears and protested that the armoury guard always went to sleep. It was a traditional perk. That, however, was the last time.

Every month there was an additional guard duty we were obliged to perform at a major ammunition dump in the far north of the island. This was a serious matter for, only a boat trip across the narrow Straits of Johore, were the bandit camps in the jungles of Malaya. We were let into a barbed wire compound and stood nervously through the night watching for invaders. In our off-duty time we used to bet on bullfrog races. No Communists came across the strait while I was there. But a tiger did.

Disturbed by the rude aerial bombing of its natural home – the RAF used to fly sorties and try to attack hidden Communist camps – it decided to opt for peace and quiet and swam the channel to Singapore. No one had seen a real tiger loose in Singapore since the legendary one appeared in the billiards room of the Raffles Hotel many years previously. That tiger (although it does tend to spoil the story) had escaped from a circus. This swimming tiger, however, was the genuine wild thing and it roamed bravely about for several days, giving us goose pimples on guard and keeping the women and children of service families behind locked doors. The poor animal was finally shot dead at the RAF base at Seletar. Perhaps it had gone to find the chap who had bombed its home.

Our drills, guard duties, our field games and the occasional hilarious rehearsals for dealing with revolting natives were the only army activities which disturbed our domestic garrison lives. Until one night I found a shocked platoon grouped around the notice board on which were pinned the Company Orders. There was a list of soldiers required for active duty in Malaya. My name was one of them. That bloodied paybook floated before my eyes again. I thought I was going to faint.

To send a small army of pen-pushers into the green dangers of a jungle harbouring lethal bands of guerillas was the bright scheme of someone at General Headquarters. It was not endorsed by the personnel of the Pay Office, both those who were going and those who were not. The Commanding Officer grumbled about essential work being left behind and senior NCOs, some of whom had seen action in that jungle during the war, looked at us with extreme dubiety.

'God, fancy sending you lot,' was our barrack room sergeant's parting blessing as twenty of us sloped off, bowed under full packs and carrying rifles, towards the truck which was to take us away from the safe boredom of Nee Soon. One of our conscript comrades, an emotional Welshman, waved us goodbye with a broken expression and the words: 'Don't worry, boys, I expect you'll get back all right.'

The rest of the company, shaking their heads, watched from the balcony and they turned away one by one, as though they could stand it no longer. Once we were in the truck and on our way, tightly holding our rifles in the darkness, the accompanying NGO, a doleful corporal, reminded us that there was a section for the soldier's last will and testament in the army paybook and that it might be as well for us to study it when we had a moment.

The risk of dispatching such novices up-country had apparently not been entirely ignored at headquarters for it had been decided not to send us along the winding and ambush-prone roads of Johore. We were to go by sea, aboard a landing craft, just like the real soldiers who invaded coastlines during the real war.

I have to confess that I, for one, cheered considerably at this prospect. Not only did it eliminate the very-present peril of being machine-gunned from the roadside undergrowth as we travelled north but, neatly, it also lent a more warlike appearance to the whole operation. As we boarded the landing craft our rubber jungle boots padded on the steel deck, there was a clatter of rifle butts, a shifting of equipment, the grunts of the soldiers in the dark. It was just like being in a film.

We set sail with a boatload of nondescript conscripts. Men from workshops and stores, from cookhouses and offices all over Singapore Island were there. They grumbled about being taken away from essential military tasks to go and play at war. Who would change the wheels? Who would issue the rations? Who would cook them? Who would make out the invoices? There appeared to be a danger of the entire military life of the island coming to a standstill.

Through the warm night we sailed among the out-islands and turned north into the China Sea up the coast of Johore. I was enjoying the romance of this part and, crouching, half-sleeping, remembered innumerable Robert Mitchums, Errol Flynns and other handsome heroes I had seen sailing through such nights on deadly missions. The Oriental sun came up abruptly and in a wash of brilliance. We were lolling along a mile or so off the coast. We could see palm trees, beaches and rising mountains lipped with morning clouds.

The landing craft was long and low, not unlike a Chinese junk; the crew lived in a little house at the back. There was a bridge from which the commanding officer commanded and a soldier steered, and beneath that were the living quarters. They did their own laundry and hung it to dry from a line slung between two masts. It transpired that all the crew and the commander were occupying their national service time by sailing up and down like this and I wondered, not for the first time, how it was that the more attractive aspects of army life had passed me by.

We lined up for tea, poured from a bucket into our mess tins. We were closer inshore now and we could hear monkeys screaming. A squaddie, a stranger to me, standing alongside on the deck, pointed landward. 'Ulu,' he said. 'That's what it is. Ulu – jungle.' He grinned at me to see if I was impressed. I was only slightly. 'Mucken,' he said. 'Means grub. Dinner. Bint is a bit of nooky.'

I thanked him for this information. Later I was able to add to my vocabulary the Malay words for trousers and belt. I knew that the Muslim Malay had the word 'bin' in the middle of his name, thus Abdul bin Malik. We had a garbage collector we nicknamed Dust bin Lid. The Malay's wife was binte, hence the traditional and coarse army slang for a lady. Later I learned to count by listening to the head porter summoning the chauffeurs outside the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. I also memorised the names of the Malay states and their main towns and I later learned the word for death. But that was my sum total knowledge of the language.

Everything about the operation seemed to be going well. The sun came up, clear and hot, as it rarely did in Singapore. There were fishing villages on stilts in the sea. Fishermen were out in skinny boats and they waved as we went by. 'Spies,' reckoned the squaddie who had taught me Malay. 'Soon as we've gone, they'll scarper and tell the bleeding bandits.'

The first hitch came when it was discovered that almost every scrap of food on board was contained in cans and between two hundred of us there was only one tin opener and that belonged to the crew. This was also a private tin opener, not army property, and its owner, after lending it out a few times, became mercenary and thereafter charged twenty-five cents per usage. He made a fortune before breakfast.

The deck became baking and we lay sprawled on it like cruise passengers soaking up the sun until about noon when the engine nodded and we saw that we were turning into a beautiful bay with islands off-shore and a shining white strand decked with palms. There were tents visible through the trees and soldiers, baked brown, on the beach waiting for us. The place was called Mersing.

The romance of the adventure was accentuated when we were ordered to wade ashore with our equipment. Through the limp water we trudged with rifles and packs. On the beach an enterprising corporal was taking snapshots of us as we waded ashore like commandos and he, like the owner of the tin opener, added considerably to his wealth by selling off the prints.

Mersing camp was set in a place something like paradise but beyond it was the thick and dangerous jungle. 'A bandit gang of about two hundred – all killers – is operating this area,' announced the Commandant with brisk and, I thought, untoward enthusiasm, as soon as we were assembled on the sand. 'We're jolly lucky we'll have the opportunity of screening the region and turfing the blighters out. That's
something
we've got to look forward to.'

To me, and judging by the expressions on the faces of my newly arrived companions, the expectation was his alone. Our eyes ticked around at the green barriers beyond the camp perimeter. High trees through which hundreds of monkeys swung and screamed. 'There's a good-sized swamp to the west,' the officer breezed on. 'And there are only a few tracks through that swamp. We'll perhaps be able to set up some useful ambushes in that area.'

I had my own anxiety about who was going to ambush whom and this quickly accumulated when, hardly before I had dropped my belongings in one of the tents, I was picked out to go to the neighbouring village to collect the mail and milk. Detailed with me were two Malay soldiers and this at first gave me some reassurance. At least they would know what they were doing. Their native eyes would spot ambushes and be quick to react. I resolved to trust them.

As soon as the open platoon truck left the guard-post at the edge of the camp and began twisting along the close track towards Mersing village, five miles distant, these two Malays lay flat on the floor of the vehicle, closed their eyes tightly and began to moan. Over and over they whispered the word: 'Mati, mati,' as they trembled.

Too embarrassed to lie down with them, I completed the journey at a painful crouch, like a runner kept too long at the start of a race. When we reached the village and the driver and his mate got out to go to the post office and the milk shop, I asked the Malays what 'Mati' meant. Their eyes rolled like black marbles. Then one ran his finger across his throat and said, 'It mean dead.' The other nodded. 'Dead,' he confirmed.

Unfortunately, thereafter this pessimistic pair seemed to haunt me; whatever duty I was required to perform they seemed to be there also, their Amos and Andy faces throbbing with fear and the words 'Mati, mati', never far from their lips.

Every other night we had to do guard duty, keeping watch over the stores, over the ammunition and arms dump, and patrolling the tenuous perimeter of the tents. Each time I seemed somehow to find myself in the vicinity of the two Malays. Their eyes would appear through the night like glow-worms, seeming to be around the back of every tree and hiding in every hole in the ground.

Once I saw them sitting back to back each with his hands over his eyes, like the croucher monkeys who squatted in the trees in this posture, apparently, as the ostrich in the sand, believing that if they could not see you then neither could you see them. Soldiers never shot at a croucher monkey because, the legend said, if you killed one you would never leave Malaya alive.

We were deep on unenthusiastic patrol in the swamp one morning when a single burst of fire erupted some way ahead and lying flat in the mire I found my involuntary companions curled in terror beside me. One was murmuring their fated word, 'Mati, mati,' and the other was blowing little bubbles of fear across a muddy pool. Then they began
touching me for luck
and I realised that this is why they always appeared in times of anxiety. To them I was some sort of mascot! God, I needed a mascot myself. On this occasion the luck held because the alarm turned out to be a nervous burst of fire from one of our own men at the front of the patrol.

Almost everyone in the camp was jittery, although some of the officers adopted a daredevil pose, swashbuckling around in a jeep and rising early to go out into the jungle and shoot wild pig with their Sten guns; a disturbance that never failed to cause panic in our tent. A conscript who ventured to the latrines in the middle of the mysterious night and sat there, Sten-gun across knees, saw lights in the trees. At once he presumed they were ambushing bandits and tried to bring his Sten into the firing position while sitting on the bog, attempting to pull his trousers up at the same time. The result was that the weapon became wedged in his trousers and shattered them when it went off with resounding staccato. He was lucky he did not shoot off his own feet, or worse.

At night the camp presented an almost surrealistic spectacle. Lights glowed in the tents and in the beer hut, while music was relayed over a loudspeaker, Sinatra, Count Basie, Doris Day or the Andrews Sisters harmonising 'Boogie Woogie Bugler Boy', filling the jungle air with their voices. I swear the monkeys used to sit in the branches and listen. Outside the boundary an Indian, devoted to commerce, had set up a rough wooden shop where he sold everyday necessities such as toothpaste, tins of Peak Frean biscuits and packs of cards. Each night he slept on his counter apparently unworried by the peril of the concealed Communists. From our guard positions we used to look out at his heaped form and wonder why nobody ever attacked and robbed him. In the absence of any attempt by the bandits several of my comrades considered doing it themselves.

For soldiers accustomed to the sedentary life of an office in a secure garrison, the requirements of active service were often sapping. Every other night was guard duty, two hours on, two off, lying sprawled on the ground when not prowling tentatively around the camp or sidling among the palm trees in the hot darkness. The guard tent used to become very sweaty and I decided that the only place to rest when I was not keeping watch was on the sacking and tarpaulin spread over the ammunition pit. It was dangerous but cosy and very private. Had anyone with nefarious intentions slunk into the camp and lobbed a well-placed grenade into my bower the sleep would have been more protracted than I expected.

As it was I came within an inch of being shot dead. The man who fired the gun was on our side. It happens very easily. I had just completed my regulation creep around the camp perimeter and had returned to the guard tent when a regular NCO approached me chattily and, as he did so, pulled back the bolt of his rifle, ejecting the round from the breech. Then, disobeying a basic rule, he slammed the bolt home, thus effectively loading the weapon again and, idiotically holding the muzzle towards me, pressed the trigger. I felt the explosion in my face. We stared at each other. Then I slowly revolved and saw the hole in the tent a fraction from my ear. We continued to regard each other dumbly, the colour gone from both our faces. He did not even say sorry. All around were snoring Malay troops, not one of whom even stirred. The sergeant-major, however, had heard it. He rushed into the tent, Sten-gun cocked. For a moment I thought
he
was going to shoot me, thinking in the dim lantern light that I was a raider.

'Did you hear a shot?' he demanded. The NCO, still trembling, rolled his eyes at me and shook his head. The sergeant-major nodded briskly at my own wan expression. I was conscious of the little hole in the tent just behind my head, like a winking eye in the canvas wall. 'What about you, lad?' he asked. 'Didn't you hear it?' It was a cleft stick. If I said I had heard nothing and was found to be lying, then I would be in the mire as deeply as the other man. On the other hand I did not want him court-martialled because of me. I managed the non-committal. 'I've just come in, sir,' I said. 'I've just been around the perimeter.'

For some reason that satisfied him and he went mumbling back to bed. I can't remember the NCO either thanking me or even saying he was sorry but I remember his name. You do when someone almost shoots you dead. Many years later the same man telephoned Columbia Pictures, the day before the premiere of
The Virgin Soldiers,
and demanded a seat on account of the fact that he was the original Sergeant Driscoll, the tough and heroic NCO of the book. He was not.

We had further, equally accidental, brushes with death. No guerillas appeared from the jungle and we intimated, once we had returned to the defences of Singapore, that they were pretty wise to keep away. Nonetheless there were dramas enough. Every day we were paraded on the beach for physical training and in our free time we played football on the firm sand and swam in the limp sea. Someone noticed a series of strange bumps in the sand and after further investigation a Royal Engineers officer was called. 'Mines,' he said with a big sniff. 'Anti-personnel mines. Very unpleasant. Blow the lot of you to God, they would.'