‘Most earnestly’ and they shook hands.
Moby leant forward. ‘The first thing is, if the man you have described to me ever makes contact with you, accept all that he says and immediately come and tell me.’
Moby paused long enough for Evan Jones to ask him the second point. ‘Keep your mouth totally shut and tell no one at all about it.’
Jones dramatically put his hand on his heart and said. ‘I sincerely accept both points.’
He stood up, they shook hands again and he left.
Only then did Moby open the letter and read it carefully. He saw that his Dover was on course for a major triumph, no, don’t tempt Fate, had plans as nearly as firm as were needed, for a food lift at a certain deserted labour lines on Lavender Estate probably on the next full moon. ‘I and my friend will be wearing white shirts. The others will be in uniform. I am hoping about thirty bodies will be ready for you. Please prepare your answer. I will try and send you another letter but don’t bank on it.’
My gamble surely, surely, will pay off, Moby prematurely gloated as he made his way to see the CO 1/12 GR, whose troops would be used on Operation Dover as Lavender Estate was in the battalion’s area.
It is a historical fact that Tan Fook Leong, Commander 2 Regiment, MRLA, known as Ten Foot Long, was killed by an aircraft-alerted by a gizmo in his new radio set. The author’s friend, the late Mr A J V (‘Gus’) Fletcher, escorted by men of 2/2 Gurkha Rifles, was awarded the George Medal for successfully getting a CT, Wang Hsi, to surrender by talking to him in Chinese at night in the jungle. Wang Hsi thought the speaker was a one-time CT. Mr Fletcher was successful in similar escapades. ↵
1 November 1954, central Malaya: After the excitement of operating against Ten Foot Long, food denial work seemed more boring than ever. But that fickle lady, Dame Fortune, did come to A Company’s rescue once more to test the company commander’s nerve when ‘reacting to the unexpected’: a captured guerrilla reported that even while the Security Forces were engaged in food denial duties, stocks of rice had been taken to the jungle in waterproof tins and cashed in such a way that routine patrols would be unlikely to find them. The Brigade Commander had airily said ‘Let’s swamp the area and find the hidden stocks,’ unconsciously aping a conjurer taking a rabbit out of an empty hat!
Jungle lore is something that takes time, effort and much discomfort to absorb properly and anyone, especially senior commanders who have never been on jungle operations, have no idea that looking at a map or flying over the countryside were in any way equal to walking ‘under the canopy’. 2/12 GR, ordered to search a large area, claimed they did not have enough troops to do so properly so 1/12 GR had to lend them one rifle company to make up numbers. Captain Jason Rance’s A Company was detailed for this task.
2/12 GR was stationed in Bahau where Jason went to be briefed by the acting CO, a burnt-out major due for pension who, knowing he would never go any further, had ‘opted out’. When he spoke, he blinked with a nervous tic that being a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese had induced and the military world had left him behind. When he had first seen a 68 radio set, with its flexible aerial raised, it was on the ground. Thinking that the aerial was stiff he had leant against it and fallen over. He had got to his feet, ashamed and with a guilty feeling of insufficiency. He was what the unkinder members of the battalion called ‘rice-minded’. The 1/12 GR company was to operate south of a river flowing west to east, as good a boundary marker as any in preventing mistakes in recognition as 2/12 GR were to operate only north of it. The boundary between two states, shown on maps as a dotted line, ran through the area of 2/12 GR’s southern company, call sign 1. Recognition of friend and foe was a constant problem: inter-subunit boundaries, so easy to mark on a map but hard to distinguish on the ground without easily distinguishable features, had to be known by all involved.
Jason was told: ‘We wear crossed yellow khukris in the front of our jungle hats so are easy to recognise.’ ‘We wear a white square in the front of ours,’ was his response. Unaccountably he was not told that one of 2/12 GR’s sub-units had met a guerrilla group wearing exactly similar signs in jungle hats, not their normal red-starred peaked caps, and dressed like Security Forces. One of them had beckoned to the Gurkhas and the senior man had gone forward, only to have his left leg shot off. Since then each man’s hat had two signs, the yellow crossed khukris showing when worn in the lines and a red guerrilla star, sown in the inside, showing when worn in the jungle.
Jason briefed his men collectively, it being the first time the company was to work under command of another battalion. He showed them the relevant map sheet: ‘Up to this river anyone seen not wearing crossed yellow khukris in the front of their jungle hats will not be 2/12 GR but daku.’
For the first two days A Company, now call sign 5, searched diligently and found no traces of daku movement. Called to the set that evening he was given fresh orders. ‘Your boundary is extended north of the river to the state boundary dotted line on the map.’ Pre-war an inter-state boundary might have been discerned on the ground by a man-made path, but because of guerrilla activity it had not been cleared since before the war so now impossible to recognise.
‘5, wilco. Request confirmation call sign 1 has also been notified of change.’
‘5, of course. I confirm call sign 1 has been informed. Out,’ but something told Jason that that was not so. In all, to the acting CO 2/12 GR’s obvious vexation, he personally checked twice more.
So over the knee-deep river A Company, 1/12 GR, went and normal ‘fan’ patrols were sent out. Jason had taken a patrol of four men to explore up to the extended operational boundary. They came across a large guerrilla camp, big enough for eighty to one hundred men but now empty. Jason walked around inside it, inspecting a primitive workshop, a sports area and strong defences, and noticed a small hut in one corner with a cooking place. Bending down to inspect the ash, he found it was still warm. On the ground he saw a newspaper and, in idle curiosity, he picked it up. He was stupefied on reading the title, ،چ&ق.گ.’Hung Sik Siu Sik, Red Tidings, with a picture of the Secretary General looking almost as though he were about to give a Christian blessing, except that the expression of mockery on his face belied the original impression. Red Tidings! What an amazing coincidence, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief. He read the first line of the text and ‘did a double take’ at the similarity of his friend Ah Fat’s nickname, P’ing Yee, ‘Flat Ears’, ٪-&ص, now written as Pian Yee, +K)y, which he knew meant ‘suitable’, and of his own, $s*F،٦, Shandong cannon, now written as $s*F٪], ‘East of the mountain bun’. He was deeply puzzled and not a little worried. Is it a one-in-a-million coincidence? Surely it can’t be my old friend trying to send me a message? He put it in his pocket to read it later.
He mentioned the warm ash to his men, emphasising that it meant a small group was still using the camp, could be met with so to stay alert. On they went. At the top of a small rise they heard a noise on the far side of an overgrown stream, now a swamp, about thirty yards wide, below them. They halted. ‘Birds,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘No, man-made,’ Jason answered, ‘a patrol from the camp returning?’ He checked their position on his map: his new boundary was another map square to the north so the noise had to be made by guerrillas.
As they reached the bank at the edge of the swamp they heard the same noise again on the other side, louder and definitely man-made. ‘They may not cross over so we must go and meet them,’ Jason said softly.
The five men moved down the bank into the swamp which was ankle deep and thick with aloes, twelve-foot tall ‘spikes’ with barbed edges that make a metallic noise when brushed against. With extreme caution they started to go across. The mid-afternoon weather was overcast and in the swamp it was gloomily dark.
Halfway across they heard a noise like a tin being pierced, then the unmistakable clink of an opened water bottle’s stopper hitting the side. Jason’s patrol stood stock still. More noises: a muffled Chinese-sounding voice that Jason could not understand, men moving, sloshing … and coming their way. All five men froze, faced the direction of the on-coming men, lifted their weapon to their shoulder, took aim and waited. One, two, three men came into sight, a dozen yards away, moving diagonally across the patrol’s front, dressed like soldiers. On their jungle hats was a red Communist star, not crossed yellow khukris. In an agony of doubt because guerrillas he had met had never been so noisy … Guerrillas, not Gurkhas – seven, eight – but who are they? – must be … have to be guerrillas Yes or no? Yes! – so he whispered ‘Open fire when I do’ and tensed himself in readiness, senses razor-sharp.
As if on a sudden impulse the men wearing a red star in their hats turned and saw five unexpected men aiming their weapons at them. They instantly and instinctively came into the aim ready to open fire. The man on Jason’s right turned to him and hissed ‘second twelfth, second twelfth.’
For a dreadful, loaded second, all thirteen men stood poised, aiming loaded weapons at each other. In a flash Jason saw that the men facing them in the gloom might just somehow be Gurkhas with a guerrilla hat sign, rather than Chinese in security-force uniform and captured equipment. No, I can’t be wrong. And yet the cold worm of doubt was working overtime in his bowels. In less than a half second he thought if I shout ‘Don’t shoot!’ in Chinese and they are Gurkhas, they are much more likely to shoot and not to miss than if they are Chinese and I shout ‘Don’t shoot!’ in Nepali. He chose the latter, took off his hat so that the other men could see his face, lowered his rifle and sloshing his way forward shouted ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,’ in Nepali. ‘We are A Company, 1/12 GR.’
They were 2/12 GR men. Almost reluctantly they lowered their weapons.
‘Why are you in our area?’ a Sergeant snapped, angry and clearly frightened. ‘Can’t you map read?’
‘Why have you daku signs in your hats when I was told you wore crossed yellow khukris? That’s why we were aiming at you in our area. And why can’t you map read?’
The angry Sergeant snapped back, ‘Of course I can map read, but you are in our area.’
Both groups, shocked at the awful possibility of so many casualties, tried not to give further vent to their overwrought feelings. ‘Haven’t you been told of the change in our companies’ boundary?’
‘Change? There has been no change. It’s your bad map reading that’s to blame for our nearly killing each other.’
It was now evident that the order of the change of boundary had not been told call sign 1 of 2/12 GR by their own CO so neither patrol had strayed into the others’ area in ignorance.
‘What was that noise we heard from the other side of this swamp?’ Jason asked.
Hesitantly the Sergeant explained that they had found sealed tins of rice which they slashed with their khukris so that rain would seep in and the rice become inedible. By then Jason realised that he had been duped by the Gurkha Sergeant’s unusual accent into thinking it was a Chinese speaking. He was not to know that his nickname was ‘Cheena’ because of his strange Nepali accent.
‘Don’t let’s quarrel. I’ll go back to my overnight base and you go back to yours,’ said Jason and both groups, each still convinced that they were in the right and the others were in the wrong, departed.
Back in his base Jason learnt that there had been three other instances of patrols clashing, none opening fire. Determined to voice his deep concern, he went to his radio set to talk to Sunray 2/12 GR, only to hear Sunray call sign 1 complaining bitterly that the map reading prowess of call sign 5 was nil.
When it was Jason’s turn he started by saying ‘5, by the grace of God you have just been saved the responsibility of many Gurkhas’ unnecessary deaths …’ giving details.
An exculpatory but almost apologetic ‘Roger’ was the only answer.
After his evening meal Jason called the soldier who had been on his right in the swamp and asked him why he had urged him not to open fire.
Came the devastating reply, ‘Because I recognised my brother.’
The operation was called off immediately. Back in Seremban Jason complained bitterly to his CO about the boundary change mix-up but how Gurkhas, not being trigger happy, had not had a massacre, unlike an unfortunate British company who, seeing their Chinese JCLO in front of them, mistook him for a ‘baddy’, had opened fire, killing nine of their own troops.[1] ‘Sir, our men are wonderfully observant and steadfast. Their fire-discipline is second to none.’
The CO agreed wholeheartedly. Later still he realised that he wouldn’t have found that Red Tidings newspaper, the name an extraordinary coincidence, to say nothing of those two misspelled names adding an extra dimension to the enigma if the boundary had not been extended.
