Copyright Rosemary Rhodes
Used with permission
Cpt. Bertrand William Stedeford
My Father survived the Chindit War but was later killed
in the Malayan Emergency.
His name was Bertrand William Stedeford. and ended as
Captain REME, though went into the army as a boy soldier.
He served in North Africa, as a Chindit in Burma, and
was killed in
November 1950, attached to the 4th Queen's Own Hussars.
Ipoh. Malaya. Aged 36.
He is buried at Batu Gaja. (It wasn't Malaysia in those
days)
Though he was killed when I was 12, he was a great influence
on my life.
I think I was brought up very a la Orde Wingate.
When she was little I
was always telling my daughter tales of what he was like
and what he said and did.
After she finished University, she and a friend took
themselves round
the world. She promised to try to get to his grave
and took a sprig of
Rosemary from the garden from me.
Things went wrong at Ipoh and it took them two days to
get to Batu Gaja
after the bus broke down, etc., so on the journeys Kate
spent the time
telling her friend all about him. They were decidedly
unfazed, when arriving at the Cemetery.
They discovered that quite unwittingly they had made
it on the
exact anniversary of his death. She admitted that
both of them stood at the
foot of his grave and wept.
He would have loved that. Hero he may have been.
Trappist Monk he was
not.
Rosemary Rhodes
February 2001
