The Plantation - Di Morrissey [87]
Philip did not want to leave, and he clung to me when I carried him to the car. I told him he was to be brave, to listen and do what his mother and aunt told him. I said that he had to be a big boy until we were all home again at Utopia, when the war was over. My wife flung her arms around my neck.
‘You will be careful, Roland. I don’t know how I would manage if anything happened to you.’
I had decided that Hamid should drive by night, pulling into rubber trees should there be any danger. Hamid said he had friends who would help them and once the women had safely arrived in Singapore he would make his way back to Utopia. I believed him and felt comforted that he would be here for my father.
I was relieved the next morning that the women were on their way to safety. I said goodbye to my father when I was collected by another volunteer, Bill Dickson, and we drove to meet up with the rest of the unit. Bill, who was some years younger than me, was a fine young man and a cadet in the Malayan Civil Service. I liked him enormously.
The drive was certainly eventful. We took it in turns behind the wheel. Driving hard, fast and incautiously was perhaps not wise. Although it was a road we traversed often, we were generally in the hands of our syce, and our drivers knew every inch of these roads, whereas Bill and I were often caught unawares. Suddenly we saw the dirt on the road ahead of us exploding. Coming very low towards us over the top of the road zoomed a Jap plane. Instantly, Bill slid off the road into the edge of a plantation and we rolled out of the car, trying to make for shelter in the undergrowth. As we crawled in between the rubber trees, we heard our car being strafed. Seconds later, the plane had gone. We waited, hoping there were no more planes, and were astounded that the vehicle had not burst into flames.
‘That was a close call,’ remarked Bill, in a tone of voice that suggested he was used to these sorts of encounters. ‘How are we going to get the car out of here?’ The task of pushing the car back onto the road was indeed going to be difficult, for although it seemed relatively undamaged, one wheel refused to move as the mudguard was flattened against it.
While we were trying to straighten out the mudguard, a frightened whisper came from further in the plantation. Shyly, an Indian girl, holding an infant, came towards us. In a mixture of Malay, Tamil and English she told us everyone in their village had left because a Jap plane had machine-gunned it and they were too frightened to come back. She had been hiding in a rice paddy, but she was now alone, so we offered to drop her and her child off at the next village once we got the car going. As we banged at the jammed mudguard the woman went back into the plantation and returned with a tapper’s knife and small axe. With these we were able to free the mudguard.
She shook and wept in the back seat, the child at her breast until we left her at a nearby kampong.
We were near to our destination when I remarked, ‘If we can drive through the back roads and the plantation roads, what’s to stop the Japanese doing the same? Why would they just stick to the main road? They’ll come around, behind our troops.’
I already knew Bill’s reply. ‘I suppose that’s their plan.’
We joined our unit, fired with enthusiasm to prevent the Japanese advance. But, to our frustration, annoyance and disappointment, our observations and suggestions were ignored by the officers of the regular troops. The Perak Volunteers were treated as ill-informed amateurs.
‘Those regular troops are damned silly,’ said Bill. ‘With our local knowledge of the topography and back roads and our contacts we could set up a great intelligence network. We know which are the best places to take on the Japs.’