How did halford Boudewyn become a World War 2 hero?
Boudewyn found work with a Eurasian food contractor who supplied
Indian army camps in Singapore. While making his deliveries in 1943
he met a prisoner-of-war from the British Indian Army and learned
of the ill-treatment by Subhas Chandra Bose's Japanese-backed
Indian National Army (INA) of those who refused to join the INA.
Boudewyn admired the bravery of those who had remained loyal to the
crown and wanted to avenge those who had suffered for it.
His new friend told him that documentary proof could be obtained
and the two men agreed on a plan to gather this evidence. Boudewyn
sold his produce at the INA's headquarters at Upper Serangoon Road,
next to the POW camp. Each day his contact (accounts differ on who
this was) would purchase vegetables then later claim some were
rotten and return them with documents stolen from an adjutant's
office.
These documents related not only to the POWs' mistreatment but
also Japan's planned invasion via Burma of India, the ultimate
prize among Britain's colonies. Each day Boudewyn gave a deep bow
to the Japanese sentry as he left the camp and his bicycle carrier,
where he kept the papers, was never searched. He did this until
1944 when he had all the relevant documents and stored them in an
oil drum buried beneath a friend's tennis court in Chancery
Lane.
Eventually the house was seized by the Japanese who converted
the tennis court into a vegetable garden. After the war this made
locating the drum more difficult, and he ultimately discovered that
while he had taken care to bury it four feet deep it was now only
one foot below the surface