Brit says he ‘can’t forget Tamparuli bridge tragedy’
Published on: Sunday, March 17, 2019
By: Kan Yaw Chong
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In the end, all three died! What exactly happened had been sketchy.
But when we least expected it, on Feb 27, we heard it told direct from a horse’s mouth – Michael Snow, a surveyor and former member of the 11th Independent Field Squadron Royal Engineers, a fellow soldier and friend of the drowned medic, Private J.W.N. Hall and a lesser acquaintance, driver D.C. Cooper.
The tragedy is marked by a memorial plaque today near the low-lying Tamparuli concrete Causeway for those who want to verify it for themselves.
The pathos of this story is this: in going all out to save a badly-injured Dusun woman, the young duos lost their lives, and the Dusun lady equally perished from the best of intention for her.
Snow spent six months in Tamparuli with the Royal Engineers from May to October 1960 purely to widen the old windy narrow Tamparuli-Kota Belud gravel road originally carved out purportedly by Hakka women using hoes.
These combo pictures show the ill-fated Land Rover being lifted out of the Tuaran river.
‘Drowning incident struck me most’
But, of all incidents, the drowning episode struck him the most and never left his memory, Snow said.
So, what exactly happened? Snow confessed he was not a direct eye witness.
But for an exclusive interview with the Daily Express, Snow came armed with a brief extract from Kinabalu blog where Anthony Catherall, another Royal Engineers driver who took part in winching out from the raging Tuaran river the ill-fated Land Rover driven by Cooper, had shared his story.
The winding Tamparuli-Kota Belud road in 1960.
Dusun lady attacked by husband
First, let’s start where the tragedy all began – the Dusun woman. What happened to her? Snow provided the best starting insight.
He said: “Her husband had attacked her with a machete and I think it damaged her arm badly. They (Royal Engineers) did what treatment they could but it was necessary to get her to the hospital.”
Where exactly did the Dusun woman come from? Catherall answered it – “Sayat”.
He said: “I was in Kota Belud in April till November 1960, Yes, the river flooded so much that there was a tragedy on the bridge on May 18.”
“We in the Royal Engineers were stationed at Paradise Camp and were in then North Borneo to build and improve roads, bridges and build an airstrip at Kota Belud.
“That day, a local woman living in ‘Kampong Saya’ (Sayat-Sayat?) in Kota Belud had been seriously injured (after the husband slashed her with parang, as Snow put it).
“Two soldiers attached to our unit, Private J.W.N. Hall, Royal Medical Corps, and driver D.C. Cooper, Royal Army Service Corps were transporting the woman to Jesselton.
“Hall, on reaching the bridge where water was overflowing over it, got out of the Land Rover and was guiding Cooper as he tried to negotiate the bridge. The woman was strapped in the vehicle in the back.
“The water current was so strong that eventually the Land Rover was swept into the river. Hall dived in to try to rescue his colleague but to no avail.”
1960: The Royal Engineers widening the Tamparuli-Kota Belud road.
Snow: Sudden catastrophe
Catherall’s account apparently missed what Snow said was a sudden catastrophe which swept the trio to their death.
Snow said: “I read it, I know Anthony Catherall because he was a member of our unit, a member of the 11th Independent Field Squadron Royal Engineers. I remember he was a driver and not surprised he was involved in recovering the Land Rover.
“His account was when their Land Rover got to the bridge, there was water across the top of the Causeway, the medic Hall got out and walked across the bridge in front of the Land Rover so that they knew basically how deep it was as he was going.
“When they got to the centre of the bridge, all of a sudden there was a torrent, a lot of water came down and it pushed the Land Rover over the bridge. Hall dived in to see if he could save anyone but they were all killed. They all drowned.
“They were able to find the Land Rover and pulled it out when the water went down but it was three days later that they found the bodies and they were way downstream,” Snow said.
Funeral and nether gloom
Hall and Cooper were buried in Paradise Camp until today.
“I was part of the funeral party. I remember there were 12 to 15 of us in the back of the vehicle that was carrying the coffins, but I don’t know where the woman was buried.”
How did everybody in the Royal Engineers squadron feel?
“It cast a nether gloom all over the camp as you would expect when you lose two friends in an accident and they had gone off to do the job they were being told to pick this woman up to take her to the hospital and they lost their lives because of that but that is life, you never know,” Snow recalled.
The drowning tragedy was, without a shadow of doubt, the highlight of his six-month stint in North Borneo.
A conscript posted to North Borneo
He said he was posted first to Butterworth in 1960 after being conscripted for national service in 1959.
Interestingly, Snow was one of those last conscripts in UK to be drafted into military service by the force of law.
The first conscription in the UK was enforced between 1916 to 1920.
The second being 1939 to 1960, lucky of unlucky for Snow.
Between 1948 and 1960, they dropped the idea of military service in favour of national service, the argument of which has historically been the same – to mingle the rich and poor in the same army and camp to engage in the one common service for the public.
Memorial plaque for Hall and Cooper.
Mission: Widening the Tamparuli-Kota Belud road
So, what common service for the public conscript Michael Snow was posted to do in North Borneo?
“Purely to widen the road between Tamparuli and Kota Belud so that the army vehicles could use it because the idea was after that they were going to build the Paradise Camp.
“That was the idea, widening the road so that they could use the road to build the Paradise Camp. We were there to do a job and that was it,” Snow said.
The fallen machine.
Losing big machines in narrow terrain
“The challenge was narrowness of the road, very difficult terrain, mainly jungle, trees all over the place. We lost a number of vehicles on the side, they went too close to the edge which were very soft areas and they finished up down in the jungle.
“When they tried to pull the hefty fallen machines out, they couldn’t in the end, all they got out from one was the engine!”
Generations of the 60s and 70s would remember even after the widening, the Tamparuli – Kota Belud Road remained relatively narrow and windy.
Slogging it out
Few people knew it was individuals like Snow from Royal Engineers who slogged it out to make things better.
Snow recalled: “Because the road was very constricted and we were using big machines, you couldn’t work the normal way where you would have a number of machines moving down the road.
“Instead, we had to clear it little by little to chop it back and chop it back and so it took longer than normal which is why we were there for six months purely to widen the road,” Snow told Daily Express.
In all, the 11th Independent Field Squadron Royal engineers comprised of 120 to 130 men.
Michael Snow and Hector Jintoni (left) who met in Wales.
No compelling interest to return but two things happened
“I was in Kota Belud from May to October 1960 before I was posted back to Butterworth to build an airstrip on the Thai border, basically to contain the communists.”
By the end of 1961, Snow said he returned to the UK to resume civilian life where he stayed rooted except for one year in Cyprus at a military installation.
But returning to Sabah for a down memory visit just to see Tamparuli again was never really a compelling idea.
However, finally, he did return 60 long years later.
Sister-in-law
Asked how come it took him so long, Snow said:
“It’s a long way from the UK. That’s the reason. But the reason I came back is, in September last year my sister-in-law
Natasha Hunter moved to Brisbane, Australia and in November, she said: Why don’t you come over for Christmas?’
“I told her the flights were expensive but she insisted that I went over.
“In the end, I checked the price and found out the airfares were not as costly as I had thought so I said, ‘right, I would come for Christmas’.
“In the meantime, I met some friends from Sabah in the UK who suggested, ‘why don’t you come over?’
“I thought, ‘well, this is an opportunity to go to Brisbane and call in Sabah on the way back’ and that’s why I am here – on the way to UK,” Snow explained, making it here on Feb 21 at long last, and returning to UK on Feb 28.
Michael Snow (left) and a friend at work camp.
Friends from Sabah
But Snow credited his decision to drop by Sabah on the way back to UK from Brisbane, to a group of “friends” whom he named Joseph Chee, Anthony Lim, Sebastian Ku and his wife, Vincent Chew and Hector Jintoni.
Hector Jintoni, who brought Snow to the Daily Express for the interview on Feb 27, said:
“There were a group of us who went to Wales to have a Christian seminar so he happened to bump into the group and then Sebastian from Kota Belud met him during our final night while he was having dinner and it all went from there.
“I think we asked him what he remembered most about Sabah, he said he was part of the royal Engineers group and that he never forgot the incident in Tamparuli bridge,” Hector told Daily Express.
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