(Updated 1st March 2024)
If you’ve read the post where I explain why I started this site, you’ll know that I never really knew my grandparents. Three of the four had unfortunately died before I was two years old.
What I failed to say in that post, was that I didn’t really know anything about my Mum and Dad’s history either.
One of the things I did know about my Dad, was that he served his National Service in the Army, serving in Malaya.
My parents divorced in the early 90s and when my Dad passed, his meagre possessions were passed to me. They stayed in a box until recently.
When I started my journey to trace my ancestry, I had a delve through the box and found an old photograph album. On the front cover of the album is an image of Malaya,
Inside was a collection of close to 100 images from his time in Singapore and Malaya.
On one of the pages, he’d written in white pencil, ‘6 Coy RASC’. This was the start of tracing my Dad’s part in the Malayan Emergency between 1957 and 1959.
Here’s a brief synopsis of what I managed to find from that simple inscription…
At the start of his service, he was enlisted into the 6 Company Royal Army Service Corps (MT).
After basic training, he left for Her Majesty’s Naval Base Sembawang, Singapore. Once on active service, he very quickly rose to the rank of Corporal.
This surprised me, because according to the Amy website, “After 6 to 8 years, and depending on ability to lead, promotion to Corporal typically follows”. I guess during active service, the requirements are different?
In 1958, he was given the rank of Sargent (a requirement for the position) and became the regular driver for Major-General Charles L. Richardson. Director of Operations and General Officer Commanding (GOC) in Malaya. A role he continued until his demob in 1959.
Looking through his images from Malaya, he’s written a pictorial story of his enlistment from start to finish.
There are photos of him and his team in the Malayan jungle, images of them carrying out their daily duties, the squad on parade in their dress whites, and during downtime at the barracks.
There are also many images of the locals and of the villages and towns they were deployed to. A personal history lesson of day-to-day life.
Obviously, there’s much more to his story and I might go into that later. But, what’s astonishing to me, is that before I looked inside that old photo album, I had no idea what my Dad did in the Army.
Some of those many images can be seen in the gallery section of this site..
It’s worth noting, that all of the information I’ve found since I discovered the photos, was located using free resources available to anyone.
