‘Let’s take them by surprise,’ said Rance, in a quiet voice. ‘Make sure your weapons are ready to fire.’
Stealthily they moved forward, all senses alert and tingling, adrenalin pumping. This was the first contact for four months so now was their chance for a kill or capture. They crept to the edge of the clearing, fenced to prevent wild pig and deer from entering, and saw two men at the far end, dressed in khaki, bent over, one digging and the other with an axe in his hand. After carefully climbing over the fence – the bars were too close together to squeeze through – feeling most exposed, they crawled between the raised ridges of dug soil to a large felled tree in the middle of the ‘garden’ for cover, only some twenty yards from the daku. It struck Jason that this was the first time he had crawled as taught when undergoing training in the Indian Military Academy in 1941, thirteen years before.
Hiding behind the felled tree Jason gave out his orders softly, ‘Major Ba and Chakré aim at the right hand man, Jasé and I will fire at the one on the left.’ Rance’s target’s body was bent over as he was digging so, not seeing his head, he aimed at his back. ‘Fire!’ he said quietly. His bullet struck the middle of the guerrilla’s bent back. He sharply turned and faced the unknown firer, with his mattock in his hand as though aiming at him with a short-barrelled weapon before he toppled forward. Jason had again squeezed his trigger as the daku had turned on him but his carbine jammed. No, no, his mind shrieked, my dream! – bright in the middle, dark both sides, a guerrilla hit and turning round, looking at me. He instantly put his weapon down and pinched himself to see if he was awake, so pent up were his emotions. He had fired his first round and the other three men, thinking Jason had somehow been hit, turned to look as they fired so missing their target.
Jason was instantly apologetic and ashamed of his behaviour at seeing what he had been haunted by in his dreams. Here and now it was for real.
The CSM and Chakré, seeing that Captain Rance was not wounded, opened fire again, but just too late to be effective. The guerrillas were already climbing over the far fence. Rance scrambled to his feet and shouted the Gurkhas’ battle cry, Ayo Gurkhali, Charge! … but in vain. The two guerrillas had disappeared and their tracks were soon lost in a maze of others. Time and few numbers were against a more detailed search.
The daku had left a rifle behind them so Jason turned to Chakré and told him to stay back with him and ordered the other two to return to camp. ‘Tell the Company 2ic what has happened and that we two will hide in the jungle near the rifle and kill anyone who may come to recover it. Do not mention the contact to Battalion HQ until I return. And don’t tell them I’ll be out all night, otherwise they’ll think I’m lost or wounded.’
The CSM, looking worried, said he understood and went back to Company HQ. Jason looked at his carbine to find out why it had jammed. He forced the working parts open and found that the case had swollen so making it useless; ‘hard extraction’ in the jargon.
It was a long night for them as they sat, backs to a large ant hill, facing where the rifle had been dropped. It rained most of the time. Once a tiger’s growl throbbed nearby – they found its pugmarks next morning – which Jason wrongly thought was the death rattle of the man he had hit, and a mouse deer whickered in fright by their feet. No one came to recover the rifle so, once it was light enough to move, they returned to where the other platoons were awaiting them, Jason bringing the rifle with him. Before he changed into his spare dry clothes, he gave his carbine to the 2-inch Mortarman and kept the rifle. From then on he never used any other type of weapon.
By being bent over and not standing up straight, the bullet had ripped the skin of Sim Ting Hok’s back, just scouring the flesh, so, although it hurt him abominably, he could still run. He followed his unwounded companion blindly until his strength ran out, spurred on by stories that the Security Forces would torture him if he were captured.
Both men were exhausted and hungry but, when night fell, there was nothing else they could do but take shelter under a tree. Where else in thick jungle? Soon after dawn they heard the belling of a deer, one of the guerrillas’ recognition signs. They didn’t answer the first time they heard it but did so when it got nearer.
Their two rescuers, Goh Ah Wah and Kwek Leng Ming, were shocked to see the state their comrades were in, especially the wounded man. ‘Tell us what happened,’ one said.
Sim Ting Hok sat on the ground, mind on his throbbing wound. He did not see the poisonous centipede crawling towards him. As it crawled up his bare arm, he automatically made to brush it off, so causing the insect to dig its claws into the man’s skin. It was most painful.
‘Comrade, help me,’ he begged.
Goh Ah Wah knew what to do. Taking his knife out of his pocket, he cut the centipede off, leaving its legs dug in the skin. Sim Ting Hok looked dolefully at his arm and the legs in it and asked ‘now what?’
‘Now nothing. I’ll tie something round the legs and you’ll just have to wait until the flesh rots. Only then can the legs be pulled out. Now tell me what happened.’
Out came the explanation. ‘That means that the enemy are looking for us and you are wounded so cannot go back and join the others,’ said Kwek Leng Ming, wondering what his boss would say. ‘Our best bet is to go back towards Seremban for succour. The enemy certainly won’t expect us to return that way. I know a sympathiser’s house where we can get food and you can be treated.’ The guerrillas had operated in that stretch of jungle since 1942 and knew the place like the proverbial back of their hands.
About midday Jason said to Chakré, ‘let’s make a brief area patrol. I’m tired of sitting down and we both have had a zizz and a meal.’ After about a quarter of a mile they heard footsteps, sounding hollow in the hush, so they hid behind a large tree on their right hand side and peered through the hanging tendrils.
Coming their way were four guerrillas, one, face down on a make-shift stretcher borne by two others, a third with a rifle over his shoulder, the fourth, their escort, also armed with a rifle. As they passed in front of the tree Jason softly called out in Chinese, ‘Ch’uan Jia Chan’, May your entire family be wiped out.
This ancient curse is one all Chinese take heed of. Although Communist philosophy recognised no traditional beliefs or folklore, deep, deep in every comrade’s soul, there they lay, dormant. Taken completely unawares at such an unusual and unexpected threat from a disembodied voice, the three men came to a sudden halt, astonished at seeing nobody. Came the curse again. Inured not to believe anything ‘non-Communist’, they could not cover their inborn fear, heightened by seeing no speaker. What they were about to witness was so astonishing any aggressive reaction never entered their shocked heads.
‘Follow me at the ready,’ whispered Jason to Chakré. From round the other side of the tree, rifles in their outstretched arms, the daku were mentally overwhelmed when Jason said, ‘Move and you’ll be shot, not killed but wounded so you can never be a father again.’ Brave words. I could never or would ever do it. ‘Give us your weapons or we’ll shoot.’
Unable to do anything else, the guerrillas surrendered them and Jason, with Chakré, escorted them back to their temporary base. There, bound by the toggle ropes the soldiers carried, Jason looked at the wounded man’s back, took the medical pack and did what he could to relieve the pain. ‘That will have to do till we get you to hospital,’ he told him. ‘You will be properly treated there.’
As the signaller ‘got on the blower’ to tell Battalion HQ about the captures, a mess-tin full of tea was brewed for each of the guerrillas and they were each given a packet of biscuits, which they wolfed down. ‘You’ll have to stay here a while’, Jason told them, ‘but if you say you surrendered to us and were not captured, you’, to the two men who had been armed, ‘won’t have to face a judge and death for carrying a weapon.’
Jason was called to the set and was asked to elucidate, finishing up with, ‘… as soon as any of my platoons return, I’ll be able to send an escort with the prisoners to be picked up on the Jelebu pass.’
This was countered with, ‘No, Sunray Minor will get a section of the Brigade Defence Platoon to the Jelebu pass by 1530 hours. Even if the other platoons have not come back you will have enough men with you to take them to the main road. Roger so far, over.’
‘1, Roger, over.’
‘1. You must return with the prisoners. I can’t tell you why but you are urgently needed here. Out.’
Jason looked at his ‘dead’ handset, seriously unsettled. How come no reason given?. He looked at the prisoners and his mind changed gear back to his present task. ‘Don’t believe, for one moment, that you will be tortured by the British. It does not happen, especially in a Gurkha battalion. The police will interrogate you, of course, but treat you fairly. Have no fear. I know where you’ll go the feng shui is good so there really is no worry.’
The four men, mightily impressed with what they had heard, how they had been treated and with Jason’s fluency, were only too willing to comply.
‘I’d like to ask you some questions before we go back to Seremban together,’ he said. ‘Are you willing to tell me the truth?’
It was obvious that the four of them were still not convinced about Jason’s integrity. ‘You don’t believe I am powerful, is that it?’ he queried insouciantly.
They started to prevaricate so Jason looked up and asked, ‘what do you see over there?’
As they turned their faces away he threw the model krait on the ground between them, making its almost throaty hissing noise as he did. On facing forward again, they winced with fear as they saw it lying so near them. Jason made as though he was going to defang a real krait – he had done this so often in his ‘shows’ – that, once the ‘dead’ snake was in his pocket and so out of harm’s way, the four men were totally convinced.
Jason noticed Sim Ting Hok’s bad arm had started to smell. He guessed what had happened. ‘It hurts, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, and aches.’
‘You will get it properly seen to when your wound is dressed but I will give you something to help.’ He called over the nearest NCO and said, ‘Ustad, bring me your bottle of rum. I’ll buy you another one when we get back to camp. I want to put it on the centipede’s legs that are stuck in this daku’s arm.’
It was brought over and, the legs uncovered, Jason poured some rum over them. Sim Ting Hok jerked his arm away, muttering. The other three daku looked on apprehensively.
‘Care for a swig?’
Looking at each other with sideways glances, first one then the other held out their hands for the bottle. This was something never expected. Surely there can’t be any trickery? The arm ceased its throbbing.
By now there was no point in holding anything back. ‘I will tell you all I know,’ said the senior man, ‘I am Goh Ah Wah and my armed comrade is Kwek Leng Ming.’ He then gave Jason the names of the two ‘gardeners’.
‘Good. What will your commander’s plan be now that he is being chased?’
