Of course, everything was done by the Chiefs of Staff to keep this sombre knowledge from the ordinary soldiers and civilians. The combined military Headquarters was perched on the slopes of a volcano called, Lawrence said, with prophetic aptness, Tangkubuhanprauw ‘the-Ship-turned-upside-down’, for what else he asked could have been a more graphic image of the fate in store for those societies caught in that typhoon of war in the East? All round the Headquarters and to some extent within it, life was going on with an easy abandon almost obscene to one who had come from so austere a front as the Libyan desert. The hotels, restaurants, dance-halls and night clubs were always crowded with laughing, noisy, over-fed people. He had never seen a population so large and fat as were the Europeans in that island. What made their appearance all the more marked almost to the point of caricature were the millions of small, delicately-made, soft-spoken, ascetic-looking native peoples who surrounded them.
There was no shortage of food or drink of any kind and at his hotel the first morning after a gloomy interview with a realistic though undismayed Commander-in-Chief, he was amazed at the numbers of men in uniform who started their day with a fiery Bols followed by iced lagers. He would watch them eat a breakfast of several kinds of smoked meats, eggs, several sorts of cheeses and breads and a pot of coffee, believing they would not eat again until nightfall. But at eleven o’clock in the morning, constantly wiping the sweat like water from their faces, they would reappear for more iced beer and large plates full of thick soup of pork and beans. At about two in the afternoon, preceded by more Bols, they would have a meal which was a banquet by peacetime European standards; at sunset they had more Bols, crackling Kroepoek and other oil-fried snacks, followed by another banquet, served again by spare, gentle and grave Javanese waiters. The strain put on their bodies by sheer excess of food and drink in a tropical climate was so obvious to Lawrence that he wondered how they would ever find strength and breath enough to march far against so spartan and agile an enemy as the Japanese.
And as he wondered he realized with dismay the meaning of such abnormal eating and drinking. These people were afraid. He was in the midst of a community caught up in a fear so terrible and deep that they could not even acknowledge its existence. These huge men and their women were trying to eat away their fear. All that eating was the grown-up equivalent of the child frightened in the dark of things without shape or name turning again and again to its mother’s breast though it had long since fed enough. It was no use a resolute military command attempting to keep the population reassured by putting on a brave face, publishing optimistic communiqués and encouraging energetic preparations for defence. All the reticence of an Antarctic night cannot conceal the whispering of the ice of a fear that is encroaching and real. In the core of their being this community already knew the truth, and the knowledge was spreading fast through nerves and tissues: a great reckoning was near and a whole epoch and Empire were about to crumble and fall. Yet as they ate and drank hugely they sang over and over again their most popular ditty of the moment: ‘We zyn niet bang’ (we are not afraid). They were protesting too much just as they ate and drank too much. They were, though they may not have known it, more afraid than they had ever been before. All else was façade and camouflage of the soul hiding from the consequences of an excess banished from recognition far too long. Lawrence’s suspicion of what the moment of truth would do to them moved him deeply and left him without any desire to condemn or judge.
For instance once an air-raid alarm caught him on a main street. A large motor-car suddenly drew up beside him. It was driven by a huge civilian and held four, bright full-bosomed, plump young women, laughing much too loudly and brightly.
‘Jump in and come and watch the bombing, we’ll get a good view of it from that hill there!’
The driver’s invitation was uttered in the bluff, faintly arrogant tone that prosperous Europeans in that part of the world tended to use to foreigners. More, he spoke as if he were conferring a favour on Lawrence and offering him a seat in the front row of the stalls on the first night of some new play. Lawrence declined politely, somewhat shocked by so unreal an approach to war.
As he walked on one of the girls exclaimed loudly behind him: ‘Oh, let the poor frightened Englishman alone! He’s probably not yet got over his flight from Singapore and would prefer a nice safe little shelter.’
She immediately followed up the remark by starting the inevitable refrain: ‘Maar wy, we zyn niet Bang.’ The rest joined in and, singing, they vanished from his life.
Yet Lawrence could assure us that, insulting as the remark was intended to be, it failed to annoy him because he was by then convinced that the woman in the classic manner of the unaware was merely attributing to him the fear that she could not face in herself. Even so he himself did not realize fully how wide, deep and real this fear was until the morning after Wavell and his entire Headquarters had been evacuated swiftly and in great secrecy at dead of night.
The evening before the evacuation his Commander-in-Chief had sent for him. He was told that there was no doubt that the Japanese were about to land on the island. The Dutch and Allied warships and the Dutch aircraft in particular had fought gallantly to hold off invasion but had been so destroyed or damaged by vastly superior forces that they were now immobilized. He wished he could assure Lawrence that the land forces would do as well; but he feared resistance on the ground would be slight and easily overcome. Yet it was of the utmost importance that resistance should go on for as long as possible. Every day gained in delaying the Japanese was precious. Even when organized resistance ceased he was hoping that it would be possible to carry on a protracted guerrilla war against the Japanese. That was where Lawrence came in. He would not give Lawrence orders but merely tell him about the situation and then he could decide for himself – because as Lawrence soon would see it was a pretty grim proposition. He, the Commander-in-Chief, needed an officer who would take command of a group of volunteers from all units and nationalities on the island. Once the main battle was joined (as it still just might be) between the defenders and the Japanese invaders, he wanted this particular unit to slip around the flank of the enemy and harass its lines of communications from the dense jungle which bordered most roads in the island. If there should be no main battle and only a token resistance – and this had to be considered as a grave possibility – then it would be more important than ever that such a special force remained in being and continued activities from some jungle hide-out. Once the Commander-in-Chief was back in India he would do his utmost to get supplies by air and submarine to this guerrilla force; but he doubted if there would be much that he could do for a long time to come. Therefore the force would have to live off the country and rely on its own initiative and the wits of its commander to survive. It would be unfair to pretend that its chances of survival would be great against so ruthless an enemy. However, in such jungle-country it might just be possible. All he could say for certain was that if it succeeded in persuading the Japanese that there were sizeable forces still holding out in the depths of the jungle and so prevented them from diverting troops to reinforce their onslaught elsewhere, it would be invaluable to the wider plan of the Allies. Throughout the Commander-in-Chief took Lawrence into his confidence in the most complete and imaginative way to make certain that his officer could believe, as he did, that what he asked was truly necessary.