JPFreek - Index

JPFreek - Spring 2008 - Index

the first
overland
Singapore To England
50th year
anniversary
Text synopsis by Roy Follows, Author
What about overland?’ I quipped, chewing on a wad of salted fish,
running the spoon around my mess tin, chasing the last few grains of
rice. The minute Noel looked up, I knew he was hooked on the idea of
driving home. ‘
This chance remark made in a jungle den, deep in the heart of
Malaya, is the catalyst to the first overland journey from Singapore to
England
At the time, Roy Follows and his firm friend Noel Dudgeon were
Colonial Police officers in Malaya, and engrossed in a lethal battle
fighting Chinese Communists, in the little-known war of the Malay
Emergency.
One year later, in February 1958, they’d purchased an ex-army
Willys MB Jeep from a scrap yard and were heading north from
Singapore to the Communist infested Thai Jungles; home was just
13,000 miles away.