The Rose of Singapore (43 page)

Onward rode the men, in choking dust and scorching heat, with dirt and sweat combining and sticking to their hot, sweating bodies. What had started off as starched and neatly pressed KD uniforms had now become crumpled and saturated by perspiration. Talking ceased except for the occasional whisper, or at times a grunt or a curse as buttocks changed position on a hard, uncomfortable seat. By now, almost midday, it was far too hot to waste energy on idle talk. Some sipped on water, others iced tea, from hip flasks filled at KL.

More rice fields and more stench. Then the lorries roared through a palm grove and a Malay
kampung
of
atap
huts where papaya trees, heavy with fruit, were growing. Copra had been spread out on mats to dry in the sun. Chickens scratched for their lunch and, on a grassy plot, several white goats grazed. A wizened old Chinese woman, bent almost double beneath a great bundle of hay, slowly jogged on bare feet along the edge of the road, the long bamboo pole slung across her bony, narrow shoulders bouncing up and down in rhythm to her jiggling trot. A mongrel dog sniffed at her ankle. Cursing it loudly for all to hear, she spat upon the dog and kicked at it angrily. Peter observed much as the lorry sped onward along that dusty highway.

Within another few hundred yards, they came to open shopfronts and thatch-roofed dwellings on both sides of a dusty, potholed street; more smells, many dogs barking, children screeching, street traders hawking their wares. They arrived at a barbed-wire fence and an open gateway where, to one side of the gateway, a British soldier with a rifle and fixed bayonet stood guard. Inside the gateway, painted in big black letters on a square, red-painted wooden board was the name of the British army camp the lorries were about to enter. Peter Saunders read out the name aloud. ‘KUALA KUBU BARU.' He then read, “‘ONE STEP FROM HELL'. How charming!” he said to Rick.

“It looks like one fucked-up place to me,” was Rick's only comment.

The army camp at Kuala Kubu Baru was the rendezvous for all transport about to ascend Fraser's Hill, a transit camp where armed convoys were formed.

An army military policeman lifted a pole at the gateway and beckoned the leading driver to proceed into the camp. Once inside, a British soldier took over, directing both lorry drivers to stop at an empty, dusty, sun-scorched parking area. They were the first to arrive.

Looking about him, Peter Saunders turned to Rick. “Bloody hell! I'd hate to be stationed at this God-forsaken place,” he said.

“Me, too,” Rick replied. “It really is a hell-hole.”

The camp was built upon a cleared and now barren hillside overlooking jungle. The army billets were constructed of rough unpainted planking and corrugated sheeting. Everything looked very old and dilapidated, and was probably used during and even before the Japanese occupation. The camp roads were nothing more than dirt tracks of fine dust and loose stone. Peter shuddered as he thought of how it must be when the rains came.

Hovels, mostly whorehouses and bars to supply the needs of soldiers, lined the dusty, stony street across the road from the entrance side of the British army camp at Kuala Kubu Baru. To the rear the scene was completely different. There, the camp, built on a man-made hillside plateau, overlooked a wide, steamy valley. Gazing through tangled barbed-wire fencing, Peter Saunders could see tall coarse grasses, burnt yellow by the sun, striving to exist on the high, dried-up mountainside. Lower down, the slopes of the hillside were green and well watered, and from them a continuous bellowing of bullfrogs could be heard, a cacophony dominating all other noises. Thick jungle covered the lower areas of the valley except where a brown, sluggish river meandered through steamy marshland. Peter shuddered as he thought of the milliards of mosquitoes, which must infest those lowlands.

With no sign of any other military vehicles to make up a convoy, the airmen in the two RAF lorries grew increasingly hot and restless. Yet, in fact, only ten minutes elapsed before the first vehicle, a light tank, made an appearance. Rumbling and clanking into the compound, it eventually swivelled around on heavy tracks and, facing the gateway it had entered, came to a standstill, its turret gun slowly revolving until the barrel pointed towards the far hills on the other side of the valley. The turret hatch opened and from it climbed a young British army officer who jumped from the tracks of the tank to the dusty ground. A lance corporal followed. Wearing jungle-green uniforms and black berets, both were perspiring profusely as they drank the contents from a shared canteen; and then both lit up a Players cigarette.

An armoured car followed the tank into the camp. It too carried a heavy turret gun, also machine guns that peeped out through slits in its armour. On coming to a standstill, its turret hatch was immediately flung open, and from it emerged a pair of young British soldiers, a corporal and a ‘squaddy', also wearing jungle-green uniforms and black berets. Sweating, they sat on their hot war machine and they, too, lit up Players cigarettes.

Three bullet-proof lorries filled with heavily-armed British soldiers were next to enter the camp, followed by several Land Rovers and Jeeps, each with a mounted Bren gun manned by the driver's mate. After these, an assortment of other military vehicles, including two British army dispatch riders, straggled into the camp.

Arriving in a jeep, a fiery, ruddy-faced, British army captain took charge of forming the convoy. Appearing as if angry with everyone in that dusty compound, with much waving of his arms, in an Irish brogue he shouted orders mixed with profanities at the drivers of the many vehicles about to be formed into a convoy.

After a brief spell of sitting on the turret of their armoured car smoking, the crew were ordered by the army captain to return to their hellishly hot cramped confines, and to immediately position themselves as leader of the convoy. With its engine whining and aerial swaying the armoured car exited the camp and, cruising along the dusty street for a hundred yards or more, came to a halt upon reaching a predetermined marker.

The driver of an armoured army lorry was ordered into second place. Next, the drivers of the two RAF lorries were ordered to take up their positions behind the armoured army lorry, making them third and fourth in line. Behind these the convoy was made up in the following order: an empty, open army lorry, an armoured lorry, a Land Rover, an army staff car, another armoured army lorry, another Land Rover, and two army servicemen-filled lorries, their open backs protected from thrown grenades by a wire mesh canopy. Following one another the vehicles took up their allotted positions until finally the convoy was formed. The two dispatch riders, eager to start the journey, sat astride their motorcycles ready to kick them into life. They could ride where they wished within the convoy. Both inside and outside the camp there was much noise and movement.

The light tank, however, remained at a standstill, its engine switched off. But now that all the other vehicles had moved out of the camp and into their designated places, the tank's crew, sweltering within the hot confines of the tank, awaited orders to take up the rearguard position. Within the small circular opening of the gun turret, a young army officer could be seen as he acknowledged the army captain's order to move. At the same time he talked into a walky-talky to the corporal in charge of the armoured car which headed the convoy.

Peter Saunders surveyed the line-up of vehicles with considerable interest, noting that with the armoured car in the lead, followed by the armoured lorry and the luggage-laden RAF lorry, the lorry he was in was fourth in line. An empty open army lorry followed, which gave protection to neither the vehicle ahead nor the one following. Peter felt some apprehension at being fourth in line. He would have preferred to be somewhere in the middle of the convoy.

The British soldier on sentry duty at the gate leaned on his rifle, a bored expression on his deeply suntanned face. Looking at his watch, he then looked towards the guardroom. His relief was due, and he was fed up with standing in the heat of day doing guard duty. Once the convoy departed, the camp would be dead, but he was glad of that, thinking of the time he could spend drinking and screwing at Molly Wong's little whorehouse just across the road. The minute hand on his watch seemed to move forever slower. He shifted his weight from one foot to another, spotted a black, hard-backed beetle, and crushed it with his rifle butt. That made him feel better. Then he saw his relief coming out of the guardroom smartly marching towards him.

Now, the sun was even fiercer, its rays dancing upon the glinting metal of many weapons. A shimmering haze of heat rose above the dusty road adjacent to the camp compound. Everyone in the convoy sweated, and all wanted to be moving.

‘One step from hell.' Rather an appropriate description thought Peter Saunders, seeking whatever scant shade there was in front of the tailboard of the lorry. He could see the slopes of Fraser's Hill far in the distance, rising majestically out of the steaming jungle. Mist clung tenaciously to the lower slopes. Higher, the air appeared to be clear, and he could see in places what he believed to be the road meandering upward. Wisps of cloud embraced the summit. He glanced at Rick who was seated at his side, and their eyes met. They had spoken little since taking their place in the convoy, both feeling too hot and sweaty to make conversation.

“Christ, it's bloody hot,” said Rick, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket.

His remark brought those men sitting nearest him suddenly to life.

“It may get hotter,” whined a Brummie. “We ain't goin' on no picnic.”

“Och, away wi' ya, mon,” butted in Jock Campbell. “Ya bin gettin' your knickers in a twist.”

“Ah, so he is, Jock,” chirped Paddy Jones from where he sat close to the Bren. “He's a big lassie, so he is. A proper dogsbody.”

“Just wait an see. We all may be proper lassies and shitting in our pants before the day is out,” whined the Brummie.

“Och, mon, ya worry a right lot about nothing,” said the Scotsman.

“Less talking,” barked Flying Officer Morgan.

“Captain Henry Morgan has commanded,” whispered Peter to Rick. “If we don't behave ourselves, he'll have us all walking the plank.”

Rick laughed. “He seems quite a character,” he said.

“He's the rit mon for this wee jobby,” said the Scotsman.

“You're right there, Jock,” said Peter Saunders; and he meant it.

“We're in a bad position here, Pete, aren't we!” whispered Rick.

“Yes, we are,” admitted Peter. “I realized that as soon as we had taken up our position.”

“If we should get ambushed, the bandits will allow the armoured car to pass around a bend and then open fire on the rest of us. That's how I see it.” said Rick.

“Yeah, you're right. The road is sure to be narrow, so if they manage to stop one lorry, they'll stop the whole convoy.”

“And riddle these open lorries with bullets.”

“Then make good their escape before the armoured stuff has a chance to come on the scene. That's what I'm thinking. I think we should hand in our resignations right now, Rick.”

The corporal, overhearing the conversation, said, “You're both getting the wind up over nothing. The convoy's been making this run for months without incident.”

A piercing whistle was suddenly heard, blown by the army captain who stood surveying the scene from the side of the road. The whistle was his signal for the convoy to move out. The armoured car, pulling away from all the other vehicles, slowly made its way along the narrow road skirting the camp, and then gathered speed on reaching the junction, which brought it onto the main highway. At set distances it was followed by the armoured army lorry, the two RAF Bedfords, and by all the other vehicles which seemed to be playing a game of Follow The Leader away from Kuala Kubu Baru's camp exit. It was here, at the junction, that at least twenty private cars carrying civilian passengers of many races awaited the convoy. Seeking protection during the potentially hazardous journey, one by one they found a place for themselves among the many passing military vehicles.

In an otherwise clear blue sky, a few wisps of cloud now floated lazily overhead. Soon, in the lowlands, it would be raining again. But here, where the land was caked and dry, clouds of brown dust billowed up around the wheels of the many vehicles as the convoy gathered speed and streamed out of Kuala Kubu Baru. The village was soon behind them, its smells, its noises, the dusty camp, everything. Here there were no rice fields or rubber plantations, instead only jungle with a thin ribbon that was the road twisting like a never-ending snake beneath overhanging growths of greenness. Now, the sun was often lost from sight, only to reappear where there was no mantle of jungle covering the road.

On a rare, very long sweeping clear curve in the road, Peter Saunders attempted to count the number of vehicles strung out one behind the other. On arriving at twenty-one, he lost count; the convoy was much too long. Actually, the convoy consisted of forty-seven vehicles.

“Thirty-one. Z.V. Fifty-two,” Peter suddenly said.

“What's that?” asked Rick.

“Oh, I was just reading the registration number on the armoured car. Quite a sizeable gun they've got on it, eh, Rick? What size do you reckon it is?”

“I dunno. I've no idea,” answered Rick. “But big enough to knock the bloody head off a frigging bandit.”

Peter Saunders chuckled at his friend's remark. “You can say that again,” he said.

After another mile of jungle they were out in bright sunlight again. Here the convoy began to climb the hill, slowly, for the narrow road literally clung to, and had been carved out of, the stony hillside. To the left of the road was a steep drop-off into jungle; and to the right loomed an almost perpendicular wall of dense foliage—a matting of greens, yellows, browns and golds glistening and sweating in the sunlight. Orchids grew wild in great profusion on the hillside as did many other flowers, species unknown to Peter Saunders. Twining vines interwoven with shrubs and wild sickly-looking banana clumps all jockeyed for position in order to survive in that beautiful yet treacherous jungle.