Meanwhile efforts were being redoubled to prevent stores and supplies leaving towns, so meriting a new code name, without which the planners feel naked: ‘Key’, to open the door to the end of the Emergency, was chosen to put on the surrender leaflets. The leaflets were all printed with ‘Quay’ – same sound! – so the code name was changed to ‘Pibroch’, which made sense to nobody, probably not even to the name givers. The actual air drop of leaflets to let the guerrillas know their hungry fate coincided with municipal elections. The tape given to the voice aircraft to warn the guerrillas about their expected starvation so surrender was advisable, was inadvertently changed with the one warning people to cast their vote for town councillors. The good citizens of Malaya were indignant at the slur on their probity; nobody ever did hear what the guerrillas thought but Jason, on learning about it, expected that the message to vote properly gave them a giggle or two that raised their morale. That was needed as, despite such staff idiocies, Government was, in fact, by then winning the war.
25 January 1955, Rompin, Negri Sembilan: Rubber tappers, those sympathetic to the guerrilla cause and those threatened if unwilling, were one tenuous source of resupply. It was impossible to look at each latex-collecting bucket to see if it had a false bottom, however hard troops and police tried to. Bits and pieces, dribs and drabs, jots and tittles of this and that and hidden in unexpected places, were carried by tappers whose ‘task’ lay by the jungle edge and so could the more safely be collected by the CT.
A Company, 1/12 GR, had been sent on detachment to Rompin, quite some distance from Seremban. The nearest estate, Rompin Estate, was in two parts and managed by a man named Peter Cox who was just about to retire on pension, He was a desiccated little man of uncertain years and more uncertain temper, had been a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese, was ‘jumpy’ and felt superior to all military who ‘had let us down in 1942’. The detached part, several miles distant and colloquially known as Rompin South, was looked after by a Geoffrey Fremin, a one-time National Service corporal of a British battalion, who had served in Malaya. He had so liked the country and the people he’d returned as a rubber planter. Bumptious and swollen-headed, he still had a lot to learn.
One day he rang Jason and told him that one of his staff had given him a tip that a group of CT were to visit his part of the estate’s northern boundary in two days’ time to collect rations. ‘They will come between half past six and nine o’clock. Are you interested?’
But of course!
In Geoffrey Fremin’s office Jason was shown on an estate map where the guerrillas were expected. He mentally related that to his own operational map before the conversation turned to details of how he intended to set about his task. The door was open and Chinese clerk in the outer office heard details of place, date and timings. His brother was in the local guerrilla group. I must warn him the clerk decided. The Gurkhas will make a good target.
Jason briefed the platoon he himself would take out. ‘Our task is to ambush some daku who are planning to pick up some rations on the corner of Rompin South rubber estate,’ showing them on the map where their target was. ‘They are expected from the northwest and we will reach the ambush area from the northeast. They won’t show their faces till the tapping starts so we’ll take up our positions just after dawn, well before any tappers can see us. We’ll go the first five miles from camp by transport with our evening meal in our mess tins, move through the jungle where we’ll spend the night by a stream near the estate edge. Once in position just after dawn we will camouflage our jungle hats with pieces of the cover crop. If nothing happens by nine o’clock that’s it so back to base. If they do come, try not to shoot any civilian tappers.’
The ambush was on a slight rise giving a clear view of the dull red laterite estate road that ended by a stream some fifty yards to their front and a large area of rubber to be tapped. The ambush would be invisible from the road only if heads were kept down. The cover crop between the trees was less than six inches high.
Before lying down and sticking greenery into his hatband, Jason saw that his men were spread out like a half-moon, with the nearest trees to be tapped only a few yards in front.
Meanwhile the guerrillas had decided not to take any supplies but to ambush the Gurkhas when they lifted their ambush so they took up a position to a flank, surreptitiously, well after dawn by when the Gurkhas were in the prone position, watching their front.
At about 8 o’clock Jason saw three men walking down the estate road towards them, Cox, carrying a shot gun and followed by a large Alsatian dog, Fremin and in the rear a Malay Special Constable with a Sten gun. The guerrillas also saw them. At the end of the road, just in front of the stream, Fremin said, loudly enough for every soldier to hear, ‘Captain Rance and his Gurkhas are ambushing the ground in front of us.’
Cox turned on him and, bitter reproach in his voice, said ‘I never gave permission for the military to come onto any part of my estate. How dare you let them?’ and, so saying, he brought his shot gun up into his shoulder, unwittingly aiming straight at Jason, and said, ‘If I see Captain Rance I’ll shoot him.’
Out of the corner of his eye, at the far end of the ambush, Jason noticed a woman tapper leave the last tree, put her latex collecting bucket on the ground and move to where he knew the left-hand soldier was. A couple of paces from him she turned round, lowered her trousers and, stepping backwards, squatted down out of Jason’s sight.
Looking ahead once more, hoping against hope that what was happening on his left flank would not result in the soldier remonstrating and so giving his position away thereby rousing Cox’s ire any more, Jason saw Cox bend down to his dog and sick him on up the rising ground. The dog jumped over the stream and came directly towards where he lay. All we need now is a roll of drums, flashed through his mind as the dog came straight towards him. A non-church goer, he mumbled ‘God help us’ and, to his astonishment and great relief, God did because the dog turned round and went back to his master, having been only about five yards from his unseen quest. At the same time, squinting to his left, he saw the tapper woman rise, pull up her trousers and resume her tapping duties.
Angry voices clearly reached him from below. ‘Fremin, what rot you talk. No one could hide in the ground to our front without our seeing them and the dog would have found anyone there, so would the tapper.’
‘But, Mr Cox, Captain …’
‘Close your damned mouth. Nobody can hide there without being seen here. Nobody could hide here with the dog searching for them. Nobody could be here if the tappers don’t give the game away.’
‘But Captain Rance never told me he’d cancelled it,’ Fremin expostulated.
‘I said “shut your mouth” so shut it.’
The guerrillas were also privy to the unexpected scene. The leader was in two minds, whether to ambush the Gurkhas – but could they be there if the dog found nothing and the woman tapper behaved normally? – or kill the three men as they walked back up the road. Knowing that Fremin and his clerk were friends he decided that it were better not to attack them. As soon as the three men were out of sight the guerrillas disappeared back into the jungle.
Jason thought it highly unlikely any daku would make an appearance now so, after waiting half an hour, he lifted the ambush. He called the flank soldier over to him and asked him about the squatting woman. ‘Saheb, I turned my head away but I had never seen “it” from that angle before.’
They made their way back through the jungle, met transport ordered for 1030 hours and reached base in time for a late morning meal.
Back in his office, smarting at the rebuffs, Fremin fumed about the Gurkhas not telling him they wouldn’t be coming. I’ll have it out with that Rance chap next time I see him he promised himself but the two never did meet up again.
That evening Jason rang Mr Cox in his house. ‘Captain Rance here, Mr Cox.’
‘I was told you were in ambush near the jungle edge over the stream, Captain. If you had been there I’d have shot you I was so angry that you had the impertinence to go there without my permission.’ Jason let him blow off steam and then said, ‘But I was there. I heard what you and Geoffrey said,’ and he repeated them, almost word for word.
After a hush, broken only by heavy breathing, a chastened Cox said, ‘but the dog? It could not have made a mistake.’
‘It came within five yards of me and turned back of its own accord.’
Another pause and then, apologetically, ‘what troops other than Gurkhas would have remained so quiet?’
There was no need for an answer so Jason rang off and ate his supper, happy at the high standard of his men’s discipline but never knowing how their skill had unintentionally also foiled the guerrillas.
15 February 1955, central Malaya: Food denial efforts were strict enough for some guerrillas to defect. One was a courier who described how deep jungle courier ‘letter boxes’ were selected; couriers never followed the same route between pickup and delivery but they had to ‘post’ their correspondence in designated ‘letter boxes’. This was confirmatory information. One such he loosely described as ‘a large tree by a stream junction’ was assessed to take a day to reach from the nearest village, Bekok. Jason’s company was detailed to go and find it. Rifles or crystal balls to the fore? Jason asked himself.
The soldiers wondered why such tasks always came their way. They felt proud of their OC’s skill, tactically and linguistically. He is sure to get a bahaduri in the next list.
It would be hard put to plan on a vaguer description Jason thought as he studied his map. By dint of elimination, he decided to search one area less unlikely than others to look for a tree that couriers could recognise as a ‘letter box’. His reasoning was based on what lovers of military appreciations call ‘time and space’ factors. The area had to be far enough off the beaten track for safety, near enough the outside world for convenience and so situated that it could be of use in the main north-south guerrilla courier route, or rather corridor, and a prominent enough tree to be easily recognised. Near running water so deep roots so tree more conspicuous? Jason mused.
At 2 o’clock on the day chosen he was awoken to a large mug of tea before as unlikely a mission as any he had ever undertaken – and that’s saying quite a lot! They were in the jungle by first light and moved all day on a compass bearing taking them northeast.
By evening they had reached the target area and small patrols were sent out to make sure there were no guerrillas in the vicinity before starting to make camp. One reported that it had seen a large tree by a stream junction.
Next morning Jason went to see it: once it had been a very large tree, sprawling around a small rocky outcrop in the junction of two streams. The Gurkhas recognised it as a chhatiwan, no English name but Devil Tree in Nepali. It had been struck by lightning and now only its large bole was left, entwined with creepers and encased in lichen. Even so it would be too much of a coincidence to have found the correct place so easily, so more patrols were sent out at 10 degree intervals to cover all the territory in the target area. In the forenoon eight patrols searched to the north and later on in the day six patrols went searching to the west, Jason having surmised that there was little likelihood of there being any courier movement to the south or east. No similarly positive tree had raised the men’s suspicions or hopes, so ambush positions would be put around the old bole. ‘My plan is to have an outer ring some two hundred yards from the tree and an inner ring actually watching it,’ Jason told his men. ‘If and daku to come try for a capture rather than a kill.’
By half past eight next morning all were in position and two hours and ten minutes later two guerrillas came into sight and were engaged by three soldiers. Jason ran to the scene of the firing. Both guerrillas had been wounded and were running away. Jason and Corporal Kulbahadur Limbu chased them.
Jason glanced at Kulbahadur as they surged forward and saw his eyes were completely bloodshot. The lust to kill was in him and he would not be deprived of his prey. They found the first man trying to hide under a bush, flesh wounds in his legs and upper body. Jason stopped moved the man’s weapon out of reach before putting an emergency dressing on the worst wound.
As he did so he heard the other guerrilla open fire and Kulbahadur return it. It sounded as though he was engaged in a running battle so Jason went to help him and found that by then Kulé had captured his man and, to do this, he had wounded him in the leg so he could not run away. On approaching him, he had been fired at from thirty yards’ range so Kulbahadur had gone forward another ten yards and been shot at again so had aimed at the guerrilla’s right arm to prevent him from firing any more. He had then gone forward and captured him. The guerrilla was furious. He refused to talk, trying not to wince as he had a First Field Dressing put on his leg, glowering fiercely, like an eagle. The Gurkha’s blood-red eyes were slowly returning to normal.
After both men had been carried to Company HQ they had their wounds the better seen to. Jason spoke with them both while the Company 2ic called for a heli to evacuate them on the morrow and a patrol was sent to discover the nearest LP. Jason asked what their names were and the man wounded in leg and arm, aged about thirty, lean and strong, refused to give it and stared stubbornly ahead, saying nothing when spoken to. The other said his name was Ah Chong. While interrogating him Jason told one of the soldiers to examine the guerrillas’ packs. One of them found some newspapers, thought that the OC Saheb would be interested, so took them over to him. Jason scanned the title, ،چ&ق.گ.’, and asked ‘Where did you bring these from?’
‘Ha La, in Thailand.’
Jason took a gamble: ‘Comrade Ah Fat gave them to you, didn’t he?’
A look of amazement crossed Ah Chong’s face. ‘How can you know that?’
‘I know many things you think I don’t know,’ was Jason’s equivocal answer. I haven’t heard of Ah Fat for ages. Moby and C C Too will have to learn about this as soon as I get back.
Flicking through the pages of the paper Jason found a surrender leaflet. He called over to Ah Chong and asked him why he had not carried it in his hand in case he bumped into the Security Forces?
Motioning to the other guerrilla, he mumbled ‘he didn’t let me. He never would. He told me he’d rather die than surrender.’ And indeed that night the man who had not spoken and who was not fatally wounded did die, almost as though he had willed himself not to live. Before being flown out with the corpse, Ah Chong, clutching a surrender leaflet, told Jason he was grateful for what had done for him and said he would no longer be a Communist but a civilian instead.
He was debriefed when in hospital and both Moby and C C Too were delighted when they learnt how much effect on guerrilla morale that issue of Red Tidings had had, and, having read it for themselves, felt that the author had scored a bull’s eye.
Mr Too was vastly impressed at Ah Fat’s subtle use of the nicknames, which he already knew about. I must find out if Captain Rance has twigged that subtlety. He phoned Moby and, in veiled speech, asked him to contact Rance to find out. He was pleased, but not surprised, to learn that, yes, Jason had cottoned on to it but had not understood why. ‘Unless he is trying to send me a message’ he had suggested.
C C Too met the Director of Operations and told him about the incident. ‘Sir, your seed of an idea has fertile soil in which to grow.’
‘Mr Too. I like the idea even better than before,’ the General replied.
Back in camp, Jason was called to the CO’s office and given his annual confidential report to read. ‘Sit down, read it and initial it.’ Jason took that most important of personal documents and read ‘This officer has a taut, lean body and the indefinable air of a natural commander. He is very active. Outwardly he is always cheerful and irrepressible in spirits, but I believe that beneath it all he is sensitive and easily depressed.’
