Tea love and war, p.26
Tea, Love and War, page 26
The Times of 6th February described this Malayan ‘Dunkirk’ as follows:
British gunboats and patrol vessels, manned by navy personnel, towed a fleet of small launches, sampans, dinghies and other small craft by night to the scene of the evacuation. Because of the shallowness of the water it was impossible for the larger vessels to go closer inshore. Small craft were paddled and poled up creeks and swamps, collected soldiers, and took them out to larger vessels.
It was in this way that Stuart and his fellows sailed around the west coast of Singapore Island and were brought into Keppel Harbour; it was touch and go because as this was happening the last of the retreating troops came across the causeway from Johore and into the north of Singapore Island. The evacuation was complete when, at eight in the morning of 31st January, the pipers of the Argylls played the last men across the narrow passage to the island, and the causeway was then breached to prevent Japanese advances. Malaya had been lost; now only Singapore remained.
The ‘fortress’ of Singapore was an island with a coastal perimeter of seventy miles and the harsh reality was that much of the south and west coasts were devoid of any adequate defences. When the last of the troops had passed over the causeway the population of the island, swollen from its usual 550,000, stood at close to a million people. Whilst there were ample supplies of rations the water supply was vulnerable. In short the island was no fortress, it was in effect an undefended tropical island with a coast indented with creeks and mangrove swamps similar to those that the enemy had proved capable of exploiting on the mainland.
From 31st January to 7th February there were constant air attacks and artillery bombardments. The Japanese particularly concentrated their shelling on the long-suffering 11th Indian Division which had now been re-equipped and moved to the north-west. All the other sappers in the 11th Indian Division were fully employed on demolitions in the Naval Base area but it had been Stuart’s hard- pressed 3rd Field Company that was again deployed as infantry, leaving him to be once more involved in hand-to-hand fighting.
The Japanese simulated an attack in the north-east which proved to be a diversion. It quickly became clear that the feared major landing by the Japanese was indeed to be in the north-west very close to where Stuart was now positioned.
On 8th February the bombardment increased in intensity and by midnight the Japanese had landed on the north-west coastal area which was occupied by the 22nd Australian Brigade. This was completely overrun. The Times reported landings on a ten mile front and counter-attack by the defenders regaining some ground. The fighting was intense over the next few days with incessant attacks by Japanese dive bombers.
On 11th February Stuart’s company was detailed to hold the south-west sector of Tenga airfield on the east of the road between Neesoon and the Naval Base.
Brigadier Steedman’s 1944 letter describes how, at 9 a.m. on 12th February 1942 and only four days before Singapore surrendered, Stuart was killed.
Would that his father had known the detail of his exploits over those last eight weeks of his life.
He would have been very proud.
BOOK THREE
Ann in her late teenage years
CHAPTER ONE
I do not remember my father. I was told that he had held me in his arms after I was born, and that he used to play with me in that first year of my life before he joined the Indian army in 1940. Mary would boast of her recollection of his playing with her: she had five years of his affections, both before and after his six months’ leave in 1937. She would have been three when he came back to Assam and six when he left for the army, and at that time I was only just beginning to walk, so although I pretended that her memories were more wishful than real that was only because I was jealous that she had known him.
When I was old enough to understand Mama would tell me that my father was a great man, and as a treat she would sometimes walk us the five kilometre journey down the track to the middle of the Pengaree tea estate and show us the huge thatched bungalow in which he had lived. When she first did this she explained that he had joined the army and was going to fight a war, but these were words that meant nothing to me. I was impressed by the house on the estate, and I think I would have been pleased if I had known then that our little leaf-thatched mud house, or busti, had been built on land provided by him, but he was too distant a concept for me to concern myself with at that age.
In those days there were no bedtime stories, for neither my mother nor my sister could read. I remember I had to go to bed earlier than Mary, though the charpai where we slept wasn’t a bed but a rough bamboo frame with string laced across and just strong enough for two small children. There was another larger charpai for our mother and her sister where they would curl up between us and the doorway of our busti, the sacking across the entrance being let down at night. I suppose they slept there to give us some protection if animals should venture inside. I do not remember any such incursion, but the feral noises of the jungle were a constant background to the night.
Our little house was built out of bamboo plastered with dried cow dung, the roof being of palm leaves or toko paat and the floor plastered with mud. There were no chairs to sit on, save for some small wooden flat stools or pinas, but we children were well used to squatting on the floor.
My earliest memories were of helping Mary and the other village children catch the tiny fish that swam in the rivulets and puddles that surrounded the little circle of huts in the rainy season. Mud must have been a constant accompaniment but a small child was not conscious of such impediment and I recall only the jumping up and down excitement of our occasional tiny catch and my pride when Mary allowed me to carry the water-filled pot in which the small fish lived out their last hours.
There were six Hindi-speaking families in the village, and eight Singpho families. The Singpho tribe were proud of their reputation as the first to farm tea in Assam; their origins were in Burma. The Singpho houses were called chung houses, having their floor as a platform or chung of bamboo built at least nine feet from the ground. I was terrified of climbing the stairs since the split bamboo which was spliced together to make the chung made crunching sounds that frightened me, but Mary and I were frequent visitors, not least because they cooked a special rice called toopala bhat which I loved. The headman of the village, the Gaon Bura, was a loyal Singpho and ensured that their tribal customs were followed. The women were renowned as expert weavers and most of the houses had looms in the sheltered area underneath the first floor where the wives produced coloured cloths using dyes from the roots of trees. The Singphos were allowed more than one wife so there were plenty of women to do the weaving. Each house stood in its own land fenced to keep in the animals.
My favourite meal was boiled rice with dal or lentils accompanied by a chutney called dhamia patta made of coriander leaf, but I also liked to have our daily rice cooked in a sticky sauce mixed with coconut and molasses. Mama called this bora choul. She was proud when we were able to have fish with our bhat or boiled rice. I also loved ghol which was skimmed curd mixed with water, salt and sugar. Mama cooked on a fire built on the ground and we fetched water from the nearest hand pump.
My great delight was to go shopping with Mama. The nearest little shop was a shack just short of the river which crossed the track to Pengaree estate. In the dry season the river was quite shallow and my mother could carry me across it, clambering down the sandy river bank and wading through the fast running water with her sari hitched around her waist and me on her hip. When the water was higher Dhrin Babu, the shopkeeper, would carry over a grown-up person for four annas, or use his dugout boat to ferry each passenger across the river for eight annas. The shop itself was more a stall than a building, but we could buy spices and oils, soaps and cloths and a few utensils. I would plead to be allowed to carry the straw bag holding the shopping but Mary would usually take over after a few yards.
When Mary was six, which was the year my father left, she was allowed to help one of the other local girls look after our cow and sometimes the few other cows in the area. I called our cow Boogoo; it had been bought for Mama by my father and as I grew older I was allowed to help to milk it. The milk was very important in our little village and my mother was generous in allowing others to share it. I remember that at one time a baby belonging to a family who lived in the Lines close to the Pengaree estate fell ill and the doctor said that milk was needed regularly. Rather than their having to fetch the milk every day, Mama simply allowed them to have our cow live with them for the time it took the baby to recover, although it meant that we ourselves went short. Despite her generosity I now know that some of the other villagers were envious that a single mother with only her sister sharing the house had the riches of a busti to herself, and a valuable cow, on land that she had been given.
Our greatest treat was to be allowed to look at the book of photographs that Mama would show us when we could persuade her to do so. I can now see that she longed to remind herself of the pictures and her apparent resistance to our clamouring for them was artificial. The book was a battered half-empty photograph album containing only three pages of black and white prints. The scenes were of my father’s relatives and friends in family gatherings. There were pictures of my father’s parents, and of his sister. My own sister loved to ask ‘What was his sister’s name?’, well knowing that the answer was ‘Mary’, at which she would preen herself in delight. One of our favourite photographs was of a garden with a winding path leading past a large bench or garden seat to a little house. Mother would tell us she had been told that the house was called a ‘summer house’ and was not lived in, but simply used as a quiet spot on hot days. It seemed very strange to us that a house of such quality should not be occupied by at least one family and that a seat of such apparent size should be placed outside rather than inside the house.
Uncle Daniel was working in the bungalows on the tea estate and would call to see Mama every week. I was not old enough to understand but Mama would usually seem to be happier after his visits which, looking back, must have been because he was able to pass on such news as he had of my father. The tea plantation was still manned and those planters who remained would have listened to the news on the radio. They would also have had letters from their friends who had joined up. Sometimes a letter would be handed over, and the next day Mama would leave us and go to the tea estate where I believe the office manager would read the letters to her.
Then there came a time when I came home from playing in the stream near the village and found Mama crying. I remember sitting on her knee and asking her what was the matter and her reply, ‘Papa is fighting the war’. I suppose I would then have been about three years old, not understanding that in the past year the Japanese invasion of Malaya had changed both the fears and expectations of those who lived in our part of the world and that the fate of those from Assam who had joined up was in the balance. Uncle Daniel was a regular visitor on almost every day that week and the weeks following, and my mother was not herself, clearly distracted and often tearful, uninterested in all our games and our friends.
I remember that one day Mary herself was looking solemn. I asked her what was the matter and she said she had overheard Daniel saying that our father’s army had lost to the enemy. From that time onwards Mama seemed to lose her sparkle. Our life continued as before, but we would often find her in tears and there were many family discussions from which Mary and I were excluded. Grandfather was now nearly blind, and we would help to lead him around and look after him as best we could. Mary and I played with the other children in the village, speaking in the local language of Sadri.
I must have been a difficult child: I recall many fights with other children and I fear that I may have been the main culprit. The reason was that Mary and I had the disadvantage of our lighter skin, and this singled us out as being different. I now know that there were a number of planters’ children in the area, but at that time Mary and I were the only ones in our immediate community, and caste differences were important. This meant that we were often called names, and as I did not understand why I would hit out in response.
It was a humid evening about a year later when Mama sat down with the two of us and finally took us into her confidence. I must have been four years old but only remember that I had been out all day helping Mary with the village cattle and that we had just guided them back from the grazing land into the safety of their night-time shelter. We were hot but happy. We stopped chattering and quietened down when we saw that Mama had been crying. Carefully she laid down the book of photographs which she had been holding and put her arms around us. She told us that there had been a big battle and that the British army, of which our father’s regiment was part, had lost and that many men had been captured. For many months she had known that our father was missing and she had hoped to hear that he was held by the enemy and would come home one day. Now she had heard that he had died in the fighting. She said that he had been a very brave man.
I had kept to myself my childish vision that one day my father, resplendent in uniform, would walk into the village and take us back to live in the big bungalow on the tea estate. As I now held on to my tearful mother and sister those little dreams vanished. The evening merged into lamentation with my aunt and my grandmother joining with Mama in shrouding their faces with their saris and swaying together in the merging of their grief.
It is only when I look back that I realize the anguish that my mother had been suffering. My father had been missing for over a year and she had feared the worst. She knew that she was ineligible for the death benefits and the company pension that would have been hers had there been a formal marriage. Most of the money that had been left for her had already gone, and now his death meant that she was alone and unable to provide for her children.
Little did we know what further tragedy was to follow.
CHAPTER TWO
The photograph album in its tin box was kept separately from a leather box into which Mary and I had never looked. We both knew that it contained papers because we had seen Mama take out the box when she thought we were asleep, carefully unlock it with a key that she kept around her neck and turn the pages over as if she was reading them. The box was kept in a hollow in the ground, deep in the hut and close to the back wall, and was covered with sand with a chipped bowl on top to complete its concealment. One day, perhaps a month after the news of our father’s death, Mary and I were on our way back from looking after the village cows, for which Mary was to be paid a small coin, when we heard shouts and a high wailing. We ran to our hut to find Mama being held by neighbours as she thrashed her arms and legs and cried out. She put out her arms and clutched us to her but we were able neither to console her nor to stop her constant keening wail. She kept pointing to the back of the hut and we saw that a hole had been cut in the bamboo wall; when we were able to escape her arms and go inside we found that the place in which the leather box had been hidden was now uncovered and empty.
I was still too young to understand, but in later years Mama explained to me that the box had contained details of my father’s address in England, his parents’ and sister’s names, and letters from him asking them to provide support for her and her children if anything happened to him. He had told Mama that this was her protection if he did not return from the war since without this proof he feared that any claims to his parenthood might be denied. Her distress and despair at the theft of the box can be imagined. She was now truly alone with no means of providing education or financial help for me or Mary. Also, being illiterate, she had no knowledge of any more precise identity save through the tea estate manager, who was unlikely to be sympathetic to the release of any information.
In the days and weeks that followed I would hear Mama sobbing in the night. During the day she would often be in tears. Friends came and went but she remained inconsolable. I know that she would often go to Pengaree to the tea estate and she later told me that Daniel helped her in conversations with the management although she was not able to speak to the estate manager directly. Perhaps it is unsurprising that nothing was done: the tea company would hardly have wished to contact unsuspecting families in England to say that illegitimate children of their beloved but now deceased offspring were seeking help. My father must have realized this and left the letters and papers to support such an approach if needed, although he must have been apprehensive as to the reaction of his own parents if contact were ever made.
Although my mother’s family were Hindus, as were all the Adivasi tribe, when she had been with my father he had explained the Christian religion to her and after we were born he had taught her to say prayers with us. Although we spoke Sahdri in the village at home we knew a lot of Hindi and we had been taught some English by our uncle Daniel so that we could say our prayers in English. Mama had used English with my father so she could make herself understood when it was necessary.
The Pengaree tea estate had a small chapel and those who worked on the estate were encouraged to use it. Many of the estate workers had come from Ranchi, well outside Assam, and were Catholics and this was their main place of worship. The chapel had no altar and no pews, it was simply a wooden house standing beside the track on the edge of the estate, but it was somewhere to congregate and there was a Catholic priest who visited on rare occasions. When I was much older Mama explained that she would often go there at this time of terrible uncertainty in order to think what she should do. For herself she had neither fears nor great ambition, but for us she wanted education and a foothold in the world. She knew that the other village children would remain illiterate and live out their simple lives in such employment as they might find on the estates. For us she sought a wider future.
