Escape from Pulau Brani in 1942

After my father reached India he eventually wrote to mother about his escape from Singapore. She probably forwarded the letter to his brother in Chard and an edited version then appeared in the Chard and Leaminster News. Mother kept a cutting and this eventually, on 4th September 1992, reached me from my cousin Margaret in Midhurst. By then it was vel}' fragile. It read as follows: - Adventurous and hazardous Journey In a letter, which reached his wife quite recently, Lt. B T Pattemore R.E., elder son of Mr and Mrs H. Pattemore, of Chard, tells a vivid story of how he escaped from Singapore to India. Mrs Pattemore and their three children were also in Singapore until the end of 1941,when they had to leave for England on account of the war situation. They are now living in England, and Lt. Pattemore is still in India. He served in the last war and afterwardsjoined the Army as a career "The last week in Singapore got very tough" he states. "We were bombed and shelled continuously????? guns were firing all the time, so the noise was terrifying and nerve wracking. Huge fires were burning in Singapore. We were ordered to keep going until Singapore fell and then get away if we could. There were several deserted boats on Pulau Brani, so we grabbed a 90-ton Diesel and on that put about 100 men of all descriptions and sailed under cover of darkness the same night. As we had no chart of the minefields, we had to cross them and chance being blown sky high. Some of the men would not take the chance and are now prisoners of war. Wewere, however, lucky and got through OK. Weanchored off St John Island until dawn the following morning. Pc?) Sumba and other nearby islands were all ablaze and there seemed to be fires everywhere on Singapore." Hid in Jungle "We hadn't got far from St John's when we spotted a Jap reconnaissance plane, so we landed on a small island and hid in the jungle all day, and sailed again at night. After four days we reached Pulau Pinang, a big Dutch island/east of Singapore. All the food we had was some bread and fruit and we had a bath in a builder's cement mixing tank. We must have looked a sight to the Chinese who were there. It was a lovely island and we were sorry to have to leave it for our cramped little ship, on which we could only sit down as there wasn't room to lie down. However, we felt better for the bread and the fruit, the bath and the exercise we had had, and we sailed that night for the eastern coast of Sumatra. We made for a river mouth in about the centre of that coastline. The Japs were already in the north and south of Sumatra, so our only hope was the centre, and that we could get across the country before the Japs got to the centre. We were lucky and hit the mouth of the river. It rained in the early morning after a very rough passage, and we sailed up river for 50 miles before we struck a small town. We landed here and contacted more survivors from Singapore. The town was, unfortunately, practically deserted as everyone was moving out and we didn't get any bread and hardly any other food, but I did manage to get hold of a much-needed towel. You see, we brought hardly any kit from Singapore and all we had was what we were standing up in." Anxious Days "We picked up a Pilot in the dawn to take us as far up the river as possible to Rengat, where we contacted the Dutch Army authorities. This town was also almost empty, as everybody was fleeing in front of the Japs, so we were again unlucky obtaining any food. The Dutch Army provided us with commercial lorries, which took us up 50 miles beyond Rengat to a big rubber estate, and we stopped there for five days. Very anxious days, on small rations. The Dutch Army had great difficulty in getting more lorries to take us over the mountains to the railheads some 70 miles from the West Coast of Sumatra. However, in the end we got three lorries and left at 6 a.m. and took a very cramped and hungry ten hours ride over real mountains. The scenery was splendid. I can't describe how grand it really was, only one thing wrong - it poured with rain at the high altitude. In some cases we were above the clouds and at others passing through them. I saw several gorgeous birds, including the hornbill, and if we had not been wet through, the trip would have been enjoyable. We arrived at the railhead at 5.30 p.m. and were billeted in the local jail for several hours. We left this town at 4.30 a.m. by rail for Padang some 70 miles away to the coast. The Dutch Army gave us some excellent soup and we most certainly needed it, as we were nearly starving.The rail trip was very interesting downthe steep mountainsides;the trains are ???? and are let down the steep slopes on a ratchet so that they cannot run away. We Got Some Bread People at the various stations gave us tea and cakes. We must have looked a poor lot - our clothes all dirty and worn. Padang is a nice town about ten miles from the coast. We marched from the station to a school some two miles away. I had no shoes except an old pair of tennis shoes, but never mind we got there; and very grateful we were to lie on the floor to sleep. The Dutch Army fed us again and thank the lord we got some bread. We spent five more anxious days at Padang. Java was falling. Japs were in Sumatra and their warships all around it and no ships were available to take us off. We began to think we had jumped the wrong way as our hopes looked so very dim. However, the Dutch Army came up trumps again. They wirelessed two ships that were fleeing from Java to call in at Padang, and this they did, despite the fact that the Japs had sunk four in the harbour the previous day. So we left Padang on a small cattle boat. Ours was the second of two ships to sail, and we were fortunate again, as the first boat was never seen any more and three survivors told us how they were sunk. Well, once more we were at sea -and a very dangerous sea at that. We took a devious route and it was seven days before we reached Colombo. Here we lay to for two days but couldn't go ashore, probably because of our dirty condition. We left Colombo and sailed for Bombay, during which time we had very little sleep and no opportunity for washing properly and by this time we were feeling the effects of our journey. The ship had no bread and we lived chiefly on boiled rice and tinned herrings - and very small quantities at that. We eventually reached Bombay, and so ended our rather adventurous and hazardous journey" . Some points from the author: (1) Pulau Pinang must surely be to the west of Singapore,not the east. (2) He makes no mention of the fact that he left his own boat to get another one going in mid-ocean. The second boat, full of Australians, being faster, then caught up and he was able to rejoin his own group. It is inconceivablethat they were turned away from Colombo. Perhaps there was a good reason but it is hard to think of one. Later books suggestthat the Dutch were ambivalent in their attitudetowards the Japs believing, at one time, that they might be able to come to an accommodationwith them. And the Dutch had no love for the English. So father was lucky that the Dutch Army was so helpful. They probably couldn't get rid of these impecunious defeated Englishmen fast enough! (3) (4) One or two other points from the author (from memory) - (1) The Japs demanded, and the British were forced to agree, that every man in the armed services should stay put, on surrender, until disarmed and directed by the Japs. Those were the surrender terms. Father alleged that his Commanding Officer (the Chief Royal Engineer) rang him from Army Headquarters at Fort Canning and said, "get away if you can". In India father faced a Court-Martial, under suspicion presumably, of" deserting his post in the face of the enemy". The Court must have believed his story and exonerated him since he was subsequently commissioned into the Indian Engineers. I assume it was a Viceroy's Commission but he held his rank on return to the Royal Engineers in Britain. The Sumatra river was/is the Indragiri. My atlas shows the town as RUNGAT. While 'resting' for five days at the rubber estate his shaving kit was stolen. A good set of mates he had! The lorries provided by the Dutch Army either before of after Rengat were in fact refuse lorries. There is a chain of mountains behind Padang, in fact running right down the western side of Sumatra, reach a height in one place of 12,500 feet -real mountains indeed! 5,000 feet higher than Malaya's best (Gunong Tahan).