Freddie Spencer Chapman
Frederick Spencer Chapman, DSO & Bar, ED (10 May 1907 – 8 August 1971) was a British Army officer and World War II veteran, most famous for his exploits behind enemy lines in Japanese occupied Malaya.
The headmaster – a man of infinite kindness and understanding- was an enthusiastic entomologist... [and] I left Private School with a good knowledge of gardening and a vast enthusiasm for all forms of natural history.
Chapman, in his own words, "loathed the monotonous bell-regulated routine of school life" and considered lessons as "things to be avoided by all possible means, fair or foul, and organised games were a waste of a fine afternoon.".
Whilst at Sedbergh School, Chapman won a Kitchener Scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, in 1926, to study history and English.
It was there that he developed his passion for adventure and, by the end of his university years, had already completed several overseas excursions including a climbing expedition in the Alps and a journey to Iceland to study plant and bird life.
He spent twenty hours in a storm at sea in his kayak and at one point fell into a deep crevasse, saving himself by holding onto the handles of his dog sled.
Gould invited Spencer to be his private secretary on his political mission, from July 1936 to February 1937, to persuade the Panchen Lama to return from China and establish permanent British representation in Lhasa.
He was involved in cypher work, kept a meteorological log, pressed six hundred plants, dried seeds, and made notes on bird life.
In August 1941, a plan for stay-behind parties that would include local Indians, Chinese and Malays was proposed, but this was rejected by the British colonial governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, as extravagant and defeatist.
During the mission Chapman noticed how lightly equipped the Japanese soldiers were in contrast to the heavy kit of the British and Indian forces.
He noted they had little standard issue equipment other than raincoats which had a hood and covered the bikes they were riding, allowing them to continue cycling in the rain.
[12] Due to continued Japanese attacks, Chapman and the two members of Force 136, John Davis and Richard Broome, were isolated again among the Communist guerrillas until early 1945.
Once he spent seventeen days in a semi coma, suffering from tick-typhus, blackwater fever, and pneumonia, with the effects of chronic malaria being the worst of it.
Hence, one's steady state of mind was of the utmost importance to ensure that the physical health of body and the will to live were reinforced on a daily basis.
In the foreword to Chapman's book on his experiences in Japanese occupied Malaya, The Jungle Is Neutral, Field Marshal Earl Wavell wrote "Colonel Chapman has never received the publicity and fame that were his predecessor's lot [referring to T. E. Lawrence]; but for sheer courage and endurance, physical and mental, the two men stand together as examples of what toughness the body will find, if the spirit within it is tough; and as very worthy representatives of our national capacity for individual enterprise, which it is hoped that even the modern craze for regulating our lives in every detail will never stifle."
His dynamism and understanding of the requirements of young people were the guiding influence in setting up the school to become a first class success story which lasted for 11 years.
In 1946, Chapman married Faith Townson, daughter of a Hampshire farmer and a WAAF Flight Officer at the Church of the Redemption, New Delhi India and they had three children: Nicholas, Stephen (1949) and Christopher.
