Forgotten Life (12 page)

Partly because of such paradoxes, the port of Emmahaaven and the town of Padang pleased us. The Indonesians pleased us immediately, with their light brown skins and sophisticated air – as it seemed to those weary of that Stone Age poverty which makes India the capital of Beggardom. After India, the variety of clothes was impressive, with men sometimes in silks and sarongs instead of the ubiquitous shorts, and women in long skirts with blouses and waistcoats. The many Chinese women wore either a
cheongsam
or provocative pyjamas. Everyone looked clean, and their general air of mild prosperity was echoed in the pleasant houses, many of them timber-made and raised off the ground. The hovels which cluster round Indian towns like soiled skirts were missing. One could observe solid tables in rooms, spread with a cloth, and rugs on the floor. Outside some houses were dovecotes; more frequent were cages with pretty birds singing away their captivity.

On our arrival, everyone appeared friendly, waving and smiling – but tact is a virtue with which to greet any visiting army. Why should they not appear easy? At least the Japanese were going, and
the population lived in a climate where fruit and vegetation could not but continue to grow.

Although we had our duties to do, like any other army we took what pleasure we could in our spare time. There was an old semi-derelict swimming pool by the coast, just outside Emmahaaven. The trees had grown in the years of Japanese neglect, so that the water was generally shaded and cool. I often borrowed a Jeep and swam there with two friends who were willing to make the effort and travel this far from Padang – I should explain that baking days and stifling nights meant that many of us had little energy, and spent the days resting when not working. I was fortunate in that the heat gave me energy.

Pleasant though it seemed, the swimming pool was ill-fated. One day, we met two orderlies from the Medical Corps, pale of body and just out of England. After a swim, we set out to explore the little stream which, feeding the pool, meandered among trees and moss-covered rocks. We came on a nasty-looking snake, preparing to strike at eye-level from the branch of a tree. One of the medics exclaimed with delight. It was a green horned viper, he said.

Pulling off his neck-rag, he gripped it between his fists and thrust it at the viper. The creature struck. Quickly, the medic dragged it from the tree and knotted the fabric about its head, so that the snake was a helpless prisoner. We were naked. He hurried back to his clothes and thrust the imprisoned reptile into a trouser pocket. The rest had had enough of snakes, and returned to the safety of the pool, while the medic and his friend, with shrieks of delight, looked for more snakes.

Next day, we learned that the orderly was dead. While he was taking the viper back to his quarters, it had somehow escaped and bit him through the fabric of his trouser pocket.

Only a few days later, another escapade ended in grief. A sergeant in Intelligence took a Dutch girl friend to the swimming pool. They drove in a Jeep after sunset – at a time when the curfew was about to come into effect. They parked the Jeep so that its lights shone on to the surface of the pool, an area of brightness among the surrounding
shadows. They dived in and swam. A few moments later, they were fired on by a machine gun. Both were killed. A patrol of South Wales Borderers dragged their bloody bodies out of the water.

From then on, the swimming pool was placed out of bounds.

I remained in Padang only three months. My travels in the East left me strangely restless. I wanted more travel. I wanted I knew not what. I had applied for a posting to China, for China to me represented the grand epitome of things Eastern and exotic; the application was turned down. I then applied for a posting to Intelligence, to replace the dead sergeant. I was accepted. Such a posting was possible only in an out-of-the-way spot like Sumatra, where reinforcements were almost impossible to come by. Intelligence was down in strength; they took me on and promoted me to sergeant. A week after transfer, I was posted to Medan.

It is Medan and how I met Mandy there on which I want to concentrate, so I will pass over that marvellous overland journey of five hundred miles which took me across the highlands of Sumatra to the capital city. I have never forgotten it, though I have forgotten the names of the driver and cook who accompanied me. We travelled in a Dodge truck up into the wild mountains which form the backbone of the island, sleeping overnight near Lake Toba – taking sentry duty turn and turn about during the night.

Toba was like a miracle, a lake fifty miles long, lying peacefully in the crater formed by a volcano which had erupted a million years BC. In the lake was the island of Samosir; what its history could have been, if it had any, I could not guess. Although the dawn was chilly, the driver and I enjoyed a brief swim in the lake's clear waters, while the cook stood guard.

‘You buggers must be mad,' he said, as we emerged.

But on me was the madness of exhilaration.

We were fired at in Parapat, where we rashly tried to buy a chicken, but escaped unhurt, to arrive in Medan, hot and filthy, some thirty-two hours after we had left Padang. A month later, another truck taking the overland route was ambushed. From then on, nobody drove between Padang and Medan. British forces kept to the towns.

Medan impressed as being nearer civilization. Despite the emergency and an early curfew, shops were open and had glass in their windows – a sophistication not achieved in Padang. Many were run by Indians (especially Sikhs) and Chinese.

Again there was the familiar task imposed by an unfamiliar city: to learn the way around, to learn the names of the streets, to learn how to get to the more desirable nooks. And again the romance of geography overcame me. Here was a distant place – and I was living in it, on a day to day basis, in danger of taking it for granted.

I was given two rooms in the upper floor of a pleasant house, once in Dutch hands, then Japanese. My main room had a balcony with an agreeable open view, jungle visible in the distance. I entered by the rear door, along a path fringed by pleasant flowering bushes. The rear staircase – once presumably a servants' stair – led directly up to my rooms. The rest of the house was occupied by assorted sergeants.

My travel documents instructed me to report immediately to a Captain Zajac, a tall demented-looking Pole with ferocious moustaches. It was said of him that when the Germans invaded Poland, where the Zajacs held vast estates, he and his elder brother had set fire to their mansion rather than let it fall into enemy hands and had walked south to join the British in India. On the way, they had been joined by other Poles. Over one hundred of them had finally gathered at the frontier.

By then, Zajac's elder brother was dead.

Zajac had collected a medal in the Arakan while losing most of his left ear in a fanatical attack on a Jap bunker. Hatred seemed to be his chief motivation. In consequence, I discovered, he was beloved by his group of men. But he hated me because I was a replacement for the sergeant, his old comrade, who had been killed in Emmahaaven swimming pool. He gave me a complicated order involving Allied war graves. I was forced to admit that I had had no Intelligence training and, in consequence, could not carry out the order.

He gave me a furious bollocking. I ought to be on a charge. I had no business volunteering for a job I could not carry out, etc.

The telephone interrupted his raving. At the end of the call, as he replaced the receiver, he said to me, in a mild tone of voice as if losing his temper was beyond his capacity, ‘Dismiss now, sergeant, and I will send for you when I need you.'

I saluted and dismissed.

While I waited to be sent for, I made it my business to understand the local situation. The troops were showing their civilian dispositions, and had settled as well as might be into situations best suited to them. Since there were no facilities provided by the over-stretched S.E. Asia Command, of which we were an outpost, small private enjoyments had been carved out, many of them centring round the RAPWI camp and the Dutch women there. RAPWI stood for Repatriation and Aid (Prisoners-of-War Indonesia), and therefore embraced all Dutch and foreign nationals who had fallen into Jap hands during their swift advance through the N.E.I. in 1942.

These unfortunates were largely displaced persons, unable to take up their old tasks on plantations and so on while the Emergency prevailed; many wanted nothing better than to get on the little steamer, the
Van Heutz
, which called at Belawan Harbour twice a week, ferrying people to Singapore for the commencement of the long voyage back to Holland and Europe. Meanwhile, most were prepared to celebrate their comparative liberty in the commonplace ways.

Eedie was a large cheerful girl. It was her height that first won my interest. I was six foot one and she was six foot two. I had never had a girl friend bigger than I before. She was going about with a handsome Irish corporal in the RAOC, but a couple of dances was enough for her to change her mind. She found I had a Jeep at my command, and that was sufficient. We drove all round Medan that night, drinking in the few bars that were open, talking and laughing furiously, pouring out personal histories of the war to each other – therapy of a necessary kind. Driving her back to the RAPWI camp, I was cut off by the curfew and spent the night on her bedroom floor. But only for about ten minutes. After that, Eedie relented and allowed me into a much more comfortable place.

Medan was an unruly town. Discipline tightened up only when the ‘extremists', as we called the nationalists of Soekarno's Liberation Army, went on the attack. Otherwise, morale was low enough to permit a certain amount of individuality. The Irish RAOC corporal went gunning for me, weeping and cursing in semi-public places over my absconding with his Dutch lady friend. In some respects, Medan resembled the Wild West.

It was a difference of opinion between Eedie and me, rather than any of Corporal Paddy's threats, which spoilt our harmony. The Dutch had reason to be grateful to the British, and were in fact more friendly towards us than vice versa. They also had cause to dislike us, since they depended on us and the British were reluctant to allow Dutch reinforcements into the country. Any such move was greeted with reprisals from Soekarno.
Merdeka!
(Freedom) was scrawled everywhere, and bullets flew. In Java, pitched battles were fought at Surabaja and elsewhere. The British were more prepared than the Dutch to play a waiting game.

Intelligence was under pressure to discover how news of pending arrivals of Dutch troops reached Soekarno, and the Port Authority at Belawan was tightened – to no effect. The
Van Heutz
reached Belawan from Singapore. Forces there sympathetic to Soekarno radioed the news ahead.

This matter of politics came between Eedie and me.

‘You're pigs, all of you, worse than the fucking Germans,' she told me one evening as we sat smoking outside the RAPWI hall. ‘We know that you want to have Sumatra under the Union Jacket, just like in India and Burma.' She always called it the Union Jacket.

‘Why do you think we want this stinking dump? We've got enough on our bloody hands. We wouldn't have it if the Dutch gave it to us.'

‘Oh, yes, you would. How much of the globe is already inside your greedy hands? You'd have it okay, you bet.' She laughed scornfully. We were partly drunk.

‘Oh? Well then, it isn't yours to give, is it? You rely on us, don't you? Otherwise, if we weren't here, you lot would be kicked out, lock, stock and barrel.'

‘That's only because—'

‘And another thing. You don't call us Germans. You Dutch are nearer the fucking Germans than we are, aren't you? You live next fucking door. Who do you think freed the fucking Netherlands?'

‘Well, it wasn't you, so just shut it up. You want Sumatra back, just because it was yours once before in history.'

‘Oh, piss off, you Dutch bint. Come to bed.'

‘Not with you, you're bloody drunk. It comes from your fucking ears.'

So a little frostiness intervened. As so often with drunken arguments, I did not mean a word I said, and yet the underlying resentment had to be given voice. The British had no good reason to be in Sumatra to begin with.

About a mile from my billet, in a modest side street, stood the cinema called the Deli, after Medan's main river. It was commandeered for the military, although men could take girl friends, one per man. Performances were always crowded.

The idle Japanese Army had spent its three-year occupation looting and collecting what booty it could. 26 Division was busy forcing it to disgorge. Food, valuables, furniture, and, above all, drink, arrived spasmodically at the sergeants' mess. They had acquired a vast store of movies, the more appropriate of which were shown in the Deli. Thus did I see many vintage films, many ancient themes.

One evening, while Eedie was avoiding me, I went with another sergeant, Charlie Frost, to a showing of
The Great Gabo
, a melodrama about a ventriloquist's dummy which takes over the ventriloquist.

We emerged from the Deli with the crowd, everyone in sombre green uniform, with a defiant variety of headgear and lengths of hair, everyone armed. Our footsteps echoed in the narrow streets as we dispersed. On one corner, respectfully back against the wall, stood a white man in white ducks in company with three Chinese, a man and two women, all dressed European style. As Charlie and I passed them, one of the women asked in a lively voice, and with bright glances at us, ‘Was it a good film?'

Thus I made the acquaintance of Ginny and her sister Mandy, and Jean Mercier and Wang.

The garrison trooped by as we stood talking. When the street was empty, the man asked, ‘Would you care for a drink?'

Soldiers meet only a certain cross-section of any civilian population. Of that cross-section, those most willing to talk to soldiers are crooks, priests, and prostitutes. Charlie and I were highly suspicious of this man with a French accent, but we went along with him and the others. They all lived just round a corner or two, in what had been a grocery shop before the Japanese arrived. The ground floor was arranged with old bamboo chairs and tables. Very little had been done for the decor, beyond the hanging of a few bright Chinese calendars. Our new friends had moved in only four months ago, after the British released them from internment.

There are times in childhood when a boy sees a girl and is overcome by a mysterious yearning, of whose nature he is kept unaware since the time is not yet ripe. A similar yearning overcame me when I sat down on those wicker chairs and found myself conversing with two Chinese ladies. Despite my life-long admiration of all things Chinese, my only intercourse with a Chinese girl had been – how secretly, how boldly! – in Calcutta, with a pretty creature who charged me ten rupees for the pleasure.

Jean was a cheerful and fatherly man, a rubber planter whose plantations lay to the east, outside Palembang. He was French Swiss, and married to Ginny. Mandy was Ginny's younger sister and married to Wang. Jean and Ginny had a baby boy, Sammi; Mandy and Wang had two little children, Fat and Tek, generally looked after by an inferior aunt.

Jean's nationality had puzzled the Japanese authorities. If he was French, then he was an enemy alien; if he was Swiss, than he was neutral. How could he be both? By insisting on speaking English rather than his native French, Jean persuaded the Japanese that he really was Swiss, and therefore entitled to a simple internment, rather than imprisonment with the Dutch. The other three of the party were Japan's hated enemy, Chinese. But no, they also were Swiss,
according to Jean's continued claims. The Japanese were, on occasions, sticklers for what was correct. Besides, Wang, although he spoke little English, was from Hong Kong, and had a British passport. So the four had lived for three years, chafing at their confinement, in a small house in the street where I was now billeted – in which time both couples had had children born to them. The British had released them recently, and established them in this part of Chinatown.

All this emerged, with many other details, over innumerable cups of coffee and innumerable cigars. Ginny's bold move of talking to us in the street led Charlie and me to think of ourselves as specially chosen to look after these four unfortunates with no home and no immediate prospect of getting back to the rubber plantations where they all worked.

We soon drew closer to the four Merciers, as we called them. I saw more of them, for I was idle. Soon, I was calling on them every day, as well as in the evening, with Charlie. Charlie Frost was a good old Cockney, with a little wife he had rashly married on his embarkation leave, who now pined for him, or not, in a terraced house in Lewisham. We became friends simply by accepting each other, without questions. I cannot say whether that was a working-class ethic or part of the alchemy of wartime. I know that I greatly admired Charlie and his immense solid respectability. His father was in the coal business, I remember.

The Merciers told us stories of Medan under the Japanese, and how public executions had been carried out in the main square. Sometimes the Japanese were correct and polite. At other times, they behaved with inhuman brutality.

Gradually, by unspoken means, Charlie and I were accepted into the little Mercier group. Ginny was twenty-four and Mandy twenty-two. Wang was about the same age, and Jean thirty.

Jean was generally calm, always genial. He and Ginny conversed in English, since she had no French and he no Cantonese. He had no wish to leave Sumatra. He just wished for normal conditions to return, and to work on the plantation with his pretty wife looking
after the home. Jean was a tall thin man – we were all thin – always immaculately dressed in white ducks and white shirt.

Wang was lazy and good-natured. He alone did not look half-starved. He liked the current condition of uncertainty, since it meant he did not have to work – although after a while he did get a menial job in a restaurant.

Of the two sisters, Ginny was the more vivacious. Being the older, she was inclined to boss her sister about; yet after all their internment the two remained close friends. Both had attended Hong Kong University, and were well educated. Mandy – whose Chinese name was Wang Lim Hwa – was the prettier, with a sweet kitten-shaped face and deep dark eyes. Ginny was always laughing, and soon hung on my arm and treated me as if she were a youthful aunt of mine. I adored her, though my feelings for her sister were warmer, darker.

They were proud of their English friend. Soon, while Jean went out to haunt offices for news or shifts in policy, Ginny and Mandy were riding round in their friend's Jeep to do the shopping, or simply for the pleasure of it, their cotton dresses blowing carelessly in the wind. I was certainly proud of them, although there was no kudos to be had from associating with Chinese women, unlike Dutch women; rather the reverse, to be frank. Most of my army colleagues regarded them as ‘natives'.

Jean and Wang trusted me to take care of their wives. Aware of that trust – trust is strong in times of war – I stood and watched as they shopped for tiny slices of cheese or tried on hats, laughing delightfully at each other as they did so. I was adult now, and the sten hanging on my shoulder was there to protect them as well as myself.

After the long months in India and Burma, female company was an oasis in the desert. I soon became aware of the considerable differences between the two sisters. While Ginny, as I have mentioned, touched me openly, swung on my arm in company, laughing, physical contact with Mandy was more secret. At first it was an affair of bare arm accidentally touching bare arm, nothing more. Yet it developed into a strange code, the meaning of which I told myself I could not understand.

They were animated and cheerful young women, happy to be free at last from their semi-captivity, glad to have a stranger's attention. The shabby grocery store was always a place of laughter and the babble of tongues – and, almost from the start, shy deer glances from Mandy.

Ginny always wore light Western-style cotton dresses. Mandy wore the same by day. In the evenings, perhaps when Charlie and I took the girls to the cinema, she would put on a yellow or blue silk
cheongsam
, ankle length, with a slit up to the knee. Then she looked most seductive. A dance hall opened in town, sign of reviving peaceful intent, and we escorted the ladies there. Jean and Wang came along but did not dance; they appeared proud to see us dancing with their wives. And as I held that slender and lively body in my arms, I saw the lecherous glances of other men, as they lumbered round the floor with their large Dutch ladies.

Unlike the Dutch, the Chinese were happy to have the British and Indian troops in Sumatra. Not only did they feel that the British were on their side (a feeling the British in no way reciprocated), but the current impasse suited them. They foresaw a time when the British would leave, when things would be worse for them, under the Dutch, or considerably worse, under the Indonesians – who, as Muslims, were known to be anti-Chinese. This was the time for them to be carefree, and enjoy young male company: someone new, after the secondhand years that had passed. Someone to take them to the Deli Cinema and indulge their girlish fantasies.

So my feelings towards Medan developed. It became the most delightful town I ever knew. In its centre were huge shady trees, overgrown and blowsy. Over everything hung a great quiet, broken only by bullock carts creaking by, the odd military vehicle, occasional outbursts of gunfire. People walked at a leisurely pace. The shops were almost empty. The heat was benevolent.

That is how I prefer to remember Medan, tumbledown after three years of utter neglect – yet was not that tumbledown quality how I now saw the whole world? Tumbledownness was a positive quality, defying the rage to be modern. Tumbledownness pointed towards
the past, that mysterious past whose history awaited an historian. So Medan remains in memory, and perhaps that particular Medan remains in my memory alone:

as Shelley said of a more renowned city.

The illusion that I had managed to detach myself from the army grew daily. Then the South Wales Borderers went into action, and I was once more the focus of Captain Zajac's attention.

In an attempt to persuade the Indians of our division to desert, the Indonesians – the extremists – promised any man who went over to their side with his rifle and ammunition a place in a kampong, a woman, and protection.

One of the first to take advantage of the offer was a certain Corporal Bill Jones of the SWB. Not only did he desert with his revolvers: he loaded some Bren guns and a few boxes of ammunition into a Dodge truck and drove it into the Indonesian lines.

It was a coup for the Indonesians, and a disgrace for the South Wales Borderers. Jones lived a high life in the kampong. He was a flamboyant character, and not above shooting some of his old mates if needs must. Mandy, Ginny and I saw him once when we were shopping. He drove into the centre of town in a large black car, with a heavily armed escort before and behind him in two Japanese trucks. He too was shopping.

His name became legendary and his old regiment swore to wipe him out.

News reached headquarters that Jones was currently in a certain section of town held by the extremists. This section had as its headquarters a cinema called the Rex.

For once the British went on the attack. The few armoured vehicles in the area were mustered and the Borderers moved in after dark. They had a personal interest in this operation.

The operation was almost a complete success. The Indonesians were not prepared for a pitched battle. Twelve of them were killed, as against two Borderers. Several houses were set on fire and many more damaged. The Union Jack was raised over the Rex. Jones escaped to fight another day.

Captain Zajac summoned me and we stood before a large-scale map of Medan. ‘Here's the river. The Rex is only two streets away. There's a Sikh temple here. This is the extent of the sector we have cleared. The fires have been put out. Today at twelve hundred hours we blow up this bridge over the Deli. You and I are going along to watch proceedings. It'll cause some inconvenience to the locals, but they can put up with that. It means the area can't be infiltrated again if we just keep a good contingent of Rajputs in the temple area. The Borderers have guard posts here and here.'

Sappers did a neat job of blowing up the road bridge precisely at twelve hundred hours. Another sector of town could now be safely held. Zajac and I patrolled the streets, which were pleasant and tree-lined by the river, until we came to the Rex. Here the officer paused on the steps.

The exterior was burnt and the glass doors shattered. An Indian corporal stood on guard, rifle at the slope.

‘We'll soon get this place patched up. Revenge is sweet and so is Claudette Colbert, eh?' It was a joke.

‘We could use a second cinema, sir.'

‘Precisely. But Army Ciné is down on strength. You appear to be a spare bod, sergeant. So you are now going to be in charge of the Rex, starting very conveniently from now. For the time being, you will be answerable direct to me. That may change eventually. Meantime, you will be receiving a list of your duties. Two Indian orderlies will be attached to you for cleaning duty. Understood?'

‘You mean I'm in charge of this place?'

‘Correct.'

‘Sir.'

 

Everyday affairs in Medan had been lent a spice of excitement, even a note of sophistication, one might say, by the fringes of violence which edged them. Once Charlie and I had been fired on when returning home from the Merciers just before curfew. But to thrust into a vulnerable area was another matter. However, the novelty of the situation was a compensation. A cinema was mine, a whole kingdom of magic.

When the list of my duties arrived, I found that I was to live in the Rex, making my own accommodation. My previous accommodation was to be quitted by eighteen hundred hours.

This news I conveyed to the Merciers when I went to have lunch with them.