Then it was their turn.
Orders were given by the NCO in charge, and SAC Peter Saunders walked with other airmen across the tarmac to where the Hastings aircraft awaited them, its huge silvery body glinting in that day’s first rays of sunlight. He presented his pink travelling form to the Movements Officer standing at the bottom of the flight of metal steps. Ascending the steps, he entered the plane and walked down an aisle between tall, leather-bound seats. He sat down near a thick glass porthole looking out over wing flaps, and strapped himself in by the safety belt.
Minutes later the double doors were slammed shut and secured. A red light came on in the cabin. The plane shuddered as an engine started. A pall of black smoke and red flames belched from the exhaust. Then, one after another, the three other engines spluttered and came to life, and the plane trembled as the engines ticked over. Minutes passed. To Peter Saunders those minutes seemed an eternity. Eventually, the heavy wooden chocks were wrenched from beneath the wheels, and the aircraft trundled forward from the dispersal unit towards the number one runway, the main runway that stretched the whole length from Changi Gaol to Changi Beach overlooking the Johore Strait. The Hastings swung to starboard before cruising at a fair speed down the long perimeter track until she reached the far end. There she swung around to port and taxied to the beginning of the runway. Behind her stood a grove of palm trees and behind these the notorious Changi Gaol. On the perimeter track, less than a hundred yards away, an ambulance and a fire tender stood by ready and waiting in case of an emergency.
All four engines were revved up, in turn and then in concert. Now, no black smoke came from the exhausts, but instead, a haze of greyish-white fumes and a lot of sparks. The engines roared at full throttle, brakes came off, and the aircraft lurched forward, steadied herself, then gained speed rapidly as she raced faster and faster down that very long runway. The dashed white line appeared to speed beneath the aircraft’s broad belly. Flickering lamps of the flare path still spluttered, though it was already daylight. At an ever-increasing speed the plane reached where the runways crossed. The white control tower on the hill to the left seemed to flash by as she sped down the runway parallel with the green embankment carrying the two-lane road that ends at Changi Village. Peter watched as they flashed past the tiny post office, and next, the billets of the RAF Regiment Malay Squadron to his left. Halfway down the runway the tail wheel lifted. The plane no longer bumped on the tarmac but gracefully skimmed the flat, even surface until, pushed forward by her four powerful engines, she lifted and gradually ascended into an azure sky. The runway at RAF Changi quickly slipped away below. Just for moments, as the plane flashed over them, Peter Saunders stared sadly down at Pop’s coffee-shack, the fish trap and upon a deserted Changi Beach. It was far too early for sun worshippers to grace its sands warming in that day’s first sunlight.
Wisps of cotton-wool-like cloud flashed past the ports as the plane headed out over the Johore Strait, the water below twinkling and looking cool and calm, with fishing sampans dotting its surface and a Chinese junk chugging its way towards the mainland. The aircraft altered course and approached the city’s boundary. Quite clearly Peter could see the detached mole, Clifford Pier and Telok Ayer Basin in the Inner Roads. He spotted the Raffles Hotel and the Union Jack Club, and of course, but further away, he could see the tallest building in Singapore, the Cathay Building, towering above the city. Fort Canning in the King George the Fifth Park seemed to glide silently by below; and to the north, he could make out Institution Hill. He continued to look down, sadly wondering where Lai Ming might be.
Lai Ming entered the wide, silver gates. Slowly, taking her time, she crossed the concrete forecourt then stopped for a few moments at the doorway of the main entrance to the Taoist temple. Looking about her, she involuntarily shuddered as she gazed upon the two ferocious-looking stone tigers, which stood one on either side of the doorway, guarding the entrance. She did not stand and stare as would a tourist but instead turned quickly away and entered the building.
Lai Ming wore her pajama-like, black two-piece cotton samfoo, the jacket buttoned up to the neck, and the trousers wide and flapping. On her feet she wore red wooden clogs. In one hand she carried a bone fan, and in the other a large wicker basket.
Fantastic carvings greeted her, and elaborate colourful glass ornaments glinted wherever she turned her eyes. She saw what must be the caretaker–priest in silent meditation at the entrance to the subterranean room beneath the seat where an effigy of Kwan Yin stood.
Placing the wicker basket down upon the stone floor of the temple, she clasped her hands together and held them towards the statue. Her lips moved slowly but no sound came as, with head tilted upward, she looked long and sadly into the Goddess of Mercy’s eyes.
As she looked up into the face of her deity, her lips trembled. She hoped Kwan Yin would forgive her and answer her prayers favourably. For a fleeting moment a hint of a smile appeared on her face, accompanied by a bow of her head. She then bent down and drew from the wicker basket joss sticks in a ceramic vase. These she placed upon the altar. She lit the joss sticks then bowed three times in worship. Next, she took a bowl of cooked rice and one of sweetmeats and placed these also upon the altar, and bowed again. She then took from the basket a bowl of white loquat blossoms with yellow hearts, deep red in their centres—sweet-smelling flowers picked by her from her own garden very early that morning. These, she scattered upon the altar immediately in front of the Goddess.
Lai Ming picked up the two fist-sized wooden objects shaped like small elongated bowls, known as yao bei, and threw them onto the temple floor. She closed her eyes tightly and held her breath as they rolled across the ground before coming to a rest. She opened her eyes, hardly daring to see the result. One faced up and one faced down. “Seng bui!” whispered Lai Ming in her native Cantonese dialect, “how fortunate, the gods are looking down on me today.” The yao bei were showing different sides, which meant Lai Ming could proceed to the next stage of the divination reading. She reached for the worn bamboo canister, which contained a sheaf of numbered sticks. On bended knee she held the small canister in both hands and shook it gently forwards and backwards. After only a few seconds one of the numbered sticks fell out of the canister and landed on the floor in front of her knees.
She would now have to throw the two wooden yao bei again to confirm she had the right stick. She stood up and fetched the same pair of yao bei before tossing them once again into the air. Should they land the same way up, she would know her numbered stick was not the correct one and she would have to begin the whole process again. “Seng bui!” she exclaimed, relieved to see yet again that the two yao bei were showing different sides. But one sheng bei was not enough; Lai Ming would have to get three consecutive sheng bei in order to be totally satisfied that her numbered stick contained the answer to the question she had posed to Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy.
Again she performed the qiu qian, and again she was lucky, the two halves showed different sides. Gathering up the wooden yao bei for the final time, she rubbed them gently to her bosom. She did not speak, but silently prayed. Three times, and this was the third, the last. “They must! They must,” she whispered to herself. She kissed and whispered to each block, her eyes wide and pleading. Casting both halves from her, they fell with a loud clatter on the stonework at the base of the altar. And when she looked down to where the two halves had fallen, she sighed a heavy sigh of relief. Sheng bei again. Lai Ming now knew the numbered stick that had shaken itself free from the canister contained the answer she so desperately needed to know.
She picked up the stick and memorized the number. Eighty-eight! With such a lucky number she felt confident of a favourable reply. She made her way to the back of the temple where she found the temple custodian, and she told him her number. The priest tore a strip of paper from a worn divination book that correlated to Lai Ming’s number then studied it closely. Lai Ming held her breath as the old priest stared at the paper intentl
y, his face completely devoid of expression. “The answer is yes,” was all the priest said before handing the strip of paper to Lai Ming, turning and shuffling away. Had she heard correctly? Yes, he had said. Breathing freely now, all tension flooding from her weary, heartbroken self, Lai Ming was suddenly elated. “He will return! He will return!” she whispered passionately, the words rolling over and over in her mind. He would not forget her. He would return.
Gaining altitude all the while, the aircraft circled the city once, as if deliberately giving the passengers a final look at Singapore. Then, with her course set west northwest, she left the island behind. Johore, the most southerly state of Malaya, now lay below, steaming jungle bordered by a brown muddy coastline.
“This is Flying Officer Carpenter, your captain on this flight,” began an up-beat voice on an intercom. “Welcome aboard. I’d like to gen you up on what’s ahead. We are now flying at approximately four thousand feet. In a few minutes we’ll be banking sharply to port, heading for the western tip of Singapore. From there we’ll be climbing to ten thousand feet and a northwesterly course will be set, which should take us over northern Sumatra and across the Indian Ocean to the island of Ceylon. There, in approximately ten hours from now, we’ll put down to refuel at RAF Negombo Airstrip. The weather ahead looks good but don’t unfasten your safety belts until the red light goes off. Your quartermaster, Sergeant Price, will attend to your needs. Enjoy the flight.”
Whilst walking down the narrow aisle of the plane, the quartermaster, an oldish, heavy-set, beery-faced sergeant, noticed SAC Peter Saunders peering anxiously out of the porthole.
“Are you feeling all right, son?” asked the sergeant.
“Yes, thanks, Sarge. I’m all right.”
“You don’t look all right to me. Are you on medical repat’?”
“I am all right, Sarge. And I’m not on medical repat’. I’m tour ex.”
“Oh! My mistake! You just don’t look well.”
“I suppose it’s because I’m sad at leaving Singapore.”
“You’ve left someone behind?”
“Yes, Sarge, I have.”
“A Chinese girl?”
“Yes.”
“They’re always Chinese.”
“Mine’s a very nice girl.”
“A prostitute?”
“No! She’s a real lady!”
“I’ve a Chinese girlfriend in Hong Kong. She’s from Shanghai. She escaped the Communist takeover a couple of years ago, couldn’t get a job in Hong Kong, had no money, so she became a prostitute.”
“Just like the thousands of other Chinese girls who’ve flooded into Hong Kong,” said Peter.
“Yes. My girlfriend’s a prostitute, but she’s also a lady,” said the sergeant. In a friendly gesture he placed a hand upon Peter’s shoulder. “Well, lad, I guess you’ll just have to keep the memory of her.”
“Yes, the memory. But I’ll return to her as soon as I’m out of this mob,” said Peter.
“They all say that. You’ll soon forget her,” said the sergeant. “During your leave at home you’ll find yourself another girlfriend. You’ll forget the past.”
Peter forced a laugh. “Wise words, Sergeant,” he said, looking up into the kindly face of the aging quartermaster. “But I’ll not forget my girlfriend, not ever. Two years from now, when I’m demobbed, I’m returning to her.”
“I hope you do. I’ll get you a lemonade. Perhaps it’ll make you feel better.”
“Thanks, Sarge.”
The other airmen seated inside the long passenger cabin sat in silence, each dwelling on his own thoughts, many staring out the portholes at fast receding Singapore. Soon, its long beaches and strips of mangrove fell astern, to be quickly lost in a misty embrace, leaving only memories for those returning home in that plane.
Now, below, on a broad expanse of twinkling blue water, the shadow of the lone aircraft flashed across a surface of rippling, tiny waves. Twenty minutes later the green and brown hills of Sumatra came into sight, and farther ahead, more water, and a greyish shadowy heat mist blurring the horizon.
The four piston engines droned in concert as the Hastings aircraft headed towards RAF Negombo, Ceylon. There it would be refueled, and refueled again at Karachi, Pakistan, then at an RAF base near Baghdad, Iraq, and finally at an airstrip in Libya, North Africa. Eventually, after four days, or almost fifty hours of actual flying time the plane would arrive at RAF Lyneham, England, and home.
Epilogue
The Rose of Singapore was first written in 1955, while I was based at RAF Fassberg in Germany. Although the story is a fictionalised account of my life in the RAF in Singapore and Malaya, it is based on true experiences.
Readers may be interested to know that the fruit seller who peddled her wares around RAF Changi, and who appears in this book, was later awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire). Having lost her husband to the Japanese during World War Two, the real Mary Tan smuggled food, drink and cigarettes to the desperate prisoners of war in Changi prison and other POW camps, defying death by the Japanese guards daily. She was an Angel of Mercy to the prisoners, many of them starving and owing their lives to her great courage.
Also, of great significance to the ending of this story, the BOAC Comet 1 G-ALYP, the jet aircraft which Peter was supposed to leave Changi on, exploded in midair ten miles south of Elba after departing Rome. There were no survivors.
Acknowledgements
I owe thanks to the staff of the British War Museum, for their assistance during my research of this book. Also to Grace Forbess whose great encouragement, also proof-reading of my work, helped me immensely with the writing of this, my first novel. Thanks are due also to Becky Ning Wang, for sharing with me her knowledge of Chinese customs.
Finally, I wish to thank my British Army and Royal Air Force friends who served in Malaya and Singapore during the early 1950s, for the many interesting stories they shared with me, some of which I have included in this book.
About The Author
Peter Neville was born in Devon, England, in 1933. He came of age in the RAF, while serving in Singapore and Malaya during the Emergency Period in the early 1950s. When not tracking down Communist terrorists in the jungles of Malaya or avoiding capture by his own military police in the red-light districts of Singapore, Neville took the time to fully appreciate his new surroundings and fell in love with the East. And when his five-year tour of duty in the RAF ended, he returned to Singapore and went on to enjoy other lively adventures there and around the world.
Peter now enjoys a more relaxed lifestyle in Florida with June, his wife of forty years. This is his first novel.
Copyright
First published in print in 1999 by Neville International, Ilfracombe as “The Awakening of the Lion: Singapore”
First published in print by Monsoon Books in 2006
This electronic edition first published in 2012 by Monsoon Books
ISBN (ebook): 978-981-4358-66-8
ISBN (paperback): 978-981-05-1727-4
Copyright©Peter Neville, 1999
Cover design by James Nunn
Cover image courtesy of Jazmin Asian Arts, Singapore
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Some of the names of people mentioned in this book have been changed to protect their identity.
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