Operation Blowpipe
JP Cross
Monsoon Books
Burrough on the Hill
Published in 2022
by Monsoon Books Ltd
No.1 The Lodge, Burrough Court,
Burrough on the Hill, Melton Mowbray LE14 2QS, UK
ISBN (paperback): 9781915310064
ISBN (ebook): 9781915310071
Copyright©JP Cross, 2022
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover design by Cover Kitchen.
Contents
Prologue
Part I. 1948-1954
1
2
3
Part II. 1956
4
5
Part III. 1963-1968
6
List of Characters
Abbreviations
Glossary
Map 1 - Malaysia
Map 2 - Detail of the intersection of Kedah, Perak and Thailand
Map 3 - Detail of Negri Sembilan
Map 4 - Detail of Sungei Perak and its tributaries
About the Author
Also by JP Cross
Prologue
Late evening, sometime in 1943, in the Serting Forest Reserve, south of Seremban, Negri Sembilan, Malaya
As porters with a resupply of provisions reached the temporary camp of an anti-Japanese group of Communist Chinese guerrillas, they were shocked as muted but spine-chilling screams of unbearable pain throbbed around the thick jungle. A traitor, who had caused guerrilla casualties, had been identified and was suffering condign punishment: he had been tied to a wooden trestle, arms outstretched, legs apart, stomach stretched and gagged to lessen noise while the guerrilla, whose wife had been killed by the Japanese, had slit the traitor’s belly crosswise with a kris, a pointed dagger with a curved blade. As the porters peered through the undergrowth, they saw the executioner slashing the belly downwards in a mockery of ritual hara-kiri. Noise from the tortured man shrank to a gurgle, then stopped as he died, blood flowing and guts slithering to the ground.
The leader of the porters was Kamal Rai: he and his men were Nepalis from Bhutan Estate, the nearest of the three estates that had a Nepalese labour force, some miles to the south. Kamal heard the voice of a guerrilla he recognised, Lee Soong, saying ‘that is what we do to traitors. If there’s another, his death will take longer, be slower and more painful. You all understand that, don’t you?’
Kamal saw heads nod. He called out the password and it was answered. Into the camp area they went and dumped their loads. If Kamal had not made up his mind about the Communists before, the mangled and bloody remains of the tortured body turned him irrevocably against them.
It was unusual for any guerrilla group to be in such comparatively non-extensive jungle but it was considered safe. The previous year a group of Japanese had landed on the coast nearby and patrolled to Bhutan Estate. There the commander was overcome and sliced to death by Kamal who escaped unharmed. The rest of the Japanese were set on and killed by some returning hunters. After that, quite why no one could tell, the invaders regarded some buildings there to be haunted, so kept away.[1]
Kamal Rai was in his mid-twenties, immensely strong, had deep-set almond eyes that flashed dangerously, high cheek bones and a face that had a calm look, although there was an air of subtlety about it. He had been educated at King George V’s School in Seremban where the medium of instruction was English and his teachers had regarded him as a scholar.
Among the guerrillas was a thin, austere, bespectacled and slightly balding Englishman, Reggie Hutton, a member of a stay-behind group who had joined forces with the Chinese fighting the Japanese. Pre-war he had worked in the Singapore Police Special Branch. One of the guerrillas, Ah Fat, was secretly known to Hutton as a British ‘mole’. Hutton had known Kamal since pre-war and the two men had joined the guerrilla group together. Hutton had persuaded them to go to the Serting Forest Reserve and once there Kamal had slipped away to Bhutan Estate to get some porters to bring new supplies back.
Before the porters left, Lee Soon warned them that any who told the Japanese where the camp was would also have similar condign punishment – or even more drastic. Reggie Hutton thanked the porters who, now unladen, were able to move faster and more easily avoid any Japanese who might just be lurking to nab them as they returned.
Calcutta, India, 19-30 March 1948
During that time an innocent-sounding Southeast Asia Youth Conference[2] – a youth being anyone up to thirty-five years old – composed of fanatical but untrained anti-colonialist revolutionaries from European Asian colonies, less Portugal, Timor being too small to matter, took place under the ægis of the Indian Communist Party. Its genesis lay in Soviet anti-imperialist policy and its aim was to teach the participants how best to prepare for the Communist-inspired risings against the imperialist colonialists. Knowing that fanaticism based solely on ignorance had to be rectified, the syllabus was designed to rectify this discrepancy. The Youth Conference was immediately followed by the second Plenum of the Indian Communist Party and its participants were invited to stay on and participate in it.
Billed as a ‘star’ was the Chairman of the Australian Communist Party, L L ‘Lance’ Sharkey, on a short-stay visa; the other attraction was a Communist from Singapore, Lee Soong, born there in 1927 and a fluent English speaker, who had already fought as a guerrilla against the Japanese.
Reggie Hutton, now Head of Singapore Special Branch, had come to hear about the Conference. He had learnt that a strong Soviet team had been in India for several months, preparing for it. The Russians could work more easily in India than anywhere else in Southeast Asia and now India was independent used their sources to help them. Whatever would transpire would be, he felt, of great significance so, even though Calcutta was not in his bailiwick, he intended to find out about it in as much detail as possible. He was extremely intrigued when his friend John Theopulos, the manager of Bhutan Estate, rang him to tell him that his chief clerk, Hemlal Rai, had received an invitation for one suitable person from the estate to attend, all expenses paid. ‘Reggie, what is your advice and why do you think my estate has been chosen to send a representative to such a jamboree?’
Reggie considered his answer before saying ‘John, why one of your men? I have heard rumours that several seriously anti-British Indian-domiciled hot-head Nepalis belonging to the Darjeeling branch of the All-India Gorkha League, have also been invited. Apart from the Indian Congress Party inspiring such political hatred of the British, even those in the Viceroy’s Council had not fully realised the effect of Soviet and German liking for one of the more expensive brands of tea in the Darjeeling tea gardens, had, similarly, been a powerful albeit unobtrusive influence. The new British Gurkhas, announced just before the 15th of August, 1947, have made these hot heads think of joining up to try and influence, quite how they did not yet know, the Gurkha soldiers against their British officers with such bad discipline that they be disbanded. It could just be that the organisers of the conference see a Malaya-based Nepali estate worker as a useful conduit for dissatisfied Gurkha soldiers to desert and even join the guerrillas – a long shot and probably impossible to achieve but …’
