‘So what’s your answer?’
‘Do it secretly by sending Captain Rance and his Gurkhas with the rest of his company, or even another company behind them as backup. He’s up to his neck in all this and he’ll just have to go.’
‘Do you think he’d do it?’
‘And spoil his time for studying for the Staff College Entrance Exam?’ and he laughed at his own joke.
So it was decided that, Captain Rance being willing, that’s what would happen.
As everyone had expected, Captain Rance was willing. The first detail to ensure was, obviously, where was his target? So, for the next few days, two Austers flew over an area to the east and south, in one case, and the north and west in the other, of the cave area. Not to attract undue attention, planes only flew every alternate day and, after five days, the gizmo in the plane flying east and south of the cave picked up an answering ‘peep’. On the next day the same pilot flew towards where he had heard the ‘peep’ from the other direction and it was much louder, loud enough to pinpoint the position within one map square. It was three days’ foot journey from the road leading to the northeast from Bahau.
Jason remembered he had Ten Foot Long’s phone number, wife’s and son’s names. I’ll risk it and call Penang. A man’s voice answered, giving the phone number.
‘Wei, is that Tan Wing Bun, Tan Fook Leong’s son?’
‘Yes, who are you?’
‘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 want him back home alive, he’ll be dead within the week.’
As Tan Wing Bun put the phone down he told himself he’d never forget that voice but whose is it?
Rather than risk an airdrop, thereby jeopardising security, part of A Company would be used to carry more rations than usual. Once the target had been pinpointed, night movement would be necessary to get to within hailing distance of the daku camp. Then, with his close bodyguard around him and his face covered in case a light was shone his way, Jason would start calling out. He would make his next move depending on the answer. His back-up platoon would be far enough away not to spoil the ambience and near enough to take what counter-action might be needed.
Jason briefed his company. ‘This is a great honour for all of us. No other battalion is thought good enough …’ and he went on to give out details, finishing up with, ‘luckily it is the full moon period but, even so, fire discipline must be tighter than a miser’s clenched fist. My bodyguards will be Corporal Kulbahadur Limbu and my batman, Chakrabahadur Rai.’
They found the camp on a slight rise on the fourth day after entering the jungle. Three men of the close escort platoon made a recce of the position, cautiously, oh so cautiously, spotting where the sentry posts were as well as the general lie of the land. The water point was on the far side of their approach. Jason decided that forward movement was the only answer as that would mean the quickest withdrawal if the worst happened and they were attacked. ‘But they won’t move at night, I’m sure,’ he said.
They kept well hidden after the recce group returned and, as daylight ebbed, inched their way forward to a position between where two sentry posts had been detected. Jason hoped that if the daku thought they were completely safe, they would have a sing-song after their evening meal; it would cover any noise they might make going through the jungle at night as it hadn’t rained for three days so the undergrowth was liable to crackle. Once they were within earshot they heard a monotonous lecture so Jason and his two men moved as silently as they could until he could make out what was being said. At last all was quiet.
‘Cover your face and I’ll cover mine,’ he said softly then called out, ‘Comrade Tang, Comrade Tang, can you hear me?’
Nothing but stirring was heard as though the guerrillas were suspiciously alert.
‘Comrade Tang, it is Goh Ah Wah here, come to talk to you. I have brought comrade Kwek Leng Mong with me. Comrade Kwek, tell them you’re here.’ In another voice, ‘Comrade Tang, this is Kwek Leng Mong. There are four of us, the other two are comrades Yap Kheng and Sim Ting Hok.’ Another change of voice and twice came ‘Yes, Comrade Tang, here we are.’
‘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.’
