As I went along Bukit Timah road I saw the guns which pointed to the Causeway, and the troops being mustered for the last stand. The side of the road was littered with vehicles of all types, from steam-rollers and tractors to army cars. We had not far to go, for I was reporting to the Rural Board Depot for instructions.

The depot was crammed with lorries and tools and materials from all parts of Malaya. These were to be issued to the various construction units of the Australian Engineers and the Indian Royal Engineers, with which we were to work.

Four of us were instructed to report to Major Bhagat of the Indian Royal Engineers, whose brother was the first Indian V.C. His unit was stationed at Jurong village, half-way along the road which runs from Bukit Timah Road to the west side of the Island.

Major Bhagat outlined the work we had to do. Three rough roads were to be formed between Jurong Road and Bukit Panjang Road, which ran parallel with Jurong Road to the north. The roads were to feed various artillery units and to act as detours should damage occur to either of the main routes. We had to find our own coolies and one lorry, and the other vehicles and tools would be supplied.

We returned to the depot, arranged for the lorry, filled up with petrol, and went to the quarters allocated to us.

My billet was situated in Ridley Park, and there were five other occupants, three of them architects, one an accountant, and one an engineer. One of the architects was a new man who had arrived in April, 1941, named Victor Smith. It was agreed that I should share a room with him.

When I was introduced to the men, their natural reaction to the name Bailey was 'Bill', which nickname remained with me for seven months.

The following morning, 31st January, we took three lorries to the Causeway end and picked up seventy-five Chinese coolies who had been working for a fortnight on demolition preparation works. We had to drive the vehicles ourselves; young Jo Cavallo was allowed to remain with me, and he was given a lorry; another engineer and myself driving the others. The Chinese were provided with Coolie Lines at the Field Company site, which was in the rubber behind Jurong village.

Work was started in the afternoon and I was engaged in carting broken stone, driving the lorry myself, with half a dozen Chinese on the back.

There is something about driving a big lorry along a rough road that has a thrill and gives a sort of boisterous pleasure. In spite of the beat, the dust and the smell of hot oil, my spirits rose, and I sang as I jostled in the cab. On several occasions I bounced out of the seat and struck my head on the roof, but as I was wearing a tin hat most of the time the result was merely a dull thud. The company of the Chinese, coolies though they were, gave me pleasure too, for I felt that I was beginning to understand their reactions and their mental make up by working with them. Often we all went into a near-by coffee-house and I sat at the tables with them.

I remember that Grehan, the first P.W.D. man I met in Penang, had spoken on that first day of the 'P.W.R.' - the Prestige of the White Races, which he said was practically non-existent in the East. I also recollect that on more than one occasion I was warned that a European lost face if he stooped to manual work in front of Asiatics; that he must always maintain his dignity.

There is a dignity in toil. The common coolie who cuts the grass along the road is master of the art. The Chinese who sweats from dawn until dusk on his allotment produces the finest vegetables in Malaya. To this day only the Chinese in Malaya can grew tobacco successfully. My sais, who could only drive a car and keep it clean, moved me with profound respect as he polished the copper tubing and the casting of the engine, and flicked the dust from the body with his feather duster. My boy took a pride in his work, too, and delighted in the preparation of exquisite dishes with figures of birds and flowers worked in potato or jelly or butter. What is more dignified than the way in which a Malay boatman stands in his small craft, propelling it soundlessly and without effort by means of a single oar?

The men who had to abandon their office desks in Malaya and take to washing their own clothes, preparing their own meals, or eating them in coffee-shops with Chinese and Tamils of the coolie class, loading and driving lorries, using a spade and cleaning their own cars, will tell you that in doing these tasks they lost no dignity. Rather, they acquired a new status in the eyes and minds of the Asiatics with whom they had thus come more closely in contact; for a worker despises a man who does not know how to use his hands and cannot bear to sweat a little for himself.

I knew many Europeans in Malaya who had built for themselves over a period of years, a pedestal from which they looked down on the Asiatics who worked for them, autocratic, ignorant, and egotistical beings who were using their colour and false status to sugar their vanity. I wonder what they did when they were left alone, with no servants to scream at, no poor Chinese shopkeepers to wither with their tongue ?

I also wonder how they will fare if they go back to Malaya, faced with the tremendous task of rebuilding the prestige which they themselves helped to destroy, the prestige which was driven out at the same time as our forces by the Japanese?

The day's work was finished and we drove towards home as night was falling, with its sudden transition from sunshine to darkness, so strange to a new-comer. There was no noise, and I could not suppress the feeling that the dead quietness was the lull before the storm.

The Causeway was blown up at the Johore end overnight, and the Island was cut off from the outside world, besieged by land, sea, and air. The Argyll and Sutherlands, who had fought all the way down the Peninsula, gathered together the handful of men that remained and formed the rearguard, piping the boys across to their last stronghold.

February 1st, 1942, the beginning of the Siege of Singapore, was unusually calm. In the morning I went into town to the bank and the office. The atmosphere was quiet, shopping was going on as usual, Raffles Hotel was as busy as ever - dinner and dance were continued almost to the end - and only the exceptionally crowded streets and stores told of the tremendous number of people on the Island, chiefly troops and evacuees, who were taking up all accommodation.

The L.D.C. was disbanded, but the Europeans still walked the streets in their uniforms. This organisation, which had been intended to copy the English Home Guard, had disintegrated as each town was cleared before the Japanese advance. The money, organisation, and materials spent on the Corps was a complete waste. Now the officers were wandering about the Island, redundant, their uniforms worthless.

Officers of the Police organisations, minus men, minus offices, minus authority, could be seen in the banks and the shops, passing time on as best they could.

The P.W.D. office was filled with civil engineers from all over the country, herded together, looking for work, superfluous. Only the youngest of us were sent to the rough-and-tumble jobs with the field companies. One-time senior engineers, with salaries of over a thousand dollars a month, were engaged in spotting on the office roof.

As I was looking through the mail, hoping to catch the glimpse of a familiar handwriting, Horsley came to me. He greeted me warmly, and we stood talking for some time comparing notes.

"And what are you doing now?" I asked.

"You'd never guess my next job," Horsley replied, and his look of disgust made me laugh. ''I'm going to be a blooming bricklayer."

He explained that our former State Engineer was to be in charge and a number of the engineers were to convert the P.W.D. Office garage into an air raid shelter by erecting blast walls.

I do not think the work was ever started; but, if it had, it would have been most expensive brickwork with bricklayers earning six to eight hundred dollars a month, and the foreman drawing over a thousand. All the workmen were qualified civil engineers and wore uniforms ranking from lieutenant to lieutenant-colonels.

I left the Office and picked up young Cavallo on the way to the Field Company's depot. My first task was to drive a Fordson tractor to the road job, and I viewed the vehicle with some misgiving. By the time I had started its stubborn engine with the cranking handle my shirt clung to my back, and perspiration ran down my knees into my stockings. The iron seat was burning hot from exposure to the fierce rays of the midday sun, and I settled myself very gingerly at the steering-wheel wishing that my cotton shorts were made of thicker material.

There was no brake to the tractor, and when I came to road obstructions I had to let in the clutch and hope for the best. Then, careering along at a reckless speed, I made the most of the lengths of clear road, arriving safely at the work site.

Work was well in progress, and several new small culverts were already in position ready for the topping of stone and laterite, that peculiar deep-red, soft stone which will break up and spread so easily and sets so hard. A number of deposits of this material had been found near by, and we opened borrow pits on the site.

On the 2nd the gang was working on the road when the Japanese carried out a raid, twenty-seven bombers passing over our heads The coolies were overcome with fright, but resumed work when the aircraft had passed on. It was obvious that we should get little work out of them if we allowed them to take cover every time a plane appeared, and we decided to face the risk and keep them on the job until we were sure that bombs would be dropped around us. The afternoon was clear of aircraft, and we continued without interruption.

I awoke on the morning of the 3rd to the sound of artillery. Our gunners were shelling the Japanese on the Johore coast-line. The sound gave us a feeling of security, and work went on in spite of another visit by the familiar twenty-seven bombers.

An Australian unit, with camp kitchens, settled in the estate through which one of our roads was passing, and we became friendly with them. I can recommend the tea brewed by the Australians on a camp kitchen.

Things still seemed to be more or less normal on the 4th, and our artillery was still hammering at the Johore coast-line. Work in the morning was uninterrupted, although a large force of bombers passed over us and we could hear the dull crump of explosions somewhere in the town.

In the afternoon, however, as I was standing watching the men spreading laterite on a portion of the road near to its junction with Bukit Panjang Road, a thin metallic whistle cut the air just above my head, and a second later I heard a bang. The sound was new to me, and I listened again as the faint whisper was repeated: the explosion could be heard somewhere down the road, and a third whispering note was followed by another bang.

The laterite was finished, and I took the lorry down the road to fill it up again. I didn't get very far, for suddenly one of our Australian cook-house friends jumped from behind a tree and waved frantically for me to stop.

I had just stopped the engine when a loud, shrill whistle rent the air, and I ducked instinctively. As I did so there was a deafening crash and the rubber trees shivered about a hundred yards in front of me. The coolies had taken cover in the roadside ditch, and I followed them. The whistle was very much louder and clearer now. We were being shelled, and I wondered if the next one would be for us.

After half an hour the shelling ceased and we clambered into the lorry and went down the road. Branches were ripped from the trees, and the torn trunks were weeping latex. The Australian cook-house had been in the middle of it, and the cooks came out of their trenches cursing and muddy.

There was more excitement when I arrived home in the evening. The bombs in the morning raid had dropped around Ridley Park, and one had made a crater in the garden twenty-five yards from the house. The damage done was one cracked drain and a buckled water-pipe. The crater was about ten feet in diameter and four feet deep. The house was not even splashed with mud.

Next door, a bomb had dropped nine feet from the baffle wall in front of a shelter formed in the bank of the lawn. Four men inside the shelter were deaf but unhurt. The wall, made of earth with timber sheeting, was knocked out of true and had opened up slightly at one end where it had taken most of the blast.

All through the evening the roll of artillery could be heard, and we went to bed with the sound of the distant guns still clamouring over the Island.

The 5th February was much the same as the previous day. Aircraft came over in the familiar twenty-seven formation, and it could be recognised when the bombs were going to drop, as the leading pilot gave a short burst on his machine-gun. Various theories were advanced by the more reliably informed, the one most favoured being that the Japanese were short of bomb-sights, and that only the leading bomber could take aim. The gun gave the signal for the aircraft following to release their loads, and probably one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty small bombs would drop at once.

We noticed that bombing to date had only occurred in the forenoon, and there were several explanations advanced. One was the prevalence of electric storms, which made flying in the midday sun difficult, and the other was that the Japanese had not as many planes or bombs as they would have liked, and were conserving their materials. Whatever the real reason, it was certainly very comforting to know that once the morning had passed the remainder of the day would be free of raids.

On this particular occasion the aircraft were engaged over the spot where we were working and I was driving a lorry along to a borrow pit, with a few men on the back, when there was an ear-splitting explosion immediately above the lorry, very low indeed. I stopped and ordered the men to run to the cover of the trees, for this was anti-aircraft shelling, and too near to be safe. Cavallo dived beneath the lorry and I ran under a tree as the splinters pattered on the dry earth around us. Twigs and leaves loosened and floated to the ground as the jagged bits of hot steel bedded in the branches.

The raid was over within half an hour and we saw a British fighter circle above our heads as the aircraft made off. There were so few of these that the sight of a solitary friendly plane was comforting.

Shelling was continued as on the previous day, but this time the projectiles were falling to the west of our position. I was able to see the path which the shells had followed in the sky, as their flight disturbed the heavy, humid air, and a few seconds after they had passed a thin curved wisp of vapour showed clearly the line of flight.

When we returned with the coolies to the depot we found that the car belonging to one of the engineers had been hit by splinters in several places. There were holes in the bonnet, and the radiator tube was cut open.

Affairs at the Mess were becoming difficult. The Chinese boys, not very good specimens at first, had changed their attitude as the bombing became more intensive. It is possible that the constant strain of the raids was beginning to tell on them, and they were rude and off-hand. The loss of prestige which was inevitable owing to the fight having gone against us was having its results, and we could get no service or attention whatever.

The six men, sharing a small house, spending their only leisure time in a dim, blacked-out and stuffy room, playing poker dice and trying to read or listen to the wireless, were tested to their utmost patience also. On one evening a mild discussion on Asiatics, and servants in particular, led to a heated argument in which one of our party lost his temper and had his attitude challenged by another. This led to trouble, and a threat of violence between them was only avoided by the advent of dinner. It was an embarrassing affair, and I felt the position keenly, being the youngest there by some years. The situation passed off, but it worried me and I thought that perhaps I ought to find another Mess.

I went into town on the morning of the 6th to attend to my financial business and collect mail from the P.W.D. Office. As no news had reached me regarding Alec Cockburn I made my way to Medical Hall, the dispensary of Grafton Laboratories, to see if it were possible to get any information as to his whereabouts. The manager was in and he told me that Alec had reached Singapore in safety and was stationed on the coast at Changi, on the east side of the Island. I hoped that the opportunity would come for me to visit my friend, but the manager did not know his unit or number, and the prospects of a meeting seemed very remote.

The bank was full on my arrival, all the up-country branches being represented at different tables in the overcrowded building. I met Harvey Ryves, and we had a long talk as we waited for our turn at the counter. He did not know what had happened to our mutual friends of Kuala Kangsar; and I felt sorry for this young man whose home had been broken up, whose Police personnel had been disbanded, and whose young wife had been evacuated. He was very cheerful, and I admired his spirit and great optimism in the face of the circumstances.

The sirens wailed their warning and we were ushered into the cellars of the bank. The place was packed with Malays, Chinese, Indians, and Europeans, men, women, and children, standing, sitting on the few chairs and benches, or squatting against the wall. In the air hung the smells of perfume, oil, perspiration, tobacco, and garlic - a powerful and nauseating odour which, added to the heat and the breathlessness, tended to produce a growing discomfort and feeling of enclosure. Nobody spoke; we were all listening for the 'All Clear', anxious to get out of the cell-like atmosphere and breathe fresh air again.

When the raid was over I was thankful to leave the town and make for the Rural Board Depot. Having collected some more money for coolies' payments there, I headed for Jurong Road. I had only reached the Ford works on Bukit Timah Road, however, when I was hailed by four soldiers, and stopped to pick them up.

They were Australians, and had been working in a unit repairing lorries and Bren-gun carriers in the workshops behind the Ford works. The bombs had fallen on their place, destroyed it and started a fire. They were muddy, torn, and breathless, and appreciated the cigarettes I was able to give them. They wanted to get to Base Depot, and I dropped them at the Jurong Road junction, where they could hail another car going into town.

The afternoon was quiet, and our work was almost finished. Guns and lorries were already using the three roads, and we spent the day in patching muddy places formed by their heavy wheels during the rain of the previous night.

When I arrived at the site with my coolies on the 7th I saw a number of lorries parked beneath the rubber. They had run in at night, and the men were having breakfast. The N.C.O. in charge of the unit told me that they intended to shell the Japanese gun position on the Johore coast, and asked me to dig trenches for his men in case the fire should be returned. We set to work and the trenches were finished by the time the guns were in position some fifty yards behind us.

The N.C.O. gave me the word to take cover and the two guns fired with a roar that almost lifted me out of my skin. The sensation of standing fifty yards in front of a gun when it fires is startling, to say the least. The guns fired again and again, brilliant red-orange flashes blinding me and the crash of the fire pounding my ear-drums. Then was silence, and the gunners ran forward and scrambled into the trenches with us. We waited for five or ten minutes for the Japanese to reply.

There was no reply. The N.C.O. observed with satisfaction that they must have got the b—s, and the gunners ran to their posts to dismantle the guns and move on.

The guns they had put out of action were apparently those which had first shelled the Island on the 4th, for no shells fell in our area after that day.

On the 8th I had occasion to go into the town again and was driving along a road in the south-west quarter when the siren wailed. The notice must have been short, for almost immediately the ack-ack started. I looked up to see the white puffs directly above my head, and I dived for the roadside drain, rather foolishly perhaps, as there was no overhead protection in the open trench. Splinters whistled down, burying themselves in the hard asphalt with a sound like a pebble dropping in mud or bounced off the stone walls with a 'peng' as their flight was stopped.

Bombs were being dropped about half a mile away, possibly round about Fort Canning, and the raid lasted thirty minutes. I inspected my car, found that it had escaped injury, and drove off.

I was bound for the P.W.D. Office, which had been transferred from town to a large quarters on Mount Pleasant, and I turned into Stevens Road.

I was opposite the Tanglin Club when a loud screaming whistle rent the air above the noise of the car engine and terminated in a terrific crash which shook the ground and seemed to lift me from the seat. I pulled up sharply and was opening the door when another infernal scream pierced through my ears.

The explosion caught me half-way out of the car, and I am not sure to this day whether it was the blast or blind instinct that did it, but I was flat on the road before the noise had stopped. I scrambled to the roadside drain, thanking my lucky stars that every road had big ditches along its edge, and was there just in time for the next shell. The whistle was worse than the bang; out of the silence this mad shriek rose to a terrifying pitch, and it always seemed to be coming straight for you: then the shell burst somewhere behind, with a crash that made ears ring and the ground quiver.

Ten minutes later there was silence, and I decided that unless I was unlucky enough to catch one slap on the moving car it would be safer to get farther away. I was on my way in no time and reached the office without any further excitement.

The rest of the day was uneventful and we were able to carry on with our patching. We moved some of the men to Jurong Road and repaired the places where the constant heavy traffic had worn off the top surface or churned up the grass side-tables.

I was up and about early on the 9th and the rumble of artillery was louder and heavier on that morning than on any previous day. Things were warming up, I thought, as I got into my car and set off for Jurong Road. The time was 6.30, and the cool, fresh air told of light rain on the previous night.

I had only gone a mile up the road towards the depot when I saw a file of men walking, stumbling, dragging along the grass verge in the direction of Bukit Timah Road. Some were bootless, some shirtless, and a few had not even trousers. One had a tommy-gun, very few had rifles, none had kit on their backs. They were covered in mud from head to foot, scratched and bleeding, exhausted, beaten.

The sight was disturbing to my peace of mind, and by the time I had arrived at the Field Company depot at Jurong Village I was asking myself what had happened; did it mean that the Japanese had landed? If so, how many? Were we dealing with them?

The scene at the depot was reassuring, for there were no outward signs of disturbance. A party of Indian Sappers was making land mines under the watchful eye of a sergeant, our coolies were awaiting our arrival, and all was quiet, orderly, and efficient.

But not for long. One lorry-load of Chinese went off to work and was trying to get my rather troublesome lorry to start. Suddenly, out of nowhere, three Japanese aircraft flew overhead, not more than a hundred feet up. They were flying from the west, which they had never done before. A few seconds later we heard the rumbling of exploding bombs behind us. They were bombing the road.

The anti-aircraft shells were exploding overhead and I saw a British fighter roar up to engage the bombers. We sought shelter under the large rubber trees; there were no trenches, because the water table was very high and water appeared at about two feet down. The ugly particles of shell-casing hissed to earth, certain death if they caught a man on his head.

Jo Cavallo was near to me, and he crept across to my side, very frightened and restless. I asked him if he was all right, and he tried to grin, the plucky kid, and said that that was the first time he'd been scared. I didn't tell him my own feelings, gave him a cigarette, and we puffed away, waiting for the raid to finish. I suddenly thought of the Chinese in the first lorry who had gone to resume work down the road. Had they been hit?

The Japanese were determined to make full use of their bombs and bullets in that raid. Suddenly they changed their tactics, and, braving ack-ack and fighters, they dived from all directions, weaving mad, steepsided cat's cradles over the road and the spot where we stood. One dived so low that we all thought that he had been hit and was falling. But a second later we heard the rattle of his guns, and soon he was up again over the trees, turning for another swoop.

For half an hour the planes dived and circled, roared down at us and let off deadly bursts of their machine-guns, or dropped bombs in the trees. The rubber estates were crowded with field and transport companies along both sides of the road, and I could imagine the havoc that was being wrought. The total force of enemy aircraft must have been fifty or so, and it seemed that they had come in on all sides, with the result that our anti-aircraft guns were faced with the problem of a large number of fast-moving targets, and our small force of fighters could only deal with single planes at scattered points.

We were standing amongst stacks of gelignite, gun-cotton, fuse, detonators, drums of oil and petrol, and all the paraphernalia of a first class unit of Royal Engineers. There were tons of the stuff, dispersed as much as possible in the small area available, but even the most distant stack of explosive was only fifty to sixty yards away. One fifty-pound bomb would have laid every tree flat and scorched the earth if it had struck a single stack.

This was the longest raid I had experienced, and the most thorough. An hour passed before the aircraft made off, and we breathed with relief. We could live another day.

When all was quiet again the lorry-load of coolies drove into the depot. The engineer with them said that they had only gone a few yards down the road when the raid started, and they took cover immediately.

A lorry came through the depot with a number of dirty, bleeding men on the back, and two inert figures stretched on boxes between them.

It was then that I was told what had happened. The Japanese had made a landing in force at a point on the south-west coast. All night they had been piling in, losing men heavily at first, but gradually gaining ground. The Australians had been pushed back to the edge of the rubber, and then the sniping began. A rifle is useless against a tommy gum amongst trees, and the additional hazard of snipers was too much for the men who were trying to watch for the Japanese moving stealthily from point to point with the strategy which they had used all down Malaya's jungles and rubber plantations.

Work was abandoned for the day, for the Chinese were frightened, realising that they were living and working at the most dangerous place on the Island.

I drove homewards, and was approaching Bukit Timah Road when I saw what it was the Japanese had tried to do. Half a mile short of Bukit Timah Road the A.I.F. had established its headquarters, and on that morning the area had been bombed and machine-gunned mercilessly. Craters lined the roadside, though surprisingly few were in the carriageway. Earth and trees, wires and poles, stones, water, and debris were thrown on the road and round about.

Already a party of men was busy repairing the commumications, and I threaded my way between the lorries and trees and treacherous coils of wire to the main road.

At the junction I picked up four Australians, one without shoes and socks, all hatless, two with rifles, two with hand-grenades stuck in their belts. I took them into town, where they wanted to pick up a vehicle going to the Base Depot.

In the afternoon I was sitting dejectedly awaiting a call for further orders when the telephone summoned me. It was the engineer who had been in charge of our quartet at the I.R.E. Depot. We were to try to get back up the road and take the Chinese out of danger.

I went to the P.W.D. workshop to get a lorry and met the other engineers. We filled up with petrol and I sat beside a colleague with a revolver cocked in my hand, not sure what we might meet on the way.

On arrival at the junction of Jurong Road we were stopped by a military policeman and warned not to go up the road. We informed him of our mission, and he was obliged to let us go through, but expressed doubt if we should be able to get as far as Jurong village.

The troops were still streaming down the road. The roadside camps were evacuating Indian soldiers carrying their blankets and packs on their heads, lorries hastily loading up with petrol and stores, explosives and men. Bunches of dirty, wet, ragged Australians were gathered round lorries, receiving issues of bread and butter.

We reached the depot and gave the Chinese two minutes in which to get their barang and women and children out of the lines and into the lorry. They took no more than five minutes, and I believe that they had already packed their things before we came.

Night was falling and rain was pattering lightly on the miserable scene as we wound our way along the road to the workshop. We put the coolies into a vacant storeroom and went home.

At 6 p.m. the telephone rang again. All the men at the Mess were asked to report at a Government officer's quarters. We went along at once, and were told that we were to destroy - that night - a large stock of wines and spirits at Corbeck McGregor's store.

The night was pitch dark and it was necessary to work quickly, for if we were seen by the Asiatics they might rush the place and start a riot when they got hold of the liquor. We worked by the light of candles for the most part.

The store was up a winding flight of stairs and each case had to be carried down the street, opened, and the contents smashed over the sump on the drain outside.

There were thirty-seven thousand dozen bottles in that place alone.

I think that there were about seventy men working that night, ex-rubber planters and Government officers, some in Volunteer uniforms, some in the uniforms of the by now abandoned L.D.C. We formed a chain along the upper floor and rigged up a chute of planks, sliding the cases down to the gang of smashers below.

My first job was smashing. Two of us bent over the sump, with hammers and a hurricane lantern, and the burst cases were passed on from the store entrance. One by one the bottles were broken at the neck and emptied into the sump, then passed on to be packed roughly into their boxes and carried to the other side of the road, where they were stacked out of the way

It was a back-aching job breaking those bottles of gin and whisky and sherry, all the best Scotch and the worst Australian receiving the same treatment. After an hour I was intoxicated with the fumes and was moved to a spot where the air was clearer. I stood at the entrance with a crowbar and when a case was thrown at my feet I had to burst the wire which wrapped it, prise open the wooden lid and pass the box along to the men at the sump.

Half an hour was enough of that, and I was sent upstairs where the men were standing in a chain, passing on case after case in a weary line to the top of the stairs. I read the names on the boxes and thought of the thousands of headaches contained in them. We were all dripping with sweat in that crowded storeroom, and we blessed the man who had a brain wave and burst open a case of beer.

I don't know what time it was when we left. Very near to dawn. A small group had grown tired of the slow progress and had rigged up an ingenious tank out of tarpaulin, which they placed on the first floor, and led a fire-hose downstairs to the drain. Their effort speeded the process a little, as they were able to work in a different part of the store. But when we looked round before we went home the impression we had made was very small indeed. The only thing we could say was that we had at least tried.

The telephone rang early next moming, the 10th February. I had to take a little food with me and go to the Head Office prepared to stay away from home for an indefinite period. The work was demolitions.

As I drove to the office I wondered sadly when I should be able again to do the work of an engineer, the real work that made the profession full of adventure and interest and sense of achievement - the work of building, of creating useful things out of bricks, stone, wood, and steel, making all the time monuments to the skill of the craftsman, the brains of the mathematician, the sacrifice of the research pioneer. For weeks I had been destroying rather than building, and the few constructive jobs I had done the last two months were shoddy and temporary.

On arrival at Mount Pleasant I met Jo Cavallo, and we had a long talk whilst awaiting orders. He knew, as well as I did, that it was the end of Singapore, but he showed no fear.

I remembered that he came from Malacca, and asked if he had ever heard of Robert Partridge. He knew him well, for Partridge had been at Kuala Lumpur Technical College with him, though Cavallo was a fresher when Partridge was leaving. Cavallo told me that Partridge had reported to the P.W.D. at Malacca for duty, and up till the arrival of the Japanese had been working on the design and construction of Civil Defence works. When the enemy was at the door, once again Partridge had had to make up his mind about staying behind or evacuating. He had decided to stay, for his girl was there, and there were no prospects in Singapore.

It was heartening to bear that Partridge had kept his promise of loyalty to the Department. I well understood his desire to stay and protect those he loved.

The conversation reminded me about Brawn and I inquired about him amongst the other engineers. I was told that my former workshop foreman had been for some time with the District Officer of Kuala Kangsar, and had next reported at Kuala Lumpur Factory. There he had remained until the town was evacuated, and had gone on to Singapore, where he was then working.

So I had been to the workshop on the previous day and had missed seeing Brawn. I resolved to try to see him on the next day, if only to thank him for his loyalty to our friendship and the Department.

My orders came through: I was to proceed to the workshop of United Engineers, where Chinese coolies armed with sledge-hammers would commence the destruction of plant and machinery. After that I was to go to the shipways and boat-yards of Thornycroft's and United Engineers and burn the boats.

An engineer named Laffan was to work with me, and we sat on a camp-bed making our plans whilst the Asiatic mechanics and fitters were paid off.

"Well, old man, it's Formosa for us," said Laffan. I looked at him sharply, for he had a reputation for almost irritating cheerfulness - he was famous for his loud laugh. But he was far from cheerful at the moment .

"What's the position?" I asked. "Does this mean we're packing in?"

"Just as soon as we can finish smashing the place up," he replied. "We've been told to smash all we can, and they'll probably surrender on Thursday."

We talked quietly for a time, and I asked Laffan if his young wife and children were safely away. He said they were, and then he made a statement which, as it came from a fairly young, married man, will live for a long time in my memory.

"It's not so bad for such as myself," he said. "I'm not so young as I was, and in any case I've been in the country long enough to get a decent balance in the bank at home. But it's worse for you boys, who've only been out a year or so. You've spent all your cash, probably, in getting out here; and you've started with high ideas and lots of enthusiasm. Now it's gone, and you haven't even a wife to look after things for you whilst you're a prisoner of war. I've got in my service for a pension, you've not even been put on the permanent establishment."

The last of United Engineers' employees left the building, and our Chinese wrecking-gang arrived. We entered the workshop.

Everything was just as if the place had closed for the week-end. Huge lathes and drilling-machines stood idle, with oil-cans and rags precisely as the operators had left them, and shining curly turnings lay on the ledges and round the bases of the machines. Hammers and spanners and gauges were on the benches. I remembered hearing that Australia was crying out for machine tools.

I looked at Laffan in dismay. He said not a word, but walked to a lathe and pointed to its gears, beckoning to a coolie to bring his sledgehammer. I went to another machine, then another, and another, and soon the air was a din of ringing steel as the heavy sledges struck at the fine machinery, wrecking the castings and bending or cracking the shafts and spindles, the bushes and bearings.

I hope that never again shall I be required to commit such a terrible act of sabotage as that which I did at the United Engineers. Millions of dollars' worth of beautiful precision machinery was ruined under the blows of the sledges. One of the staff of the company came storming to me and asked me why I was committing this crime. The poor fellow was overwrought and I could sympathise with his distress at seeing the place smashed up. He said that he preferred to leave the machines for the Japanese rather than witness their destruction, but I pointed out that I was merely doing my duty and suggested that he should go away where he could not see the painful sight.

When we had ruined as much as we could at the works, I took the coolies in a lorry to the slipways, carrying with me petrol and oil to start the fires. A senior member of the department indicated the jobs I had to do, and left me to it.

During our reconnaissance we found that people were still living in the buildings around the yards, and it was impossible to fire the boats until we had moved them to safety. There was a great deal of work for the sledge-hammers, however, and we started on the lathes and other machines.

Two or three ratings who had survived the sinking of the Prince of Wales were hanging around the Thornycroft Slipway, awaiting the departure of a mine-sweeper. There were also three or four gunners from an anti-aircraft unit which was defending the aerodrome near by. Their feeling of abandonment and resignation to their fate was apparent; they had been drinking beer until they were not quite under control. I sympathised with these dirty, tired, inebriated men, and gave them a sledge-hammer with which to let off a little steam. They smashed unsteadily at the machinery, and one lad said that he would put a shell through the workshop roof from the gun if I wished. Discretion made me refuse the offer though it would have saved us time and energy.

A beautiful Napier engine, painted white, was lying on the side of the slipway, together with a number of brand new Thornycroft engines. One of the latter was still in its crate, and another had just had the crate demolished round it. They were to have been installed in some new 75-ft. Naval Patrol launches which were almost completed in the sheds. The sailors smashed at the castings and the electrical apparatus until they reeled and the engines were wrecked.

The job was done except for the burning of the boats, and I put the coolies on the lorry and took them home.

My mind was in a turmoil from the events of the day. The thought of the damage I had done weighed heavy on me, and the fact that it was done under orders was little comfort. The situation certainly was serious if we had no time to remove that valuable machinery. Then I began to consider my own position; no arrangements had been made and no orders issued as far as I was aware, regarding our evacuation.

The others at the Mess were very quiet and we were all thinking the same thing; were we supposed to stay on or had we to get out? We knew nothing about boats, and none of us had any instructions.

I suggested that, as I was working at the slipway on the morrow, they should go down with me to see what could be arranged for our escape. There was a small boat, about a fourteen-footer, almost completed, with a petrol engine partly fitted, and perhaps we could finish the installation and get it to run.

We agreed that it might be possible to reach Sumatra in six days, and we worked out the minimum requirements of food and drink and fuel. That left little space for six men and their baggage, so it was decided that only the bare minimum of clothing should be taken.

The night was disturbed many times by the explosions of Japanese shells and British guns were firing all the time from positions near the house. Yet somehow we managed to snatch a little sleep and awoke at four o'clock on the following morning. As I dressed I could hear the crackle of machine-guns and the sound of rifle fire. From the noise of the field-guns I could tell that they had retreated overnight and were firing over the house.

I packed a few things in my kit-bag, including a magnetic surveying dial and pencil and ruler for navigation purposes. One of the architects tore the bottom off a map of Singapore which showed the surrounding islands and about half of the sea between the Island and Sumatra. We had no idea where the minefields were, but we had to risk that.

We went to the Slipway in two cars at five o'clock. The tractors were at work trying to patch up the airfield, and netted temporary hangars were erected on the roadside. Three or four fighter aircraft were anchored along the edge of the road. The flying-ground was littered with the wrecks of planes, and the few buildings were torn and splashed with earth. As a last effort the R.A.F. had decided to take off along the road.

I had still no orders about the burning of the boats, and I rang up as soon as I thought someone might be there. A senior engineer answered.

"I'm at the slipway," I said. "Have I to carry on?"

"No; do nothing yet. Stay there and wait."

After an hour I called once more. Still no orders were given. In the meantime one of the party had been speaking to a Naval Reserve officer who was loading a small launch at the jetty, and there was need of hands to help get the craft to Batavia. They were leaving that afternoon.

The senior engineer in our party decided to go to Head Office and get the position clear. He had only been away a few minutes when I rang up again.

"Any orders about the firing?" I inquired.

"Not yet. The Navy wants us to wait," was the reply.

"What's the position ? Is it a case of every man for himself, or have we to await instructions?"

"I think it's every man for himself, but things are a bit chaotic here. If you can make your own arrangements you'd better do so, but keep in touch with me as long as you can."

Once more I waited, until at last the senior engineer from the Mess came back with his news. The Director of Public Works had received permission from the Governor for the Department to evacuate. It was necessary for us to find our own way of getting out, but we had permission. The only order for me was to deny a tank containing thirty thousand gallons of petrol, and to wait a little longer in case word should come through for the burning of the boats.

I wanted to go back to the Mess to collect more clothes and things of sentimental value, but was told that the area had been cut off and we had no alternative but to get away as we were.

The other engineer and myself found the tank of petrol and opened the cocks to allow its contents to run into the trough around its base. Then we sat down, awaiting the afternoon.

The siren wailed the 'Alert', and we took cover in a stout-looking building until the raid was over. Apart from that the air was still, the street was dead, Tanjong Rhu was deserted.

Somebody came in to say that I definitely had not to touch the boat yards.

Our work in Malaya was finished. We boarded the Panglima, the 75-ft. launch, and were given orders as to our duties. I was to cook for the sixteen people aboard, and we all were to take watches for aircraft and submarines.

The launch was one of three which had been in Thornycroft's, and she had had her engines dismantled. The mechanics had run off before the parts had been reassembled, and the Panglima was without means of locomotion. The other two launches were new, not quite finished, and only one could run its engines, and not fully at that. There was, in addition, an old hulk which had been used as a minesweeper, and had no engines. The four craft were to be towed to Batavia by a harbour tug.

The tug took us out into the middle of the harbour, and there we hove to and made fast the towlines, checking up and getting into line. The mine-sweeper was the first in tow and the three launches followed.

I looked behind at the Island. Never do that when you have come to love a place. I shall never do it again myself. I hurried down into the galley to make some coffee.