“YOU CAN’T DO IT!”

Greetings,

It’s been ages since I last posted. Something of import has distracted me… or rather, immersed me. I was refining my next novel, A Noble Fate, and I’m thrilled the narrative is done, with creating the needed formats and its publishing all that’s left to do.

‘You can’t do it!’

Those were the words my classroom and English teacher once uttered to me in primary school. But let’s leave that for later.

Years ago, a colleague - in knowing my zest for culture and history - posed a question: Why are my stories, factual and fictive, dormant? Unwritten, unvoiced. I had shared a morsel of a relation, throwing food over the barbed wire fence to starving prisoners at the ill-famed Changi POW camp. It was a noble act given the locals themselves were short of victuals during the Occupation.

She urged me to record these accounts on paper for our future generations. She was quite right. It’s a belief I endorse. It would immortalise the grace and courage of decent people and their acts that defied genuine peril. If the guards didn’t shoot to kill, those heroes would have suffered arrest, then beatings, torture and, in cases, capital punishment. In occupied Singapore, the latter meant beheadings with heads planted on stakes and flaunted in public.

The Kempeitai was the Imperial Japanese Army’s military police during World War II. Its role, however, stretched well beyond the conduct of their troops. They were a secret police and espionage agency too, and equal perhaps to the German Gestapo and the Wehrmacht’s Feldgendarmerie merged. A modern likeness in the UK would be the army MPs, Police Special Branch, and the MI5 and MI6 as a single bureau, acting within and outside Britain. Like the Nazis, it was a law unto itself.

But her suggestion of committing what I’d learnt to paper was, for me, an old, acrid issue. One that went to my core. Indeed, I deflected it.

Our chats fell on events such as the Fall of Singapore and Malaya and the ensuing occupation. Also, the mood Down Under, since Japanese planes had bombed Darwin, with their forces nearing Australian shores via the Coral Sea and New Guinea. At that point, US Marines itching to do their bit were amassing in the country. And seen as ‘saviours.’ With the local men fighting overseas, killed, missing-in-action, or in captivity, the women drifted to the incomers. It resulted in about 15,000 war-brides during the conflict from 1942.

My friend is a child of one such couple, a lovely woman born and raised a true-blue Aussie. In Brisbane.

In contrast, I am Singapore-bred, a Peranakan or Baba Nyonya, also known as a ‘Straits Chinese.’ We are best defined as a sub-ethnic race and culture with origins tracing back to Ming Emperor Yingzong’s daughter Princess Hang Li Po who wed Sultan Mansur Shah of Malacca. She arrived from China in the 15th century with a retinue of five hundred noble damsels and servants, settling on Bukit Cina, a hill gifted to them by the sultan. Likewise, they married Malays. Our family is further graced by a thread of Thai or Burmese. Alas, the lore does not clarify which. My father’s folks are from the Penang and Province Wellesley area in the north of Malaya; while my mother’s clan has its roots in the southern state of Johor and in Singapore. To cap it off, I have spent my entire adult life living in Australia.

Like Jane Woodley, the heroine in my East of Woodley novel, I rest comfortably in my skin as ‘a mixed bag of lollies!’ After all - with no disrespect meant - isn’t the British monarchy as richly assorted? English, Scots, German, Dane, and Hungarian blood live in them, with Russian and Greek for good measure. Such melds are fantastic. There’s hardly a family without blending. The sciences of human evolution and ethnic studies are clear.

Akin to most families in Malaya, mine had suffered under the Occupation. Each person I knew from the earlier generations had accounts to tell… but only at the rare moments they lifted their shield, when my prying worked. The elders were stolid, inclined towards hiding emotion, putting up facades to mask the worst period of their lives and avoid dredging up what they prefer to bury. Their traumas. Young children during the war, my parents have divulged little about it, too. They kept silent, simply saying the invaders were brutal.

But indeed, logging their experiences is a must.

In part, it explains my fascination with the conflict in Asia.

Despite our varied origins, my friend and I share an interest in World War II. I gathered her curiosity began when she uncovered the truth about her parentage and the absent father, a US soldier. Whereas, perhaps oddly, ‘Commando’ comics seeded mine. But while I read those through my early years at school, it was (funny for an easily distracted kid) John Vader’s ‘Spitfire’ which flung me squarely into reading. No, not Darth, but John… John Vader. A history of the illustrious British fighter plane of the Battle of Britain. That elegant, Merlin-powered perfection by Reginald Mitchell, which is revered even today eight decades after hostilities. I was around age 10. Not that I would have absorbed every detail covered in the text, but it kicked off my lifelong passion for history, and soon after, historical fiction. Before long, my imagination went riot. A desire to write sparked.

But…

‘It’ always held me back.

To explain…

My teacher gave our class a short story assignment. It had me enthused until I, having digested the task, presented my concept. Plus...... my wish to include dialogue. Mind you, as a Boy Scout and avid reader by then, I wasn’t the sort to attempt anything without pondering on it and having basic faith in myself.

Her reaction was swift and brutal. ‘NO!’ Her words hit me. ‘YOU CAN’T DO IT!’ Their tenor was cutting, such that they seared into my memory. It was also of the tone that entertained no argument.

Bang! Self-esteem and confidence sailed out the window. It was also a school environment where students didn’t question the almighty teacher. I held my tongue and hid my distress.

I’d prefer to think she hadn’t meant to be disparaging, albeit it came across that way. Perhaps she was having a bad day. Or perhaps she needed to stay within a planned teaching curriculum? Who knows? And besides, I don’t believe all educators (my mother was one) are uninspiring or inflexible.

Or maybe I was a sensitive kid. Whatever it was, those words had a lasting effect on me.

Ever since then, I wrote doubting myself, despite English being my first language. Second-guessing my writings became the norm, even for technical reports during my career. Woeful, I know.

Not that the shock extinguished my hunger to write. It suppressed it and drove my stories into hiding. Neither did it deter me from devouring books. There has been no period when I was without a ‘gem’ in my palms, except during the most-stringent phases of my military service.

Fast-forward closer to the present…

Countless dog-eared books and weary irises later, those Asian witnesses had passed onward. I’d squandered the chance to chronicle their experiences, horrid or uplifting, as seen and sensed through their eyes and hearts. Authors far more learned than I have covered the major theatres of WWII, but in contrast, little of South Asia. It isn’t a stretch to say there’s scant published about Burma or Malaya. Few speak of the Chindits. Likewise, about Force 136, inserted by Dutch submarines from Ceylon to wage a guerrilla war alongside the MPAJA (fielded mostly by Malayan communists) from the jungle. The native perspective is even less represented in writing.

This is an observation. Not a criticism.

Why are you not acting then? I hear your query.

Indeed, I was… about New Guinea.

Again, ‘it’ kept me from embracing the challenge. I had gotten used to changing the topic whenever it arose, as I did when friends championed the idea.

As outlined in a prior post, I had missed the opportunity to author the biography of an Aussie Digger who had served in New Guinea. He was someone for whom I held the utmost respect, and from whom I gained an insight into the bloody campaign. The latent opening lingered for years. Then it vanished. Frail, he wouldn’t have lasted through the interviews. Nearing the age of 100, he passed upwards to rejoin his loved ones and mates lost earlier. It is my colossal regret. A bitter lesson. Above all, it would have been a tribute to a decent gentleman. Thence, not a week lapses without my disappointment resurfacing.

‘When someone says you can’t do it, do it twice and take pictures.’ - Unknown

But after years of wavering, I am done with foiling myself and forestalling. I am cancelling out the doubt. Spurred by my idiocy, I now devote myself to writing, and I do so, loving the buzz I gain from it.

Which brings me to my point. I bare my story not to elicit sympathy, but with a hope others will learn from it. My fear is many individuals sauntering through their lives, yearning, but not embarking on their desired directions because of someone else’s negativity or cynicism. I have come to appreciate Ricky Gervais’ wisdom. He once said, ‘Remember, it’s better to create something and be criticised than to create nothing and criticise others.’ So true.

To those wishing to bring creative works to fruition, I say ditch the sceptics and shake off your doubts. Seize your chances when they present themselves. Prove them wrong!

YOU CAN DO IT!

Keep smiling,

Gabe