Bart Richardson - Singapore: Working party

Transcript

A month later I was given 50 men as a working party to go to Singapore … what else. So we camped at the great well, which had an amusement park… and we used to go down from there, down Outram Road we marched down there a mile or so to the school ground, which we used to call the sales centre because there we would split into groups to do whatever and we always at that stage went down to the wharves cleaning up the mess after the bombings, and it was a mess too. But there were also the big sheds that were full of tin food there for the asking.

Well, we didn't ask the Japs. They didn't say no, they didn't say yes. But we took the stuff out just the same, kept on doing that, which added considerably to the flavour of fried rice, and this went on for some time until the Japs suddenly realized, "Oh can't be done. You can't do that".

So they used to search us then going out the gates every night. Well, they put a stop to it. And then it was about that time that the Krait came in. Remember the Krait that came in from the islands off Singapore and came over to Singapore itself in canoes and attached limpet mines to a lot of ships in the harbour, got away before they started to blow up.

It was just about then that the Japs stopped us going down on the wharves again. I don't think they wanted us to see the mess that was made. And we moved from the great well to Selarang which was only next door anyway. Didn't do much there for a while. And we went back to Changi.