The Tommy Thomas memoirs: an exercise in self-glorification
Anyway, talking about memoirs, you should read the story of Winston Churchill. One day he was at a party and had too much to drink and he bumped into a lady. The lady scolded him and called him stupid and he responded by calling her ugly. “You are drunk, sir,” the lady said, to which Winston Churchill replied, “Yes, but tomorrow morning I will be sober.”
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
If you read “The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew” and then you read the many other books about Lee Kuan Yew written by others (which I have done), you will see that in many instances there are differences in the interpretation of events.
The same goes with Chin Peng’s memoirs, “My Side of History”. For example, what Chin Peng wrote about the assassination of Sir Henry Gurney on 7th October 1951 along Kuala Kubu Road and the Special Branch account of what happened are two different stories.
According to the memoirs of a British Special Branch officer, the CPM (Communist Party of Malaya) had a spy in the Special Branch and he or she passed information to them that Sir Henry Gurney was going to drive up to Frazer’s Hill that day. The CTs then laid an ambush and killed Sir Henry Gurney.
Chin Peng, however, said the CTs had laid an ambush three days earlier (before anyone knew Sir Henry Gurney was going up to Frazer’s Hill) but not a single car drove by during all that time. They were just about to give up and go home when they heard a car engine.
A few seconds later they saw a car come around the corner and started shooting. They managed to kill the driver and the car stopped. An Orang Puteh opened the rear car door and started walking towards them, so they shot him dead.
It was only the next day that the CTs knew they had killed the number one Orang Puteh of Malaya, Sir Henry Gurney. It was a random ambush, not a specific ambush to assassinate Sir Henry Gurney. And the reason why Sir Henry Gurney came out from the car and walked towards them and “offered” to be killed is to draw the gunfire away from the car to save his wife. Of course, she survived the ambush.
Hence the memoirs of the British Special Branch officer and Chin Peng’s account regarding the assassination of Sir Henry Gurney have two different versions. And the same goes with the memoirs of so many other people written over the last 100 years.
And the same applies to the memoirs written by Tommy Thomas, “My Story: Justice in the Wilderness”. That is how he saw things, his interpretation of events. That does not mean his view of events is 100% correct.
And readers need to be warned: you take all memoirs with a grain of salt. Most times, memoirs are merely an exercise in self-glorification.
Anyway, talking about memoirs, you should read the story of Sir Winston Churchill. One day he was at a party and had too much to drink and he bumped into a lady. The lady scolded him and called him stupid and he responded by calling her ugly. “You are drunk, sir,” the lady said, to which Winston Churchill replied, “Yes, but tomorrow morning I will be sober.”
