Rance was never told that his former CO knew not a word of German.

1961

It was not until five years later that Major Rance, working with the Temiar on Operation ‘Bamboo’ in the area of the Sungei Temenggor and Kerinching’s ladang was met once again by Senagit, as he was carrying a dead boar. Without thinking Jason, now a good speaker of Temiar, took it from him and grunted: Senagit, initially taken by surprise, later remembered the man who had done just the same when he brought back that young pig near the Sungei Perak headwaters.

When Senagit next met his friend Ah Soo Chye he told him, ‘just like that time before.’ This time he was not dressed like you wear clothes but as a soldier with a weapon. Ah Soo Chye, disbelieving Senagit at first, carefully questioned him and came to the conclusion that, indeed, the two men were one and the same. He was flabbergasted, outraged and bewildered. One day revenge will be mine … but it remained an unfulfilled pipe dream as by the time Jason Rance did return to the area he had retired, permanently, to the Betong area of Thailand.

III 1963-1968

6

April 1963

After a decade of fighting guerrillas in the Malayan jungle, 1/12 Gurkha Rifles were posted to Hong Kong for a two-year spell where, apart from obligatory duties – Force Guards, Border Protection, Community Relations activities and Aid to the Civil Power when the police requested it – modern warfare could be practised from section up to brigade level. Classification on the range on the Bren light-machine gun and rifle was also an imperative as were, at long last, games and athletic competitions. It was certainly the first time since 1942 that any of the Gurkha soldiers had permanent accommodation to live in.

Two years later the Battalion left Hong Kong and returned to Malaya, this time going to Suvla Lines in Ipoh. It was then that Major Jason Rance was detailed to undertake a special task: to arrange for the return, by way of Malaya, of two Gurkha ex-prisoners-of-war who were stranded in Thailand. It meant working with Ah Fat, the Bear and the orang asli and Jason became dependent on Senagit. Successful though he only just was in getting the two wartime soldiers away from Thailand, in the guerrilla follow-up the Bear and Ah Fat were captured: the Bear was hideously killed and later Ah Fat died of wounds suffered under torture. Following on from that Jason was sent to Borneo to command a recently raised armed Auxiliary Police Force, the Border Scouts, ‘eyes and ears with a sting’; he nearly lost his life once a month for the year he did the job and was both broadcast as dead by the Indonesian Radio in Pontianak and by the Sarawak Gazette. He was then put in charge of the Gurkha Independent Parachute Company, based in Kluang, with more adventures in Borneo and Brunei before handing over prior to being posted to the Jungle Warfare School, near Kota Tinggi, not far from Johor Bahru – now Malaya no longer but Peninsular Malaysia. That was in July 1968.

There were two people who, during this time seldom if ever forgot Major Jason Rance, by whatever name they called him, polite or impolite. One was Tan Wing Bun, son of Tan Fook Loong, who only recognised his voice, at least to start with; the other was Wang Liang, son of Wang Ming, the Bear.^[1] In January 1955 Tan Fook Loong, the commander of 2 Regiment, MRLA, was killed by bombs. The plane carrying them had a gizmo that linked it with a similar one in his portable radio. Jason Rance had been involved in getting some surrendered guerrillas to buy a new radio before Special Branch ‘doctored’ it. Before the bombing decision, which was considered ‘unsporting’ by the Director of Operations, was reached, it was decided to go and talk to him in person in the jungle, Rance masquerading as a surrendered guerrilla. But even before that Jason, who had secretly found out the guerrilla’s home phone number earlier on, had rung his son, Tan Wing Bun, in Penang. The son could never forget the day the phone rang. He answered it and a voice asked: ‘Wei, is that Tan Wing Bun, Tan Fook Loong’s son?’

‘Yes, who are you?’ he answered, not recognizing the voice.

‘Is your mother, Chen Yok Lan there?’

‘What is it to you? Who are you?’

‘Just someone telling you that I’ll be talking to your father and unless you tell me to tell him you and your mother want him back home alive, he’ll be dead within the week.’

To dedicated Communists such as were that family, surrender was anathema. As Tan Wing Bun put the phone down he told himself he’d never forget that voice but whose is it?

The news of his father’s death was a shock to Tan Wing Bun, as was another phone call by the same voice. ‘Wei, is that Tan Wing Bun, Tan Fook Loong’s son?’

‘Yes, who are you?’

‘The same person who rang you before. I went to talk to your father in the jungle. I told him who I was, that I had rung you, that you did not want to talk to me. If you had gone with me your father could be alive today but, no, thanks to you he is dead. During the war, Japanese bullets didn’t kill him and in this guerrilla war government bullets couldn’t either. But his own pride killed him. Feigning to be a pig he vanquishes tigers.’

‘Tell me who are you are,’ the son shouted but the caller had put his phone back on the cradle. Once again the son felt he could always recognise the voice if he heard it again.

Almost all CPM members used aliases and some of their families did also. In this case Tan Wing Bun was an alias: his real name was Tan Wing Hoong and that was the one he now used on his documents. After leaving school he tried to ‘get his own back’ and become a Special Branch officer but his alias was discovered so he was turned down. He became a contractor for supplying the goods that hawkers took round the streets. He opened his business in Penang and it spread as far as Grik. One day he was in Grik in his car outside the Police Station. He was interested to see a British army Land Rover outside, with a Gurkha driver. Instead of getting out of his car he sat and waited and watched. Quite why he did so he never really fathomed but something piqued his curiosity. Then one of those intriguing coincidences happened, nothing spectacular merely that a British officer came out of the Police Station. History can turn on a very small point.

 One of the people he supplied, a Chinese itinerant seller of noodles, caught sight of the British officer and eyed him speculatively. He, as had some others like him, had been supplied with a photo of Jason Rance and told that on the odd chance the face in the photo was seen immediately to report it to his local party secretary for onward transmission to MCP HQ in Betong. The photo had been taken by the hotel manager at Sadao when Rance and one of the still stranded Gurkhas had stayed there during Rance’s attachment to the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation in Bangkok in 1959. Rance had written an anti-Communist message on the organisation’s headed notepaper and had secretly reached the MCP camp. There he had left the message on a bush and enticed the sentry to take it to the office in the camp. While he was away the hotel manager had taken the passport, given to him to put in his safe against loss from his room, out of the safe and had taken the photo – ‘they’ would ask for it, ‘they’ always did for any foreign visitor. And ask they had. It was subsequently circulated widely in the hope that the writer could be caught and vengeance taken.^[2]

The vendor of noodles said to himself that one looks like the man in that photo. I’ll have to do something about him.

Inspector Wang Liang, peering out of his office window, saw him. He had noticed him on more than one occasion and became suspicious of him. Not again? Leaving the office by a side door, he unobtrusively crossed the road and went behind the large tree in front of which the noodle-seller had parked his barrow. He saw a car had drawn up beside it. He noticed its registration number, P 9678 – remembering registration numbers was now second nature.

Happily unconscious of any unfolding drama Rance, in his faultless Chinese, called out to someone inside the Police Station, ‘I’ll go and have a meal in the camp before I go back to Ipoh. See you next week when I go upstream to meet the Temiar.’ It never occurred to him why but he added, ‘feigning to be a pig he vanquishes tigers’, a phrase that tickled his senses of humour.

Tan Wing Hoong’s heart stopped several beats when he heard that … it can’t be but it must be. It’s that voice and that stupid phrase I’ve never heard anyone else use screeched through his mind, but yet he just knew it had to be the speaker on the phone. I must act now …  He called the noodle-seller over and told him what he had to do … and do it quickly … and make a good job of it. The Bear’s son heard and, equally surreptitiously, went back to his office.

After their meal in the camp Jason and his four men left for Ipoh. Jason, sitting in the front, still had his side window shut when, minutes later, as the vehicle slowed down to go round a sharp bend above a stream, a large rock was hurled at the side window of the front-seat traveller. A web of cracks spread though the glass with a few shards splintering into Jason’s face, the rock falling back onto the road. The driver slammed on his brakes and he swerved, his vehicle nearly overturning. The four Gurkhas, as one, were out of it in a flash and gave chase to the rock thrower, a Chinese noodle seller whose barrow was by the side of the road.

He had reached the edge of the stream when the leading Gurkha, eyes reddened in anger, drew his khukri as he caught up with him and wielded it with all his strength. Out of the corner of his eye the Chinese saw what was about to happen and lunged forward. The Gurkha’s khukri managed neatly to slice off the edge of the stone thrower’s left buttock as he fell headlong down the bank into the water.

Jason caught up with the red-eyed Gurkha. ‘Much damage?’

‘No saheb. Hardly anything. Look, there’s more cloth than skin and blood on my khukri.’

The chief doctor in the small hospital in Grik was intensely interested in the type of injury that an almost inarticulate Chinese man, brought in face-down by some unknown person in a car, had suffered. It was a particularly sharp knife wound in the buttock which was messy with cloth that had been hacked into it. The man did not specify what had happened, however hard the doctor and nurses tried to make him speak. A phone call to the Police Station brought a plain-clothes officer in to investigate. It was Wang Liang who of course could identify him. He also noticed a car in the car park and saw the registration number was P 9678. He took a statement from the doctor and said he would put the police onto the case. ‘Can’t have that happening, can we?’ he said as he left.

Tan Wing Hoong, who had kept out of sight but had monitored the Land Rover’s departure, cursed fluently at the near miss and vowed for another opportunity, another day. He paid an advance for the injured man and later on that day as he passed the Police Station he saw a young Chinese, dressed in civilian clothes, enter. On an impulse he stopped the car and called out to him. ‘Can you help me, please?’

The other man turned. Neither knew each other. ‘If I can, yes.’ Instinctively he noticed the car’s registration number. P 9678.

‘I wanted to talk to a British officer I saw earlier on. I thought I knew him but was not sure,’ he lied plausibly. ‘Do you know who I mean?’

‘Yes, his name is Major Rance, a fluent Chinese speaker. May I know your name please?’

Unthinking, he gave his alias, Tan Wing Bun, not his real name so happy was he in having solved the mystery of ‘that’ voice. ‘I think I have seen him before,’ he dissembled. ‘He was the one who told me he’d be working up here. Am I right?’ he asked, smiling guilelessly.

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘Oh yes, that is what he told me. Thank you,’ and he drove off, not knowing that the man he had spoken to was Special Branch Inspector Wang Liang. The Bear’s son had already come across the name and knew the owner was a dedicated Communist. He reported it and the answer came back, ‘Be alert for any re-appearance.’ I’ll most certainly mention that to the Siu Gaau Sinsaang – the ‘Major sahib’ – when he next comes here. He made an entry in the report book but did not follow it up with any vigour.

As Tan Wing Hoong drove away a frown creased his brow as he tried to work out how best to get his own back now he knew who his enemy was. He was responsible for killing my father in the jungle. Where best to kill him? In the jungle, yes, but where? It was common knowledge that 2 Federal Infantry Brigade was conducting operations in Temiar country. That gwai lo can only have been in Grik for future work with the t’o yan, he mused. Then it struck him: he had heard ‘next week’. I’ll get him in the jungle and where better than with the Temiar? he asked himself, smirking. All these military people give their operations names so I’ll have mine. An idea flashed into his mind. I’ll get him killed by poisoned darts from blowpipes – a lingering death – so the name of my operation will be Blowpipe. If not immediately, later: I don’t mind how long it takes. My Operation Blowpipe will be victorious. 

The Bear’s son had met Jason when he and his father were about to go and get some secret documents Ah Fat had ‘stolen’ from Chin Peng’s safe during the Baling Peace Talks at the end of December 1955. The two were being prepared for their task by C C Too in the house of his girlfriend when the Bear’s wife brought her 15-year-old son round, unexpectedly, to meet Jason. Wang Ming said that he had often spoken about how Jason had initially won them over and it would be a great kindness if Shandung P’aau could show his son his tricks. Jason, realising a happy companion on a dangerous mission was always better than an unhappy one, adroitly played up. He held Wang Liang spellbound and so had a friend for life before Wang Ming sent them back home with a smile, the boy chuckling all the way.

Ah Fat had seen the Bear’s hideous torture and after his own recovery, sadly only temporary, he went and told the Bear’s widow and son what had happened. Both were utterly disgusted and the son felt that his one job in life was to revenge his father’s death. His problem was ‘how to?’ He asked ‘Uncle’ Ah Fat who was against the son’s trying to work his way up the ranks of the guerrillas and be a ‘mole’ or by trying to organise a group to make a raid into Thailand – ‘that’s only for cowboy-type films’ – but a better and less targeted idea was to join the Malayan Police and see if he could get a posting into the Special Branch. For this ‘Uncle’ Ah Fat suggested ‘Uncle’ Too had the answer so went to see him. Because of the sterling work the Bear had done for his country over many difficult and dangerous years a generous reward for his family would not be out of place. Indeed there was an answer but, unfortunately, not one that could be bypassed. It was explained to the lad in detail: potential recruits needed certain basic laid down physical standards and academic qualifications, the latter the Cambridge School Certificate, with a Pass in the English language. The Recruit Selection Board, which always included a senior Special Branch officer, would determine from the interviews who among the successful candidates were potentially suitable for such work. When the Probationary Trainee Inspectors passed out from the Police Depot, they were posted to different branches of the Force, and those already earmarked for Special Branch work were posted to that branch.

Uncle Too asked Wang Liang what his school results were and, on being told, pursed his lips. ‘You are just about good enough for an ordinary policeman but for Special Branch work you also need to be able to write Chinese and speak one more, better two more, dialects.’ He saw the lad’s face fall but knew that a really keen recruit was not easy to find. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what. If you really, really intend to do what you have vowed, I am prepared to fund you’ – he had his own sources – ‘you will have to work hard but if ever I see you not up to standard, I’ll stop the funding.’

‘Uncle. I’ll do my level best, I promise you. I won’t slacken.’

‘Once I am sure you can manage, I’ll recommend that you join the police force as a Probationary Trainee Inspector if you pass. Let’s say you do and we both hope so. You have to undergo six months police training at the KL Police Depot. There you will learn foot drill, arms drill, weapons training, law (focusing on the Criminal Procedure Code, the Penal Code and the Evidence Ordinance) and Malay. Are you prepared for all that?’

‘Yes, Uncle,’ was the answer, given confidently.

‘Let us say you are successful and become a Probationary Trainee Inspector. You will pass out from the Police Depot and, if already earmarked for Special Branch work given your ardour and your family background, as I am sure you will be, there you will be posted.’

The boy nodded his head.

Uncle Too continued: ‘You will be given on-the-job training and, not necessarily immediately but certainly at some time in the future, you will be sent on courses at the Special Branch Training School in KL.’

The lad stood up and sincerely thanked Uncle. ‘Now go home, tell you mother all about it and I’ll let you know in a few days which school to go and study at.’

By August 1968 the Bear’s son was a Special Branch Inspector in the Grik office, where he had the added job of learning about those he knew as t’o yan, Temiar aborigines, although this last word was no longer politically correct in all circles.

Jason knew that before he could extract the two Gurkha ex-prisoners-of-war from Thailand he had to penetrate then use the Temiar for knowledge of the border area and around Ha La on the Thai side. He knew that without a good knowledge of Temiar he would not succeed. He thus had acquired a good working knowledge of Temiar. Now, years later, Mr Too had asked him to try and find out about Ah Soo Chye, Tek Miu and Lo See as sources about them had dried up. Initially, even with the support of the one Temiar who by then was not afraid of him so could help him, Senagit, it took quite a time for the leaders of the Temiar community, including Headman Kerinching, to trust him enough to talk to him. One of Jason’s original ploys was to tell them that if he was successful he would try and get the Gurkha soldiers then on the ladangs, not liked by any of the orang asli, removed. So before any headway could be made in getting some Temiar to go with him and a small team of Gurkhas to the border to meet and escort the ex-prisoners of war to safety and rescue, movement to their border crossing synchronised, a meeting was held. Jason was hopeful that any progress he could make would be a bonus. In the end he was not as optimistic.