Weerawarnasuriya Patadendige Jinadasa Silva
From Sri Lanka, born in 1911. Intelligence officer. Fought on the Allied side for the colonial power Great Britain 1942-1945. Photographed in 2002.
Weerawarnasuriya Patadendige Jinadasa Silva grows up in a wealthy family in the British colony of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.
During his many years at a boarding school he is taught lots of Shakespeare and lots of British history, far more than what he knows about his own native country. He feels like a real Englishman. Some years later it there- fore seems only natural that he should go to war to defend his colonial power.
But it is really due to a complete coincidence that Silva finds himself in the military forces. His membership in a club leads him to Sri Lanka’s local defence force. At this time in 1936, they train for war in tiny barracks after office hours. It is hard work, but there is a cheerful atmosphere, as Silva remembers. Because his initials include a “W”, he is now called Willie by the British officers.
A few years later events take a serious turn. In 1942, the British forces in Sri Lanka are under attack by the Japanese, at the same time that Singapore is virtually in enemy hands.
Willie Silva is chosen to lead the defence of Trincomalee, a harbour city in eastern Sri Lanka and the most important Allied naval base in the Indian Ocean. Ships that have sailed through the Suez Canal or around South Africa must call in at Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, to bunker fuel, and to load or unload cargo.
Sri Lanka is a vital headquarters, a focal point, and therefore of extreme importance to the Allies. Silva describes what happens.
Silva and his troops are stationed on a mountain side where their duty is to protect the camouflaged weapons in the area.
A surprise attack suddenly hits from the air, unexpected and startling. Japanese planes circle the harbour. Bombs are dropped. British ships sink. Silva’s troops are suddenly extremely vulnerable to attack by the Japanese planes.
Silva then makes a decision that will save the lives of his men. He orders them down into narrow trenches. He gives the following order: noone is to desert his position.
The planes fly so low that Silva can see the Japanese pilots’ little eyeglasses. But the trick works; the Japanese think that the harbour is far better defended than it really is, and do not try another frontal attack.
“I’m still alive partly due to accident, partly due to the opportunity that arose”, says Silva about that trick with the trenches. Silva continues to serve. He rises in rank, from sergeant to lieutenant to officer in the intelligence service. He is given responsibility for reporting on the situation in the area to the British High Command. He is the only Sinhalese among the 70 officers.
He will later be given an important role in Sri Lanka after it wins its independence from Great Britain in 1948.
He becomes Sri Lanka’s “Black Rod”, an important symbolic rank having great authority in the former colony’s new administration. He is of real importance to the island, but he still chooses to leave Sri Lanka.
He falls in love with an English woman interpreter. He meets this woman, whom he later marries, while he is employed by the UN Veteran Association. Since the early 1960s, he has therefore made his home in south-eastern London, in Great Britain.
“I like it here. It’s quite natural for me to live here, I feel English and not at all foreign,” says Silva.