Jardine unearths 'forgotten' war of early republic
Jardine unearths 'forgotten' war of early republic
Des Price, Contributor, des@home.se
Foreign Fields Forever
David Jardine
Fellview Publications
xxx pp
David Jardine is a well-known Jakarta expatriate who has, over
the years, written frequent letters to The Jakarta Post, more
often than not about politics. In addition, he has contributed
articles to the paper and a number of other Jakarta-based
publications, including Jakarta 24 magazine.
Jardine recently produced his first book, Foreign Fields
Forever, a short, compact history of one of Britain's forgotten
"little" wars, namely the conflict with the new Republic of
Indonesia from 1945-1946.
The catchy, alliterative title draws on a line from the famous
British poet Rupert Brooke, and refers in particular to the 1,100
or more British, Indian, Australian and other Commonwealth
servicemen and women buried at Menteng Pulo in Central Jakarta.
The conflict in question is a source of pride for Indonesians,
as their poorly armed forces took on the battle-hardened veterans
of the world's largest empire. The U.K. forces included Army,
Navy and Royal Air Force; Indonesia had none of these.
If it is a source of nationalist pride in Indonesia, this
struggle is little known among the British, and Jardine set out
to fill this gap -- in particular, he had in mind the large
expatriate community here, many of them thirsty for knowledge of
Indonesian history.
The period covered in Foreign Fields is September 1945 through
December 1946, during which an anti-colonial uprising took place.
The period was marked by much spontaneous organization in the
form of local militias, but was distinguished throughout Java and
much of Sumatra by ferocious determination on the part of the
masses.
Interestingly, the writer makes no mention of the Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI) -- was the party absent in the hour of the
nation's greatest need?
He does, however, deal with a range of issues including the
fate of the many, many thousands of POWs and other internees held
in appalling conditions in Japanese prison camps in Indonesia. It
was part of the function of the British forces to find these
unfortunates and secure them.
What he has to say here is rather disturbing, as he alleges
widespread attacks on the camps by Indonesians who also attacked
convoys of released prisoners on the roads and railways.
Jardine has devoted a chapter to the POW question and what he
calls "the delicate question of war crimes", alleging that these
were committed by all sides. Jardine's treatment of the issue
fleshes out what the famous British foreign correspondent Edward
Behr said in his Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?, part
of which is devoted to Behr's memoirs of Army service in Sumatra
at the time. Of particular interest to Indonesian readers will be
the Bekasi massacre.
Also of interest to Indonesian readers will be the question:
Who killed Brigadier Mallaby? Jardine has a special box dealing
with this, in which he quotes Indian officer Major K. Venu Gopal.
Gopal claims to have ordered his troops to fire on the crowd in
Surabaya just moments before Mallaby was killed.
What the writer is at pains to stress is that the situation
here in 1945-46 was very complex, involving four parties (five,
if you include the Indonesian Chinese): the Indonesians, the
Dutch, the British and the defeated Japanese.
And given the refusal of the Europeans to recognize the
republic, there was no easy solution. Perhaps we might have
learned a little more from the book about Indonesia's passionate
appeals to foreign opinion.
Pictures provided by the Imperial War Museum in London
illustrate Foreign Fields Forever, which was designed by
Jakarta24 magazine and published under the label of the hitherto
unknown Fellview Publications (Jardine is from Cumbria in the
north of England, and "fell" means hill in the local dialect).
The first print run of 500 has sold out, and those interested
in obtaining a copy of the book can contact the author at
edenvalley72@yahoo.co.uk.