We've tried to ensure the information displayed here is as accurate as possible. Should there be any inaccuracies, we would be grateful if you could let us know at info@ipohworld.org . All images and content are copyright.
(Please click on the thumbnail for a bigger image.)
In An Emergency - A Poem
In February 1948 the Malayan Rulers and the British Government signed a policy for the future of Malaya? in London. It was the Federation of Malaya Agreement.
It was a policy for change. One concept in the agreement set Malaya on the long and perilous road to the establishment of Malaysia. The concept was of course Independence.To the majority of Malayans the agreement held the promise of self-rule; to the Malayan Communist Party it was a threat to their future dominance. What followed became known to many as the Malaysian War of Independence?although officially it was not a war, but simply the Malayan Emergency?
In the course of that war far more civilians perished in the Communist Reign of Terror than the total fatalities sustained by the Security Forces in the field.
The Emergency was an anvil on which Malaya was hammered into a new nation ?Malaysia.
The price those men, women and children paid for freedom should not be forgotten.
Of The Communist Campaign Of Terror 1948-1960
Smokehouse on smokehouse burning bright
On plantations in the night
Slashed trees as far as the eye can see
Strategy in an Emergency.
Children calling, cries and wails
Trapped in a train blown off the rails
Families search amid debris
To rescue in an Emergency.
Buses, cars and trucks ablaze
Glowing in the smoking haze
Travellers need to pay the fee
On roads in an Emergency.
Wires are cut towards Lenggong
Ask the linesmen to go along
Night or day what e’er may be
They’d go in an Emergency.
Victims taken in the night
Others too must view the sight
Terror was to be the key
To rule in an Emergency.
We who gather here each year
Remember them within our prayer
They stood naked unlike we
Well armed in an Emergency.
TOM TURNBULL
Editor’s note: this poem was written for the occasion of the annual remembrance ceremony for all those who died in the Malayan Emergency. The ceremony takes place at Batu Gajah’s, ‘God’s Little Acre?cemetery on the second Saturday in June.