His face is disarming. He has the weathered look of a born adventurer; of one who has spent much of his life outdoors. Rugged and craggy as he looks, he still does not allow the 90-odd years to draw a map of wrinkles on his face. Yes, the bulky pair of hearing aids are a giveaway but ignore them, and you can well imagine him atop a mountain with a look that translates as, 'Hmm, another summit. Bring on the next'.
In Sir Roger Moon's case though, it was not mountains he conquered but war that he fought – not as a soldier but as a POW. In fact, he had many soldiers in his family. "My wife's grandfather was a very famous Australian general, Sir William Throsby Bridges, the founder of the Duntroon military college.
On the other side of the family, my mother's first cousin was General Sir Walter Congreve VC, and his son was also a VC. My little brother was an officer." Sir Roger may not have been a career soldier but he volunteered during the Second World War. He was a Sapper, which led to his travails during the war.
When Sir Roger set out on a series of journeys around the world, he expected glamour, excitement, and perhaps a leisurely life. He simply didn't bargain for disaster, spine-tingling terror and the kind of mind-numbing confinement that confronted him at nearly every turn in the Far East.
From the beginning of a rather sedate childhood in Yorkshire, England, Sir Roger had his eyes set on treasures across the seas. "There were seven boys among the family of nine from my mother's side, and six of them sailed the seas and went off to America, China... they all wanted to go abroad. I went to Kenya!" he says, relaxing in his son-in-law's villa in the Arabian Ranches in Dubai.
1933: Kenya
"I went to Kenya in 1933 to be a coffee planter," he reflects. "Kenya in those days was a lovely wild place. You could see wild animals from the verandah of your house in the mornings." Life was good in the coffee plantations, but Sir Roger didn't find it exciting enough. "I spent about three good years in Kenya and then I went back to England for a while," he says.
1936: England
With the boom in trading across the world, he decided to try his hand at the stock exchange. "I spent some time at the Liverpool stock exchange, which was exciting but a bit shaky because of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the blue chip companies like Dunlop not doing so well. I decided that the stock exchange was not for me and took off to work in Malaya for the company whose stocks I used to trade in."
But even during the relatively sedate period, Sir Roger managed to find some excitement. "The interesting part while I was in England was that I took part in the Monte Carlo Rally and met Amy Johnson, the first person to fly solo from England to Australia in 1930. She was stranded on the roadside as she had a puncture and didn't know how to change the tyre. We helped her and in the bargain lost a few points in the rally," he says chuckling at the memory.
1939: Malaya
"When I got to Malaya, as Malaysia was then called, I joined the Dunlop Plantations. So I was on a rubber estate soon after I got there in June 1939."
But this was no idyllic existence like his Kenyan sojourn. In a few months, the rumble of the Second World War reached this remote place when Japan got involved. "As soon as the war started, the planters wanted to get back to the UK to join up," he explains. "But we were not allowed to and that was very tiresome."
Thwarted patriotic emotions found expression in volunteer forces that were formed across the many Straits Settlements that Malaysia was a part of. "All the settlements such as Singapore, Malacca, Penang and Province Wellesley had their own volunteer forces.
I was in Tuhog, because Dunlop had a set-up there. There was the Tuhog Volunteer Engineers there and after being there for a year, you had to join them more or less. I didn't join them because I preferred to go to Singapore and fly."
Sir Roger pauses at this point to reflect on the passage of time. "Getting on 70 years now, eh!" he laughs. It is a short burst of laughter, almost a guffaw. You can see him going back in years, and almost picture him as a young man thirsting for adventure.
"In December 1941, when the Japanese invasion was on I was conscripted to be a volunteer," he continues. "Each state had their own corps. Johor, one of the Straits Settlements, had one called the Johor Corps.
We trained a day every week for 36 weeks in a year. "As soon as there were signs of the war breaking out, I was called up and attached to the 18th Australian division which was positioned in Malaya. Once the war started, we were quartered down at Johor Baru, the capital of Johor, in southern Malaysia.
It is within walking distance of Singapore, and we prepared ditches for demolition mines in case the Japanese came down there." And so it was that the misfortune that would dog him till the end of the war began. "Unfortunately I got the worst attack of malaria," he says ruefully.
"I was in a hospital and all I heard was martial music, the guns and the army traffic." Once out of bed, Sir Roger strode straight into the thick of the action. "On the night of January 7, 1942, we were called into action because the Japanese were landing at Kenji and we spent about a day there."
Even under such circumstances, Sir Roger remained the sociable person he is. His weather-beaten face crinkles up in pleasure as he recalls, "The officer in command turned out to be my wife's uncle. He was commanding the 37th Infantry brigade.
"At the end of seven days, it was the end of our hopes of success in Singapore," he rumbles. "Then on February 15, 1942, the surrender took place. The next day we had to march out to Changi. It was pretty awful, dead bodies lying all over the place. And that was the start of our captivity."
The travails were on their way. "The captors wanted us to sign parole cards saying we wouldn't escape.
"All the prisoners were rounded up and put in one barrack block. I was there for four days with no food or water. When we wanted water, we stole it from a lavatory in the attic!"
Yet, there were moments of black humour under the circumstances. "Since all the wounded from the other hospitals had been ordered up there, and after holding out for four days, one officer gave in and we had to sign our parole cards.
Which was quite funny in its way, because some signed as Adolf Hitler, Mussolini ... "I signed my name as Edgar Wallace (the popular thriller writer of the period). Yes, I was a big fan of his books! Today, it makes fascinating, and hilarious reading. At the time, the POWs just wanted to get home in
one piece.
1942: Singapore
"After we signed the parole cards we were taken to some working camps in Singapore and my first camp was in a quarry where I was supposed to load trucks with rubble."
1942: Siam (Thailand)
In October, the camps were set up in Siam (Thailand) and "we were taken there from Singapore. It took us four days before we got to Thailand. And that was the start of all our troubles."
What remains in his memory of the time is his clothes, or rather the lack thereof. "By that time all the clothing I had left was a G-string. That's the war," he says dryly.
And hard unrelenting work. "We started off on a top of a cliff, breaking very very rough stones and rocks," he says.
"We were grouped into teams of four and had to break the rocks with crowbars and hammers. The temperature was sometimes 135 degrees and we had to start at dawn and only allowed to stop at dusk with a five-minute break in between."
Then came his second tryst with malaria. But that certainly did not get him any rest. "I got a relapse of malaria and I couldn't make it to roll call the next day," says Sir Roger. "The guy who slept next to me, came back after roll call and told me 'You better come.' So I went out to work on that day with a hell of a temperature." But that was not the end of it. "I contracted malaria 17 times, jaundice, dysentery and beriberi," he says simply.
Beriberi caused gross swelling of the limbs and stomach, making walking in itself very difficult, let alone having to get out and work. Cuts and wounds on the legs and feet became infected due to the absence of antiseptics, disinfectants and bandages. Many lesions soon turned into tropical ulcers which often as not became gangrenous. Hundreds of men had limbs amputated as a last resort.
But there was more to follow. "After that episode, we were taken to Hintok, a place built by Australians," says Sir Roger. The railway was being built at the time, and POWs were conscripted to work on it.
Death was in the air and not only due to the war. "A lot of people, including some of my friends, died because of cholera which was dreadful," says Sir Roger.
When they were bereft of everything, save perhaps a loin cloth or a tattered pair of shorts, the only thing the men could offer each other was a helping hand and encouragement to battle on towards better times.
"After the railway was built we were taken up to a point that was five miles short of Hellfire Pass which was the boundary between Burma and Siam," he says. And we were cutting wood there for the engines. It was very difficult." An understatement typical of Sir Roger.
Thus it went till the end of the war. "After the war, we were sent to Rangoon (the capital of Burma). And then on to England. "I went back to Malaysia after some time when things had settled down. I was there till 1967."
After going through such travails, one would assume that he would have preferred to stay at home and enjoy the sunset from the porch. But not Sir Roger. The travel bug continued to bite him and he travelled and still does to all the places where his daughter and son-in-law stay in.
"I first visited Dubai in 1996 when the Burj was just rising up from the sea. My son-in-law lives here and I visit them. He was in Singapore earlier, then he moved to Korea, and then to Hong Kong. Finally he moved to Dubai 12 years ago. So I am very lucky I can visit them in all these places."
A remarkable statement considering the relentless misfortune that stuck to him like an insatiable leech. Though he does not have any tales of daring escapes or bizarre attempts at adventure to tell, his narration (of his life's journey) is delivered in a simple, no-frills manner. The battles, usually waged alone and unloved yet with an indefatigable, inspirational humour did nothing to break his spirit.
"I was terribly lucky, too. Even though I had malaria and ulcers and a lot of other problems that almost rendered me immobile, I survived. "It was one tough period of slogging up to the end of the war." Heroes come in different guises.
Sir Roger is one of them. Shiva Kumar Thekkepat is feature
writer, Friday
Standing tall... "I contracted malaria 17 times, jaundice, dysentery and beriberi," says Sir Roger Moon.
