The Rose of Singapore (2 page)

The crude wooden door was ajar, so Peter pushed it open to enter into another world, where men slept fitfully, sweating, naked and unashamed, some beneath mosquito nets, others with their net thrown aside, but all with their loaded rifles and Sten guns, cold mistresses, in bed beside them.

Needing to urinate, Peter went out the back door of the shack, but did not go as far as the screened in ‘desert lily', a two-inch pipe about the height of a man's crotch, with a funnel in the top in which one was expected to pee. There would be too many mosquitoes buzzing around the funnel waiting eagerly to bite any exposed dangling appendage. Nor did he visit the primitive latrine twenty or more paces into the undergrowth. Why bother? The latrine was simply a deep, drilled-out hole in the ground covered by a wooden box with a nine-inch-diameter hole cut in its top, placed invitingly over the hole for patrons to sit on when doing number two. The thunderbox, as it was called, was hidden from view on three sides by chest-high
atap,
the Malay word for dried palm fronds. During the day there were always millions of mosquitoes buzzing around the thunderbox waiting to bite someone's bare ass, but at night trillions of the little bloodsuckers awaited some poor wretch to come and drop his pants. And worse, on rainy nights black spitting cobras often visited that immediate area searching for frogs. Peter hated frequenting that smelly place and did so only during the daytime and out of sheer necessity. This night he peed up against an old rubber tree growing not too far from the basha's doorway. Relieved, he returned to the basha, undressed, and then crawled unsteadily into bed to lie alongside his cold, uncaring rifle.

A party of about eight headhunting Dyak tribesmen, brought in from Borneo by the British government, was returning to the camp when Peter Saunders passed the guardroom on his way to the sick-quarters just before nine the following morning. Clad only in filthy khaki shorts, the short brown men carried no guns, just long knives called
parangs,
and their trophies of that night's hunt: the heads and hands of Communist terrorists waltzing grotesquely from grass belts worn around their waists. Peter Saunders felt sickened by the sight. But it had to be. The hands would be fingerprinted and the heads photographed for identification purposes. The Dyaks grinned at Peter and shook their bodies causing the heads and hands to do a grim dance to their movement. A wave of nausea swept over Peter, but he checked himself from throwing up and turned away from the gruesome spectacle.

He hurried on, towards the overgrown hillside where the sick-quarters, a cluster of three thatch-roofed shacks, was perched. The air was hot and oppressive, but there would be no rain until the afternoon; at RAF Kuala Lumper it rained almost every afternoon. Peter's khaki drill uniform was already sticking with perspiration to his body when he eventually arrived at the doorway leading into the sick-quarters waiting room. There he was greeted by a very young, very white medical orderly who had obviously only recently stepped off the boat from England. A ‘moon-man' without a doubt, thought Peter. Bum fluff showed on a face that had never seen a razor and the young airmen had acne too.

“LAC Saunders,” was all Peter said.

“Ah, yes. The medical officer is expecting you. I'll let him know you are here. Please take a seat,” said the medical orderly, smiling in a friendly manner and speaking in precise English. There was none of this Malay and Chinese jive thrown in, which one was apt to do after a few months of being stationed in Malaya.

“Thank you,” said Peter, and he sat down on a well-worn wicker chair, feeling the seat of his pants and the back of his jacket sticking coldly to his clammy body. The medical orderly returned almost immediately, so Peter stood up and was politely ushered into the medical officer's domain, a whitewashed room, surprisingly clean, tidy and efficient looking. Considering that it was difficult, nay impossible, to make any of the dirty old shacks at RAF Kuala Lumpur appear clean, tidy and efficient, Peter Saunders was always impressed by the place; as a patient he had certainly seen it often enough. The only difference was that now there was a new medical officer. The one he had come to know so well had become tour ex (tour expired) and had returned to the UK.

“Good morning, Saunders,” greeted the young flight lieutenant, looking up from where he was seated at a desk.

Peter noted that the man's skin was just as lily white as that of the orderly. Another ‘moon-man', he decided. He replied, “Good morning, sir.”

The medical officer (MO) beckoned the sickly and emaciated airman standing before him to take a seat in front of the desk, and when Peter was seated he asked in a kindly voice, “How old are you, Saunders?”

“Nineteen, sir,” Peter replied.

“Ah, yes. I have it here. You're not a national serviceman I see. You're in for five years; hopefully a career man.”

Peter did not answer him but instead watched silently as the MO studied the file he held. Finally the MO looked up and said, “So you're the chap with the malaria problem, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“A bit shaky, sir.”

The MO, studying the file again, said, “Hmm! Quite impressive!” Then, “Quite impressive!”

“What is, sir?”

“Your file. You seem to have had everything in the book during your stay at KL.”

“I have been sick an awful lot,” acknowledged Peter.

“Yes,” said the medical officer.

Peter was not sure what that ‘yes' meant, so he remained silent.

A minute or two passed before the MO said, “I see that you broke a few records while at RAF Kai Tak, Hong Kong.”

“Sir?”

“Well, there's a notation here about you. Hmm. Let's see now. Yes, almost a year ago, and written by the medical officer at Kai Tak, stating that you were the youngest, shortest and lightest airman at that time in the whole Far Eastern Command. That was in mid-fifty-one. It appears that, probably out of curiosity the MO at Kai Tak took the trouble to check out these statistics. Where you aware of his findings?”

“Yes, sir. He called me to the sick quarters one day and told me.”

“Yes.” Again silence for a minute or more before the MO continued, “At that time your weight was seven stone, or ninety-eight pounds. But I note that just one week ago you weighed in at just over six and a quarter stone. We can't have that, Saunders. If you keep this up, soon you'll be nothing more than skin and bone, a skeleton on my hands.”

“Yes, sir. I'm aware of that,” said Peter.

The MO removed his horn-rimmed spectacles and wiped perspiration from them with a clean, very white handkerchief. “Bloody hot, isn't it?” he said.

Peter acknowledged that fact with a simple, “Yes, sir.”

Replacing his spectacles and again looking at the file on his desk, the MO suddenly said, “On medical grounds I'm sending you down to Changi in Singapore, where you can take a rest and recuperate. I'm giving you two weeks sick leave before you report for duty there.” Still studying the file, he paused for a few moments before looking up and saying, “I've managed to secure you a posting at Changi. Until you are tour ex, Changi will be your permanent posting.”

Hardly believing what he had just heard, LAC Peter Saunders let out a deep sigh of relief. It was as if a great weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders, and for the first time in the long four and a half months he had been stationed at KL he felt he had something to smile about. “Thank you, sir,” he said, almost in a whisper. It was if he was having a beautiful dream listening to the medical officer who had resumed speaking.

“Your replacement should arrive today, so I suggest you report immediately to Station Headquarters, have your clearance chit signed by the end of today, and we'll have you flown out of here tomorrow on the first plane bound for Singapore.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Peter, rising to his feet. “I can't thank you enough, sir.”

The medical officer smiled in a kindly manner. “Good luck, Saunders, and good health,” he said, rising to his feet and shaking hands with the skinny little airman. And as he ushered Peter to the door, he said, “I hear it's an altogether different life at Changi.”

2

A steady hand and a heavy finger had made them; six capital letters carefully grooved into the sand a few feet above the water's edge to form the word ‘SHEILA'. Soon, the incoming tide would wash over and erase the word but Sheila herself was still very much a sweet memory, far from being forgotten by the writer of that name in the sand.

Midway between the name written in the sand and where the previous tide's high water had left a thin, ragged line of seaweed twenty feet up the beach, two youths lay on their backs, soaking up the sun, their bodies, clad only in skimpy swimming costumes, facing a cloudless Singapore sky. The two were in quiet conversation, but occasionally one or the other would lift his head to speak to a third youth, LAC Peter Saunders, who was standing a few feet from them, at the water's edge. Peter was paying scant attention to their conversation, however, his thoughts being elsewhere as his eyes roved across the sparkling blue water that stretched away into the distance to where it reached green islands and the hazy coastline of Malaya.

Almost two months had passed since Peter Saunders had arrived at RAF Changi, a period in which his health had improved dramatically. No longer sickly white and emaciated, he was now deeply suntanned, several pounds heavier, and once again fit and full of vitality. Brimming over with newly found energy, he had not felt so well since his posting from RAF Kai Tak, Hong Kong, almost eight months ago.

It was a Saturday afternoon in mid-November 1952. The place: Changi Beach, a popular strip of rather dirty-looking sand separating the sea from the giant air base of Royal Air Force, Changi, situated fourteen miles north-east of the main administrative centre of the island city-state. The temperature was in the eighties, the sun scorching hot. The tidal water of the Johore Strait, separating the British Crown Colony island of Singapore from the vastness of Malaya, was low, but with its swift current was coming in fast. Soon Peter would swim again. He didn't like to swim when the tide was low because then the water was shallow and the bottom was mud in which slimy grasses grew, inhabited by poisonous water snakes. He would wait awhile, to when the water had risen enough to cover the lower slopes of the beach. Like a vast lake, the surface of the water lay shimmering and blue, ruffled only by the wash of a motorized pleasure boat streaking towards the open sea, and a cargo-laden junk plodding along in midstream, its tattered mainsail up, and its dual outboard motors fighting against the fast-moving current. The few narrow and sleek fishing boats made no wake, they were too slow; nor did the many sailing dinghies from Changi's yacht club, dotting the water in a slow race as they tacked towards the islands in a light breeze which barely filled their sails. The only other ruffling of the water was the gentle lapping of tiny waves around Peter's bare feet, caused by the incoming tide.

Faintly, in the far distance, he could see the most southerly state of Malaya, Johore, its coastline just a blur on the horizon, a watery haze hanging motionless over swamplands and tangled masses of jungle wilderness.

In the foreground, opposite Changi Beach and roughly two miles away, lay Peter's favourite island, Pulau Ubin, a long strip of fertile land embraced by thick vegetation, knee-high green grasses and tall coconut palms. On the westerly side of Pulau Ubin, a Chinese fishing village lay nestled in a sheltered bay almost hidden in the greenery. Scattered over the rest of the island were many little homes made from palm planking and thatch, their Chinese and Malay dwellers seemingly happy with their smallholdings of chickens, ducks and goats, and their small plots of land. They could also reap a constant harvest from the bountiful sea.

To the left of Pulau Ubin, plainly visible, looking like green molehills on a shimmering field of blue, were smaller islands basking in quiet tranquillity. To the right lay ghostly Fortress Island, and the ugly nakedness of dismantled and blown-up gun emplacements—an awful reminder of the Japanese invasion of Singapore. During World War II, all the heavy guns on Fortress Island were pointing out to sea from where, logically, an enemy would begin its invasion. But the attacking Japanese army did nothing logically; they came from the north, from Thailand, marching and riding bicycles down jungle paths in the Malay Peninsula, all the way to the Johore Strait. The guns proved useless against them. The British soldiers who had manned those guns and blown them up at the fall of the island were dead, massacred by the invaders; and this happened just ten years back, in 1942. Now, with its tragic memories partially concealed beneath a thick mantle of tropical undergrowth, the island lay as peacefully as it did before any conqueror came to its shores.

Behind Fortress Island lay the much larger island of Pulau Tekong Besar, its towering hills seemingly always shrouded in jungle mist, and blending with the steamy coastline of Johore.

During the past nine weeks, Peter Saunders had often explored the islands off Changi's shores by renting a canoe-like fishing craft from Pop, a short, thick-set, very active middle-aged Chinese fisherman who never wore anything except a pair of dirty old khaki shorts, and a smile on his weather-beaten, good-natured face.

Pop owned and operated a coffee shop on the beach, a crude shack really, made from driftwood and old sailcloth; its roof thatched palm fronds and rusty sheets of galvanized iron. It was situated roughly a hundred feet above a line of dried seaweed and little bits of refuse that had been washed ashore by the last highest tide. Here, Pop rented out four rowing boats and two primitive but very seaworthy native canoes by the hour to the beach-goers, mostly RAF personnel from Changi. His petite wife, Momma, assisted him in running the shack by selling to its patrons Green Spot orange drink, fried rice and other Chinese foods. Momma was about thirty, friendly, smiled a lot and showed off her many gold teeth. Pop and Momma had four very young children. The elder girl and two boys, happily nude and suntanned, were either getting underfoot in the shack, playing in the boats or running around on the beach laughing and making lots of noise. A newborn baby girl spent most of her time sleeping in a crib suspended by a heavy coiled spring attached to a bamboo beam supporting the roof of the shack. The family also had a friendly, skinny, brownish-coloured mongrel dog which rested its chin on the knees of patrons to the shack, and looked up at them with big brown sad eyes imploring them for a handout of whatever was being eaten. Also living in the shack was a flock of chickens, which clucked happily as they ate food dropped to them. And when there was no food being dropped, they pecked at the great variety of insects that emerged from every nook and cranny of that flotsam-built shack. Pop's coffee shop was quite an interesting place and by visiting the beach whenever he had the opportunity, which was almost daily, Peter Saunders had become one of Pop's best customers.