Tuesday, November 21, 2006

A WW2 Story about those British Ammunition Boxes


Here's a World War 2 story told to me by an eyewitness many years ago. A few days after the surrender of the Japanese invading troops in 1945, a number of British army officers and scores of ethnic Indian soldiers employed by the British forces moved to a foothill location at Mount Faber. 

They dug up tens of ammunition boxes (quite the same as the item on display) which were buried deep in the ground. That eyewitness was nearby when he saw a high-ranking British army officer opened and checked those ammunition boxes packed with British sovereign gold coins (each sovereign coin has about a quarter troy ounce of pure gold). All those boxes were lifted up by those soldiers onto a large military truck.

I have read from a book that the British forces might have shifted some of Great Britain's physical gold reserves into Singapore when WW2 broke out in Europe in 1939. Then Singapore was known as Fortress Singapore, and as the British might have thought that it was quite safe to store something precious here, not knowing a few years later that the Japanese invading troops would occupy Singapore. Those gold coins were secretly buried in Singapore for a good period of three years. Just a thought here, but then you may want to think that there might be one or two boxes left behind, still buried somewhere in the ground of that foothill. You'll never know that you might discover some treasure there.


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