The voice on the telephone at 4.15 in the morning on 8 December 1941 was that of a young lieutenant of the Perak Volunteers. He was speaking from Sitiawan Airfield. "The balloon's gone up" he said, "and I propose to take over the airfield for defence".

Of course the news was half expected, but it shook me out of my sleepiness and made me aware of my position. The only thing to do then was to dress - there was no point in going back to bed. As the war was all nice and new, I'd attend the muster of my coolies. At the depot I was somehow relieved to find that nobody but I had heard the ominous news.

Attendance at muster became a regular thing after that morning, and I came home to shave and eat at 5.30 to 6 am. Close contact with my men was essential lest any scare caused panic. And all was well for about ten days.

The Civil Defence scheme was put into force, and a rota was introduced to make allowances for prayers for the Mohammedans, different times for meals for the Tamils, Malays, and Chinese, and one day a week off. Equal shares of day and night shifts were given to each man. A complicated rota, but it worked - for about ten days.

The burden of our daily work was the completion of military works and shelters, main road repairs, and the finishing of jobs which might hinder the military. A steady stream of traffic headed north towards Grik, and guns and troop carriers rumbled along the road between Ipoh and Taiping. Evacuees began to arrive from Kedah, the State north of Perak, the northern boundary of which was Siam.

After dinner on the evening of 11 December, I went to the Club for a change and a little company. Instead of just a few members sitting reading magazines, the lounge was crowded. Several Press war correspondents were discussing the turn of events with the District Officer, and telling of their experiences. A gloomy group of middle-aged men stood near a heavily shaded lamp, talking in low voices. A nurse and a teacher were sitting nearby; perhaps we could put on the radiogram for a dance. When I suggested this, nobody replied; it was as if they hadn't heard me. "Anything wrong?" I asked. Dick Prior, one of the little group of men nearby, said "Haven't you heard? They've sunk the Prince of Wales and the Repulse".

The Prince of Wales and the Repulse were the two big capital warships which were supposed to cover the seas around Malaya, and they and the big guns facing south in Singapore made the Peninsula impregnable. That was the theory; that was the claim. No wonder nobody wanted to dance. A funeral wake would be more appropriate.

Feeling suddenly weary, I sought a chair and lit a cigarette. Nobody wanted to chat either.

The radiogram would help perhaps - a quickstep would liven things up. On went the record. The Dead March would have been more in keeping. But at least the two girls started talking. I asked one to dance, and she rose reluctantly, and we navigated a few steps round the talking groups until the music stopped. A waltz next, I thought. "Do you think we ought to dance when the news is so bad?" asked my partner. Then one of the men stopped us in our tracks. "My God, how you can dance on an occasion like this defeats me" he grumbled. The other girl stopped the radiogram. We were heading for a showdown.

The recollection of my reaction is dim now, but in spite of my inadequacy I had to express my feelings. So the assembled members stood their ground as I reminded them that in Britain we had lost the Courageous, the Royal Oak, the Empress of Britain and scores of others; we had lost France, suffered Dunkirk, and fed on bad news for two years. Whilst in Kuala Kangsar we were losing heart after three days. With a dry throat and burning face I restarted the radiogram and grabbed my reluctant partner.

Good old Dick Prior offered me a cigar. Another man asked the second girl to dance. Then a young couple came in and joined us. We'd got it off our chests and felt better for it.

On the following Saturday a Brewster Buffalo made a forced landing on a recreation ground known as the Polo Ground. It was an ugly blunt-nosed single engined fighter, and the pilot was a twenty-year-old Australian called O'Mara. He stayed the night with me, and his was a fascinating story. The Japanese had been bombing Penang, and he had been sent north from his base at Ipoh to engage them. He claimed four bombers before running into an escort of fighters. In the unequal dogfight that followed he lost his cool, and found himself upside down. I admired his frankness, but a man who has shot down four bombers is entitled to be frank. When he had managed to get the Buffalo the right way up, he tried to get back to base, but lost direction and made the landing in Kuala Kangsar. We were proud to have him. Early next day a small gang of coolies took down the goalposts, and a large crowd watched him take off as the mists evaporated under the rising sun. "He's a berani (brave) kid", said Dick Prior.

That was the only aircraft I saw over Kuala Kangsar. It served not only to put us in context, but to lift our spirits because of the courage and skill of young O'Mara.

Horsley returned from Sitiawan Airfield for a night's rest in his own home. He was lowspirited and feeling pessimistic. We discussed the situation, but found little to hang onto except the knowledge that plenty of troops were going through town and up the Grik Road. The Japs had walked through Siam (Thailand), but we had troops on the border. The war was only a week old.

Only two days later the telephone wakened me at 3 in the morning. It was the State Engineer. He'd been ringing Horsley's number for an hour without success. There was an urgent instruction for him; all vehicles of any description had to be evacuated from the coast to a village thirty miles inland.

I dressed and hurried in the cool night air to Horsley's quarters. The full significance of the order took shape as my half-night's sleep gave way to wakefulness. The coastal area of our District included Lumut and Sitiawan, and they were served by a single road. That was their only communication with the rest of the country. To remove all cars, vans, lorries, motor cycles, 'all vehicles of any description', was to isolate the whole coastal region. No services, food or fuel could reach the coastal towns unless carried on foot for thirty miles. The towns, villages and estates would be sterilised.

The house was not very far away, and I hammered on the glass-panelled door with closed fists. A few moments later my chief opened the door, still full of sleep. "Good God," he grumbled, "I thought the noise was machine guns." I apologised, and gave him the State Engineer's message. Horsley gasped, and breathed dismay. "I can't do it", he protested, "they can't realise what it means."

We went into the house, and after discussing the implications Horsley rang the State Engineer for confirmation. There was no mistake. Every vehicle capable of use as transport was to be deployed to a position outside the defined coastal area. No vehicle was to be allowed to return.

"I'll do it, but it means disaster," he said. Next day he left for Sitiawan, leaving me once more in charge of Kuala Kangsar.

On 14 December Robert Partridge reported to me. He had been given half an hour to clear out of his home in Grik owing to the rapid advance of the Japanese. He had not even brought a change of clothes, because he had spent that half hour seeking his coolies. They had fled into the jungle, leaving a sub-overseer only. Now the two of them asked me for instructions. Partridge's savings, his future, his few possessions, all had evaporated. No hope of marrying now. He was desolate.

I gave him three lorries and told him to go as far up the Grik Road as the military would allow, to pick up as many of the labour force as he could find, and bring them to the coolie lines outside Kuala Kangsar. Next day I sent a lorry laden with rice, together with wages for the men who had missed payment on pay-day. The lorry never returned.

Horsley rang from Sitiawan. He wanted gelignite from stores - he had to blow up the airfield and its defences, including those he had only just completed.

On 15 December a Major Wakeham brought a party of Royal Engineers with instructions to prepare the bridges in my District for demolition. These included the 1929 Iskandar Bridge, a big structure of arched girder construction, which crossed the River Perak. That was the one with a resident painting crew. There was the Victoria Railway bridge half a mile upstream - also pretty big. And the Blanja Pontoon Bridge, which crossed the same river on a loop road connecting Batu Gajah and Taiping. That was an interesting engineering job, the floating steel cylinder pontoons held across the river by hawsers and chains, which had to be released on the receipt of river flood warnings, then pulled back across the water after the flood had passed. Major Wakeham had explosives and a few Asiatic volunteers - nothing else. PWD had to find the other items. Working on a shift system, we supplied and delivered timber and nails, wire, buckets, string, electric batteries, cable, fuel, lorries, coolies - a seemingly endless variety. Wakeham would ring up and ask in his quiet, casual way for some item which he needed in an hour or so. All the rules had to be broken to cope with his needs. A sawmill was taken over with all its timber, petrol was issued from our pump in the workshop yard, all on the nod. The supply lorry was held up in an air raid in Ipoh, and we nearly ran out of petrol. Then a Colonel Lloyd arrived with a thousand dollars in cash, and next day a further ten thousand followed. Our Chief Clerk, a Special Grade Clerical, quoted General Orders; only two hundred dollars in the safe at any time. He refused to hold the key to the safe's second lock, so I had to hold both keys. It is strange how, in recollecting times of stress, a silly little detail like that sticks in one's memory.

The situation in the town deteriorated rapidly. The Chinese shopkeepers shut their doors, and the coolies ran out of rice. These splendid faithful Tamils must be kept at work on the demolition preparations, and they must be fed. My only recourse was to the District Officer.

The DO was a remarkable man. He was always smiling and cheerful, even when everything was going wrong. When I told him my story he put in a few phone calls, then told me to send a lorry to the Government godown for four bags of rice.

In the afternoon a small lorry came to the office, its deck filled by the four large bags of rice. Sitting on them, mounting guard, was the lorry cleaner - Zakariah. He imparted a slightly comic touch to the scene, his assumed air of importance contrasting amusingly with his weakly, foolish bearing.

I got in beside the driver and we went to the coolie lines near the workshops. Zakariah was sent to call the coolies, and he shambled away with lifted sarong, his plimsoles flapping as he half-ran down the lines, shouting summonses as he went.

Then followed the unusual sight of a young Englishman sitting on a sack of rice on the back of a lorry, filling coolies' bags and hats and bowls and sheets of newspaper with rice carefully measured with a chupak measure to make it spin out, and Zakariah fussing around, trimming the very English queue, calling for silence, pushing the men forward one by one to get their rations. He, Zakariah, was a most important man that day - the tuan was sitting in his lorry. The atmosphere was almost one of celebration, the coolies obviously delighted with their windfalls, and the work situation was secure.

The Japanese were of course well into my District by this time; they had entered it one week after the war had started. They were now within a mile of Lenggong. The Engineers received orders to blow up or immobilise the Chenderoh Dam, and one morning I had to go up the Grik Road to the 50th mile to meet the Captain of the small detachment sent for that purpose. As we met, a Japanese reconnaisance aircraft flew over us without opposition, to see what we were up to in the semi-jungle. The Engineers had not slept for four days, and had been living on pomeloes, a fruit rather like grapefruit. That morning they had caught a stray goat and were planning a feast. I supplied them with cable and batteries for the demolition job. And so I played my part in preparing to destroy the power supply and the flood protection of Kuala Kangsar.

PWD Kuala Kangsar finished the jobs, and Major Wakeham had high praise for the men who had slaved to do it. And on 18 December 1941 PWD Kuala Kangsar, having stripped itself bare of materials, and after completing all the preparations for destruction of its best engineering works, packed up shop and ceased to exist. At seven o'clock on that day my own part in it was finished, and I went home.

Dinner was a muted affair; there was little food in the house, because the Taiping suppliers had not delivered food that week, and local shops were closed. In any case however there was no pleasure in eating alone, with the future a vacuum. Uncertainty was the main course that evening.

My brooding meal was almost finished when a car drew up in the drive. The driver of the Riley was a PWD Architect from Taiping. He was hungry, exhausted, at the end of his tether, and asked to be put up for the night. With him were his sais and boy, who also needed food and bed. They had left Taiping in a convoy, a nerve-wracking experience on the narrow roads in blackout. We scratched a meal together, and there was plenty to drink.

At nine o'clock we had another guest; he was an engineer from Kedah who had brought a convoy of six lorries from Taiping. They had been machine-gunned, the lorries developed faults, and the tyre and tube on the back wheel of his own car had been torn to shreds. After a beer and cigarette another makeshift meal was arranged; then he told us that he had a Chinese girl in his car, in need of food and a pallet for the night.

The cook-boy Ah Chang, who had sent his wife and children into the forest, was showing signs of distress. He was a neat and meticulous worker, and for four days my irregularity with mealtimes, my midnight calls, and unexpected extra guests needing a quick meal, a drink or a bath, added to the overall tension, had been affecting him. Now his face was drawn, very pale, and the bone structure seemed even more pronounced than before. Normally he had a quiet smile and calm features, but now he gave a despairing gesture at each new order or challenge to his ability, his face dead and unsmiling. But he never failed me. He fed and bedded the Asiatics in the servants' quarters and scraped food together for us. He rigged up beds and kept us going with all we asked for, until at midnight he had to give in. In my anxiety for him I looked into his kitchen before he retired. He and Hussein, the sais, had just about a pound of rice left; they had been giving to the others. That was too much for me. They must have the remaining contents of one bag left at the workshop after the distribution in the coolie lines.

We were supposed to be on call round the clock, but I was not optimistic that anyone would answer the midnight call to the workshop. My heart swelled with pride and relief when Brawn answered the phone. He had been at work since seven that morning. There was one last instruction for him; the six Taiping lorries were to be refuelled, serviced and tested at once, then loaded with all valuable materials from the workshop. A tyre and tube were also needed for the damaged car. They would all be leaving at six o'clock next morning. Within six hours. And we needed the left-over rice in the sack on the distribution lorry to be brought to my bungalow. No protest, simply "Very good, sir; I'll stay on the job until everything's done". That was a proud moment for me.

Brawn came round to the house with the sack of rice strapped on the carrier of his old Ford Popular. Whilst the rice was being divided between the servants, Brawn and I chatted behind the house. He asked for permission to leave as soon as his job was done, and I gave him permission on condition that he reported to the nearest PWD Office for further instructions. He left, and I never saw him again.

There were other callers that night. Robert Partridge and a young Indian draughtsman called Nathaniel came to see me. Both these youngsters were in a highly emotional state. They asked for instructions, because they said that the Office staff had disappeared, as well as most of the labour force and overseers. The news was a blow to me, because all had seemed calm in town that day. Partridge wanted to leave for Malacca, to find the girl he had hoped to marry. Nathaniel wanted to strike south also, to find his parents.

There was nothing in Regulations to cover this situation; no authority for me to let them leave the District. But their work was finished, and there was no PWD operating - except me. So I gave them permission to leave, on condition that they reported to the first available PWD office; surely there would be one somewhere. They took my hands; it was too emotional a scene for grown men, but Asiatics are emotional by nature, and Partridge was half Asiatic anyway. As they left, I wondered how many more would arrive to tax my mind and heart. Privately there was deep down a feeling of pride that friendships had emerged through working relationships, in just a few months in PWD Kuala Kangsar.

Something made me ring the office - though it was well past midnight; probably 2am. Perhaps it was a desperate desire for reassurance of staff loyalty. A Chinese clerk called Tok Seng replied. I knew that he was in the office at eight o'clock that morning. "What's wrong, Mr. Tok Seng?" - "I don't know, sir" - rather breathlessly - " but nobody has been to relieve Maniam and me today. The whole town's in a panic." The dangers of bush telegraph. "As far as I know, everything's in order," I said, since in fairness to me I was aware that the Argyll and Sutherlands had been holding the Japanese for the past three days on the Grik Road - I'd been up there and seen for myself. A detachment had come down to Kuala Kangsar a couple of days earlier for a break, and they'd been very optimistic about the situation, in spite of the absence of reinforcements.

"Well, sir, may we please go home? We haven't slept for twenty hours, and we are afraid to go to sleep with the office open".

They were told to go home and to come back late that day, open the office, and await my arrival. Surely I could get some sleep myself now. I felt empty, weak, bereft.

The telephone rang; it was Major Wakeham.

"It just occurred to me that you might not have had time to find out the position up north because of the busy time you've had", he said carefully. "No, I thought everything was OK" I replied. "Not so good - have you made any arrangements for yourself?" was his reply.

It had never occurred to me. Life had been such a hurly-burly, looking after the men, the demands of the Engineers, the evacuees descending on me - all these things had denied me time to think of my own situation. Now where do I stand? Wakeham left me in no doubt.

"You'd better make your own arrangements, for it could be an hour, or three hours, or a day".

I thanked him for thinking about me when he had so much on his plate. But it was hopeless to try to do anything then. It was probably two o'clock in the morning, and I was out on my feet. The house was in total blackout. I went to bed, and the Engineer from Kedah slept on the hardwood floor of the lounge, across the front door, with a rifle by his side.

Perhaps two hours later and we were awake, had some tea and fruit - there was nothing else - and I started to pack. One cabin trunk was packed to capacity, and one small attache case took my papers and letters. The rest had to be packed into the car loose. The big Chevrolet took all my clothes, two radios, books, even cutlery, and there was just room for me to drive. All the furniture, pots and pans, pictures and furnishings, crockery and glassware, and the empty trunks and tin-lined cases had to be left behind.

I was filling the car when Horsley came in from Sitiawan. He looked a physical wreck, and his clothes were sweat-stained because he had worn them for three days - unthinkable in the heat and dust of the tropics. He said he had had no sleep. When I asked him how things had gone, the tough little Australian showed, for the first time, signs of emotion.

"The Chinese are arming themselves with bamboo spears", he said, " and they think we're running away. One man came to me as I was blowing up petrol pumps, and asked 'Does this mean that our protectors are deserting us?' I couldn't look him in the face".

I passed on Wakeham's warning, and my chief went home to gather his things. He wasted no time, and took very little. He left behind the accumulated possessions of seventeen years of service in Malaya. That was Horsley; rough, tough - and selfless.

Later in the morning the State Engineer and others came through from Taiping on the west coast, and we were discussing the next move when a small deputation of members of the staff came to my quarters. They were the clerks and overseers on monthly pay, and they sought their pay and permission to evacuate. We had the full story from them. The highly respected Chief Clerk had taken fright and fled into the forest. Chelliah, the man of authority, who had made such trouble for Brawn, had disappeared also. Other responsible staff had caught the breath of panic and fled. The coolies were stranded. Their bosses had gone, and they were left without anyone to advise or lead them. Some had stayed in the coolie lines, but the majority had run away like frightened sheep. This wholesale panic showed itself many times in the weeks which followed.

Only the most faithful and loyal had remained to take further orders. They included some surprises. Ramasamy, a weedy Tamil who had been in trouble many times for theft, and had survived many threats of dismissal; Muttiah, the biggest crook of a storekeeper one could ever expect to meet; and a young clerk in the Building branch, who was blubbering pitifully. The men I had trusted were there. In addition to Brawn, Partridge and Nathaniel there was Phoon Tok Seng, correspondence clerk, Inche Yun bin Ismael, finance clerk, and the little Tamil Christian, Victor, my building overseer.

The State Engineer paid them as much as he could from cash he had brought from Head Office, and went with his party to Ipoh. Horsley and I were to report to him when the military ordered us to leave Kuala Kangsar.

The rest of that day hung like a cloud over me. Horsley and I walked down Government Hill to the office, and Maniam helped us to remove or destroy all the secret plans and papers. Horsley took the money and more important documents from the safe. The store below had little left of value, but later on we handed over to the Engineers quantities of tyres, tubes, picks and changkols, and a large stock of gelignite and fuse. Oh yes, we had lived dangerously as we worked in that office. If that gelignite had exploded in the store we would have all gone up in smoke. Not so very long before evacuation I had had to examine all that gelignite and to pick out the sticks which were sweating. As far as I can recall, though the gelignite store was of solid masonry construction, and tastefully whitewashed inside, it was not built as a magazine.

After a scratch meal we went to the workshop to see what else we could save. One old lorry remained; if we could get a driver perhaps we could fill it with spares and tools and send it to Ipoh. We filled the tank with fuel and looked around for a water can. A shuffling figure materialised from the gloom of the timber store. "Tabek, tuan", said Zakariah, lorry cleaner by special appointment, "this is very difficult."

When asked what he was doing in the yard, he explained that they had taken his lorry, so he had stayed to help us.

We let him fill the radiator, then we all carried piston rings, connecting rods and other spares to the lorry, filling baskets and stacking them in the back. Zakariah surprised me with his energy and enthusiasm in the face of the circumstances. We could not pay him, because in effect PWD had ceased to exist. But he gave the impression that he was not expecting payment anyway.

The lorry was ready; still no driver. Horsley suggested the Military, and we went to a nearby Army Camp to beg for a driver.

A young Indian officer agreed to let us have a driver if he could have the lorry. That was what we wanted, of course. The driver would take the load to Ipoh, then report to an Army camp there and await the arrival of his unit when it arrived from the evacuation of Kuala Kangsar.

A tall smiling Sikh driver reported to us. In faltering English he said that he was to take the lorry to Ipoh - but he didn't know the way, and soon it would be dark. Could someone go with him? Neither Horsley nor I could, as we had to await evacuation orders. We tried to explain the route to the Sikh, but his pleasant smile became vacant and finally he assured us that he didn't understand.

"Tuan". We had forgotten Zakariah. Touching his songkok respectfully, cracking his knuckles and weaving his dry stick fingers, "Tuan, I can go with the lorry". As if he was asking us a favour.

We explained that it was a one-way trip only, that he would not be brought back, and might not even be able to get back on foot. He understood perfectly. He obviously understood that there would be no PWD, no tuan, nobody to pay or feed him.

Of course we never saw Zakariah again. I hope he got through.

The workshop was handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the RIAOC, who had Bren-gun carriers and lorries to repair. As darkness fell Horsley and I returned home, two PWD engineers without jobs, without followers, feeling very sorry for themselves.

Meanwhile the military had moved into many quarters and had taken over the hospital. Horsley and I paid off our servants, and for me at least the parting was traumatic. We went a little further along the road on Government Hill to share quarters with a young Drainage and Irrigation Engineer named Perry. We slept side by side on two mattresses laid on the floor. Perry's one remaining servant attending to our needs was an old Tamil gardener.

Our food consisted primarily of rice and bully beef, but we had tea and whisky-sodas, and plenty of cigarettes. Perry had a Music-Hall sort of voice, deep and liable to break, not unlike a puberty voice. When he spoke to his old kebun in Malay, that voice made the speech extremely funny; and to our delight the Tamil replied in virtually the same voice. Horsley and I roared with laughter, but Perry was oblivious of the entertainment he was laying on. When we explained to him next morning he was eager to exploit the chance of a bit of light relief, and he spoke as frequently as possible to the old man, so that we could all savour the Tamil echo. Anything to lift the pervasive gloom.

Next day, 20 December, Horsley and I went a walk into town - we had nothing else to do. We collected the mail at the Post Office. One letter was for Partridge - from Malacca. But none of my staff could be traced. We wandered aimlessly around town, looking at the shuttered shops and idle crowds. Then we became aware of a restlessness, a sound of murmuring, then an increase in pace of the idlers. People began to run, and soon we saw that the crowds were moving towards the railway station. We followed, and on arrival at the station we saw that they had converged on the platform and approach roads, pushing and swaying and chattering excitedly, noise and energy creating the first phase of mob hysteria.

The first signs of mass hunger.