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When the Japs did start I was posted to Air Headquarters working in The Combined Services Opertions Room, so I got to know just how things stood, getting the pukka gen, that very few other people knew, knowing the exact Jap losses and gains and our LOSSES. It was just the shortage of good RAF planes that left us Malaya, we having all very old obsolete kites against the best Jap's kites and we being always outnumbered 10 and 20 Japs against one of ours. Naturally, we had heavy losses in planes, at one time only having half a dozen serviceable planes in the whole of Malaya and Singapore Island. When we did eventually get some Hurricanes, the Japs were three quarter way down Malaya and bombing our aerodromes every hour of the day, so they knocked out our Hurricanes before they had a chance to get going. I met Tom when his crowd had evacuated to Singapore Island, he had all his kit with him them. The day after I met him he got posted across to Java to try and get organised there. I thought at the time he was blinkin lucky getting away from it for a while at any rate.

I fortnight after Tom had gone and things were getting really hot for us, the Japs only 10 miles from Singapore Island and the airaids becoming continuous all day and night long, I got asked if I would LIKE, mind you, to go to Sumatra and continue from there - of course I wasn't in the service to try to get the VC, I'm no hero - too true. So on the 31st January, day before they blew up the causeway linking Singapore Island to the mainland, I was on the boat, 3,000 tonner, ready to sail for Sumatra. Jap planes came over (27 of them) and bombed the docks hitting the ship right next to ours, no doubt they were trying to get ours as we were all ready to go, steam being up. The trip across took only 2 days, the sooner we got there the better as we had nowhere to sleep the ship being full up and the food was just tinned bully and biscuits. We docked at Palembang, quite a fair sized town, it is very much hotter there than Singa.

The next day we had to unload the ship and what a bloody job that is, the hardest days work I've ever done in my life. Carrying large boxes of tinned food, thousands of them and millions of other stuff all day long in a temperature of 120 degrees IN THE SHADE. Now and again a fellow would drop a box of tinned fruits and split the box open and all the lads would muck in eating up the whole box load, all the meal we'd be likely to get that day. We got a billet an ex old school, the place being so bloody filthy the locals wouldn't go near the place. Anyway we were all too tired out to worry much that night. After about a week there after hard work we got just about organised, finishing up with our cookhouse next door to the lavatories.

We had 2 aerodromes and about 30 aircraft, Blenheims and Hurricanes, we got the airaid and Japs over everyday bombing the petrol dumps, as at first they couldn't find out where our aerodromes were as they were right in the jungle hidden from sight. The local people treated us very well, cheering us nearly every time they saw us as if we were blinkin heros, instead of evacuees from Singa. We heard the news then that Singa had fallen to the Japs, so things didn't look very hopeful for us, we knowing Sumatra to be next. The Japs then concentrated on us, there being just a few Dutch troops and RAF, very few British Army fellows. 27 Jap bombers visited us every other hour or so, finding one of our dromes through seeing one of our kites landing there. I was working a mile away from this drome at the time and we heard Jap troop carrier planes and bombers were on the way. We burnt up all the valuables and secret papers and files etc., we nearly all got issued with rifles and a few tommy guns and a handful of ammunition each and then hell got let loose. Paratroops about 3,000 of them came down, while their bombers had already done the damage they had set out to do. Anyway the parachutists all landed on and around our aerodrome, but not before we, the RAF ground crew, were ready for them and the RAF lads stuck to their posts mowing down the Japs as they landed, we did, the RAF ALONE, mopped up the Jap parachutists but not before we had had quite a few killed. A feat that the British Royal Marines couldn’t have carried out any better. Still it made a mess of our aerodrome and we knew we would be getting it much hotter, from the Japs.

There was very little left that we could do now, the following day news was received that the Jap troop ships and war ships were on their way up the Palembang river and there was nothing there to stop them, our planes being nearly all u/s. Two MT drivers had two lorries outside our billet full-up with petrol ready for the word go, so in the morning we reported to HQ asking for orders, but when we got there not a soul was in sight, everyone had buzzed off, so it didn’t take us 5 minutes before our kit was packed in the lorry and off we went for a place 200 miles south to Oosthaven the sea port nearest Java. But we hadn’t gone a mile when we found we were living in high hopes as there were 1000 odd cars civvy and service all waiting to cross the river, where one tug boat was taking 2 cars over at a time, it looked as if we’d be there for hours and hours at this rate and the Jap fleet was on its way up the river. 5 minutes and over came the Jap bombers, there were about a dozen of us in the lorry, so we decided to get across the other side of the river while the going was good and had arranged to wait for the lorry on the other side, only as long as we were there all the cars and lorries made an easy target for the Japs. We left our kit in the lorry and made our way across the other side taking just our rifles and guns.

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