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| Malaya. Singapore is the pink bit, bottom right |
I am standing on an observation tower guarding an RAF camp on the island of Singapore. To hand is a loaded rifle. Also a searchlight which I may swing this way and that. Dusk; the jungle beyond the camp is becoming darkly impenetrable.
Something moves. It's a skinny guy in a white shirt and short pants, down below on a narrow path. He’s moving towards me accompanied by three or four Asiatic cows almost as skinny as he is. I wash the searchlight over the cows, briefly lighting up their eyeballs. The skinny guy is resentful as if I’m interfering with his way of life. Which I suppose I am.
A hundred miles to the north, up the Malayan peninsula, shots are occasionally exchanged. The CTs (communist terrorists), surrounded by British Commonwealth troops and starved almost into skeletons, are coming to the end of their resistance. Soon the fighting will stop. Otherwise it’s still a war zone and sometimes an unlucky Brown Job – conscripted into two years’ national service, like me – will get his head shot off. Back home in the UK, months later, I take delivery of a General Service Medal with Malaya Clasp. Solid silver, no less. My name, rank (Junior Technician) and RAF number (2751052) inscribed round its edge.
Did I earn it? Well, I repaired VHF radios which allowed war-plane pilots to speak to each other. Implausibly this makes me a combatant.
I’m a long way from the action but terrorists are, of course, mobile. In the dark they could get quite close and I’d be a standing target atop my tower. But I'm bored rather than scared. No, I didn't deserve the medal.
It seems that military bling is liberally bestowed and merely being there evidently qualifies you to receive your share. Many years ago, when a I still had hair and flaring hormones I knew an old man who had been at the Battle of the Somme and miraculously survived it. He was received as a hero back home in Britain, but he assured me he was nothing of the sort. He had been conscripted, was terrified and wanted only to put it all behind him. He spend a good part of the rest of his life as an anti-war activist - and we all know how much good that did. As for Singapore - one of my favourite places in the entire world.
ReplyDeleteDMG: During the UK's national service era there were quite a lot of opportunities where you could get your head shot off just by "being there". Cyprus was particularly dangerous, as was Kenya. Had I been slightly older I might also have qualified for Korea, though death from hypothermia would have been more likely.
DeleteThe greatest risks occurred with the Army not the RAF and in this instance I was the the subject of beneficial irony. I did badly at school and could have easily ended up in the Army as a result. However, for reasons which still aren't clear to me, I scored well in the multiple-choice examinations which tested my intellectual as well as my physical potential for contributing to the war effort and - against all my expectations - was directed into the RAF. Thereafter I underwent further tests which concluded I was fit for the RAF's Group 2 trade (electronics; airframes and engines being Group 1) in a descending order of some 25 groups. This, I felt sure, was pure madness. At school I had done especially badly in physics and the RAF training course I was given lasted eight months and involved a substantial amount of related maths. But, it seems, the RAF knew me better than I did myself. I passed all the required 27 exams wherein the penalties for scoring less than 60% were particularly painful.
Later - and here's the further irony - what I learned in the RAF informed my abilities as a journalist and took me into unexpected byways. Notably getting me a job in the USA.
I’m guessing that you were there during the “Malayan Emergency” and so I’ve perused the Wiki entry for that chapter, imperceptibly lessening my ignorance of History. With all the parallels to the “Vietnam Conflict” I might have guessed where good ol’ Agent Orange was first experimented with prior to its more voluminous use in ‘Nam. And of course civilians were massacred, as happens in every war, but I think never as efficiently as the USA did it in August of ‘45. I think you deserve your bit of silver, just for risking it all. My dad had half a cigar box full of campaign ribbons and medals from his Army service in the E.T. I’m not sure he was trying to impart a lesson by allowing me full access to them when I was a kid. I used them as toys and they became scattered and lost. I’m certain that if he cared he would have scolded me. I asked him back then if he had ever shot anyone, and his answer was “I don’t know - there was a lot of shooting”. He recalled a “near” confrontation with a tank(he was a bazooka man), but seemed to most remember “sleeping in frozen tank tracks on Christmas Eve”.
ReplyDeleteI missed being drafted in ‘72 by a hair’s breadth, and the threat of that conscription was never mentioned to me by my parents, or even my friends or teachers. I was oblivious and I was lucky.
MikeM: I should have appended dates, many of my experiences occurred before most of my blog friends were born.. I entered the RAF in April 1955 and (including boot camp, which we called square bashing) trained for a full year before being transferred to FEAF (Far East Air Force) to put my newly won skills to use.
ReplyDeleteAlas I proved to be a poor bargain to the RAF. I only worked for two or three months. Then I caught what seemed to be incurable athlete's foot and after much time spent in the camp's sick quarters, plus a fortnight at a military hospital up in the Cameron Highlands in Malaya, I was transferred back to to the UK. Where my athlete's foot cleared up in a fortnight.
"Where would you like to be stationed?" I was asked. By this time I'd become a hardened armed forces cynic and I sneeered "So you can put me as far away from my choice as possible?" But they were as good as they promised and my final few months were spent at RAF Lindholme, near Doncaster, a mere 30 miles or so from my home town of Bradford. Thus, I went home most weekends.
To tell the truth I rather enjoyed that last period. Lindholme was an active station for training navigators (in WW2 Lancasters) and finally what I'd been through made sense.I did real work. Notably modifying VHF antennae for these ancient planes.
I was there with you for a few moments at that RAF camp on the island of Singapore. At least I was very clearly imagining what you were writing about. I could also imagine that cow herder.
ReplyDeleteColette: You'd have been most welcome. Not for any sleazy reason, just a chat and a Tiger (The local beer.) I'd long since wearied of all-male company
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your short but very evocative piece – it was gripping, really. I could feel the atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteThe way you were selected in the RAF reminds me of my late husband. He was drafted by the US Military and during the interview was asked what he had been studying – he replied “Medieval Poetry.” Got it, said the sergeant - MP - we’ll place you in the military police. And he was sent to patrol the Arizona-Mexico border for 2 years…
Vagabonde: It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely juxtapositioning of past experience with new job.
ReplyDeleteIn an attempt to cure my athlete's foot I spent time at a hospital at altitude in Malaya. There I was outnumbered by the real heroes of the so-called Malayan Emergency. Soldiers who had gone out into the jungle on patrol with shotguns. The weapons themselves were significant; shotguns are excellent when you expect to come upon the enemy at very close quarters. Many were now suffering from "pyrexia of unknown origin", sweating so much that that their mattresses had to be changed regularly. I doubt I'd have been bored during those excursions.