As the scout car came into the straight, the driver and gunner saw the Land Rover in the ditch and guerrillas round it. The gunner fired bursts of rapid fire at them.
‘Back fastest,’ shouted Tan Fook Leong as bullets sprayed the road, luckily, for the guerrillas, not causing any casualties. They fled back into the jungle not minding how much noise they made and quickly moved off. It would be several hours before any soldiers could start tracking them.
With heightened vigilance, the driver, horrified to see what his bad gear change had resulted in, halted near the Land Rover, full of bullets and three dead men. The gunner saw tracks and broken foliage so he fired several more bursts in their general direction.
‘Our Commanding saheb is dead[1] and so are the other two,’ said the driver to the gunner. ‘One was my close friend. I must tell Battalion HQ about this now’ and he made his call.
The guerrillas, excited at their success, stopped half an hour later for a breather before being ordered to return to their jungle base, a day’s stealthy journey away, in small groups by different routes, so confusing an inevitable follow-up by the Gurkhas.
The guerrilla jungle ‘garden’ where two disgraced guerrillas were working lay to the southwest. Yap Kheng, a big, strong man once a forest ranger, had an axe and Sim Ting Hok, a non-descript with the limpid gaze of an entirely stupid man, a mattock. They also had seeds to sow, beans, eggplant, sweet potatoes, pumpkins and spring onions. Yap Kheng stopped working as he heard distant firing, wiped his forehead and said to his companion, ‘that’s firing we can hear, isn’t it?’
Sim Ting Hok stopped digging and listened. ‘Yes, in the distance to the northwest. It’ll be from the Jelebu pass ambush. Quite a noise’
‘I would so much have liked to have taken part in the ambush rather than work here. Why were we kept out, do you think?’
‘As a punishment. Demotion. At our last self-criticism you admitted to having written an unauthorised love poem and I was not paying enough attention to what was being said so could not answer the questions.’
‘What will our comrades do now, do you think? There’s bound to be a big follow-up operation by the gwai lo military.’
‘They’ll get out of the area now. We were not told but a move east is my guess.’ Instinctively he lowered his voice. ‘Between us two, you know, I’m fed up. So far we have seen nothing really worthwhile for our pains. I’ve had enough. There’s too much bad feng shui here for my liking. What do you think?’
Automatically he looked around although he knew there was no one else there. ‘That’s sedition. They’d kill you for that.’ He hesitated. Softly he added, ‘But I agree with you.’ Then louder he asked, ‘if the others go east, what will happen to us here?’
‘We were told to stay till fetched. We have only one rifle between us, your punishment included going empty-handed.’
‘I know. But what can I do about it, except trust to luck. We’ve still got a lot of work to do so let’s get on with it.’ He shook his head wearily and bent down to scratch his ankles. ‘These leech bites never stop itching. If we had the same jungle boots as the gwai lo have our feet’d be better off.’
They resumed their tasks.
Back in the Battalion’s Communications Centre, the Comcen, the duty operator heard the call ‘Hullo 9, hullo 9, urgent message, over.’
‘9, send, over.’
‘9 …’ the driver gave details of what and where had happened.
‘9, I’ll send for Acorn. Wait out.’
Acorn quickly came and told the driver to wait until rescue arrived.
‘9, wilco, out.’
The IO immediately told the 2ic who ordered the Duty Bugler to blow that hardly-ever-heard call, the assembly call that ends in five ‘Gs’, ‘Officers Report at the Double’.
By the time the British officers, including the Gurkha Major, had assembled the 2ic, Major Henry Gibson, had made his plans. He told them of the tragedy of the three dead people was why he had ordered them at such short notice. ‘It’ll be that bloody man, Ten Foot Long, I have no doubt. He’s been a thorn in our flesh since 1948. He’s had the luck of the Devil so many times. It’s now up to us to turn the tables on him. Right, listen to me.’
He pointed to the map. ‘The incident seems to have happened just short of the Jelebu pass. Exactly where will only be known when the Land Rover and the scout car are found. One platoon of A Company, with one day’s Compo rations, will be ready to move in half an hour. It’s now 1415 hours and it’s dark by 1800.’ He looked at the OC, Captain Jason Rance. ‘One section will secure the area, one will help with the recovery of the bodies and both vehicles and one will track the guerrillas’ movements. You, plus your other two platoons, will draw five-days’ rations and ammunition for your whole company and move out tomorrow morning, having eaten early, at 0930 hours. This new order from Brigade about not surrounding and attacking a guerrilla camp yourself but using a marker balloon to show the RAF where the enemy camp is so it can be bombed means that you will take one with you.’ He glanced at Rance, with a meaningful look, ‘and no bloody heroics of “not understanding” and trying to do it with your men,’ said with a veiled hint of expected insubordination in his tone of voice.
Major Gibson was a pre-war officer. Sad-faced, balding and wrinkled, he was considered as ‘burnt out’ by his subordinates. From the earliest days of his service he had tried hard to get to know his men, speaking their language ‘well enough’ although not as fluently as some of the wartime, emergency-commissioned officers spoke it. He referred to the soldiers as ‘the little men’ and had been accepted by them because he was an English saheb in the same mould as they, their fathers and their forefathers had known British officers for more than a century. He had a kind heart, was apt to be forgetful and was ‘carried’ by the other officers.
He inwardly felt that Captain Jason Percival Vere Rance – ouch, quite a mouthful – was only commissioned because of the war as his background was not sufficiently ‘sahib-like’ although he was a ‘good enough type’ for this post-war army. Rance was six feet tall, with a taut, lean body and the indefinable air of a natural commander. With fair hair, penetrating, clear blue eyes, his features were almost hawk-like and stern. He showed his pleasure with a wonderful open smile. He was a brilliant linguist and had proved to be an outstanding company commander, an exceptionally talented jungle operator, good with the men, dedicated and hard-working who, if he could get his administrative and staff training as good as his tactics, could go far, but his background was unusual – ‘broken the mould’ some grumbled. He had been born in Kuala Lumpur, his father had been ‘something’, never asked what, tax official it was hinted, so probably not really a gentleman, and, from what he had guessed, had married ‘beneath him’. Mrs Rance’s background was most certainly unusual, although Jason never spoke about either parent: as a young woman she had been a ventriloquist who helped her father run a Punch-and-Judy show. She made sure that her son could master that unusual art and make different voices. Quite why, other than party tricks, she never told him: possibly it was vanity and possibly so that her own gifts need not be lost after her death.
Senior battalion officers were, in fact, jealous of Rance’s linguistic ability. Apart from faultless Nepali and good Malay, having had a Chinese playmate, Ah Fat by name, he also spoke fluent Chinese and could read and write many characters. He kept quiet about it, not because he was, well, not exactly ashamed of it – why should he be? – but more likely to keep it as a ‘secret weapon’. He made company parties a roaring success as a ventriloquist: he had a dummy which he sat on his knee and the absurd conversations in Nepali and English ‘brought the house down’. One of his acts involved a highly coloured model krait which produced some absurdly funny situations. He was a superb mimic and another of his party tricks was getting his dummy to bell like a deer.
Not only his peers, but his seniors seemed almost resentful of his prowess in the jungle. On operations his men were always prepared to go that little bit farther, not worry quite so much if faced with short commons, show maybe a bit more confidence in difficult situations than might be expected and always ready ‘to go those last few yards’. He had shown courage worthy of being recognised officially but nothing had ‘come through’. Luck of the draw he told himself; ‘battalion politics’ muttered others. What also seemed to upset his seniors was, when off parade, he was greeted with smiles more than were they. Bad for discipline they muttered but discipline never faltered.
There was another, unspoken, reason for the 2ic’s underlying resentment: during the war, instead of being sent overseas, he had been posted to the 5th battalion stationed on the North-West Frontier where the only activity was being sniped at by Pathans when roads were opened for convoys coming from the plains. Then he was posted to south India to be an instructor teaching camouflage and had been there till the end of the war. He did not have any campaign medals while Jason had the Burma Star and the General Service Medal with bar ‘South-east Asia 1945-46’.
At Major Gibson’s implied rebuke, Jason merely said, ‘I understand, sir’ in an abstract tone of voice – just now he was not his usual self for two reasons. One was that at the very end of his recent three-yearly leave of six months in England, he had become engaged to a girl who he felt was to be his and only his. She had said her father worked in the Air Attaché’s office in the British Embassy in Washington and that she’d tell them all about it. In her first skimpy letter she had written ‘… and I’m in such a rush I’ll write fully once I get to Malaya where Jason has arranged for the wedding as there’s not enough time to marry before his leave finishes.’ The wedding was due at the end of the following week and he was radiantly happy. The CO, in his kindness, had let her stay in his bungalow. Jason had arranged for somewhere else to live after the wedding. Wonderful! She had written a long explanatory letter to her parents and put it is a blouse pocket ready to take for posting. However, the person who collected her clothes to launder mistakenly took the blouse with the letter in the pocket so it never got sent. Sea mail to the USA, in any case, took quite a time so her parents were not worried in any delay in hearing from her.
The other reason was that he had, unusually, a secret worry. He had been disturbed by a recurrent dream, the meaning he could not fathom. Each time there was black left and right, white above and a grinning daku (a communist guerrilla) who aimed his weapon at him. Whenever Jason had tried to fire his weapon, a carbine, nothing happened, the daku shot at him and when he awoke, it was into another dream. Where oh where am I? Hospital, prison or lunatic asylum? Of course he told no one about it and behaved normally. Yet, worry him it did. I’ll take my krait with me, if only as a lucky mascot. It might even come in useful.
During his reverie other orders were given. The RMO was to get ready with body bags and whatever else was needed and the MTO to detail the ambulance, the Recovery Vehicle with the fitter, a 3-Tonner and another Scout Car for the platoon. The Signals Officer was to ensure communications were to stay open until night-time interference made contact impossible. ‘Open at first light tomorrow,’ were his orders.
‘I will have the sad duty of going and telling Mrs Ridings about her husband; something I’ll find particularly difficult, I fear,’ the 2ic added. He looked round and asked if there were any questions.
The IO asked if he or the 2ic who would inform Brigade HQ. ‘You’d better do it and tell their Duty Officer that I’m closeted with Mrs. Ridings. Any more?’ He looked round. ‘No. Right. Move.’
The buzz of the CO’s death had gone around the lines and men wanted to know why, how and what was to be done about it. Jason Rance wanted to brief his men collectively before any of them moved out so he ran down to his company lines and called to the CSM: ‘Major Ba, everybody fallen in immediately for orders,’ before going into his Company 2ic’s office where the Gurkha Captain, a pre-war warrior, was and told him the same thing. The CSM came in, saluted and told Jason the company had fallen in and was ready for orders.
Jason stood his men at ease and said, ‘The Commanding saheb, escort and driver have been killed by the daku. The battalion will mount a large operation to look for the killers but first, as soon as I have dismissed you, 3 Platoon will draw compo rations for one day, weapons and ammo and escort the recovery vehicle and the ambulance to bring back the corpses and damaged Land Rover. I will bring the rest of the company out to the same area early tomorrow morning with five days’ rations for 3 Platoon.
‘I will remind you of my standing orders for jungle movement: never cut what you can break naturally; never break naturally what you can bend; never bend what you can move; never move that which you can get through without moving; never tread on what you can step over; never step on soft ground when you can tread on something hard. Don’t forget that a footprint with the toes the same length is a bear’s, not a man’s; that cigarette smoke by water can be smelt for up to three hours afterwards and ours are different from theirs, and a dab of wet salt, never a lighted cigarette, is best for leeches. Why are we the best company in the battalion?’ He answered his own question, ‘because we never forget those points.’
His men accepted him and what he said because he never took any of them for granted.
Before Major Henry Gibson left the office he phoned his wife. ‘Jane, darling, drop everything and be ready to go to Ted’s bungalow and meet me there. He’s been killed in an ambush and we must tell Fiona. Also tell Jason’s fiancée. It will be a great shock for her, too.’
‘Oh, how terrible! I’ll wait until I see you and join you then,’ and rang off. With heavy heart, Henry Gibson joined his wife outside the CO’s bungalow, which was next door to his. ‘Darling, this is just too terrible,’ she said, with a sob in her voice. ‘Yes, I know,’ he answered with a choke in his.
He knocked on the door and called out, ‘Fiona, it’s Henry and Jane. May we come in?’
Fiona Ridings, a tall woman in her late thirties, had a determined, somewhat militant air with her almost masculine figure and bobbed hair, at once came to the door, saw the grave look on their faces and guessed why they had come to see her. ‘Henry,’ she burst out. ‘I just know why you’ve both come. It can’t be true, can it?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid to have to tell you it is. On his way back, Ted was ambushed just short of the Jelebu pass. The scout car driver says he was killed outright so that means he felt no pain.’
‘Wi … will you be bringing his body back?’ she asked, her voice quavering.
‘Yes, Jason Rance’s men are escorting the doctor to recover it at this very moment. The doctor will look after him and we’ll tell you when he has done all that needs doing.’
‘I’m superstitious, you know, my husband wasn’t. I just knew that Friday the 13th would be unlucky for him, I just knew …’ and she burst into floods of tears.
‘Let me get you a drink.’ He called the Malay house boy and told him to prepare a stiff brandy for the Mem. It was quickly brought and he gave it to the 2ic.
‘Drink this. Jane will stay with you for a while and help you tell the children when they come back from school. I must go back to the office and help sort things out. After you’ve had your drink, go and lie down on your bed and Jane will sit with you. I think you had all better spend tonight in our bungalow. It’ll be no trouble and we’d rather like you to be with us.’
Fiona made a great effort to calm down. ‘That would be a great help. Yes, please,’ she gulped.
As Henry tuned to go, she said, ‘You know I was in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the war, even got to the rank of sergeant. My job was in Operational Planning in the War Office. Every operation the army mounted was given a code name. To feel I can get my own back on Ted’s loss, can the code word for the operation I know you will be planning to capture those terrible men who killed him somehow be related to him? Please, please,’ and she started crying once more. Jason’s fiancée, overhearing everything said, kept to herself in her bedroom, scared stiff.
