WW2 - escape from singapore (1942)

Image from the front cover of "The Escape from Singapore" by Richard Gough

on February 14th 1942 my father escaped from singapore - this is his story - Singapore surrendered to the Japanese on february 15th!

Dad was stationed in Shanghai and Hong Kong before the outbreak of WW2 and ended up in Singapore. Details are sketchy to say the least but this is his story and my 2025  journey to follow in his footsteps, following the route he took to Padang in West Sumatra where he embarked on the SS Tinombo to  safely reach Columbo and on to Bombay.

The official escape order which allowed my father to be authorised to leave Singapore, signed by Brigadier F.H. Frazier.

​P.H. Ward’s Escape from Singapore
 
I left Singapore (with an official authorisation to do so, signed by my Brigade Commander, Brigadier F.H. Fraser, D.S.O. Commander 2nd Malaya Infantry Brigade) on the R.A.S.C. motor launch “Cecilia”, on the evening of Saturday 14th February 1942, with Brigadier Paris, Lt. Col. Douglas, IEME, S/Condr H.W. Hollins R.A.S.C. and approximately 42 others.

On Sunday 15th February, apart from encountering some British male civilians (Government employees we ascertained, whose morale was at rock bottom) aiming for Sumatra as were we, and a Japanese recce plane which gave us the “once over” but didn’t return, we passed a quiet day.

Brigadier Paris and Lt. Col. Douglas both die following enemy action ex-Padang. During those last few days in Singapore I had been been confined (quite literally – no telephone calls or any contact with the outside world allowed) inside the YMCA in Orchard Road. I had the nostalgic pleasure of visiting the YMCA in June 1979 and found that it hadn’t changed very much structurally as far as I could make out.
 
Note: Dad visited us whilst we were living in Singapore and I could easily have accompanied him on a similar journey to re-trace his steps but Dad never really talked about this episode in his life.

On reaching the coast of Sumatra, we sailed up the Djambi River to the town of Djambi (now spelt Jambi) where the kind and most helpful Dutch authorities exchanged our (by now) unsuitable launch for a flat-bottomed river craft and also gave us a goodly supply of provisions, (by this time we’d consumed all our tinned “M and V” {Meat and Veg} from Singapore) from a local godown.

​We continued to Muaratebo where we had a route march and tonsorial “treatment” by the local barber. The journey continued by boat, motorcoach and railway to Padang by way of Sawah Lunto. The journey by coach through the Padang Highlands was hair-raising and memorable for the wrongest of reasons.”
 
Brigadier Fraser escaped aboard the Dutch ship Rooseboom, which was sunk off Sumatra. Although he survived the sinking along with about 80 other passengers in one lifeboat, he did not survive the shocking 28-day ordeal of drifting 100 miles. There were only five survivors.
 
Note: Dad was lucky to have been issued a berth on a much slower and smaller vessel which, fortunately, was less likely to have been a satisfactory target for a Japanese submarine. We'll never know why Dad wasn't allowed a berth on the SS Rooseboom with the Argyll and Southerland Highlanders with whom he'd left Singapore before their overland crossing of Sumatra. Dad suggested he was required to stay in Padang to assist with administration duties.

The SS Rooseboom was a Dutch steamship of 1035 tons built in 1926 by Rijkee & Co. of Rotterdam. The vessel sailed on the evening of February 27th with Brigadier Paris (who had escaped Singapore on the Cecilia with my Dad) and 600 troops and civilians on board. Four days later she was sunk off Ceylon (now Sri lanka) and only five survived.

The SS Tinombo which Dad travelled on from Padang to Colombo and on to Bombay.

Taken from Dad’s Army Service Record which shows that due to the chaos after the Fall of Singapore the Army had no idea if he was still alive or been made a P.O.W.

After a few days in Padang, where elements of the A.I.F. seemed to be well established under the command of Major-General Gordon Bennett, we left round about the evening of 26th  February (I’m guessing, really) on the SS Tinombo, a Dutch East Indies coastal freighter more commonly seen on the Timor, Celibes, New Guinea run – that sort of area.

​On board we were allotted ‘hold’ accommodation and a supply of rice (only) for the voyage. We later learned, though not confirmed, that the ship had already been en route from Padang to Bombay, when she had been sent back to Padang on the orders of General Wavell in order to collect up ‘remnants’ (which included Dad).

We arrived in Bombay, as far as I can remember, around 14th March, after a brief call heightened by excellent sandwiches from some British ladies at the Transit Camp Colaba, where we were kitted out completely as we had all left Singapore with only what we stood up in, plus rifle and ammunition, and looked after exceedingly well, the R.A.S.C. and R.A.O.C. went to Agra to the vacant (Akbar Barracks) from where subsequent postings took place.
 
I have a map of my route through Sumatra. On arrival in India, I was ‘requested’ by GHQ to send a full report as a ‘Far East Straggler’ (for such we were officially designated for pay purposes etc. – well they had to call us something!)
 
Note: Later, Dad told us that when he was about to leave Singapore he gave his Bible (or Book of Common Prayer) to a soldier who had to stay behind. This soldier was captured by the Japanese. After the war Dad was in a Dentist’s waiting room in Bristol. He read in a magazine there, about a soldier who was captured at Singapore who was trying to contact a soldier who had given him a Bible before he left Singapore.  Dad made contact with this ex-soldier & it was the man he had given the Bible to. This man said that the Bible had helped him get through his incarceration with the Japanese. Dad said that he could keep the Bible.
 
He also told us that he was on a train near Agra with a fellow soldier. They were both smoking their pipes. When dad left the train, he forgot his pipe. Years later he was travelling on a train in England when he noticed a man smoking a familiar looking pipe. He asked the man where he got the pipe from and was told that he found it on a train in India during the Second World War. It was Dad’s pipe!

1944 Agra, India - Dad is on the right

Colombo harbour in 1971 - I was a young Navigating officer on board the SS British Soldier, offloading 32,000 tons of crude oil from Kharg Island in the Arabian Gulf.

The area above is where my father and other small boats would pass after getting safely across the Singapore Straights on February 15th 1942. Sailing by night the small boats would hide in the island mangroves during the day to avoid being spotted by Japanese aircraft. Their objective was to reach the mouth of the Batang Hari River to get up to the port of Jambi to proceed overland to Padang on the west coast of Sumatra.

APPENDIX 1: tHE ESCAPE FROM SINGAPORE BY RICHARD GOUGH

I found the above publication a fascinating read and gave me a greater insight into my Dad's escape to freedom. There were three references to the boat Cecilia:

Page 96: Another vessel at sea that night was a medium-sized yacht, the Cecilia, with Brigadier Paris on board together with some of his Argylls.

Page 131: When the officers learnt that General Percival was considering the possibility of surrender they made plans to save as many of their men as possible. Those believed to have escaped on the Cecilia included: Brigadier Paris with more of his Argylls including Major Angus McDonald, Captain Michael Blackwood and Private Hardy.

Page 195: Cecilia - Described as a motor launch but may have been a yacht sailed on February 15th with 44 selected passengers on board including the names mentioned above. Most of her passengers subsequently joined the ill-fated Rooseboom and drowned after the torpedo attack four days later.

APPENDIX 2: The rooseboom dutch cargo ship which dad hadn't been allowed to board in padang was torpedoed by japanese submarine i-159 on March 1st 1942 at 0150hrs

This account of the struggle for survival after the sinking of the Rooseboom was based on survivor and Argyll and Sutherland Highlander Walter Gibson's book, The Boat and taken from his obituary in the Times On Line (April 27th 2005):
 
“On the third night out from Padang a torpedo struck the Rooseboom, which very soon capsized and sank, taking most of her 500 passengers with her and leaving only one lifeboat seaworthy. This boat, designed to hold 28, was now occupied by 80 of the 135 who had survived the sinking. The remainder clung to lifelines and floating debris.
 
The senior surviving soldier, Brigadier Paris, took charge of discipline in the boat, while informing the survivors that the Dutch captain of the Rooseboom, who had also survived, was in overall command. The best of discipline was futile in the face of the privations that now ensued. Men and women went mad with thirst. Many threw themselves overboard rather than face further suffering.
 
In Gibson’s account, a gang of renegade soldiers positioned themselves in the bows and at night systematically pushed the weaker survivors overboard to make the meagre rations go further, until attacked by the others and flung overboard themselves. Brigadier Paris died, hallucinating before he fell into his final coma. The Dutch captain was killed by one of his own engineers.

The numbers of the living dwindled rapidly. By the time the lifeboat fetched up on Sipora, a coral island off Sumatra (a mere 100 miles from their starting point of Padang), only Gibson, a Chinese girl, Doris Lin, with whom he had developed a bond during those terrible weeks, and three Javanese remained. One of the latter drowned in the surf as they tried to get ashore. The remaining Javanese disappeared. After a period being tended by natives Gibson and Doris Lin were found by patrolling Japanese. He was returned to Padang as a POW. He later learned that she had been shot as a spy by the Japanese.
[Taken from Wikipedia]

Appendix 3: maps - THE ESCAPE ROUTE FROM SINGAPORE TO PADANG

The Cecilia passed through the Berhala Straights and into the delta of the Batang Hari River which was known as the Djambi River in 1942. The river banks were lined with mangrove swamps in the journey upriver to Jambi. once in Jambi, the Dutch administration transferred them to smaller, flat-bottomed boats upstream to Muaratebo from where trucks transported them to Sawah Lunto and on by train down to Padang.