FEB 3, 2004
Memories take flight for Changi airfield
Visiting old haunts, ex-British airmen based
here recall the turbulent 1950s and 60s - plus
Changi Village bars
By Goh Chin Lian
IT LOOKS no different from any other HDB coffee
shop now, but to former Royal Air Force (RAF)
technician Mike Smith, the Airfield Restaurant at
Changi Village was once a bar where he had spent
his 21st birthday, thousands of kilometres away
from his home in Coventry, England.
'We had a quiet meal and a drink, just eight of
us,' said the 67-year-old Briton, who was posted to
an airfield at Changi between 1956 and 1959. 'I
didn't miss home. I liked it here, the camaraderie,
the people, the variety of shops.'
He visited Changi Village last Wednesday with
more than 40 RAF veterans and their wives, on a
trip arranged by the Bristol-based Royal Air Force
This is the fourth trip to Singapore that the
association has organised since 1998 for its
members to visit old haunts and re-live their
memories. It's done once every two years.
Mr Ray Rowley, 73, part of the latest group,
recalls ferrying soldiers wounded in the Korean War
in 1950 in an ambulance from Changi to Alexandra
Hospital, after they had been airlifted here.
He said: 'It was rather frightening. Some of
them were groaning, and each time the ambulance
rocked, it upset them.'
He was also here during the Maria Hertogh riots
in December 1950. Crowds had attacked Europeans
because of a legal tug of war for the custody of a
girl between her Muslim foster mother and Dutch
He and other motor transport crewmen carried
light automatic guns when they picked up aircrew
from all over the island and took them to Changi
for flying duty.
'But we were lucky and didn't encounter any
Mr Beverley Steed, 65, was pelted with bricks
and bottles once by some people when patrolling the
streets in a Land Rover in 1964, at the time of the
Indonesia had opposed the formation of Malaysia,
which then included Singapore, and Indonesian
saboteurs had sneaked into the island.
'The curfew was on. We had to make sure all the
people were off the street. When you came, they
disappeared. When you left, they returned.'
It was especially disturbing to be on guard duty
at the Changi airfield at night, armed with just a
rifle, he recounted, as the saboteurs had planted
'I'd be standing there and I'd hear all these
Though the bombs went off, they did not hurt
anybody, he said.
Grass fires also used to break out two to three
times a day at the airfield, said Mr John Dicks,
68, a fireman from 1957 to 1958.
The fires were sometimes so big that more than
200 people had to be activated to beat them out.
They would use worn-out hoses and 'we'd be all
black when we were finished'.
On some occasions, the firemen were so bored
they got their friends to start a fire, so they
could get out for a breather, he said.
Some favourite ways the crewmen had of relaxing
was to sit at Changi Point and watch ships, hold
barbecues at Changi Beach and visit the bars at
They also used to play football at the Padang,
eat at Stamford Cafe in Bras Basah Road and enjoy
cabaret shows in Chinatown.
'We were all single, carefree and arrogant.
Sometimes we would even take taxis and refuse to
pay for them,' said Mr Dicks.
It was to keep such fond memories alive that Mr
Mike James, a former RAF Changi communications
operator, formed the association, after a visit
here in 1996.
It started with 150 members and now has 12,000
who live all over the world from Britain to New
Zealand to Saudi Arabia.
Ironically, said Mr James, not one lives in
He is disappointed that a lot of the RAF
Changi's past has disappeared. Many of the old
barracks in Changi were demolished last year, he
'We have half a brick from Billet 121,' said Mr
Dicks, the association's archivist.
He also has 3,000 pictures of the RAF Changi
days, some taken as early as 1927 when the camp was
still being built near Changi Village. The pictures
were given him by former veterans and their
The association has passed copies of some
pictures to museum officials here for their
Once, it had helped a Singaporean trace a
picture of his coffee shop in Changi Village when
it was a bar run by his grandfather.
Mr Dicks said: 'We'll eventually die, so we've
made arrangements for all the photographs and
archives to go to the Royal Air Force museum in
Britain. Hopefully they'll be around for many years
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