The serial: Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 60

In the morning he brought tea and a snack, sometimes a bunch of delicious bananas.

At first, jungle navigation was difficult because of inadequate maps (one inch to the mile), unworkable compasses, and no wireless. At that time, if someone was injured there was no available casualty evacuation or air supply. Other hazards were predators:

“We never saw tigers,” writes Kenneth McLeod. “They were there in the jungle but if you were in a party they would take no notice and skedaddle. It was the older fellows that became man-eaters as they couldn’t run fast enough to catch their prey.”

Vipers and pythons also lived in the jungle and monkeys were ubiquitous and tribal with a male leader. By taking a note of what they ate, the jocks could discover which plants were safe to consume.

Jungle training was one thing but adapting fighting skills to a rubber plantation was another. The uniformity of these areas was dispiriting when the troops confronted row upon row of tall trees whose leaves cast looming shadows.

If soldiers trained for too long under these conditions, they became depressed and suffered from “rubberitis.”

Exhausting

No matter what kind of ground the Argylls trained on, it was exhausting, particularly in the Malayan climate. But Stewart was inspiring and managed to get his men to advance 1,000 yards an hour in the jungle. If nothing else, they became fighting fit and the regimental spirit always remained strong.

Stewart never failed to provide essential rations such as hot, sweet tea five times a day to prevent dehydration.

After training, the Argylls marched back to Singapore from Mersing, taking eight days to complete the 116-mile journey.

Officers accompanied the men, and the ultra-fit Stewart, twice the age of his men and officers, maintained his position at the head of the column. On these marches, the commanding officer wore a Glengarry.

The march not only toughened the men, but proved that Singapore was vulnerable to a rapid infantry advance from the north, as there was no jungle barrier protecting the northern coast of the island from the mainland.

In December 1939 the jocks handed in their kilts but officers still wore them for special occasions. Many peacetime parades were abandoned.

That same month the Argylls moved camp to Tyersall Park close to the Botanical Gardens. On my map I managed to find the old entrance; the rusting gate into the precinct, once owned by the Sultan of Johore, is close to the National Orchid Garden off Tyersall Avenue, not far from St George’s Church, where Anglican congregations worship.

Now weed-ridden, Tyersall’s entry was uninviting and too risky to negotiate, as it was late afternoon when the mosquitoes are active.

“Unlike the Gordon Highlanders who had stonebuilt barracks, we lived in bamboo huts three feet off the ground. This was to repel snakes and other wild life,” wrote Kenneth McLeod.

The roofs were made of palm leaves stitched together to resemble tiles laid on bamboo struts. Tyersall was make-shift and hurriedly built in order to accommodate two battalions (the other was 4/19 Hyderabads). These barracks also held the brigade headquarters and the Indian military hospital.

Accommodation

The huts were 40 feet long with a veranda running along the outside wall. There were 30 beds in each and junior officers lived in similar accommodation but in cubicles with a cold water section for their ablutions.

These had overhead water buckets that served as showers.

While the jocks had to keep their sleeping quarters spick and span – blankets just so and clothes on a peg – officers were let off lightly.

A Chinese “boy” looked after them. In the morning he brought tea and a snack, sometimes a bunch of delicious bananas.

Angus Rose writes about his and Angus’s Chinese “boy,” Ah Ling, who spoke little English. On his first day, Angus asked Ah Ling to lay out their mess dress for dinner, but when the two officers returned, they found that the new servant had laid their shot guns on their beds.

Angus Macdonald worked out that Ah Ling had mistaken “mess kit” for “musket”. When Ah Ling made mistakes, the two Angus’s fined him.

Angus Macdonald kept an account with meticulous calculations based on the Chinese servant’s misdemeanours so that, when Ah Ling’s first pay day came, he owed his bosses $25.

Although Angus, in a letter to Daisy, makes no mention of Tyersall and its primitive facilities, he refers to his quarters as “a shed” in his correspondence with Esther. Shed or no shed, Tyersall had its amusements.

Officers liked to rag in the mess, diving head-first through the flimsy partition erected between their ante-room and dining room. Angus’s letter to Daisy, written after his first Christmas in Singapore, never mentions anything to do with training or manoeuvres. Censorship regulations prevented it. They were at war even if at that time it was phoney.

But it was not just back-breaking manoeuvres and long-distance marches. Off duty, my uncle found plenty to entertain him even though it was expensive.

Beautiful

“In Singapore, almost any game was played on firstclass grounds.” Now a captain, Angus joined the Royal Singapore Golf Club.

Its course at Bukit Timah on the road to the causeway, was beautiful; the tropical trees on the perimeter had all been removed and it reminded one of home.

This extirpation of the tropical did not stop at the club’s vegetation; it also included humans. The Royal Singapore Golf Club was for Europeans only.

In May 1940 Angus gave up his membership at the golf club. He could have taken up flying but that was costly. Like Captain Michael Blackwood, he joined the Royal Singapore Yacht Club.

“I had neither the money nor the time to belong to both the golf and yacht club,” Angus confessed in his letter to Esther.

After his land-locked life in India, buying a yacht was very welcome. It was a pleasure to escape from the stuffy metropolis and feel the fresh sea breezes and swell of the waves.

A sail around the tropical islands was a different experience to the dank, cold forays he was accustomed to in Kintyre. More on Monday