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Two artificers appeared trém nowhera with culting boats,
PRIN
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1959.
With the
compliments
of the Japanese
some quirk of human nature we find it funny when a BY
man slips on a banuna skin. Some philosopher (I forgot who) has pointed out that this applies only to two-legged animals. No one laughs when a horse falls down, To this profound truth I might add a rider of my own: it is also not funny when a one-legged man loses his balance.
At any rate, no one laughed when a British corporal, whose name I have forgotten, so let us call him Nobby Clarke, came a cropper outside the coolie quarter in the vast prison concentrated round the notorious Changi Gaol 011 Singapore Island.
UN
our
miati
all- clear, they went back to thele normal policy of mas- terly inactivity.
It so happened that he was spectacle of me like Corporal roun
the look-out accompanied
hobbling BERDAN by two ather Clarke
wit an unusual gave the soldiers who had much lost a compound was J. and in trying to put Cor one. poral Clarke on his fust one of Them fell down, tou. By that time, my friend Alan Hingston who commanded the RAOC, nad I arrived on the scene. Weg
DI
men
A shocking number bad lest a leg or an arm, some in the fighting, some as a result uleves contracted during cap- tvity,
probably have
been evacuated
All the same.
* ; ' landing strip was just big enough for the tiny Hir-
planes to land
anes &
veryone perpendicular, brequi In Entop these men would
en down, handed each mua his home-made crutches, and as an exchange basis, or at least sweating somewhat from our want to a neutral country. Such exertions under The Bree civilities were not understood by Mulayan sun, returned in th
The Japs. The egless unt the shade and ar mugs of so-called dess had to survive as bist and approach-
they could in conditions which
tea.
"You know,
Eric. it's alnut praved loo much for many who
1.me we ák! something about bad all their limbs.
Craps like Clarke," said Alan.
I agreed. It was not the first time we had talked about mak-
Ang artificial limbs. But, Zone- how, it had always remained 1:.lk.
Metal problem
The Jap-
pilots Ix: JOTC Juman
reerned
able than the officers. artny
especially
one flatlered
by MAJ. GEN, E. C. Q. MORPHY
MAIOR-CENERAL E. C. O.
MORPHY started his Army career in the Leinster Regiment and transferred to the Indian Army in 1918.
He was a lieutenant-colonel in the Indian Army Ordnance Carps at the outbreak of mat. and spent 3 years in cap- tivity in Malaya.
Now he is a director of a firm of wholesale tea and coitea blenders In the City. writes and broadcasts stories in his spare time.
them about the excellence of pline, their machines,
Some of them spoke u little
Alan Hingston and I felt a English, and if any of our chaps rticular responsibility about happened to be near when one commanded of those airplanes landed, they this problem. We
usually get a cigarette in return for a few compliments about the pilot's prowess in the air.
pretty self-con- the twin Ordnance Corps, most
We bad
W
huu!
For
of the camp workshops came under us. and we had a high
of skilled artifeers, their cruelty, the Japs are a
curious, childlike people,
Percentage
Meeting arranged
on
rmoothly
ch 22 irteld But
DID IT HAPPEN?
Another story in the sorios that keeps
you guessing
!
be stripped of bits of aluminium. Four times in the next fortnight the operation was repented, and
World's Greatest
Imposter
CURIOUS
CHARACTERS
LYING and trickery were George Psalmanazir's second nature. As a young boy, towards the end of the seventeenth century, he ran away from his home in the south of Frane e, broke into a church, stole a pilgrim's staff and cloak-left there as a votive offering and started off to the East disguised as an Irish pilgrim.
Then began one of the most fantastic lives of imposture the world has ever known,
Living on his wits, Paalmanazar wandered across Europe, disguised now as a beggar, now soldier, now tutor, now cook. Changing his pose (so that he could beg more effectively) to that of a Japanese converted to Christianity, he mude some mistakes and was arrested as a spy.
it.
But Psalmanazar was so pleased with the new pose that he began to perfect He invented a complete language, and even wrote a little book of gibberish, which he pretented to be his native tongue.
Psalmunazar then enlisted in a Dutch mercenary regiment, causing much. amusement by publicly chanting nonsense and praying to the sun at odd intervals.
The
reghment's chaplain way suspicious, but admiring. He helped the imposter to develop at edd intervals afterwards, One his Imaginary language, and to artifer emboldened by success, develop oven more outlandish actually removed some kind of "custom"-uri de dieting on cicek from the cockpit controls brolled snokes, raw meat and as a memento, But we had to tree-roots,
poor slop that kind of foolhardiness The chaplain went even fur- it endangered the whole ther. He introduced Pgalmana- zar to the Bishop of London
we were mak- operation. ing progress, Scon, he said,
Japanese
but
who, Impressed, revolved Live
The RAUC workshops were imposter as a guest of honom. kept busy turning our legs; the Meanwhile, Pælmanzzar had big airplanes
Geoffrey Invented as his buckground n of the victor- AUC, under Captain
Walsh, made the arms, They | mysterious caster island, So have reached Rue- | will authenticated did his story pir force would might not
They appear—especially when be able to lund bumpton standards
Changi, served their purpose,
produced un enormous volume on the "island's" history, Come and took,
In August 1945, when our own geography and customs that adreraf: "New in on their libera-
he was sent to Oxford Univer- lion nights, Changi airteld,sity by publie subscription,
#1
he went (1), 100 how we are making
progress with which had never been serviccable for Japanese airplanes of any the airteldi.
size, was miraculously ready to As Bob led
receive them. Waving and cheer- the pilot away
Ing in the front row of emaciated down the air- strip, twa Ord- prisoners was Corporal Clarke, nunte artificers standing confidently, by courtesy of the Japanese air force, on two
appeared from Howhere cutting
DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?
with legs. tools. Quickly 'n d with the mini- mum of noise. they
removed slices of alu- from minium
the wings and luselage of the Japanese air-
A third officer, with a pot of aluminium paint we had managed to procure, covered up the scars.
Mystery still
When the pilot Anally returned and took off we stood with bated breath, walling to see how the airplane would behave in the air, It seemed to fly quite normally. But we were still anxious. Re- percussions, we fell, were bound Just to follow. The sabotage
We were tained community. be, of course. Everything did to make life bourable to be improvised out of next to Dicers and NCOs. Yet the thing. The situation al the problem bad always beaten us. te-1 am writing of the best Now we decided to try again. 15 months of our captivity -was Bat all the POWs who had not The first thing to do was do been sent away to the farthest call a meeting. The Camp Com- corners of the Far East were mandant, Lieutenant-Colouwt Eb concentrated in this one camp Holmes. of the Manchester ing on which an airplane landed the result was worth the risk.
K:giment. did this Everyone the strip. Bob Simpson, an To this day I cannot account Coming the Indian Ara arred about the need to make officer in my corps, was the most for the fnet that, the Japs never Art:licia! legs and arms. The duent Japanese speaker we had. tried to solve the mystery of how we doctars bripted, 2 about what he "happened" to be standing some of their airplanes came to
was needed. Alan Hingston and there when the airplane touched I agreed to make tixen. But how down.
There
1 was lieutenant-colonist,
Ordnance Corps. about 50 ctlleers and 250 NCOS any lot-- all iritishi. (The Indian troops been seare #1tet in the hope th they could be turned against us. When
warld we get the raw material?
And so the great day arrived be discovered. We were ready the first day after our meel- far reprisals for we all felt that
Bob and the pilot exchanged The wood presented no probe courtesies. It was, said Dob, a the Japs found that petstein few. Working parties were often fine pices of flying to land sn
failed, they tried more bridal the jungle where we could theasures. In spite of appalling got at the timber
we needed. treatment, nothing could shake. And we had already, of course, the loyalty of the vast majority made peg-legs and crutches. But ut our Indian cutades. Bul
needs arthicial leg a proper Joints. And for joints, a light This metal alloy is required.
problem which had Was the always beaten us.
that is another story.)
Many handicapped
I wish I could remember who that oftemaon
It was the medieves who had the genius was
the doughest job in the camp.
who said quietly: "There are
In the bally equipped, over- crowded burtag-room hospitals, always the Navy O-Fighters."
they fought
constant battle At first we groffed. But the more daring spirits sald, "Why
against discase. Short of essen-
tial drugs, anaesthetics, and the net?"
must elementary surgical facili-
Les, they succeeded somehow or
For on several days a week, other in performing miracles, these sanatl Japanese fighters would land on the airfield which 10 be cun-
There were no text-book rales we were supposed for treating some of the obscure structing at Changi. Somehow. diseases which arose from mal- the Dirfeld never seemed to nutrition and, sometimes, from make much progress, in spite of sheer starvation. Oflen the the furious energy of the work-. amputation of a limb was the parties whenever a Jap overseer only way to save a life. So the appeared on the scene. But, as
How many
words of four letters be more con yout make tram the retter
R о
TARGET
I
O
E N G
the aquare the left 1
km making
cach
word.
the letters In each of the winali myjuures may be used once only. Eaen word must con- July the large letter in the centre KN Litere must be at
que atrie-Jetter word in the
H. No parul: no Turcian. MYITE ; Tủ prope ARMER TODAYA "TARGET: Do worOK. Dood: Eh words, very good | 78 words, azcollent, Solution on Monday,
YESTERDAY'S SOLUTION Abele able alar alec sroŭile baci bale barrel blare biens earl teng leader jerr leper palo parable peal pearl peel plen real rebej rezi HEPAKABLE repeat repel
London Express Service.
YES
NO
or
course, Pramanazar did no work at Oxford. But he always gave the Impres
Industry. fion of Immense
Every night, a candle burned at tula window-wille he snored to bed.
Psalmiina-
who
By day, however, zar impresed everyone saw him, Sul dressed strange- ly, he wandered about Oxford smoking a black-clay pipe, on the bowl cf which was balanced cual. The suffocaling à live
of did not seen fumes It gave
to worry him,
CHUCKLES
FRUITS . VEGETABLES
7-26
McNaught Syndicate, Ine
in the space about. Anger on P, 18.
Only after his death his Imposture discovered.
WAZ
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