NEW ZEALAND ENGINEER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 September 1942, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND ENGINEER

ESCAPE FROM EAST INDIES.

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright)

(Received This Day, 1.0 p.m.) LONDON, September 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 is a public works engineer who spent three years in Malaya, chiefly in building bridges. He held a commission in the Volunteers when the Japanese attacked, and prepared 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 landed on a small, uninhabited island, being bombed while in lifeboats and when they went ashore on the island. Many of the passengers and crew were killed, and others died from wounds during a week on the island when the rations comprised two meals daily, each consisting of one biscuit, one twenty-fourth of a tin of corned beef, half a cigarette and a tin of water. Most of the women and children were taken off the island after three days by a ship going to Java, but the Japanese captured the ship. The remainder of the survivors were later picked up and arrived in Sumatra. From there Mr Smith was taken by the Royal Navy to Ceylon.