‘Get ready for action. Open fire on my order. Only the Snatch Group move out after I order stop firing.’ Tan Fook Leong’s order loudly reverberated.
The Communist-inspired war in Malaya against the colonial power, Britain, known as the Emergency, had been a feature of everyone’s life for six years, since mid-1948. Sometimes flaring, sometimes subsiding, it rumbled on, waxing and waning, until 1959. By 1954 it was simmering, taking advantage of ‘opportunity’ targets, ‘as and how’. And one was about to be presented to the waiting ambush.
Lieutenant Colonel Edward Ridings had only recently taken over command of 1/12 Gurkha Rifles (1/12 GR). He was an able and likeable man, with a good war record. Just over forty years of age, medium-sized and barrel-chested, he had black curly hair, an open face and, what he was secretly proud of, an extremely trim and athletic figure. He had been posted in from another Gurkha regiment so was eager to ‘get to know’ his company commanders and the men. His family had come with him: Fiona his wife, Theodore his son, who said he, too, wanted to serve in the Gurkhas, and Edwina his daughter, both children going to King George V School in Seremban.
1/12 GR had been on jungle operations since mid-1948 and every three years underwent six weeks of re-training which included modern warfare tactics, range classification, administration, a drill competition and games, especially the inter-company football tournament. After a battalion parade to celebrate the new Champion Company’s triumph, three of the four rifle companies moved out to tactical bases near villages between fifty and seventy miles away, with the fourth in Seremban. The CO had spent a night with each ‘out’ company, travelling in an open Land Rover. A champion rifle shot, he carried a rifle. With him was an armed bodyguard, sitting in the back seat. Behind came an armoured scout car with a Bren gun mounted on a cradle. This the gunner, sitting in a chair with his head showing, could fire with aimed shots – if he had to lower his seat and the cradle to close the roof, he fired it using the cradle’s handle-bars, aiming through an open slit in the bodywork.
Glancing at his watch the CO saw it was later than planned so told the driver to speed up. The scout car driver saw the Land Rover surge forward and tried to catch up. Negotiating a steep hairpin bend, he missed his gears and stalled the engine. The Land Rover, unescorted, drove on alone.
To the guerrillas’ amazement they saw an unescorted and open-sided Land Rover approaching, a little faster than normal, with an elderly British officer in the front passenger seat – so our leader was correct! – and an escort in the back.
When the vehicle was in the centre of the ambush, Tan Fook Leong gave the order to fire. The vehicle slew into the ditch with no movement from the three men inside.
‘Cease fire! Snatch Group out, get their weapons and ammunition. Quickly! Kill anyone still alive.’
The guerrillas spilled onto the road and saw all three men were dead. As they grabbed their three weapons and started to search for ammunition, they saw that the CO had been hit in the nose by a single bullet as well as his body being riddled and bleeding. The Gurkhas’ bodies were also heavily hit and bleeding profusely.
It was then that they heard a heavy vehicle coming towards them.
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.
