In the Footsteps of the Argyll in Malaysia

 

I never knew Great Uncle Ron.  He was killed in Malaya (as it then was) in 1941, serving with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.  But the very mention of his name to any of the older members of the family would elicit the same response.  Verbatim.  “You would have loved, Ron.”  He had suffered from TB as a teenager and was considered infirm, so was delighted to be accepted for active service at the age of 25 in order to prove to himself, as well as to others, that he was fighting fit.  He was to die before his 26th birthday.

Skip forward to Christmas 2001.  For once, myself, my two brothers and families are at my parents’ house.  Talk after dinner turns to family stories and Uncle Ron makes his appearance.

“You would have loved Ron,” my father begins, telling us that he still had the telegram detailing Ron’s death somewhere and goes up to the attic to look for it.  Ron had been killed by a shell in Battalion HQ twenty miles south of Ipoh, Malaysia.    The date the fatal shell fell was 29th December 1941.  Sixty years to this very day, 29th December 2001, exactly sixty years to the day that he fell.  My Dad had ’t looked at the telegram for a while; it was in a box he hadn’t opened since my Grandfather passed away.  It was strange that it had happened when all the family, for once, were gathered, as if Ron was nodding to us from beyond.  Then and there I swore that one day I would go and put some flowers on his grave on behalf of the family.  My Dad was touched.

“You would have loved Ron,” was his reaction.

It was another ten years until I could do what I had promised , my father, by this time, visibly frailer each time I saw him, his body riddled with cancer; too frail to travel, but not too frail to instruct me to take lots of pictures.  Some friends were living in Jakarta, close enough to Taiping to combine a visit with my family pilgrimage.  I was to make the trip with my friend.  His wife made the bookings.  She was good at that sort of thing.

Having followed by bus the route the Argylls took north to Ipoh in the state of Perak, fourteen hours after leaving Jakarta, we found ourselves beside a quiet dual carriageway waiting for a taxi.  After an hour or so one stops.  Unfortunately the driver does not actually know Ipoh very well and spends two hours looking for the hotel, phoning friends for assistance and creasing up his face in confusion when we show him our map.  Many phone calls, numerous enquiries of other drivers and scores of circles later we get to the hotel.  “No pets and no durians,” proclaims the sign at reception.  Ipoh was a tin mining town, and this, along with rubber plantations, once provided great wealth.  Not now though. Its centre is resplendent in crumbling grandeur in pastel shades.  The only building still clad in its colonial elegance is the Royal Ipoh Club, the name spelled out in white stones on the flowered bank overlooking a lush expanse of playing fields where cricket, polo and rugby were once played. It looks haughtily down in its mock Tudor grace on ramshackle facades of formerly beautiful buildings and pavements that tilt at every angle, open drains and potholes that could swallow you up to the knee. The classically Victorian train station hotel is, like so many others, closed with some of the shutters hanging precariously from one hinge.  It is here that Ron would have disembarked from a train on the Kuala Lumpur to Butterworth line.

A perfect lawn and lines of gravestones laid out in neat rows.  A palm lined avenue leading to a memorial, while gardeners dressed in green cotton overalls, with straw hats, silently tend the immaculate cemetery which is laid out on both sides of the road.  Ornate gates face other across the tarmac.  329 known casualties from Indian, British and Commonwealth armies rest here along with 500 unidentified troops.  Most of these seem to be “An unknown soldier of the Indian army.” 

My Dad, who passed away last year, couldn’t thank me enough.  Why do sons always crave the approval of their fathers?  A good few more you-would-have-loved-Ron’s later and several I-can’t-thank-you-enough’s and for all those who did, and those who would have loved Ron, the flowers were laid.  And through this travel, reading the letters he sent, researching the history of his regiment, in following in his footsteps from Singapore to his last resting place in Taiping, even though I never met him, maybe, just maybe I did get to know him… just a little.

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3 responses to “In the Footsteps of the Argyll in Malaysia

  1. I am so proud of you that you kept your promise. I too wish I could lay thee flowers on all the graves of those ones who died for you, us, someone else… in the wars they did not choose… We must not forget. We must remember.

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