Memories of Malaya - 13. Highs and Lows

My father has picked up his pen again to continue his Memories of Malaya series, sharing his memories of his boyhood in Malaya.

He writes:

When I first went to the Victoria Institution it was into Form One. In addition to arithmetic we were introduced to geometry and algebra. For some reason I had difficulty in arithmetic although I was very good in the other two subjects. In arithmetic I think it was the question of language which was causing the difficulty. The problem was this: there are 3 rulers; ruler A is 3 feet long; ruler B is half as long as ruler A and ruler C is half as long as ruler A but is one and half times longer than ruler B. I may not have stated the question correctly but it was this kind of question.

But the odd thing is this: the boys who had come from Chinese schools still continued to do very well in arithmetic although the English language is not their strong subject; they did not seem to encounter any difficulties. After my brilliant results previously it was a great disappointment when I came out in the middle of my class in the half yearly examination. Father then started intensive coaching of me and I improved my position. So I crept up the form every year until about Form 3 when I began to come up to the top 3 in the class always competing with the other doctor’s son.

The school started streaming the two top classes when we were in Form 4. It was a simple process: the top forty boys in the form in the Form 3 exams were sent to the science stream in Form 4 and the next forty to the Arts streams. The rest went on to the lower classes in the form. In the science stream we had to do the 3 sciences, that is, Chemistry, Physics and Biology as three subjects and not one as general science. They were not all that difficult and I enjoyed them. Then came Form 5 when we were introduced to Additional Mathematics which I also enjoyed.

As I wanted to read law I started to take private tuition in Latin in preparation for taking the subject in Form 5. Again it proved not difficult because it was a logical language. Latin is helpful in two ways for learning the English Language: firstly if you have a large Latin vocabulary it helps with your English vocabulary and vice verse of course; secondly it also helps your English sentence construction; the dative and ablative cases make one aware of the use of prepositions in an English sentence.

One of the highlights of this period in school was the celebration connected with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The country organized parades and there was a street procession with the various communities contributing floats to go round the town. Every class held a tea-party on the day. We did not have television, so we did not see the proceedings but the school children were able to see a film of the coronation when the film came to the country much later on. We could hear the music of “Land of Hope and Glory” whenever we turned on the radio.

A less happy event was the killing of the High Commissioner for Malaysia whilst he was traveling to Fraser’s Hill on a Saturday: he was shot together with one or two of his military and police aides and escorts by the communists. The school scout troops were given the honour of lining the route where his cortege would pass on the way to the church. I was in the contingent. It was a great blow to the government - the country was still not independent - and demoralized it.

His successor was General Sir Gerald Templer who was a no-nonsense soldier. He would put a village or town under a twenty-four hour curfew if after some soldiers or police were killed and no one came to give information. There was a case that involved the small town of Tanjong Malim which created quite an outcry in the newspapers in England. There was no actual fighting with the communists in the large towns. Most of the confrontation was in rubber estates, secondary jungle and sometimes further inside.

One of the ways the government devised to combat the threat was to resettle all persons living in outlying areas into a settlement which was surrounded by barbed wire fence and guarded by special constables to prevent these villages from supplying food and medicine to the communists. According to official reports this method worked to a certain extent. The civilian population was not allowed to carry any food when traveling between towns and persons in buses and cars were searched at check points placed along the main and trunk roads. For the civilians this was the only contact with the military operations.

General Templer wanted to involve as many communities and as many people in the fight. Special constables and home guards were formed. Both were drawn from persons who had no military training but after a little bit of marching drill and practice with the rifle they were given a rifle and an arm band with the word “Special Constable” as they had no uniforms and their main job was to patrol the resettlement-villages or New Villages as they were called or to assist in manning road blocks. Boy scouts were called in to act as couriers to deliver mail amongst the military and police establishments. I was involved and went to a briefing but was never called upon to do anything.

A General du Fonblanque was assigned to organize the Home Guard. Their presence was not much in evidence in the towns as far as I can recollect. I met his daughter, Patricia, who was at Newnham at the time I was at Corpus Christi, Cambridge when she attended meetings of the Malayan Association of the University.

Photo: of Victoria Institution, thanks to hbp.usm.my with thanks

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