Extracts from the letters of Major Ernest Fisher Lodge MBE of SOE in Sumatra 1944-5
Compiled by his nephew, David W Swanbury
Ernest Fisher Lodge MBE, (1906-1998) often known to his friends as Oliver, joined up in June 1940 after returning on leave from his rubber planter's job, to England from living and working in Sumatra and just in advance of the Japanese invasion and occupation there. Lodge is the most common surname in Skelmanthorpe where his father and mother, Nee ‘Fisher’ originated, but he was born in Normanton. He led a most adventurous life from beginning to end.
Originally in the desert, 7th Tank Reg't, 8th Army , where he was shot at Tobruk and taken prisoner, he escaped from the POW camp in Chieti, Italy as the Germans arrived to take it over, to walk down Italy through the allied lines and eventually get home. See Blog post of 26th October 2014 'FROM TOBRUK TO CHIETI TO SKELMANTHORPE' LINK
After a recuperative leave, mostly in Skelmanthorpe staying at School House where his brother, A.H. (Bert) Lodge was Headmaster of the local Junior and Infant school, he was assigned to SOE operations in Sumatra.
This is a short and somewhat understated account gleaned from limited correspondence to the family, but best told in his own words.
This is a short and somewhat understated account gleaned from limited correspondence to the family, but best told in his own words.
FORCE 136 COLOMBO
22 May 1944 Embarked U.K. Colombo , Ceylon Sumatra
under the Japanese occupation.
(His posting was to Force 136. This
was a cover name for the Special Forces Executive to supply and encourage
resistance movements in enemy occupied territory and mount clandestine sabotage
operations. From his previous life as a planter in Sumatra he was fluent in the languages and was accustomed to life in the jungle).
I
arrived in Colombo
In
early 1944 I was sent on a crash commando course including parachute drops,
demolitions, codes, W/T, mayhem, along with French, Dutch and Belgian agents
who were to be dropped into occupied Europe . I had been transferred to Force 136 for
operations in S.E. Asia and because of my previous life in Sumatra
was seconded to a Dutch commando unit based in Colombo Ceylon Sumatra . We did quite a lot of jungle bashing with a
couple of trips to India Meerut Bengal .
I
arrived here a few days ago not long after leaving home. From England Delhi Libya England
From
Delhi Colombo Central
India ranged up to 118F
in the shade and the nights seemed almost as hot as the days, fans fitted in
the compartments hurled a withering blast of hot air at you. Apparently this is
the worst time of the year – just before the rains come. The peasant types we saw from the train all
the way down looked poor and dirty but hardworking. Arriving in Ceylon India
We
are pretty near the equator and the climate and vegetation is very similar to
that of Sumatra . At the moment I am 200 yards
from the coast which has the real South Seas
atmosphere of coconut palms fringing a sandy beach. The surf is good and I am beginning to master
a small surf board.
This
country, in contrast to India Casey Court India India Egypt
Like
England America Europe .
The
Yanks have put up a good show in Europe
and done wonders in the Pacific. It is
going to be many years before they finish talking about it.
It
is now three months since I arrived here and am just about acclimatised
again. We have just come back from
jungle exercises up in the wild parts of the island and your eyes would have
popped at the easy meat floating around in the way of game. We weren’t allowed to shoot anything,
particularly as part of the time we were in a jungle reserve, but I spent quite
a bit of time up a tree with a pair of binoculars for company. Deer, two varieties, and pig were common
animals coming down to drink, with occasional wild water buffalo. There were plenty of elephants around, as
shown by the tracks and droppings all over the place and I seemed to be one of
the few who were unlucky enough not to see one.
Jungle fowl, mouse deer, pythons and giant lizards are all to be met
with occasionally along the trails and we had leopards around the camp at
night. Actually one came right into our
bivouac and a sergeant shot it by torch light and reckoned that this case was
covered by self defence. The river
itself was teeming with life. From my
perch it was always possible to see two or three turtles touring along under
the surface, apparently scavenging oddments from the bottom. I came across six of them sitting side by
side on the trunk of a tree which had fallen into the river. The maximum size seems to be about two and a
half feet and some of them have flat shells, others quite steep ones like the
tortoise. Odd crocodiles appear but they
are small and didn’t bother us: we swam in the river every day. The water was alive with fish of all shapes
and sizes and in consequence there was a great variety of wading birds to be
seen on the small sand banks that occurred in the river. Storks, herons and cranes and many small
types with long thin legs and fancy feathers were a common sight, also a type
of cormorant and a red fish hawk.
Kingfishers flew around almost like sparrows. Doves, hornbills and
several kinds of vividly coloured green and blue birds could be seen crossing
the open space caused by the river.
Small and lesser fry could be seen drinking at the water’s edge. Then of course, the commonest bird in Ceylon Sumatra
and I often thought what a great enjoyment Dad would have got out of a place
like that. In addition to what I have
mentioned there was all the insect life – some very beautiful butterflies – and
the whole plant life representative of the jungle itself. Amongst the small animal life which I forgot
to include were porcupines, civet cats, jungle cats and even rabbits.
It
happened to be the dry season and so leeches were rare and we were not troubled
at nights by tropical rain; but we did have hell with ticks! These blood sucking brutes are very small and
hang on to any vegetation waiting for some animal to pass. We collected them in large numbers, all over
the body and the irritation they set up – even after they have been removed and
killed – is maddening. Any vegetation in
this climate causes sweat to pour out and you can reckon on being completely
wet, sticky and smelly and uncomfortable most of the time. The evenings however are very pleasant and I
consider myself lucky in having found a place like this while in the army.
In
the Mess here we have an English bull terrier which is two years old and needs
about two men to keep it out of trouble.
It is a dog which is enormously strong and very brave but has
practically no brains. Its ambition in
life is to kill all the other dogs and cats in Ceylon
The
weather on this island is divided into two seasons,- the SW monsoon from mid
May until mid October and the NW monsoon for the rest of the year. Colombo
We
continue with our training and three weeks ago I had a rather unpleasant
experience whilst forcing my way through some thick jungle. I must have accidentally released some tied
up combination of branches by my movements as a large branch suddenly whipped
out from nowhere and caught me a solid smack in the mouth. Although my teeth are pretty well rooted I
lost four of them, one on the spot and the others driven so far back that they
had to come out. This leaves me with two
large canines on top with a space big enough to back a car through. Odd bits of broken bone still work their way
out and I even pulled a bit of wood out.
The army dentist is fixing me up with new teeth pretty soon. During the same exercise, another officer
from our mess had three toes crushed by a boulder falling on his foot.
About
a month ago I had a letter from Mackinnon. (His ex-plantation manager in Sumatra )
He is now employed by the USA Gov’t. and is in charge of native rubber
production for the whole state of Paro , Brazil Brazil East
Indies and I guess that they have had a very rough time.
Some were killed during the fighting and some have died since. I was lucky to get out when I did.
When
I think of Hawaii London Oahu
have been lucky in this respect and that it will not be long before you can get
back to normal life. The progress of the
war in the Pacific has been better than we could possibly expect and it is not
going too badly in other parts.
Letters
from England Europe
is finished. Incidents are bound to
occur with types like Tito and other guerrilla leaders and I have no doubt that
they were expected by the Allied governments and that they will be able to cope
with them. What I find particularly
annoying is the attitude of France Africa
by surrendering there too. In addition
we had to sink some of their fleet to prevent it operating against us. They wouldn’t fight the Japs in French
Indo-China. Then we had to fight a war
against them in Syria Russia Russia
Near
the shore here where we bathe and do some surfing there are several fisherman’s
huts. They are clever fishermen at all
types of fishing and are very good in their own particular type of outrigger
sailing boats. When the season is
unfavourable for boats they fish from the shore with large nets which require
from thirty to forty men to handle. One
day when it was raining heavily I dropped into one of the crude huts for
shelter. They are made of palm fronds
and I should have been almost as well off standing in the rain. This hut had two rooms, one for each
wife. The owner explained to me that he
was a good catholic but he had two wives.
One of these, an old one, he referred to as his ‘good wife’ and the
other as his ‘playing wife’; whatever he meant by that he did not explain. Some days later I saw him chasing his ‘good
wife’ with a piece of wood as big as a table leg with which he caught her crack
over the head. This could easily have
been a scene enacted ten thousand years ago.
It seems that here the man is still the boss. The average Sinhalese woman seems fairly clean
and dresses very attractively, especially on religious days. They are mostly Buddhists and patronise their
saint days in a big way with processions, elephants, drums, fireworks etc.. The children run about almost naked and are
just like any other kids. The Tamils
from India Colombo
LANDING IN SUMATRA
My
first submarine landing (February-March
1945) was on the North west coast
of Sumatra . A Dutch captain was in charge and we had
eight Chinese in the party.
The
British submarine Clyde
It
was decided that the Dutch captain and I should go ashore alone the first night
to recce the site which was a rocky promontory backed by solid undergrowth and
flanked by a long sandy beach. A party
of six ferried us in a rubber boat with an outboard motor and paddles for near
approach. The plan was for us to
establish a post overlooking a near-by aerodrome. We spent an hour or two cutting our way through
the bush and being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
On returning towards the sea we missed the promontory and hit the beach,
thinking that we were unobserved but being fairly quickly disillusioned by some
loud shouts followed by automatic fire.
Being only armed with a revolver each we beat it hot-foot towards the
promontory where our landing party were already paddling furiously away from
the shore. We plunged in after them and
luckily escaped without casualties.
Shooting at night, when one cannot see the sights, is almost always too
high, as we learnt in training. A
tropical storm then burst on us, our walkie-talkies had been under water and
would not work, an infra red gadget which was supposed to show our position to
the submarine failed to work. Two hours
later the submarine accidentally ran us down or we should have been paddling
around still. That put an end to the
operation and when the submarine completed its own operation, with the sinking
of a couple of coasters, we returned to Colombo
The
next operation consisted of myself and three Chinese being successfully landed
from the British submarine ‘Torbay ’
in a mangrove swamp on the East coast of Sumatra ,
facing Malaya across the
Straits of Malacca.
 |
Ref Getty Images
HMS Torbay departed Trincomalee on the
5th August 1945 for this mission.
.
We
managed to stay there until the war finished, collecting information from the
local people. Sumatra
is more than 1000
miles long and 163,000 square miles in
area. We found out later there were
70,000 Jap troops in the country, many based in strategic centres and the
remainder spread very thinly over the remaining area. When Japan Sumatra
where the POW had just completed laying a railroad across the country under the
usual grim conditions. It took us nearly
two days by boat, to arrive at the Jap garrison situated on the banks of the
large river.
Hank Neumann’s book, 'The Sumatra Railway' is the definitive account
of life there, originally in Dutch, which was extensively researched from the
Dutch archives when they became available.
He and Ernest Lodge corresponded regularly once he had found Ernest’s
details in the archives including all the messages that he sent and received
from HQ in Colombo
It
was night when I strolled into the Jap officers’ mess, in jungle green with a
carbine over my shoulder.
It was a Jap Guards Regt. and they were all smartly dressed. Fortunately they knew the war was over and I was driven out to the POW camp some two miles away, being the first Allied officer that they had seen.
In a book, 'It Seems like Yesterday', by Jack Saunders who was a POW who worked on the Sumatran Railway describes his arrival as follows - 'A few days after we had been given the good news of the end of the war, A small party of commandos arrived at the camp headed by Major Lodge. He looked just like one of the desperados one sees on the films. He was a very thin man dressed in a dark shirt and shorts with a civilian cap set at a jaunty angle on his head. He had very slim features, a sharp prominent nose (a Lodge trait) and a dark moustache. He had a wide belt round his waist holding a revolver and plenty of ammunition.'
'He told us that they had landed on the island by submarine some weeks before the Japanese surrendered and had watched us working. He was absolutely horrified at the state we were in and also the conditions under which we were living. He told us that Lady Mountbatten would be paying us a visit very soon.'
Interestingly the author Jack Saunders lived in or near Oulton Broad and before he died, somehow met Ernest Lodge's sister, my mother, who also lived there. So he was able to recount his experiences to her and thus she found out about his book.
Many people know only of the Burma-Siam railway but the suffering on the Pakan Baroe railway was of a similar order. Not being the subject of a film and also in a former Dutch possession, the horror of this enterprise is little known not least as the definitive book on the subject by Hank Neumann was in Dutch: though there is an English translation. Sumatra was part of the Dutch East Indies at the time and is now a principal part of the 2000 mile long string of islands that make up Indonesia.
Another book where Major Lodge is mentioned with excerpts online is -
The Sumatran Railroad: Final Destination Pakan Baroe. 1943-1945
A book by H Hovinga - LINK
Medan Sumatra . It had three Brigades, each having one
British Division and two Indian Battalions.
One brigade stayed in Medan Padang Palembang Medan Hawaii US Japan island of Bangka
It was a Jap Guards Regt. and they were all smartly dressed. Fortunately they knew the war was over and I was driven out to the POW camp some two miles away, being the first Allied officer that they had seen.
In a book, 'It Seems like Yesterday', by Jack Saunders who was a POW who worked on the Sumatran Railway describes his arrival as follows - 'A few days after we had been given the good news of the end of the war, A small party of commandos arrived at the camp headed by Major Lodge. He looked just like one of the desperados one sees on the films. He was a very thin man dressed in a dark shirt and shorts with a civilian cap set at a jaunty angle on his head. He had very slim features, a sharp prominent nose (a Lodge trait) and a dark moustache. He had a wide belt round his waist holding a revolver and plenty of ammunition.'
'He told us that they had landed on the island by submarine some weeks before the Japanese surrendered and had watched us working. He was absolutely horrified at the state we were in and also the conditions under which we were living. He told us that Lady Mountbatten would be paying us a visit very soon.'
Interestingly the author Jack Saunders lived in or near Oulton Broad and before he died, somehow met Ernest Lodge's sister, my mother, who also lived there. So he was able to recount his experiences to her and thus she found out about his book.
Many people know only of the Burma-Siam railway but the suffering on the Pakan Baroe railway was of a similar order. Not being the subject of a film and also in a former Dutch possession, the horror of this enterprise is little known not least as the definitive book on the subject by Hank Neumann was in Dutch: though there is an English translation. Sumatra was part of the Dutch East Indies at the time and is now a principal part of the 2000 mile long string of islands that make up Indonesia.
Another book where Major Lodge is mentioned with excerpts online is -
The Sumatran Railroad: Final Destination Pakan Baroe. 1943-1945
A book by H Hovinga - LINK
See Page 290 Relief of Pakan Baroe railway prisoners 25th August 1945 . by Major E.F.(Oliver) Lodge
Excerpt from Page 290 -
There were some 5,500 POWs, all Dutch except
for 500 British. The last survivors of
the Prince of Wales and Repulse in this camp had died before I arrived. There were 40 Dutch doctors there and only
one British with no medicines, who told me that the men were dying at a rate of
about 10 per day. First priority was to
draw up a list of medicines, top of the list being Emetin for Amoebic
Dysentery, which I sent off at once on my W/T set to Colombo. About 36 hours later Liberators were dropping
containers over the camp. A few more
days later more Allied back-up personnel arrived to take care of the POWs and my
unit ordered me back to Excerpt from Page 290 -
I
had 3 British Sgt. W/T operators and a Cpl. Driver attached to me and one of my
jobs was to count the 1000 Jap troops and hand them over to the Navy. Capt Nishimura was also with me, with his own
Jap W/T team. There was some desultory
firing before we landed, from Indonesians, which soon subsided and we
disembarked on to a long narrow wooden jetty.
Whilst the Dutch troops moved inland Nishimura collected the Jap troops
which were already gathered in the area of this small port called Muntok. At the end of the jetty was a large square
platform. We sat on the rail nearby and
counted the Japs off two by two, until some 20 officers were left. Suddenly someone gave a scream in Japanese
and all the officers whipped out their swords and held them in the air. When I asked Nishimura what was going on he
told me they were saluting me, so I acknowledged same. It was right here that I thought it was about
time I had a Jap sword and said so to Nishimura. He said don’t bother with that lot I will get
you a better one when you return to Medan Medan Bangka finished. It was five weeks before I got back to Medan
An
interesting incident is what happened to my wife Mursiah who had to endure
Japanese occupation in Sumatra . Early after they surrendered I had collected
her and put her in what I considered a safe place, some 300 kilometres
south of Medan Padang Padang Banka . I told Nishimura to see Col. Jojima and
arrange to bring her down to Medan Bangka ,
Nishimura came to me with a grin with a Jap W/T signal in his hand to inform me
that she was now safe in Medan Medan 150 miles
just to fetch her out. Ineffective
resistance was squashed without any casualties and the Jap convoy under Major
Omura, brought Mursiah and daughter Yusni safely back on the two day
journey to Medan
During the occupation his wife Mursiah had to survive under the Japanese.
They had met when Ernest was at a rubber estate in Panigoran. Pani means water in Batak and Goran means
mountain.
She says she wept frequently as she
did not know where Ernest was and no one could tell her. A friend suggested that she should see an old
German woman who was a bit of a fortune teller. This woman told her not to
worry as he was all right but not on the land.
‘Where is he then?’ In a
submarine between Malacca and Singapore
Under the Japanese Mursiah lived in
her kampong but had to live by her wits to survive. Amongst other things she had a bicycle and used to smuggle rice in
the tubes to sell in the town.
One of her three Kampong houses.
Mursiah was eventually put in a
concentration camp with other European ladies because she said that she was a
British citizen being married to one. If
she had said she was Indonesian she would have been freed but her pride in her
husband would not allow her to do this and the conviction that he would
eventually come for her. She could cope
with the hard work of planting rice and chores that had to be done there but
may of the European women broke down under the strain. She was sympathetic towards them as most of
them were not used to hard work and were in dire straits. Many of them smoked and as cigarettes were in
limited supply, these women used to pick up the discarded Jap soldiers’
butts.
At the end of the war the
Indonesians took Mursiah and Yusni and put them into a house that had been owned
by a Dutch planter, with several other women.
They were pretty antagonistic and accused her of being a British spy,
asking her where her husband was. It was
really house arrest and they were given no provisions. The house had no food and they had no
utensils but were eventually given a bit of blackened rice that was full of
sand. She found an old tin can and went
to the stream to get water, managing to catch some shrimps as well. With these and the rice they contrived to
separate from the sand they managed to get something to eat. Later she saw some Dayak people who had rice
growing in their forest clearing and asked if they needed help to harvest it in
exchange for some food. They did and so
they were gradually able to feed themselves although she didn’t rate the other
women much as they seemed pretty helpless. But Mursiah has always been a strong
resourceful character and survived in her life where others would have given
up.
When Ernest sent his Japs to collect
her, the news of Japanese arriving in force and asking for her filled her with
fear and trepidation and Yusni was asking if she was going to be shot. Transporting her to Medan Medan Singapore
Mrs Mursiah Lodge and Yusni much later in Malaya.
The
Jap troops and officers were fine soldiers and we would have had a tough job
retaking Sumatra from them had
there been no surrender. Amongst the other experiences I flew on their planes,
fighter bombers, with their crew, for longer forays.
I
left Ceylon Singapore
From
what I have seen myself the Japs are responsible for the deaths of thousands of
prisoners and internees, mostly through deliberate starvation and withholding
the necessary medicines. There has been
continuous cruelty and barbarous beatings of Europeans but many of the atrocity
stories are journalistic inventions.
Newspapers around here are a menace and often a great hindrance to the
occupation authorities. The native
population has suffered even worse than the whites, especially the Javanese
slave labour brought over to Sumatra
for constructing roads and railways.
They seem to have brought over mostly youngsters of 16 or 17. At a generous estimate only 50% have been
able to live through their slavery and those who are left are skeletons. They are left dying all over the place as
they wander around looking for food.
Estate coolies have done pretty well as each estate had to fell a
certain area of rubber to plant paddy.
The estates themselves are not looking too bad and the trees should
simply pour rubber after their long rest.
Engines have been removed from most of the factories but it should be
easy to replace them. I guess I shall
stay on here when my job in the army is finished. It was quite a pleasure for me to go around
my former haunts and to meet in the camps a lot of my former friends.
During
the last seven months whilst I have been in Sumatra I have only received two
batches of mail from England, the first one containing letters and the second
one containing one letter. Even allowing
for the fact that I have been moving around a lot this shows how bum the army
postal system is. I have got to the
stage where I never want to see a soldier again. You see them at their worst in a conquered
country where what is commonly known as thieving goes under the name of
looting, and on no mean scale.
This
country is in a hell of a mess. When the
Japs surrendered, the first reaction was one of rejoicing and a desire for the
Dutch to come back. Then those types who
had been heartily sick of co-operating with the Japs realised that if the Dutch
did come back they were doomed, so they started intensive propaganda for
independence. They found all the support
that they needed in various youth groups trained by the Japs and they all
smacked their lips at the prospect of unlicensed lawlessness and loot. As no troops arrived, either British or
Dutch, they began to get cracking and the movement grew like a mushroom. By the time British troops arrived they were
real cocky and had managed to get some arms.
They paraded through the streets of Medan Medan Medan England America
I
have a lot to do with the Japs since they packed in and was in fact one of the
first allied officers to contact them.
In Sumatra they behaved extraordinarily
well and the more I have seen of them the more I have liked them. They have wonderful discipline, are always
willing to do the lousiest jobs, and are afraid of nothing. They have a fine physique, are good soldiers
and altogether a body of men that commands respect. I have travelled with them as a bodyguard to
various parts of the country and in fact one was knifed to death by a bunch of
Indonesians whilst guarding the house in which I was living. He kept on firing until he died with most of
his stomach out.
The
mass of Indonesians here are heartily fed up of the whole show and would like
some European or American influence back.
However, they are entirely intimidated by the extremists, who have
nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Since the Jap lesson at Tebing Tinggi the country has been fairly quiet
but in the last six months the Indonesians have certainly made monkeys out of
us and gullible American public opinion.
28 March 1946 Letter to brother Ron in Hawaii
Here is complete and utter chaos. The French Revolution has nothing on this. Apart from now commonplace murder, loot and butchery, which we have come to look upon as normal conditions, there has lately been a wholesale massacre of royal families in the northern province of Sumatra known as Atjeh. (Aceh). The local aristocracy - known as 'Hoeloebalangs' - have been paraded in front of the mob, insulted and exterminated, he process being carried out to the last woman and child.. In some families this entailed fifty deaths. British troops only occupy three towns in the whole of Sumatra - Medan, Padang and Palembang. - and are not strong enough to maintain law and order in those very small territories. Outside of these towns is unbridled anarchy and terrorism. Originally there was some semblance of freedom of movement, but former leaders, without any force of law to back them, have either been murdered or replaced. Now the criminal class has muscled to the top and whilst making fools of the world outside carries out heavy programmes of murder, loot and thuggery. Nobody's life is worth a button. The Japs had introduced a large scale planting of rice to ensure that Sumatra should be self supporting. Most of this has already been stolen in the fields by bands of starving coolies brought their present condition by the complete breakdown in the economic life of this country under this rule of cut-throats. There is horrible starvation for hundreds of thousands in the near future. As always the wretched peasant classes will be the sufferers as the thugs will make sure they themselves will have plenty of food.
There are now still more than forty thousand fully armed Japs in Sumatra, having been kept for so long to deal with any large scale uprisings in the interior. They have done quite a good job since the surrender and have shown themselves capable of dealing in a sort time with situations which leave the British administration baffled. The country under their control was incomparably better than it is at the present moment. They were pretty rough and cruel but believe me there was law and order. Having seen what has developed since the peace, the people of this country would be only too pleased to have the Japanese back. By the people I mean the peasant classes, on whom all the suffering falls.
Here is complete and utter chaos. The French Revolution has nothing on this. Apart from now commonplace murder, loot and butchery, which we have come to look upon as normal conditions, there has lately been a wholesale massacre of royal families in the northern province of Sumatra known as Atjeh. (Aceh). The local aristocracy - known as 'Hoeloebalangs' - have been paraded in front of the mob, insulted and exterminated, he process being carried out to the last woman and child.. In some families this entailed fifty deaths. British troops only occupy three towns in the whole of Sumatra - Medan, Padang and Palembang. - and are not strong enough to maintain law and order in those very small territories. Outside of these towns is unbridled anarchy and terrorism. Originally there was some semblance of freedom of movement, but former leaders, without any force of law to back them, have either been murdered or replaced. Now the criminal class has muscled to the top and whilst making fools of the world outside carries out heavy programmes of murder, loot and thuggery. Nobody's life is worth a button. The Japs had introduced a large scale planting of rice to ensure that Sumatra should be self supporting. Most of this has already been stolen in the fields by bands of starving coolies brought their present condition by the complete breakdown in the economic life of this country under this rule of cut-throats. There is horrible starvation for hundreds of thousands in the near future. As always the wretched peasant classes will be the sufferers as the thugs will make sure they themselves will have plenty of food.
There are now still more than forty thousand fully armed Japs in Sumatra, having been kept for so long to deal with any large scale uprisings in the interior. They have done quite a good job since the surrender and have shown themselves capable of dealing in a sort time with situations which leave the British administration baffled. The country under their control was incomparably better than it is at the present moment. They were pretty rough and cruel but believe me there was law and order. Having seen what has developed since the peace, the people of this country would be only too pleased to have the Japanese back. By the people I mean the peasant classes, on whom all the suffering falls.
As
I am still of use here I am putting off my demobilisation for the time
being. My old firm have offered me a
manager’s job either in Malaya or Sumatra
so I suppose I shall end up planting again sometime.
Unfortunately the only information of these exploits are his words in the few bits of correspondence remaining, limited by reason of security at the time. He wrote extensively to his brother, the Headmaster, who being more interested in the stamps only kept the envelopes, so I got no information there!
Subsequent to the above, he eventually took the family to live at Cheroh Estate in Raub, Pahang, Malaya as manager of rubber and palm oil plantations there. There are more tales to tell of an interesting life there and surviving the Malayan Insurgency if someone else could tell them. His daughter Yusni could write a wonderful book of her life as a child under the Japanese occupation in Sumatra and of Cheroh Estate in very trying times if she put her mind to it. Finally he and his wife retired to Penang. Both lived a long, full, and eventful life and were kind and generous to a fault. So many enjoyed their benevolence and support and owe them a very great debt of gratitude.
There are more related posts listed below that are of his life as well as other bits of the family, such as his brother Ronald Harry Lodge who emigrated when young to Canada and finally ended up in Oahu, Hawaii, where he witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbour. During their lifetime it was an era of dangerous turmoil and fascinating events that involved many ordinary people surviving in exceptional circumstances. If only it were not too late to discover more as so much information died with them.
For those interested in the outcome of the East Sumatran revolution, which lasted one way or another until 1950, a readable potted history is here - Wikipedia
On YouTube there is a good video about the Sumatran Pekanbaru Death Railway - LINK with other related works listed on the researcher Jamie Farrel's website ( pekanbarudeathrailway.com/) - OTHER WORKS
Some other posts on this blog specifically related to Ernest Fisher Lodge -
SURVIVING THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN AUSTRALIA
FROM TOBRUK TO CHIETI TO SKELMANTHORPE
Unfortunately the only information of these exploits are his words in the few bits of correspondence remaining, limited by reason of security at the time. He wrote extensively to his brother, the Headmaster, who being more interested in the stamps only kept the envelopes, so I got no information there!
Subsequent to the above, he eventually took the family to live at Cheroh Estate in Raub, Pahang, Malaya as manager of rubber and palm oil plantations there. There are more tales to tell of an interesting life there and surviving the Malayan Insurgency if someone else could tell them. His daughter Yusni could write a wonderful book of her life as a child under the Japanese occupation in Sumatra and of Cheroh Estate in very trying times if she put her mind to it. Finally he and his wife retired to Penang. Both lived a long, full, and eventful life and were kind and generous to a fault. So many enjoyed their benevolence and support and owe them a very great debt of gratitude.
Incidentally, Yusni settled in Wales.
There are more related posts listed below that are of his life as well as other bits of the family, such as his brother Ronald Harry Lodge who emigrated when young to Canada and finally ended up in Oahu, Hawaii, where he witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbour. During their lifetime it was an era of dangerous turmoil and fascinating events that involved many ordinary people surviving in exceptional circumstances. If only it were not too late to discover more as so much information died with them.
For those interested in the outcome of the East Sumatran revolution, which lasted one way or another until 1950, a readable potted history is here - Wikipedia
On YouTube there is a good video about the Sumatran Pekanbaru Death Railway - LINK with other related works listed on the researcher Jamie Farrel's website ( pekanbarudeathrailway.com/) - OTHER WORKS
Copyright – David Swanbury
Some other posts on this blog specifically related to Ernest Fisher Lodge -
SURVIVING THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN AUSTRALIA
FROM TOBRUK TO CHIETI TO SKELMANTHORPE
Indirectly family related -
