‘I am comrade Tang. What do you think you are doing in the jungle at this time of night? You haven’t come with any gwai lo, have you? If you have, they and you will regret it.’ Tan Fook Leong sounded suspicious and inordinately surprised.
‘We are on our own, comrade. No gwai lo can move in the jungle at night as we can.’
No answer.
‘You got the new radio and the batteries, didn’t you? The sentry gave you our names, didn’t he? He never made mention of any gwai lo did he?’
‘No, no, he did not.’
‘On our way back from giving the sentry the radio we were captured. The gwai lo were many, we were only four but resisted until we were overpowered and captured. “Surrender, come over to us and be civilians or we will kill you here and now,” Jason adlibbed, ‘but they did not kill us and we have been treated well. We have not been tortured. We have been allowed to visit our families. We have been well fed and rewarded with money. We have had a good medical check up and our jungle sores have been cured. We were homesick. We have been given an amnesty. The armed struggle is futile. Why sacrifice your life for the party when the Secretary General and his clique have gone to Thailand and are living in safety with all the rations and comforts they need and you are missing. We have dangerously come back as we respect you. You treated us well and we want you to live at peace with your family. I have telephoned your son, Tan Wing Bun in Penang, to tell him I’ll be talking to you but he rang off without an answer.’
Jason’s oratory was in vain. Insults were hurled at them, their families and ancestors. ‘Go away you traitors before we come out and capture you. You’ll wish you were never born.’ A pause, a silence then, ‘No, we won’t let you go away. Comrades, advance and capture those pigs.’ Shots were fired but they were wild and went overhead.
‘Back now,’ said Jason and they moved back as quickly as they could, blessing and cursing the moonlight at the same time. A voice in Nepali to their front, ‘Saheb, here we are. What now?’
‘Back, Saheb, bring all your men back and we’ll go as far as I think we need to. There is no need to hurry as we will hear the daku follow us if they do.’
They moved for an hour and waited till dawn before meeting the rest of the company. ‘Sentries out and let’s have a brew,’ Jason ordered. ‘Miné, open the set and pass a message I’ll write out for you.’
The message they received at 0800 hours was stark. ‘Go back two thousand yards now as bombers are coming over at 1000 hours. Out.’ I’ve heard that before, how many unfused bombs this time?
A bomber flew over and dropped its bombs exactly on target, killing Ten Foot Long and killing or wounding all the men with him.[1] Jason was ordered to return to where the camp had been to inspect the damage. There were six wounded men and fifteen corpses. Jason signalled Battalion HQ and the CO managed to get two helicopters, much against the RAF’s better judgement, to go and collect the corpses and wounded. This time it was another company and some SEP who went and arranged matters. As Jason said, ‘once is enough.’
With Ten Foot Long’s death Operation Red Tidings was terminated and ‘Framework Operations’ came into force. That meant company commanders were given their own area and were responsible for keeping ‘boots on the ground’ according to their own programme. The aim was to keep the daku guessing so making them unsettled and more likely to surrender. More surrender leaflets were dropped than before, some showing little scenes depicting, in strip-cartoon fashion. In one it was clear that this was the work of a European ill-versed in Chinese etiquette: Father rushes out of the house and falls on the neck of his returning and once errant son who shakes his father’s hand.
Lieutenant Colonel Henry Gibson wrote a letter to Mrs Ridings telling her that her husband’s murderer had been accounted for. She never replied.
And, by now, Jason had worked so hard and concentrated so diligently on such different and difficult targets, he had burnt out his hurt feelings of being jilted, so the recurring dream of walking up the aisle to get married and losing his clothes never returned, nor did the ‘black at the sides and the white on top’ dream of missing a daku. He felt shriven.
Late December 1954, central Malaya: Vinod Vellu was not a consummate actor for nothing. He had been accepted by the group to which he had been sent and, having studied Political Science at university, was well aware of what to say when talking about Marxism and other –isms. Unusually there was a Malay CT in the otherwise all Chinese group and the two of them became close friends, although both knew that showing undue friendship when a true Communist was suspicious. In this case, however, the leaders of the group they were in realised that as neither of them spoke Chinese, a certain degree of amity was to be tolerated.
After only four months the Indian’s political advice was often asked, in Malay, although it was difficult for him to know how much notice his seniors took of it. What did intrigue them was how southern Indians, especially those working as labourers on the ‘colonial’ rubber estates, might be persuaded to show their ‘colonial’ masters what their true feelings were.
‘We would like to co-opt them into our ambit.’
‘I have not had much to do with those people, I am sorry to say,’ admitted Vinod Vellu. ‘What I can do, were you to wish it, is surreptitiously visit such labour lines when our group gets anywhere near them.’
He let that sink in and a couple of days later he was asked if he was ready to visit such a place. ‘With your permission of course, yes. However, as you well know, I am not a military man and so my ability to find my way through the jungle will depend on the comrades you detail to go with me and wait nearby until I have finished my research.’
A week later, after quite a traipse through some stiff country, he was told ‘tomorrow is your turn. We believe that you should get to the labour lines after work has finished, say by 4 o’clock. Be with them till six and, excusing yourself in the twilight, you will be picked up and escorted back to us. You will change into plain clothes, oh yes, we have a spare set handy, before you approach the lines. We will give you a piece of the deer we caught to throw at any barking dogs.’
‘Yes, I will put my thoughts together and hope for success. What is the estate’s name?’
‘Lavender Estate.’
Unseen by his Chinese comrades, he wrote a note to Ismail Mubarak, c/o his father, the comprador, as the chief on an Indian labour estate, which he would drop inconspicuously and hope it would find its way back to Seremban.
He was guided to the labourers’ quarters and told that his escort would be waiting for him at the jungle edge. ‘We expect you not to be more than an hour,’ he was told.
When Vinod Vellu lived with his parents he never visited the lines so the labourers were initially underwhelmed at seeing a stranger but, on giving a ‘red salute’ with one arm and fingers to the lips with the other, the atmosphere quickly changed. Beckoning them to close round him, he told them that he had heard they had grievances and, if these were not met, ‘I will bring the comrades to persuade’ – said with irony – ‘the manager to attend to them. They are also relying on you to supply them with some rice. If you can they can guarantee their support.’
Well within the hour they had told him they wanted better quarters, more pay and better rations, otherwise they would go on strike. ‘The comrades will accept that, I know,’ he told them encouragingly. ‘I will return after reporting to the comrades how to set about your demands.’ Once outside their lines he unobtrusively dropped his message, met his escort and they went back to base slowly, blessing an old timber track to help them.
The next morning a meeting was called. Vinod Vellu addressed them: ‘That was an excellent idea of yours. I had a really satisfactory talk with the labour force. They were so keen on what I said they told me they would discuss the idea among themselves and let me know their answer.’
‘What is their idea?’ he was asked.
‘Their spokesman’s tentative plan is to tell the manager that if he did not double their pay, they would walk out and leave him. I said that if they could get rice for you that would guarantee your support. Once that is confirmed, all that is needed is a date for their coup, as they called it.’
The reaction was better than he had anticipated. He was warmly congratulated. ‘We will discuss this in detail and, once our firm date has been decided, escort you back to Lavender Estate so you can fix it up that end’.
The comprador was an astute man. Tall, with thinning hair, he had been an athlete when young and although now in his fifties, he was alert and adept as any man half his age. He had been on that rubber estate for many years and was on good terms with the European manager, a Mr Evan Jones, an ex-officer of the wartime Indian Army, who, most unusually, was fluent in Tamil. Not far from being pensioned, he felt that by keeping in the manager’s good graces, it could only redound in his favour. From his separate quarter he had sensed, rather than heard, an unusual amount of conversation the evening before, almost as though someone – but who could it be? – was giving a lecture. He had slipped on his flip-flops and quietly, quietly gone over to where he heard a voice that sounded like his son’s and, peering through one of the slats of a window frame, saw it was he. My son! Can he be in this for real or is he trying to get his own back? He felt it was the latter but … He nearly called out to ask him who he was but decided against it. After a while, being bitten by mosquitoes for almost as long as he could bear and not hearing any noise or hint of discontent, he had slipped back to his quarter. He rehearsed the main points he had heard, rather disturbingly anti-British and pro-Communist.
‘What was all that about?’ his wife asked him. ‘You don’t often bother to go and listen to the coolies’ claptrap.’ Being the comprador’s wife, she knew she was superior.
He didn’t answer her but quietened her down by snuggling up to her. However, both were beyond their prime and the warm night would make them sweaty, so, separated, they went to sleep, unexercised.
Next morning the comprador casually wandered around the block where his son had been and saw a piece of paper on the ground. Normally he didn’t bother to pick up any dropped piece of paper but this time he did. It was a cheap envelope and the address on it read, Mr Ismail Mubarak, c/o the Comprador, Lavender Estate, Police HQ, Seremban. That really intrigued him. He recognised his son’s writing. He had heard of a ‘Moby’ but had never met him. Momentarily he was tempted to open the envelope but prudence won: I’ll give it to the manager when I go to the office and make my report. Let him do any skulduggery if he wants to. I’ll keep quiet about who wrote it.
And so, later on in the morning, he went to the manager’s office and told him what he had learnt the previous night, what he had found earlier on. ‘Sir, here is the envelope I picked up,’ and he handed the cheap-looking envelope over and waited to be questioned.
‘Can you give me a description of the man giving the lecture and what was he talking about?’ Mr Jones, a tall, gaunt man, asked him.
The comprador told him as much as he thought was prudent, was thanked and dismissed. The manager had been in the Intelligence Department during the war and ‘knew’ such things happened although this was the first time he had come across such a case during the Emergency. He thought it over: either the letter was meant for ‘posting’ and the stranger’s visit was the way he wanted it posted or, perhaps, it was dropped by mistake. Probably the former, otherwise why the address on the outside? He reached for his phone book and looked up the number of Seremban Police HQ.
The exchange answered, ‘Police HQ, Seremban speaking. Can I help you?’ in Malay.
The manager also spoke Malay but he chose to speak in English. ‘I am Mr Jones, the manager of Lavender Estate. May I speak to Mr Ismail Mubarak please?’
‘Hold on, sir, I’ll put you through.’ The Malay exchange operator’s tone was good.
A ringing tone was heard and ‘Ismail Mubarak speaking. Can I help you?’
The manager introduced himself first and said, ‘Can I come and see you about something that I can’t talk to you about on the phone?’
‘Sounds exciting. Yes, any time. Come to Police HQ and we can go into a huddle over a beer in my quarter.’ Although a Moslem, Moby felt he would be forgiven taking alcohol in the line of duty.
Later that same day Evan Jones met Moby in his office and they introduced themselves. ‘Come into our visitors’ room. Beer or tea?’
‘Beer, my syce is driving.’
Moby gave his orders and they talked about nothing in particular till ‘Cheers and what can I do for you?’
Moby asked.
Evan Jones took the letter out of his pocket and handed it over. ‘I’ll tell you what my comprador told me,’ – and, to Moby’s intense interest, the story came out – ‘… and this morning, this is what he gave to me,’ he said as he handed the envelope over. Moby took it and Jones noticed that he did not open it to read it.
‘I thank you warmly,’ Moby said. ‘I can’t give you any details, I’m afraid …’
