I was born into a military family and my early life was spent moving from RAF base to RAF base. One of these trips saw us in RAF Changi, Singapore. Life was good and there was a lot of emphasis on freedom. Health and Safety did not really exist and the following incident highlights just what it could be like in the early sixties....
"At one time, there was a stray dog that used
to come round because my mum would keep feeding it. I got quite attached to him
and called him Ben. He was calm and gracious and I never heard him bark, not
once. Then one day, when I was out at the back of our house, Ben turns up as
usual and comes up to me and I stroked him. Then a Chinese guy comes along with
a rifle. It was pretty common to see guns and I thought no more about it. Then
he starts waving at me and at first I couldn’t understand what he was doing.
Then it dawned on me. I backed off a bit and I screamed “No!”. The dog sensed
something was about to happen and stared at the gunman. He raised the gun, took
aim and shot the dog right in front of me. It gave a little yelp as the bullet
entered its fore-head. It dropped dead right at my feet. Small drops of blood
clung to my bare legs as I struggled to come to terms with what had happened. I
guess they were scared of rabies. If he’d missed, the bullet would have hit our
house. The dog and I had become good friends and I cried my eyes out. I was
only 8 and Singapore was a whole different place in the early sixties......."
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