The Government's war emergency programme included bulk storage of rice, the staple diet of the Asiatic. Kuala Kangsar had two railway station go-downs filled with 14,000 bags of limed rice, each bag weighing 180 lbs., ready for distribution in an emergency. Two important factors had been overlooked when the rice had been put into bulk storage. The first was that a 180 lb. sack needs four men to lift it, and so cannot be handled rapidly. The second was the panic element of an emergency. The ordinary Asiatic such as a coolie would be likely to panic at the slightest provocation - rumour, shortage, military occupation - and one person was enough to start the panic.

The Engineers planned to destroy the rice go-downs, and the District Officer - who was also Food Controller - had made a valiant effort at distribution. With a few English Schoolmasters he had opened one go-down, and had tried to organise the crowd into fours to handle the bags. The process was so slow that the mass of people became restless, perhaps fearful that they might miss their issue. They rushed the organisers, and the go-down had to be closed.

Horsley and I worried over this situation as we walked home, and we discussed the mechanics of the problem. An opportunity to try out our ideas arose when next morning the DO rang to ask Horsley for barbed wire and posts to make a barrier for the go-down entrance. Horsley obtained the materials, and we erected the barrier intended for crowd control. It failed.

There had to be another idea. The crowd were on top of us, panic was in the air. In desperation I put an idea to Horsley, and he put it to the DO. He let us have the second go-down, which was on the other side of the railway track.

We asked Perry, the Health Officer and the Doctor to help us. We borrowed a three-ton lorry, and I took a small omnibus. The bus led the way across the track to the second go-down, followed closely by the lorry. We opened the doors, filled the lorry, and closed the doors again before the mob saw us. I directed the lorry driver to the nearby coolie lines, called out the men, and we tipped the bags on the roadside, to be pounced on by the crowd.

When we returned to the go-down the bus was in position at the entrance. The crowd pressed so hard that the Europeans were surrounded, and the doors could not be opened. Horsley fought his way to me, and said in despair "It's no good - they won't give us a chance".

The scene was frightening. There were Chinese, Indians, Malays, dirty and sweating, hungry and fearful, pressing in on us in despair. And in the go-downs were 14,000 bags of rice destined to go up in smoke.

A sort of madness must have possessed me then. The older and more experienced men with me obviously were cautious and conditioned. But I pushed my way through the press of bodies and stood with my back to the doors, scared stiff, sweating, desperate for this last chance. I shouted for silence, amazed at the power of my voice. There was no response; I shouted again and again. Then an old Chinese near me called my name and asked for rice. I pushed my face into his and screamed him into silence. He retreated, murmuring to the men around him, and they quietened down. Waiting for silence, I could feel my knees trembling. Then, quietly, I told the men at the front that we could not open the doors until they heard what I had to say. The word passed round, and we waited. Perhaps only a minute or so, but it was an age.

My friends were very quiet, helping me with their silence, but watching for the next move.

At last I was able to explain that so long as the mob pressed on the doors, we couldn't open them to get at the rice. They must move back ten yards.

Whilst the crowd murmured and stirred, then slowly fell back, I jumped into the lorry, displacing the driver. My friends saw their chance, and dashed forward to trim the stragglers. I started the engine, and as soon as the way was clear, I asked the helpers to open the doors of the shed. Before the crowd could get in, the lorry was backed in and the doors acted as side screens.

I recognised half a dozen of my old coolies in the crowd, and they were told to come near. They were promised a whole bag of rice each if they would spend all morning working on the lorry. They scrambled over the vehicle, and worked with Horsley, the Doctor, the Health Officer and Perry in the go-down. The lorry was soon filled, and one of my friends climbed on the back with the coolies. We set off, and the doors of the shed were closed. Half a mile further on the men started dropping the sacks along the roadside. The precious rice was pounced on immediately by the hungry crowd.

When we returned, the lorry was handed back to the driver, who had got the idea, and I went to my bus. The sacks were fed into the bus through the rear emergency door, with the Doctor guarding the front entrance. The air was filled with dust and lime powder, and soon our throats and eyes were choked with the stuff. But we were winning.

We set off in the loaded bus. It was rather more vulnerable than the lorry, agile Chinese in particular managing to clamber onto the window ledges. I was afraid of running over somebody, but I mustn't stop. As we wound our way erratically along the side roads, sacks were dropped at intervals, to be claimed immediately. Once I saw Hussein, my former sais, and slowed down so that he could take his sack. He sat on it, a solitary, comic figure, unable to lift the sack and obliged to wait for help in exchange for a share of the rice.

So it went on, and bags were scattered all over the town. Soon we ran into ambushes as the crowd sensed our tactics. But the distribution averted the panic, which gave way to a friendly game, and cries of "Tarek, tarek, tarek" (pull), accompanied my cries and gleeful singing as the burden of fear and despair was lifted. Each 180 lb. sack bowled over the pullers as it crashed onto the road, to be sat upon as a prize. There was no fighting. One sack was occupied by a little Tamil girl, and nobody tried to unseat her. She was a signal of our success.

Nobody was hurt. We had made little impression on the stocks of rice, and the process was slow, but with the pressure eased the DO and his team were able to carry on with distribution at the first go-down. If only we had had more time, we could have cleared the lot. But I like to think that nobody went hungry in Kuala Kangsar.

There was a hilarious party at Perry's that night.

Next day we were asked by the military to move out of Perry's house, so that newly arrived officers could move in. We were out in half an hour, all our barang having remained in our cars. We moved into the Doctor's house, made beds from cushions on the floor, and went out to do what we could. Rice distribution had to be resumed, mail awaited collection, and Horsley and I had to assist the Engineers in a wrecking expedition.

Wakeham and his men were already at the workshop when we arrived there. We witnessed the destruction of our petrol pump, the Dieseline tank and its contents, two lorries in for repair, a steam roller, a concrete mixer and other plant. This was Horsley's new workshop being destroyed before our eyes.

We looked at each other in blank dismay. That workshop had taken time and a lot of trouble to establish from nothing. We had had to sort out the trouble between Chelliah and Brawn, we had argued and even quarrelled to get things right. We stood amongst the ruins of our work, and found deep understanding there.

"Come on, bo' - we don't want to see this, do we?" said Horsley.

On the afternoon of 22 December we sat in the Club with the Engineers, their wrecking job finished. We were finished also. Then we were told that the Japanese had cut across the Chenderoh Lake area from the Grik Road to Plus Road. Plus Road ran to Sungei Siput, halfway between Kuala Kangsar and Ipoh. It was about fifteen miles away. There was a risk of the troops fighting on the Grik Road being cut off if the Japs managed to reach the main road. Things looked pretty black for us in Kuala Kangsar. We were told to stand by for orders to move.

At 7 pm the last few remaining Europeans still in Kuala Kangsar formed up in the town for the trek to Ipoh.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The old Chevrolet was checked for water and air, and I put the last of my overnight things in it. The convoy was to be formed in Jalan Kangsar, the main street. I drove from Government Hill, past the clock which commemorated the Coronation. The clock had stopped. I took up my position at the tail of the convoy.

They were not quite ready to leave, so I walked along the line of vehicles, smoking a cigarette and trying to cope with the flood of memories. Horsley came up and murmured something, his voice low as if we were at a funeral. I suppose we were, in a way. PWD had died that week. Kuala Kangsar was pretty dead too. A Malay Penghulu came along on his bicycle to see somebody off. There was nobody else. Just the convoy, like a funeral cortege.

Harvey Ryves, the young Police officer who had lived next door to me on Government Hill, passed in his little Morris, and gave me a cheerful grin. His Police force had been disbanded, and his pretty wife had been sent south several days earlier. He had little cause to be cheerful.

The District Officer finalised the arrangements with the convoy leaders. They counted us as they walked back along the line. At last we were ready. We moved off in the moonless night.

The convoy had left a little late, and there was a serious risk of trouble at Sungei Siput. Three armoured cars led the convoy in case we met the Japs there.

The convoy ran into heavy rain at Iskandar Bridge. My battery had died on me, so that I had to race the engine to get a mere glimmer from the blacked-out lamps. We crawled along the bridge, over the cross trenches packed with guncotton cutting charges. Men were standing by to blow the bridge as soon as we had crossed over. We had travelled three miles, at little more than walking pace, and my car was hot and stuffy.

Two miles from Sungei Siput, where the road ran under the railway in an S-bend, we came upon a convoy of army lorries parked in darkness on each side of the road. There was perhaps ten feet of roadway for us, in pitch darkness and pouring rain. Our convoy stopped, and my engine stalled. When the convoy restarted, I stayed where I was. Then half a dozen Indian soldiers pushed me for a hundred yards or so until the engine started. I cursed my carelessness in neglecting the Chevvy after Hussein had left me. He had treated it like a baby, and it was always in perfect order and clean as a new pin. The Indian helpers accepted a tin of cigarettes for their trouble.

Troops lined the road for four miles, right through Sungei Siput, and at last we were clear. A little further on we ran into a flood. Half a mile of road was flooded a foot deep after the tropical storm. We passed an army lorry bogged down where it had strayed off the road in the darkness.

The convoy stopped, restarted, crawled along, stopped again, a snail's pace, for four hours. At the end of that time we had reached Ipoh, and we had travelled thirty miles.

Horsley and I put up in an engineer's house for the night, and we were thankful to sleep on the floor.

We reported to the State Engineer next morning, and were told to strike further south that afternoon. My car needed a new battery, so I went into town with another young engineer, a new arrival called Jewkes. We came upon a scene of desolation. The main streets were empty save for the odd army lorry on patrol with gun crews on the alert for aircraft. The glass car showroom windows of Borneo Motors and other car firms were shattered, and the Chinese shops were boarded up. Light debris covered the broad carriageway. As we drove down the deserted street, a solitary air raid siren wailed its warning, and a Japanese bomber cruised casually and unchallenged over the town centre, until distant ack-ack guns came into action, then it dived low and dropped its bombs somewhere near the railway station.

There was nobody to sell us anything, so we walked into a car dealer's shop and picked up a new battery from the charging bench. I took a spare wheel also, complete with tyre. The military had ransacked the place for spares. There would be very little booty for the Japs when they entered the town - which obviously would be soon.

We returned to the house, and a bomber passed over us as we stood by my car. It flew very low, and we saw the Rising Sun on its silver wings. We thought he'd seen us, because he went into a dive which seemed straight for us; we dived under the trees for cover. But his target was the nearby railway station and an ammunition train. There was a huge explosion, and we crept out to see a great mass of black smoke climbing high into the air. Then followed the rumbling and crashing of further explosions as tankers burst and ammunition blew up.

We left Ipoh at 2pm with the noise of explosions still in our ears.

Rain was sheeting down again, so that the car windows had to be closed, creating a Turkish Bath atmosphere inside. The steamed windscreen and the tropical storm reduced visibility to almost nil. The convoy had to pull in after an hour so that we could stretch our legs and ease our backs.

Tapah was our next port of call, and we reported to the Executive Engineer there about 6pm. My orders were to stay at the Rest House with another Assistant Engineer named Boardman. But when we got there we found it crowded out. A Royal New Zealand Air Force construction unit had moved in, as well as officers of the Engineers and other Army units. Boardman and I managed to arrange for a room, which we shared with a second lieutenant. Next we had to get some food, and we waited for a space at table to devour soup, sausage and mash, and tea. The lounge was crammed with troops, so we retired to our room.

Harry Boardman had arrived in Malaya only a fortnight before the Japs bombed Singapore. He had not even been posted to a District; he knew no Malay: we decided to try to stick together.

Our night's rest was too short. Because of some jumpy individual who raised the alarm, our convoy was alerted in the middle of the night, and we were on our way by about 3 o'clock in the morning. I was following Horsley's car, trying to keep the tiny light of his number plate in sight through the mist which had followed the rain. We passed parked Army vehicles in almost complete darkness. After an hour Horsley stopped, and told me that he was falling asleep and had lost the convoy. We struggled on a few more miles until we reached a small village, then pulled in to the side of the road and fell asleeep.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dawn was breaking when we awoke to find ourselves objects of amused interest in the village. We checked the cars and went on to find the convoy.

We found it at Slim River, hiding in the roadside rubber plantation out of site of reconnaisance aircraft. Then we were told to split up into small units under the military, and we would be engaged in clearance of semi-jungle and rubber, using estate coolies. Nine or ten of us were to push on to Tanjong Malim, on the Perak-Selangor border, and to book into the Rest House until further orders.

After a morale-building breakfast in a Chinese coffee house, we made our way to Tanjong Malim, made famous by the Sultan Idris Training College. We arrived about noon, to find all the accommodation taken over by British and Indian troops, engineers, and an Australian transport unit. Army officers and evacuees filled the Rest House. We concocted meals from the tinned food we had with us, and sorted out the goods in our cars. Some of the stuff overburdening our vehicles suddenly looked out of place in a convoy on the run. For there was no mistake about it - we were on the run. The Japs were outflanking us all down the west side of the peninsular, and the main Trunk Road was dangerously near the west coast.

The newly formed PWD Construction unit, so-called for want of a better word such as 'circus', installed itself in two Assistant Managers' bungalows on the Changat Asa Rubber Estate. The previous occupiers were on active service with the Volunteers. There we took some of the load off our cars, which had been full since 18 December. We took out the clothes and cases, wireless sets, toiletries and dry goods, and pooled our resources. The cook-boy serving the house was put in charge of the provisions. Out of this sharing emerged a sort of cohesion and sense of purpose. I suppose we were clutching at straws by that time, and glad to escape the individual loneliness of driving solo in darkness and heat and potential danger.

In any case, it was Christmas Eve.

We decided to have a celebration. There were only three of us on that first evening; Jewkes, Boardman and myself. Christmas Dinner consisted of tinned sausages, tinned peas, rice, tinned soup, dry puffy biscuits, and coffee. A glass of Creme de Menthe came as something special. Out of that plain meal in the ugly dark bungalow we found the spirit of Christmas - if only we could have got in touch with home.

Christmas Day 1941 in Tanjong Malim was a Christmas Day with a difference. The senior officers of our unit had been told by the Army that a line of rubber trees had to be felled a couple of miles to the north for defence preparations. The coolies from Changat Asa and another estate were to be collected and taken there to work. We drove north and crossed over a steel bridge which carried the trunk road over a river, and the lorry loads of coolies and tools arrived a little later. A number of women and children had been sent by the estates also, and they were put on cropping the padi bukit - hill rice - which grows on dry land as against the usual rice which grows in water. The rice was ripe, and there were hundreds of acres of it to be reaped. The rubber trees were old and topheavy, with stout trunks, and they grew up to the edge of the road on the hillside.

The rubber estate coolies had no idea how to fell trees. Willing but untrained Tamils nibbled with their axes around the trunks until the trees were about to topple, with which there would be a chorus of shouts and screams as the nearest coolies fled, and the rest laughed at their scampering. Good fun, but not quite what was required. A puzzle of criss-cross fallen trees had then to be dealt with. So we had to instruct these rubber-tappers in the art of tree felling. It was our turn to provide the entertainment as we sweated and swung with the axes, cutting the notches fore and aft so that the trees would fall neatly in the right direction. None of us was a trained lumberjack, as soon became obvious, but progress was made, and the coolies very quickly got the idea.

We were settling down to a more or less organised plan when we heard the drone of aircraft. The coolies stopped working and began jabbering excitedly, and suddenly they were running. They had no idea where, but they ran. Panic was in the air again.

The women were terrified; they crouched on the ground, moaning pitifully as the Jap flew over them. Then we heard the crunch of explosions nearby. They were bombing Tanjong Malim. The aircraft returned to fly over us, and some of the coolies picked up their belongings and ran away. We were not going to get any more work done that day.

The leaders of the gangs came to us and asked to be allowed to go home. We assembled them in a circle under the trees. When we asked them what they were afraid of, they said that they feared for their wives and children in the coolie lines, who might have been bombed. They wanted to get back home with their families.

We decided to send the women back, to look after the others, and we promised not to bring women out again. That settled the men, who went back to work. We let them go home early, for their peace of mind.

In fact we found that the target had been the railway station, and one coach had been hit. Minor damage had been caused to the platform and some buildings, and a crater about four feet diameter and nine inches deep in the road indicated the scale of the attack. There were no casualties.

Next day we made good progress, interrupted by a reconnaissance plane which had a look at us and flew off. We really could not hope to do anything without the enemy knowing all about it.

On that day the State Engineer told the nine PWD Engineers of our party that we were to be commissioned, for our protection in case we were captured. A uniform would assure us of some security.

Uniforms were issued; they were not complete, and there were no firearms. It was all a bit of a joke, and we called ourselves 'Nunn's Army', after the Director of Public Works. The most important thing was to get on with the work, and in that we enjoyed a total absence of red tape. I had cash issued to me for daily payment of the coolies, and we worked as long as we could.

My old friend Major Wakeham inspected our work with a Captain Wilson on the third day, and I was transferred from the tree felling to the area of padi bukit and jungle scrub on the hillside. The idea was to clear lines of fire. A number of Chinese coolies were added to the workforce; they were stronger than the Tamils, and claimed higher wages. They were also less likely to panic. Their resilience and staying power were a blessing in the days which followed.

On 28 December we experienced our first Japanese leaflet sortie. The usual daily unchallenged reconnaissance plane flew along our line, and we lay low. Then it turned, and a puff of smoke was followed by a pop as it passed overhead. We resumed our work.

Some time later the coolies started chattering and pointing to the sky. As far as the eye could see there were tiny flashing red flakes, drifting down slowly like coloured snowflakes on to the padi field. As they neared the ground they were seen to be pieces of paper, fluttering, wheeling, drifting in the still air. After a tantalising wait the first sheets grounded, and I picked one up.

"FROM AN INDIAN SOLDIER TO AN ENGLISH OFFICER"

"Why don't you give us soldiers enough food to eat? While we are fighting you English have plenty to eat."

Our Tamil coolies could not translate the Jawi text, and many could not read anyway. The excitement of the pamphlet raid soon passed.

Two other types of leaflet had dropped elsewhere. One was a cartoon of a huge white man; he had a Malay woman on his knee, and a drink nearby. The second showed English troops carrying off native women. Beneath each cartoon were the words:

"THE WHITE DEVILS WHO WILL SOON BE DRIVEN OUT OF THIS COUNTRY."

Next day, by which time our felling and clearance work must have been easy for the reconnaissance planes to pick out, two bombers approached at midday. I called to the gang to take cover, and they melted into the vegetation. There was a small barn, perhaps eight feet square, with split bamboo walls and an attap roof, and I climbed into it. The walls and roof allowed me a perfect view without my being seen.

There was as usual no opposition for the bombers. They flew low, circling overhead, until the first lined up for our working spot. He dived - straight for my flimsy shelter, or so it seemed.

I have read about the ability of a snake to mesmerise a chicken before it strikes. That plane mesmerised me. Would it be bombs or bullets?

It was bullets. Deafening gunfire from perhaps fifty feet above my hideout, then the Jap turned and climbed. It was not a big machine, and perhaps we were merely giving the pilot a little target practice, because he missed the hut and the coolies hidden around it.

The second bomber lined up and began its dive. I was in line again, and by now the realisation of danger had hit me. As I watched the thing dive towards me, a small silver bomb dropped from the fuselage. Foolishly, because split bamboo and attap were meaningless, I threw myself on the floor. The missile floated down and fell into the scrub some fifty yards away, to explode harmlessly. Yes, it was target practice. The aircraft turned and climbed, and they took turns at bombing and machine gunning our area. But the coolies were safely hidden amongst the litter of tree trunks. The small bombs were apparently anti-personnel bombs intended to strike terror into the population. They were a failure that day. Apart from some excitement, nobody was hurt, and most of the bombs had fallen in thick jungle beyond our working spot. The gang resumed work.

On the next day we moved to another part of the job, some distance from the area which had been the Jap target. The bombers returned, and attacked the same spot as before, but the men were safe. Then on the third day there was a surprise for the raiders; an anti-aircraft gun had been placed in position near a bridge in the town, and its accuracy kept the raiders at bay. But a line of army vehicles suffered, and when we returned from our day's work we had to negotiate the blocked road.

Raids grew in intensity, the enemy building up the attacks as the defence works developed. On New Year's Day 1942 we saw probably the heaviest and most disastrous raid of all, the forerunner of each big Japanese push southwards. My gang was working on the crest of a hill, clearing jungle to form a rentus or clear line of sight over the crown. Our working spot gave us a good view for two miles or so. An aircraft flew over and circled above, the ack-ack following it. Then two more arrived, and followed the first in a circle, at a height to avoid the accurate ack-ack. Suddenly, in what seemed a suicidal tactic, one plane went into a steep dive, dropped its bombs, and climbed steeply away; the other two followed, and within seconds they had wheeled and made off. But one of them was in trouble; a thin trail of smoke followed it, and it appeared to be losing height. I stood up and yelled "We've got one!" with such excitement that my coolies poked their heads out of the scrub. I explained in Malay what had happened, and they cheered, one old Chinese picking up his billhook and taking aim at the fast disappearing raider as if with a rifle. After all the unchallenged raids and cheeky reconnaissance visits it was good to relish that moment.

The elation was however short-lived. At the end of the day's work no lorry came for the men, so we decided to walk into town. We found that the bridge had been damaged, and the Engineers were busy patching the timber deck. A house near the bridge had been reduced to rubble, and the shop fronts in the main street were shattered. Some of the bombs had fallen near coolie lines on one of the estates which were supplying our labour, and we found later that a coolie and a boy had been killed. The prospects of having a labour force next day seemed remote.

In the event, a handful of Tamils and Chinese reported to us on the following morning. My men were put to work a short distance away from the previous day's site, and I decided to sit on the other side of the valley and act as lookout for Japs coming from the north. A dozen or more times my shouted warnings sent the men scurrying for shelter, but their morale was high and they seemed almost to be enjoying the hide-and-seek. Just once we thought we had been spotted, when a plane banked and raked the valley with gunfire; but nobody was hurt.

The day's work over, we walked up the lane to the roadside, just as another bomber flew over. We took cover in a ditch, and as we did so two large Army lorries drove into the lane at speed. The Indian drivers fell out of the vehicles and ran for their lives. I thought that they had panicked. The aircraft were engaged in gunning into the rubber up the road, then they turned away, and we climbed out of the ditch. The Indian Army drivers returned, and they were clearly amazed to see a crowd of coolies gathered round their vehicles. They showed me the contents of the lorries; one was loaded to the roof with guncotton, and the other was full of ammunition.

In spite of the nuisance raids and their effect on the labour force recruited from the Estates on a day-to-day basis, we were able to hand over the cleared areas and trenches for the Army to construct gunpits, and on 4 January 1942 the small group of ex-PWD staff, now Officers in the Straits Settlement Volunteer Engineers, received orders to move south. We loaded our lorries with spares and tools and all we could to make us an efficient and independent Unit - because we had no organised contact with any command structure - and at 10.30 that night we formed up in convoy for another weary trek south.

The narrow Trunk Road was a mass of traffic, some parked by the roadside, others crawling along with frequent stops as obstructions halted the leading vehicles. Sometimes fast-moving ambulances blasted us off the road, and we pulled over to the verge to let them pass. We had to make way also for northbound lorries carrying troops. All this in virtual darkness on a narrow winding road.

On the section of the road between Rasa and Batu Caves we were told to put all our lights out, and we passed between lines of Army vehicles parked on each side of the road. There was barely space for us to get through. Then the road cleared a little, and we passed through Kuala Lumpur to Kajang. There one of our party piloted us to a Rest House, and we ran thankfully into the compound. I fell asleep at the wheel as soon as the engine stopped.