SINGAPORE ESCAPE

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23746, 18 September 1942, Page 6

SINGAPORE ESCAPE

FORMER CANTERBURY COLLEGE STUDENT LONDON. Sept. 16. News has reached London that Mr D. Bruce Smith, formerly of Canterbury College, has escaped safely to Bombay from Singapore and is joining the Indian Engineers. Mr Smith, a public works engineer, spent three years in Malaya, chiefly building bridges. He was commissioned in the Volunteers when the Japanese attacked, and helped prepare defence positions. He left Singapore before the .capitulation, and was sailing for Java when the Japanese sank the ship by bombs, after which the survivors were landed in a small uninhabited island, being bombed while in the lifeboats and when they went ashore on the island. Many passengers and members of the crew were killed and others died from wounds during a week on the island when rations comprised two meals daily, each consisting, of one biscuit and one 24th of a tin of corned beef and half a cigarette tin of water. Most of the women and children wer£ taken off the island after three days by a ship going to Java,-but the Japanese captured the ship. The remaining survivors were later picked up and arrived at Sumatra, from where Mr Smith was taken by the Royal Navy to Ceylon.