The Widow and Her Hero

Author’s Note

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I was asked by the South Australian Film Corporation to write a screenplay on the extremely Homeric war-time operations against Singapore, from Australia, named Jaywick and Rimau. The film was never made. Since then, more and more information on these operations has become public knowledge, and though incidents which occur in this tale bear a debt to the two real wartime operations against Singapore, and though the real issues of Operation Rimau, and the beheading of its operatives, provide a spark for this tale, this narrative is not meant to be a roman à clef of those times and characters.

Thus the characters here presented, their motives and their inner souls, are not meant to reflect the actions, motives and inner life of any person who lived or died. There was, for example, no World War body named IRD (though similar organisations did exist). Nor were any battalions of the Royal Ulster Fusiliers part of Singapore’s garrison. And so on.

Just the same, for their depiction of secret operations from Australia at that time, I have a great debt to the following dedicated authors and sources:

The Heroes, Ronald McKie, Sydney 1989; The Krait: The Fishing Boat That Went to War, Lynette Ramsey Silver from the research of Major Tom Hall, Sydney 1992; The Heroes of Rimau, Lynette Ramsay Silver from the research of Major Tom Hall, Singapore 2001; Kill the Tiger, The Truth About Operation Rimau, Peter Thompson and Robert Macklin, Sydney 2002; The Transcript of the Trial of the Rimau Men, Australian Archives, Victoria. Other correspondence, including interrogation of Furuta, and Special Reconnaissance Force documents and reports, can be found in the Australian Archives, Canberra.