Jardine recently produced his first book, Foreign Fields Forever, a short, compact history of one of Britain's forgotten ‘little’ wars, namely the conflict with the new Republic of Indonesia from 1945-1946.
The catchy, alliterative title draws on a line from the famous British poet Rupert Brooke, and refers in particular to the 1,100 or more British, Indian, Australian and other Commonwealth servicemen and women buried at Menteng Pulo in
The conflict in question is a source of pride for Indonesians, as their poorly-armed forces took on the battle-hardened veterans of the world's largest empire. The
If it is a source of nationalist pride in
The period covered in Foreign Fields is September 1945 through December 1946, during which an anti-colonial uprising took place. The period was marked by much spontaneous organization in the form of local militias, but was distinguished throughout Java and much of
Interestingly, the writer makes no mention of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) - was the party absent in the hour of the nation's greatest need?
He does, however, deal with a range of issues including the fate of the many, many thousands of POWs and other internees held in appalling conditions in Japanese prison camps in
What he has to say here is rather disturbing, as he alleges widespread attacks on the camps by Indonesians who also attacked convoys of released prisoners on the roads and railways.
Jardine has devoted a chapter to the POW question and what he calls "the delicate question of war crimes", alleging that these were committed by all sides. Jardine's treatment of the issue fleshes out what the famous British foreign correspondent Edward Behr said in his Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?, part of which is devoted to Behr's memoirs of Army service in Sumatra at the time. Of particular interest to Indonesian readers will be the Bekasi massacre.
