thereupon arranged a shift system so that the work fell more fairly on all the Brothers .
At ten am all the Brothers assembled for a cup of vegetable soup . They grew long beans , eggplant , spinach and a very nutritious plant , rich in iron , caUed kangkong . This they grew in a smaU stream that ran through their garden and they gathered it every day . They also grew maize and the sweet potato , which would only produce leaves . After the bowl of soup the sun was weUup and the Brothers rested .
After their siesta the Brothers returned to their vegetable plots . However , some of them who were stronger than the rest betook themselves to cutting down trees and clearing the virgin jungle . Brother lgnatius ( Principal of SJI 1951-1956 ) was among these .
Evening prayers were at six pm . Dinner followed . All too often it consisted of porridge and vegetables , but the Brothers had had the foresight to lay in stocks of tinned food in the prewar years and they carefully rationed their diminishing stocks . After dinner they sat around a fire before retiring for the night .
It cannot have been lost upon the Brothers that in their utterly rudimentary life , stripped of practically every comfort that modern civilisation affords , they were re-enacting the centuries-old routines of Ca tholicmonasticism . Just as in the Dark Ages the monks of Europe had maintained the light of learning and of faith , so , in their jungle setting , they were preserving the same treasure in a new Dark Age . If this was the case , they were also quickly reminded of another featureoflifein those days , the daily proximity of death .
Of the 3000 or so men , women and children who were settled atBahau , abou t halfdied , eitherof malaria , or starva tion , or both . Nearly all the Brothers had malaria , it came and went with the passing days . nley had quinine , at first in liquid , later in capsule form . Yet the sound that became most sadly familiar in that desolate clearing was the sound of the bell tolling for the latest funeral .
Nor were the Brothers themselves immune . Brother Kieran Edward who used to teach in the Anderson building , was struck down with cerebral malaria . He had been a teacher noted for his strict discipline and for his purity of character . He was still in his thirties . The gravity of his illness quickly made it imperative that he should be taken to the hospital at Seremban , which was sixty-two kilometres away . One evening , the Brothers decided that their only chance of saving their sick comrade was to take him to the station at once . So , through the thick darkness of the jungle night , the little stretcher party made its way down the winding jungle track to the town . Sick with apprehension , they stumbled into the station yard and into the van attached to the train . There they kept vigil while the train made its desultory way through the Malayan night . The next day Brother Kieran died peacefully . He was buried at Seremban . Brother Christian Lane died in the same year , and soon after the good Bishop Devals died also . He had cut himself while working in his garden and he contracted bloodpoisoning , but he was , in any case , worn out by his long endeavours in the care of his flock .
There were even some young people who went to Bahau for the sake of the adventure . Among these were two sixteen-year-old boys , Chen Si Kok and his friend , Edmund Tay . The former was destined to give his life to teaching at SJIand the latter to the University of Singapore , for as many years . There he became the Dean of the Faculty of Dentistry . In 1943 they went to spy out the land for friends in Singapore but they stayed in Bahau until the end of the war . They were both Old Boys of St Anthony ' s Boys ' School ,
Meanwhile , even in the jungle the Brothers did not neglect their vocation to teach . Two Brothers , two sisters and two other teachers organised a little school for the children in the Bahau community . Patrick Mowe recalls :
' I must have been five or six years old when 1 was there . There was no formal schooling - Iwas too young - but 1 remember the Brothers wore their white robes in the jungle . This must have been only on Sundays , 1suspect , when we went to Mass .
' I don ' t remember too clearly the classes the Brothers must have conducted because I was too young to attend them , but I do remember Brother Christopher .
' T do remember the daily funerals - they were definitely a daily affair-at leastonea day , and the Evening Prayers . They were held regularly every evening , I think because people were feeling so depressed !' Sick and undernourished , the community struggled on until they learned , from a clandestine radio hidden in the jungle , about the end of hostilities . This they knew before their Japanese captors . As the Japanese withdrew , aircraft based in Sri Lanka made three food drops : the first one eight kilometres away , the second fifteen kilometres away and the third one just 500 metres from the colony . Then a doctor parachuted in too . Every day this English doctor treated the patients in the morning and in the afternoons he went to the nearby towns to collect from the Japanese stores such things as trousers , shirts , shoes , toothpaste , toothbrushes , milk , cigarettes and so on for the people in the colony . Finally , less than three or four months after the end of the war , the Brothers returned to Singapore the way they had come . This time they had to spend all night on the platform at Gemas , but they did not care : their ordeal was over and now they were eager to return to their real work .
Sf ] in the War 39