Razeen jumps. ‘Exactly! Ladies and gentlemen, look: the hospital has remained as it was in the war. Inside it has been modernised, but the exteriors are the same. And it is surrounded by tunnels and secret chambers. Now the government wants to close it and demolish it.’
No!
‘The services will be transported to a new hospital that will be built in the north. Historians, of course complained, but the government has already decided its fate. Civil servants are not keen on preserving history. They even tore down Changi prison in 2005 to build a new maximum security prison. Only an original wall remains.’
He shakes his head.
‘And now they are knocking down this hospital, despite what happened here on the fourteenth and fifteenth of February 1942.’
The Alexandra Hospital massacre started on the 14 February around 1 p.m. Japanese troops – having suffered many casualties in the battle of Opium Hill further up – stormed down in a rage and claimed they were being fired on from the hospital roof. Captain J. F. Bartlett came out, with red crosses sown on him and his hands held high, to make sure the soldiers respected the hospital. They fired at him at point-blank range. They then burst into the operating theatre, stabbed the medical officers who were performing an operation and bayoneted the patient who was under anaesthetic. We know this because Captain Smiley, the surgeon, survived despite suffering multiple stab wounds. The soldiers then rounded some 200 staff and walking wounded, tied them up together and squeezed them into three small huts where they left them overnight, having barricaded the doors and nailed the windows. Some of them collapsed and suffocated. The rest were marched off next day in twos and threes and bayoneted to death. The massacre sickened everyone including the Japanese, so much so that the division’s commander, General Mutaguchi, conducted an enquiry and those responsible for the killings were executed.
‘And now,’ Razeen says, ‘to Kranji.’
- 25 -
There are many soldiers in front of the Kranji cemetery steps. In full combat gear. With guns.
Razeen either ignores them or hasn’t seen them yet as we park the minibus – their camouflage must have worked.
‘Although Changi was a bigger camp and its graveyard greater, it was Kranji that was developed into a permanent war cemetery by the Commonwealth Graves Commission,’ says Razeen, ‘because the cemetery at Changi could not remain undisturbed. So the bodies were exhumed from all other places around the island and reburied here. Bodies also arrived from the cemetery in Saigon. Altogether about 4,500 people are buried here.’
Only now Razeen notices the soldiers. ‘Let’s join them,’ he says. ‘They are here for their graduation ceremony. You are lucky; this doesn’t happen all the time.’
‘Is there conscription in Singapore?’ asks the curious American.
Indeed there is. Like in Switzerland, every male goes through basic training and is then called up once a year for training exercises until the age of 50. The north-western tip of the island, beyond Sungei Buloh belongs to the military and is permanently out of bounds, its features appearing on no map. Given Singapore’s history of conflict and its geographical position – being squeezed between two larger neighbours – this is understandable. Would Kuwait have been so easily invaded, if it could call up every man under arms?
The soldiers congregate around the memorial while we walk between the well-tended grid of landscaped graves. Every headstone bears a name, regimental arms and an inscription with some 850 bodies still unidentified. I look down. ‘Private J. C. Auton, 2/19 Infantry Battalion, 20th January 1942. Age 27’. Next to him lies ‘Private R. Currey 2/20 Infantry Battalion, 10th February 1942. Age 22’. Like many others, his inscription simply says: ‘His Duty Fearlessly And Nobly Done, Ever Remembered’. They were both Australian, from New South Wales. Among the crosses, there is the occasional Star of David: ‘Private H. Sanders, 2/20 Infantry Battalion, 30th December 1942. Age 37’. No crescents, though; the Muslim soldiers are buried on the other side of the hill, forever facing Mecca. Most graves are of men, but there are also women: here is nurse Ruby Margaret Brooks, from Cambridge and next to her Diana Mary Cooper from Hitchin, both 23, both volunteers of the British Red Cross Society.
Razeen gathers us around a particular grave. It is that of Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Lyon who died on 16 October 1944, aged 29.
Ivan Lyon?
‘Is there a commemorative plaque for him in the Presbyterian church on Orchard Road?’ I ask.
‘You’ve noticed it?’
In what now seems another lifetime.
‘There are many heroes buried here and their story deserves to be told,’ says Razeen. ‘Major Ivan Lyon was a Scotsman who was attached to Z Unit – special operations – and who commandeered one of the most successful acts of sabotage during the war, Operation Jaywick, yes, named after the toilet cleaner. A group of eleven British and Australian commandos sailed from Australia in fishing boats and on 26 September 1943 they sneaked into Singapore harbour, paddling in small canoes. They attached magnetic limpet mines on several vessels that were moored there and sank seven Japanese transport ships. All returned successfully back to Australia.’
Razeen pauses. ‘So why is his grave here?’
At the main memorial on top of the hill, the soldiers gather to hear a pep-up speech by what looks like a very young major. I hear him use the common adage that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
‘One year after operation Jaywick, Lyon volunteered for a repeat performance: Operation Rimau, which is Malay for tiger – after one of Lyon’s tattoos. But this time the Japanese had learned their lesson and his team was spotted. They escaped on Merapas Island where two of them, Sub Lieutenant Gregor Riggs, another Scot, and Sergeant Colin Cameron, an Australian, stayed back to engage the enemy while the others tried to escape. They both died heroically on the island, but in vain. The Japanese ran in hot pursuit and eventually ten of the group were captured and the rest killed, including Ivan Lyon. Just one month before the final Japanese surrender those ten were executed as spies.’
The last post sounds from the soldiers’ ceremony further up.
Razeen points at two tombstones. ‘Look: here are those two who sacrificed themselves: Gregor Riggs and Colin Cameron. Their remains were found in 1994 on Merapas Island. They were the last two military burials here at Kranji War Cemetery, on 27 August 1994.’
I check. They were both 21 when they died.
‘And here, ladies and gentlemen, lies Rodney Breavington,’ Razeen says. ‘He was a true blue ANZAC: born in New Zealand, settled in Melbourne. He, and three others, another Australian and two British, escaped from their POW camp but were caught by the Japanese 200 miles out on a small boat.’
I know the story. Because of them, the whole of their division was asked to sign an oath that they would not try to escape. They refused. So the camp commander dragged the four escapees to Selerang Beach to make an example out of them. Before they were killed, Breavington stepped forward and asked the firing squad to kill him but save his mates. It was him, he said who was the mastermind of the escape; they were only executing his orders. The incident was captured in a poem, The Corporal and His Pal, part of Australian military folklore. The firing squad was symbolically made up of four nervous Sikhs who had defected to the Japanese. After they fired, one of the condemned stood up and pleaded: ‘You have shot me through the arm. Please shoot me through the heart.’ The second volley hit him on the leg. He cried ‘For God’s sake, shoot through the HEART!’
When the war was over and the war crime trials began, the Japanese commander who ordered their execution was shot on the same spot on Selerang Beach. Razeen shows us a picture: a corpulent, middle-aged man is tied to a pole, his trousers inside his well-polished high boots, stooped forwards, a hood over his head. The caption identifies him as Major General Shinpei Fukuye.
The soldiers are dispersing, as we approach the Singapore Memorial. A large semi-circular stone inscription explains: O
n the walls of this memorial are recorded the names of twenty-four thousand soldiers and airmen of many races united in service to the British Crown who gave their lives in Malaya and neighbouring lands and seas and in the air over southern and eastern Asia and the Pacific but to whom the fortune of war denied the customary rites accorded to their comrades in death.
‘Here,’ says Razeen, ‘are the names of the bodies that werenever found.’
‘Perished at sea?’ asks the curious American.
‘Many of them. But there are some that stand out.’
He goes and points to a name: ‘Captain Patrick Heenan, the Singapore traitor.’
Let me take over once again. The fact that the Singapore Memorial wall bears the name of a court-martialled traitor is worth exploring if only for the Anglo-Saxon notions of innocence and guilt.
Captain Patrick Heenan was the illegitimate son of a Eurasian mining engineer and a girl from New Zealand where he was born in 1910. He grew up in Burma and, when his father died, his mother moved to London where she remarried. His stepfather was well-off and forked out the fees for Cheltenham College where Heenan joined the cadets. He became an officer in the Indian army’s 2/16 Punjab Regiment and was posted in Malaya. His mixed parentage and dark skin colour appears to have been the target of overt racism in the British mess, so, disgruntled, he bought the Japanese pan-Asian propaganda directed against the British Empire; he seems to have turned into a double agent during a long holiday in Japan just before the war. Further unauthorised trips across the Thai border made his commanding officer suspicious, and he sought Heenan’s removal from the Punjabi Regiment. So where was this suspected spy moved to? But of course, to intelligence – Air Liaison to be exact, where he was promoted to second in command in a border post. No one seriously believes that the initial Japanese successes in the air were simply the result of information by Heenan, for there must have been other spies, too, but the fact remains that he was caught hiding a wireless transmitter in a Catholic padre’s communion set. More incriminating maps and reports were found when his locker was searched. He was jailed in Changi prison; two days before Singapore fell, he was secretly courtmartialled, taken out to the docks and shot in the head. His body has never been found.
Which is why his name is now on the memorial wall: there is no body and there exist no documents that prove his guilt; the fog of war has seen to that. The Singaporeans and their historians have no doubt, like Razeen, and there have been many attempts to wipe his name from the memorial. But as there was no confession, the Commonwealth Graves Commission in charge of the memorial wants irrevocable proof. I can’t see why a conviction by a court-martial at the time isn’t good enough.
The soldiers are preparing for the final ceremony. Rifles are being unloaded from a lorry and arranged on a table in a row. I approach and caress one rifle-butt as I would a lion. The Commander sees me and comes over. He is young, early thirties, and Razeen confirms my reading of the epaulets: this is Major Marcus Tan who greets me.
‘A wonderful place to bring your soldiers, Sir,’ I say half-respectfully, half-fearfully for I have been a bit too close to those weapons. But the major, assertive, self-confident and very congenial does not notice – or does not show it. He points at the conscripts standing saucer-eyed at ease, for whom the sense of occasion appears overwhelming.
‘They’re getting their rifles for the first time,’ he says to me. ‘I believe that this place enhances the significance of the ceremony. There are many brave men and women buried here.’
‘I couldn’t agree more, Sir,’ I say, as martially as I can muster, and shake his hand firmly.
Jacky is waiting for me at Tantric. She buys me a pint.
‘Heavy day,’ I say. ‘World War Two. Kranji.’
She’s not interested.
‘Did you meet Richard?’ she asks instead.
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
I smile mischievously. ‘It was good,’ I reply.
‘I’m glad you two got on so well together.’
I am not so sure. Richard has been cool since that first date and is always busy whenever I come into the bar – or rather busier than usual.
‘Meet Tim,’ says Jacky introducing a long-haired, bespectacled Caucasian who is standing next to her.
‘Hi, I’m a geek,’ he says to me and, as if in a rush to prove it, he tells me a joke. ‘You look as if you are going to get this. No one else understands it.’
‘Go on,’ I tell him.
‘Kurt Gödel, Werner Heisenberg and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar –’
‘Hold on,’ I stop him. ‘Noam Chomsky I know. He defined formal grammars, cognitive psychology and that. Heisenberg is he of the Uncertainty Principle. But Gödel?’
‘He was a pioneer of mathematical logic,’ Tim replies grinning. ‘No one knows him, hehe.’
I have a bad feeling about the joke.
‘Anyway,’ he continues chirpily, ‘Heisenberg looks around him, and says “What unusual company. And we’re in a bar. I am certain that this is a joke, but I have no idea whether it’s funny or not”. Gödel considers the proposition for a minute, and replies “It could be. But in order to tell whether it really is, we’d have to know whether it was funny to someone outside the story, and as we’re inside the story we’ll never be able to know.” At which point Chomsky interrupts “Of course it’s a joke, you’re just telling it wrong!”’
Jacky and I glance at each other as Tim pisses himself laughing.
‘I like him,’ I whisper. ‘He’s weird.’
‘Me too,’ she replies and squeezes my hand.
I take a good look at Tim who has gone to the bar.
‘He’s straight, isn’t he?’
‘Yep. But he’s really cool.’
I tend to agree with her. ‘Do you like him?’
She nods.
‘A lot?’
She wriggles away.
‘As a friend,’ she whines. ‘As a friend’.
I put a mental bookmark to follow this up while Tim returns with a bottle of champagne and a carafe.
‘What’s this?’ I ask.
‘A French 75,’ he replies, and he clearly doesn’t mean a vintage. ‘Try it.’
‘What’s in it?’ I ask.
‘In the bottle? Gin, lemon juice and sugar.’
He half fills my flute glass with the lichen-coloured mix and tops it up with champagne. I taste it. A champagne sour if ever there was one, and very nice it is, too.
It doesn’t take long to get me drunk on an empty stomach. So I don’t know whether it is the effects of the French 75 or whether I really do see Dan walking through the door.
If it is him, he looks the perfect picture of health.
CHAPTER TEN
THE WISE OLD MAN
The Wise Old Man had lived at the edge of the village for what seemed like centuries. Even the wrinkliest inhabitants remembered how, as children, they used to pass by his hut part afraid, part curious, but always – always – respectful. Such deference arose not simply because the Wise Old Man was, well, old, but because he managed to live without possessions and without needs, surviving only by the charity of strangers. This was not any Wise Old Man: this was the wraith of an arhat; the exhalation of a true bodhisattva.
The Thief wasn’t local; he had come from afar. He didn’t know of the Old Man, of his station in this life and the next, of his suspected and expected holiness. What the Thief knew was that this hut, casting a ghostly silhouette under the bold full moon was situated away from the village. Even if its occupants were not asleep, they could summon little help by shouting.
The Thief kicked the door in. It fell on the floor, broken, unused to sudden lurches. The Thief entered and checked his surroundings.
There was nothing inside.
No, not nothing worth stealing; nothing. No bed, no sheets, no table, no clothes, not even an empty rice bowl.
Does anyone live here? wondered the Thief. Someone must, because it’
s clean. And the door was closed properly.
Behind him, he heard steps.
He turned around abruptly only to confront a wizened old face with a long white beard and a bald head that reflected the moonlight like a lamp.
The Thief saw the Wise Old Man and spat down in disgust. The hut of a beggar. This was not his lucky night.
The Wise Old Man knelt down and caressed the fallen door.
‘I was looking at the stars,’ he said apologetically.
The Thief pushed him aside and walked out without uttering a word.
‘Wait!’ cried the Wise Old Man.
The Thief stopped but did not turn around.
‘You came here to rob me and found nothing. I can’t let you go like this.’
The Thief made a half turn, his face questioning the beggar with the corner of his eye.
A beggar who was taking off his rags and who stood in front of him as naked as he’d appeared from his mother’s womb.
‘Here, take these,’ said the Wise Old Man. ‘Take my clothes. They’re the only things I’ve got.’
The Thief stood there watching the sorry collection of skin and bones that stood in front of him, his lower lip trembling.
‘TAKE THEM!’ This time the voice of the Wise Old Man was masterful, commanding.
Part afraid, part curious, but always – always – respectful, the Thief took the Wise Old Man’s rags and bowed down deeply until his elbows touched his knees. And then, with a swift gait, he left in the direction he had arrived.
The Wise Old Man’s eyes followed the Thief’s shadow as it slowly fused with the farthest darkness. Then, when there was no movement left to follow, he sat down and stared at the silver disk up in the sky.
‘Poor man,’ he whispered. ‘How I wish I could have given him this moon.’
- 26 -
‘A combination of egos and too long in power. A whole generation has grown up not knowing any alternative. It no longer occurs to anyone to speak out of turn.’
I’m back at the Raffles, having a coffee at the Empire Café and doing the unthinkable: talking politics with Singapore’s most distinguished human rights activist, Alex Au, who has just characterised Singapore’s leaders.
Singapore Swing Page 18