AS I stepped out from the grove of bamboo and tropical hardwoods where the hotel jeep had dropped me, I had to suppress a gasp. On my right, startlingly blue waters, as brilliant as a blue emerald, washed up against the powder-fine sands of Emerald Bay. 

(From left) Stephen, Christopher, Hazel and Sue cut a cake in the shape of the Statesman, marking the 71st anniversary of their ancestor’s escape and 20th year of Chapman’s Bar at Pangkor Laut Resort.

The lustrous bay on the private island of Pangkor Laut is one of the most romantic places in the world to honeymoon in, famed for its picture-postcard beauty. Couples cocooned in the five-star comforts of Pangkor Laut Resort, a YTL luxury resort, linger over private dinners on the beach and take romantic cruises aboard an old-world Chinese junk.

To me, it seemed an unlikely place for a wartime adventure but 71 years ago to this date (May 13), one of the most daring World War 2 rescue missions in Asia took place on this island, from this very bay. 

Christopher and his brothers Nicholas and Stephen had a ‘normal childhood’ and the family often journeyed to see and observe the wildlife when his father was stationed in Africa. Christopher is seen here with his parents in the 1960s.

Pangkor Laut was an uninhabited island at the time of the Japanese invasion of Malaya, which began on Dec 8, 1941.

On May 12, 1945, two British commandos, in disguise as Chinese labourers, successfully made their way to the small island on foot and sampan. Colonel Freddy (Frederick) Spencer Chapman and Major Richard Broome had left their Gurun camp hideout in the jungles of Perak on April 27, travelling some 97 kilometres, aided by Chinese guerillas.

Chapman was part of the small stay-behind parties of the British Armed Forces that had been ordered to “organise and lead reconnaissance and operational parties behind the enemy lines” when the Japanese invaders landed. He had been in charge of 101 S.T.S., the Special Training School in Singapore established by the British in 1941 that trained fighters in guerilla warfare, intelligence gathering and sabotage work. Broome was from Force 136, an arm of the Special Operations Executive of World War II.

Contact had finally been made with their headquarters in Ceylon and it was essential that the men return with pertinent information on the state Malaya was in then.