Hello Tich
Welcome to Poms in Oz.
My late father and my now elderly mother were in Malaya/Malaysia at the same time as you were.
Dad was 19 when the War began in 1939 and he signed up with the Royal Engineers. He was then transferred to the Ryal Bombay Sappers & Miners and was sent to India in 1942. Somehow he then got attached to the Unit led by Mountbatten and was sent to Kandy, Ceylon, where he met Mum. (Her father was a British tea planter in Ceylon.)
When the War ended they married and Dad left the army. He got a job in 1947 with a company called Perak Hydro. He was with them till he retired in 1976. Perak Hydro was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Balfour Beatty, who had built Chenderoh Dam (near Taiping) in the 1920s. PH was responsible for keeping Perak supplied with electricity and I gathered from Dad that the main purpose of the leccy was to keep the tin mines running which was just as important as lights in the towns to prevent looting etc.
Mum & Dad were in Malaysia throughout the Emergency and I was born there in 1956. Dad was a civilian by then but apparently the CTs used to go into the jungle and saw through 3 of the four legs of a couple of power pylons. This caused the pylons to collapse, so Dad, a PH line gang and a team of Royal Engineers then had to go up into the jungle to put the pylons back up and restore the power.
Dad said that they all used to go with an armed escort provided by the Coldstream Guards.
When Mum talks about the Emergency, she talks of getting phone calls from the local Chief of Police saying, "I can't tell you where Johnny is right now, but I can tell you that he is safe and should be back on dd/mm." They were based in Malim Nawar, where there was a power station when I was very small (too young to remember) and then we moved to Kampar, which I do remember. I used to go with Dad to a field near the power station once a week or so. The dentist in Ipoh was a guy called Leong Min On. He had a Tiger Moth. Once a week or once a fortnight (I can't remeber) he used to fly over all the PH sites and drop the payroll, in cash, from the plane. Apparently even during the early 1960s it was safer to do this than to try to take the cash around by road. I remeber standing beside the field with Dad, waiting for the plane to appear and then Dad, I and a couple of jagahs would walk over and pick up the bags.
I must admit I have never heard of Terendak till this morning but I have just looked on Google Maps. It is near Malacca, it seems? I have very dim memories of the town of Malacca and also of the beach at Port Dickson. Mum says that my very first dip in the ocean was when she took me into the sea at Port Dickson, aged 8 months.
Mum & Dad definitely knew a lot of people in the Army and they also knew people who had settled in Malaysia but had been prisoners of war on the Burma-Siam Railway. We also had Malay servants and they used to tell me about the kampongs and guarding them from the Japanese and later from the CTs. I seem to think that the Ghurkas were involved with some of this at least?
I met the widow of F. Spencer Chapman in about 1973. She suddenly appeared in Ipoh, ws ushered to the Ipoh Club and I sat with her for about 3 or 4 hours one day. By then I had read her late husband's book and all the others I could get my hands on. Apparently she was hoping that someone would take her into the jungle to show her the camps that her husband had used, but she said she didn't know how to set about doing it.
I suggested the Hash House Harriers! Lady Chapman and I were in the Palm Court of the Club & I was waiting for Mum, who was shopping in Ipoh. Dad was where the men always were at noon on a Saturday - with all the planters in the men only Long Bar! I asked one of the stewards to go and fetch Dad, to try to get some proper help for Lady Chapman. Dad put her in touch with some other people (I don't know who) but apparently she was told that the camps had been very deep inside the jungle, the clearings had long since grown over, and that it really wasn't possible for her to try to do a jungle trek to get to them. (She looked at least 70 to me but might not have been that old.) I think they did what they could with a plane or a helicopter instead.
I have saved the link to your website and will read the whole thing when I have a bit more time. Mum now lives in Oz (she will be 88 this year but her mind is as clear as a bell - Dad died in 1991.) I will e-mail the link to your site to my sister in Oz because I am certain that Mum will want to read every word.
With regard to trying to locate your old comrades from Malaysia, obviously I can do very little. However, have you come across a forum called British Expats? (
British Expatriate Community : British Expat Community) A section of that is devoted to expats in Malaysia or considering a visa option called MM2H. (Malaysia My Second Home.) Some of the contributors to that might have old ties with Malaysia and they also publish news articles in the main part of BE. I'll bet they would want a news article from you, my friend, and BE is read by millions of people world-wide.
Try Google Australia too, I suggest:
Royal Engineers + Malaysia - Google Search
Just tell Google UK to find Google Australia, then tell the latter to confine itself to Australian web-pages. I have not found much but I do not know enough about the subject to be able to improve my search parameters. You probably do.
Best wishes and once again, thank you so much for posting your information on Poms in Oz.
Gill
Ex royal engineers malaya 1960s
