“Scatter your ashes into the jungle and the sea, soldiers” by Rex Tan

An exploration of Malaysia’s first communist insurgency that occurred after the Japanese government surrendered in WWII.

First published in Pandan Weekly in July 2024. Content warning: capitalism/communism

​From the author:

“Scatter your ashes into the jungle and the sea, soldiers” explores Malaysia’s first communist insurgency that occurred after the Japanese surrender in WWII. Prior to that, the communist party was a close ally of the British in resisting Japanese occupation. Yet their relationship quickly soured when the British returned to re-establish themselves in Malaya.

During the insurgency, a faction of armed communists hid in the jungle and started guerilla warfare, causing the British to employ various measures such as a mass resettlement plan to strangle the communists’ supply lines. The civil war eventually ended with the communists’ unconditional surrender in 1989, and official records show that over ten thousand lives were lost in this conflict.

My poem hopes to illustrate how idealism thrived and died off when nationalism and anti-colonialism movements rose after WWII. I also wanted to ask: did the people at the time know what was best for their country, or were they merely following their gut feelings on what would work? Can we really know at the end of the day?

As bullets paint dreamless rainbows
Laterite soil thirsts on gaping gashes

Inside the quavering nipah shades
Leg-locked bodies moan of star and sickle 

Dreams of yesterday of faraway home
Festered like everything else in this putrid jungle

From the waning sun, came the moustached apes
Who snitched the rotted fruits of revolution

Beneath the canopy of tualang and foliages
Of lalang, hides the thorny pride of scorching hearts

Obfuscated in the tropical night’s gauze
The long march to glory descends into the long march of shame

Lifting my head, I hear the revelry of the gods
Piercing through the night clouds

Is this a dream or a revolution
No one can tell when freedom is a dizzying sensation

Rex Tan is a journalist by trade and a poet at heart. As a Malaysian, he is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Malay yet he calls none his first language.

Instagram: @rexxycs Facebook: @tcs0826

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