Mosquitos and Singapore

By Ted Wilkins

This true story covers the three years during which a young RAF serviceman was called up for National Service and transported to Singapore from war-torn and rationed England for a “tour of duty” on 81 Photographic Squadron at Seletar Airbase in Singapore.
Based on diaries, notes and letters written at the time, Ted Wilkins describes life on the Squadron and the aerial survey work concerning the “terrorists” during the Malayan Emergency. His autobiography also captures all the flavours and excitement of life on this fantastic island during the early fifties. Reminisces include a Malayan wedding, a visit to the Tiger Balm gardens, the Mosque at Johor Bahru and a picnic trip to adjacent islands. Through these pages, the author warmly describes how he embraced the customs and livelihoods of the island’s pleasant, always smiling people.
Written in a humble manner, this book brings to life all the excitement of exploring a new and fascinating country, so far removed from the author’s previous country life at home. The climate, the people, all the hustle and bustle, the flowers, the clothes and colours of this “magical glamorous island”, are all lovingly captured in a remarkable way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: We Green Solutions
• Release date: Mar 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9789810755379

Book preview

Preface

One day my granddaughter Catherine asked of me: What did you do in the war Granddad?

She was involved in a project at school. I told her that I was too young to have served in the forces during the war, but that when I was 18, I became eligible for National Service and that I had been called up into the Royal Air Force. She then asked, What was National Service?

After explaining to her about it, I decided to write down my experiences, of that time in my life, before I forgot.

Using my photo albums, some letters and diaries, I have managed to put together a fairly accurate account of those three years of my life.

This then, for the sake of my grandchildren, are my recollections of that time.

Ted Wilkins

2013

Chapter 1

Earlier Years - The Seeds are Sown

After I had passed my Scholarship, when I was 11 years of age, I found myself attending the Grammar School in Crewkerne. This School had a fine reputation, reputedly being the 4th oldest school in England, having been founded in 1499 by John de Combe. The original school is still standing adjacent to the Church (with the name of Hardy, carved into the wooden panelling by Nelson’s first officer). Above the entrance in the stone across the door opening is carved the school motto – Venite fili obidite mihi timorem domini ego vos docebo, which means roughly, Come unto me my son and I will teach you the word of the Lord. It was also the school anthem and every schoolboy soon learnt how to sing it at the top of their voice – in Latin.

The school which I attended was the newer school, which was built on the top of the hill, Mount Pleasant, in 1849. It is a huge solid building and when I first walked up the long curving driveway with my father to visit the Headmaster, Mr. Gubbins, in his study, I must admit to having feelings of awe and trepidation, as I watched him standing there in his long flowing black gown.

I had seen the Grammar school boys walking through the town in the summer wearing their striped blazers and their straw boaters, always so aloof and smart. Now it seemed that I was about to become part of this set.

So it was, that my parents had to purchase all the required uniform, including PT kit and rugby boots. This stretched the clothing coupons, and I can recall seeing my mother sitting down at the kitchen table with all my brother’s books as well, to try to calculate the amount she needed. (I had four younger brothers and a sister.)

With my new blue and white striped cap on my head and in my new grey flannel suit (short trousers), coarse grey flannel shirt and house tie, I arrived at the rear entrance to my new school. I was soon shown to my classroom…no, form. I was in the second form. So started my Grammar School education.

It was during my time here that I acquired an interest and passion for aeroplanes and flying. There was an old aeroplane engine on a stand up on the school field behind the gymnasium building. This was used for instruction, by the older boys in the ATC and I would spend many moments looking around it, puzzling on why it looked so big and heavy, and wondering what plane it came from. (I never did find out though, because one day, it was gone, to help in the war effort).

It had about 6 cylinders and was a radial engine with everything showing…so to speak. Very intriguing, for a young, nosey boy. Also tucked away in the corner of the rear yard between the school buildings was a rear turret from a Lancaster. It was supported in a metal frame but it worked. I went often to look at it and climbed up in it to turn the handles that spun the turret around.

Sitting in the seat, it was easy to imagine being airborne and firing at enemy aircraft.

Across the square in our town was a small paper shop that also sold toys. Amongst the stuff stacked on the shelves were packets of model aeroplanes to build. Keil-Kraft kits. They contained a small paper plan, a tube of balsa wood glue and lots of pieces of balsa wood strips of various thickness, as well as thin flat sheets on which were crudely inked out the shapes of the ribs, for the wings and tailplane.

I had looked enviously at these for some time, and by taking on a once-a-week paper round (not allowed by school rules) I managed to save the magic sum required and thus bought my first model.

The cardboard box had a lid on which was drawn a picture of the finished model in action, and a container bottom. It was about 12 inches long and about 3 inches wide. Wrapped up inside the plan were the wooden strips, two button-type wheels, some wire, two small metal cup hooks, a tube of tissue paste, a tube of balsa wood glue, a carefully folded length of tissue paper, a small wooden propeller and a long piece of elastic.

There were also a few stick on flashes. I spread them all out on the large window sill of my bedroom. We lived in a small Georgian type, town-house, the front of which had been built as a shop. Upstairs above the shop, the house had a long landing with the bedrooms leading off from it, so as boys we had plenty of space inside our bedrooms. I was lucky, as I did not have to share my room, so I could leave my half-built planes in relative safety.

I managed to find a piece of thin plywood from an old gramophone box up in the large shed behind our house and used this to pin out the balsa wood strips.

In my inexperience, I made the mistake of laying the strips directly onto the plan instead of onto tracing paper. Consequently I found the balsa wood glue had not only stuck the strips together but had also run down and fixed the whole bang-shoot to the plan as well.

After carefully peeling the bits apart from the plan, I borrowed the waxed paper bag from inside the corn flake packets to stop this happening again. Using one of my father’s old razor blades snapped in half (Blue Gillette) I slowly cut around the black ink markings of the ribs. The notches in them, where they sat on the spars, were always the hardest to do and I am afraid that my first attempts were not so much notches as large triangular holes. Still the balsa glue always took care of some little mistakes.

To the curiosity of my younger brothers it all gradually took shape. (They were all under a threat of fate worse than death should they so much as touch one little piece of it anyway.) It took a long time to work out how the elastic had to be folded and fixed inside the fuselage to be able to twist the propeller. Covering the skeleton with the tissue paper took ages. Carefully pulling out each little wrinkle to let it glue on as smooth as possible, I made the mistake of putting paste onto each spar at first but soon realised that the tissue paper could not slide and tighten up, but I got away with it for a while, until one day it split.

The tightening was done by gently spraying water onto the paper and then letting it dry. There being no spray guns in those days I used to carefully dab it on with some cotton wool. Once dry and assembled they made good little models. I never painted any of those that I made as I could not get the colour dope. My bedroom soon had a Heinkel, complete with black German crosses, a Spitfire, a Horsa glider, a Fairey Battle and a Hurricane.

At the top of the rear garden of our house was a large building. It was all part of the shop property and was once used for storing bags of seeds and grain on its two floors. The top floor was on a level with the ground at the rear, so that the horses and carts could easily off load directly into this top floor of the building. It was about 20 feet across and about 60 feet long and now being empty on the ground floor it was just right to flight trial my models.

My father had let the top floor to a Mr. Hancock who was building a full-size glider. I often crept up there to have a look at the structure as it progressed, looking at the ribs on the wings and all the small V webs of thin plywood that he glued to all the joints.

My brothers provided a caustic audience as I endeavoured to make the models fly the length of the shed.

It took some time for me to find out about Centre of Gravity (C of G) and balance and trim, before at last they would fly straight and level. Once this was perfected and good flights became the routine, I noticed my audience defecting; there being no crashes to boo or cheer about.

The war was progressing and I went to the cinema on Saturday afternoons to see the news reels (complete with crowing cockerel), between the films of course, and they usually had lots of films containing aircraft.

A Spitfire was said to have crashed up behind our town cemetery so I hot-footed it up there to take a look, but there was only a big hole and a lot of men with lorries, digging. I never knew if the pilot was all right. Some said he had bailed out and was safe.

Another plane crashed across the road to Hewish on the Chard road, I went up to see that and the police and firemen were there as it was still burning furiously. As I was watching there were several loud explosions as some of the ammunition exploded.

It was a twin-wing plane and it was all crumpled up but it was possible to see the gun midway down the fuselage where all the noise was coming from. The police soon had us all moved back a long way from the plane. Rumour had it that the pilot had bailed out but his chute had got caught in the tail and the poor chap had come down with his plane. I never found out if this was true.

I used to save all the pictures of aeroplanes that I could find, especially from Picture Post. As I progressed through my schooling I arrived at the point when I could join the school ATC Squadron (75 Squadron). I was really excited and proud to be marching to the Church behind the band on Armistice Sunday. Each year the opportunity arose to go to the summer camp. Naturally off I went. My first camp was at RAF Chivenor, up near Barnstaple on the North Devon coast. It was here that I had my first flight.

It was in an Anson and in fact it was quite a bumpy ride, making some of my fellow ATC friends very sick, but I was lucky. The Anson must have been an early type because the sides seemed to be one long window with thin support bars criss-crosing up and down. There was no inside lining to the walls and the framework was painted a dark green.

I can still see now in my mind’s eye the farmers in the fields with their horses and wagons, taking in the harvest and the train puffing out smoke as it ran along the railway line just outside the RAF Camp fencing, going towards Ilfracombe. There spread out below was the long stretch of tarmac runway running up through with the green grass all around and out to one side the rows of huts, all neatly spaced out. The river ran down one side and as we flew along it we could see ahead to the glittering surface of the sea stretching away to the horizon. Wonderful!

On the camp we slept in the same type of beds and billets as the RAF personnel used. There was rifle shooting at their range using real 303 rifles, not the 22’s that we used back at school. Many of the lads padded out their shoulder by stuffing their berets inside their tunics to try to protect themselves from the kick of the rifle. I don’t think it worked very well. I remember one lad complaining that he had the outline of his ATC badge imprinted onto his skin.

One day we had to put on our PT kit and were taken off in lorries with the flap closed at the back so that we could not see out. When the vehicle stopped we all got out and the RAF sergeant explained that we had to find our way to a place called Combe Martin, which was marked on the map he was leaving with us. Our present position was marked on it and the whole idea was to map read our way back to this pick-up point by the shortest route. With that he got back into the lorry and departed, leaving us to it. Well, as usually happens, there were twenty or more suggestions as to where we were or in what direction we ought to head for.

Peering over the shoulder of the chap holding the map, I could see that it was an Ordnance Survey map with every little thing clearly marked. The coastline was clear to see, as was Combe Martin. The place where we were was indicated by a cross, but looking around the surrounding countryside, it was hard to identify something that might tell us in which direction we could line up the map. Eventually some agreed that if we walked along the road for a while we might find a signpost. Some hopes, dopey lot. They didn’t even know in which direction they were walking. It was quite possible that they might have to come all the way back again. Blow this, I thought.

Borrowing the map for a second, I noticed some woods marked on it that looked very similar to some I could see a few fields away. I saw a trail or track marked on the map leading down from the woods to a road that seemed to go along the coast to the village. I passed the map back to the other chaps as they were about to set out on their trek up the road. Two other lads and I agreed that we would try the route to the woods so off we set.

Well now, I don’t want to sound big-headed but we were sat eating ice cream in the village of Combe Martin long before the road party arrived. The lorries came for us a little later in the afternoon and took us all back. It had been a good day out.

Back at school, I asked if I could join the band and was given a smart silver bugle, complete with tassels and from thence on, had to report twice a week after school, to the gymnasium, up on the school playing fields, well out of earshot. Here we spent many an hour marching back and forth, blowing our brains out, learning all the commands from the drum major by the position of his staff and the corresponding tunes. There were three kettle drums, two medium drums, a large bass drum and six bugles, one of which played the solo. Very particular we were too. Everything had to be perfect. All this, to be able to lead the Squadron on its march to church. Mind you, half the town, it seemed, used to turn out to watch us march past. Air Force blue uniforms, shiny shoes, white belts, sparkling bugles, dangling tassels, glistening drums (the drummers wore white gloves as well), I tell you, we thought we were the bees’ knees.

Besides the band, there were training sessions when we learnt the Morse Code, practising to each other on keyboards with sound effects. Anyone coming into the room after school on a Friday would have been greeted to a cacophony of dah, dah, dits as we laboriously tapped away. Sometimes if the weather permitted, we went up onto the school playing field and positioned ourselves at opposite sides of the playing field. Being some quarter of a mile apart and with two coloured flags, we practised Semaphore. Some funny exchanged messages we got too.

As my education progressed so did my time in the ATC. There were more summer camps to follow, back to RAF Chivenor once more and down to RAF Mountbatten at Plymouth. This was not such a good summer camp as we seemed to spend most of our time swimming.

After passing my School Certificate I started work at Westland Aircraft at Yeovil as an Apprentice engineer. This meant getting up at 0530 and catching the works bus, which left at 0645 and arrived at the Westland Aircraft works at 0725 after travelling around several villages on the way, picking up more people. Whilst the majority of these workers returned home at 1700, I had to walk up to the Yeovil Technical College, a distance of a mile and a half, to begin Night School at 1830. At 2100, I left to catch a bus home to Crewkerne, arriving about 2155. This I had to do for three nights per week, with one day being day school, as part of my Apprenticeship.

In March of my first year, I passed the first part of the ONC exam and surprised myself by getting a first class pass in Maths – not my favourite subject I must admit.

My interest in aeroplanes increased. As the firm organised trips to the Farnborough Airshow, we apprentices were privileged to be able to help in the preparation of the aircraft that were going to be on display. By that I mean spending many hours of elbow grease polishing the bare metal wings of the Wyvern until they glistened. Unfortunately the hydraulics went wrong and it spent the whole time at the show in the static display with its wings folded.

At this time, aircraft were approaching the speed of sound and the DH110 was putting on a demonstration by climbing high and diving down to give onlookers the thrill of sensing the BOOM that accompanied the achievement of passing through the Sound Barrier.

We all stood staring up at the high wispy clouds covering the airfield, straining our eyes to get a glimpse of the plane, when suddenly, there was the Boom Boom as the plane went through the sound barrier and then just as suddenly the twin-tailed plane came swooping out of the clouds and went flying past to our right and lifted slightly to port in a long swooping turn out across the airfield. As it turned in towards us, there seemed like pieces of metal sheet, looking for all the world like leaflets, dropping from under the plane. Suddenly the plane started to break up. The cockpit and main fuselage and engines broke away leaving the wings and tailplanes to flutter down like a kite with no wind, waggling from side to side as they floated down towards the ground. Looking up I could see coming towards us the red hot glowing engines, almost noiseless they rushed past about 16 to 20 feet above us. Behind them followed a lot of debris, which rained down onto the ground with one large black mass finishing up just in front of the fence where we were standing. Later, someone told us that these were the batteries.

At the time I was engaged to a girl, Phyllis Harrison, whose parents owned a grocer’s shop in South Street, and she had come to the show with me. She just gasped and collapsed. At first I and several others near us thought that she had been hit by something, but luckily it turned out that she had only fainted with the shock of it all. Within a few moments she had recovered and we stood up and turned around to look behind us.

There was a slight rise in the ground forming a small hill and we had been tempted to stand there for a better view but we had chosen to stand down at the fence to see the aircraft taxi past on the runway…just as well. The engines that had gone past so perilously close had crashed directly into the spectators standing on this knoll and had then bounced away into the car park behind. It was really awful.

The most amazing thing about it all was the silence. The whole place was eerily quiet. No screams, no shouting, no anything; even the people near us who came to help up my fiancée spoke in a hushed manner.

The Commentator at last recovered his composure and it was so comforting to hear the sound of the voice of Raymond Baxter again. His calm English public school accent brought reassurance to a lot of people that day, I am sure. We slowly made our way towards a telephone box to ring home and let our families know that we were OK, although we had to queue for a long time. Everybody was quiet. It was most eerie. It was as if someone with a magic wand had put a spell on the whole airfield. As we got back onto the coach we were all counted on. Thank goodness everybody was ok.

One lad had spread his mac on the ground and had been sitting on it on the hillock where the engines had struck. He had left it behind in the turmoil of sorting everything out. It had all been such a shock.

We got to know a lot more about what had happened and the casualties as we talked on the journey home, but it was not until after a stop at a pub/restaurant that any sense of normality returned.

Of course when we arrived home everybody wanted to know all that had happened and were all very relieved that we were safe; but we all felt very sorry for those poor people that were killed or hurt. The pilot, John Derry, and his navigator lost their lives in the accident. After a while and some modification the plane later went into service as the Sea Vixen. Perhaps this episode stayed in my mother’s mind and later influenced her thoughts about me being a pilot, but at the time my enthusiasm was not dampened.

Aeroplanes continued to go faster and more and more jets appeared in the skies. An airfield near us at Ilton became a training school for RAF pilots and Vampire jets could be seen flying around daily. With National Service now well established, I was deferred for a while, up until my Apprenticeship was finished, or so I thought. Destiny, however, has a way of upsetting even the best of plans.

Chapter 2

Call Up

It was in the late summer of 1952 when I got off the red Safeway bus which had just brought me from my place of work at Westland Helicopters Ltd in Yeovil 10 miles away. It had pulled up outside Sutton’s shop near the Market Square. Saying Cheerio to the driver, Ted Callow, as I got out, I strolled back down the pavement towards the White Hart and crossed the road. I went in through the side door of our house. My father owned a shoe repairing shop in the town, a double-fronted shop with a shop entrance and a side door to the house behind. I walked through the passageway, past the bicycles leaning against the wall and into the finishing room. This was a room of the house that contained a shoe finishing machine which was usually operated by my mother. Here the edges of the repaired soles and heels were sanded off smooth on the rotating emery covered wheels. Then the edges were painted black or brown (as the case may be) and when dry (the paint – ink – was water-based) the edges were daubed lightly with wax and then smoothed out on a heated tapered rotating iron. This sealed the edges and made them waterproof.

Mother looked up as I passed through, and gave me a quizzical grin. I shouted a greeting (the machine was quite noisy) and went through to the living room. I hung my bag and coat onto the hallstand at the bottom of the stairs and opened the door. As I did so, there was a shout: There’s a letter for you, from the Army. You’ve got to go away. It’s a brown letter and it has O.H.M.S. on it. It was my younger sister Hazel. She was full of excitement, dying to be the first to tell me of the letter. My mother came in behind me and reaching up to the long mantelpiece above the fireplace, she took down the envelope from behind the spotted china dog at the end of the shelf and handed it to me. The door opened and my father came in; my younger brother Gilbert squeezed through beside him as they all gathered and stood quietly while I carefully slit open the envelope.

Hurry up, said Hazel; she was really excited to see what I was going to have to do.

We all knew that this was my National Service call up. Father had managed to have me deferred, since I was an apprentice at Westlands, but as I had failed my last Maths exam in May it was on the cards that I would soon be called up; after all I was now 20 years old.

Inside was a Railway Warrant to Exeter, and an explanation of the route to the Medical Centre, which surprised me, because it was at the premises of The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. My sister thought that was really funny.

This is because you failed your exams, said Father. Mother was looking a little apprehensive; it was obvious that she was a little nervous about her eldest son going off to be a soldier. So was I, to be honest, but I was not going into the Army, I was going into the Air Force.

Well, I’m off down to see Phyllis, I said. I bet she will be surprised. (Phyllis was my girlfriend.)

Can’t you wait until you’ve had your tea? said mother. It was obvious that they would like a little further discussion on the likely events of the future before I dashed off with the news.

Well, the day of the Medical arrived. Westlands had let me have the day off, so off to the station I went. I walked up East Street, down past Mary Davies’s house on the corner, and down across Cropmead. It was a nice dry sunny day.

Following the path past the Cricket and Fair ground I came out in South Street, on down past the Railway Inn to the bottom, past the factory clacking away as they busily made the webbing on the looms, and then past the swimming pool. Up the hill, past the entrance to the Bowditch Farm, along the straight and then into the Station yard. The heaps of coal never seemed to get any less and the yard was always full of trucks either loading or unloading.

I shoved the warrant through the little hole in the curved glass window and waited while the clerk/porter/station-master sorted out what was what. Going for your Medical then? he asked.

How the devil did he know that? I thought to myself. Yes, I replied.

Ah, we’ve had quite a few of you lads lately. Hope you get on alright. Going in the Army are you?

No, I said. I want to go into the Air Force.

Oh, a Brylcreem boy, eh? Well, good luck.

I walked up the platform and climbed the steps of the bridge, crossed over and went down the other side to await the train to Exeter. Soon, I could see the smoke of the arriving train as it puffed up the rise from Sutton Bingham to Crewkerne. With the usual swishing, clanking sound it swept past and stopped. I opened a Third class carriage door and climbed in.

As I sat down I thought of the many times Phyllis and I had caught the train to go to Lyme Regis for the day. With a jerk, it pulled away. I settled back to look out of the window along the journey. Past the level crossing, the gatesman leaning on the gates as we chugged past; a blast on the whistle and we were entering Henley tunnel. It seemed dark for ages and longer than I remembered, although as a younger lad, with some other adventurous friends, I had run through it as a dare. Soon we clattered past Chard Junction and the many milk wagons queued up there and then on to Axminster.

As the train started to slow for Exeter, I looked once again at the sketch and directions on how to