There had been an air of unease, if not of apprehension, among senior party members for the past couple of months and a Politburo meeting had been called. The nub of the worry was the sense of affairs not going as well as they might or as they had been. There was a suspicion that some of the set-backs, especially in the south of the country, might just be because of a treacherous insider working for the Security Forces. It was therefore decided that a small and senior group of members, suitably escorted, should go on a fact-finding tour, dangerous but necessary. The leader of the group was to be Comrade Ah Fat. He was, in fact, a police ‘mole’ of the highest ability: no one had ever had any reason to suspect him. He was well built and solid, with fluid movements. His eyes were always alert, never missing a trick, even though his peripheral gaze was not easy to follow. He looked a tad glum, was round of face, with ears close to his head: in some circles they had given him the nickname of P’ing Yee, Flat Ears. He stood about five and a half feet high. He had a habit of rubbing the palms of his hands together when thinking. Normally taciturn, he could be vivacious if to remain silent would have been suspicious or when he did not have to act his part so could be natural. He was well educated and spoke excellent English. However, for safety’s sake, he kept that skill a closely guarded secret lest his ‘other’ role be jeopardised. Whenever he did speak English in front of other Chinese, it was only of middle-school standard.
The composition of the search team had just been voted when the comrade in charge of the camp defence reported that a courier and his escort had arrived and was asking for an audience with the Secretary General, Chin Peng.
‘Did he give his name and have you vetted him?’
‘Yes, he is Comrade Xi Zhan Yang.’
Comrade XI was as loyal a member of the party as one could find and the Secretary General relied fully on him, being his personal courier. He was based in Kuala Lumpur and had a delicate woman contact in Police HQ who gave him information never divulged to unauthorised people. ‘Send him to me immediately.’
Xi, who also used an alias of Ah Ho, had a squat face, lined and careworn as an old map, and tiny nostrils which made him look like a frog. He had a slightly reedy, hooting voice. Sending his escort to report to the soldiers’ part of the camp, he was told to go to where the Politburo was meeting. He looked dead beat as any long walk through the jungle, always being ready to take evasive action to hide from any military activity, was always fraught and something none of the Politburo had done since during the Japanese war. It was immensely tiring. He was welcomed and asked what his report was and ‘can it wait as we are having a session?’
Xi shook his head. ‘It is opportune that I talk to you all. There are two major points I think every comrade should learn about immediately.’
Sipping a hot drink, he gave the outlines of his first report which were ominous: thirty-five comrades had been killed or captured south of Labis in Johor by a strong patrol of Goo K’a bing, Gurkha soldiers, under the command of an imperialist gwai lo, foreigner. The dead included Yap Piow, the commander of No. 7 Company and Ng Chen, second-in-command of the Killer Squad. A most serious loss.
‘That, Comrades, is the outline and I have a detailed written report.’ He rummaged in his backpack and handed it over.
‘I hope your second report is not as gloomy as the first one,’ said Lee An Tung, the Head of the Central Propaganda Department. He had a dry, hot-eyed, dark, ‘chiselled’ face and whose clipped grey hair had the carbonised iridescence of coke. He was a squat, pugnacious-looking, slightly balding man with a perpetual frown and a worried look on his face whenever he spoke.
‘No, Comrade. It is vague but, I believe, accurate. There is a gwai lo army officer in a Gurkha battalion who wants to join our organisation …’ There was such an intake of breath from his audience that his words were drowned. ‘… who is a secret card-carrying party member.’ He paused and looked around him. All faces showed utter surprise.
‘Do you know any other details? That is much too vague even to make outline plans on,’ the Secretary General said, doubt in his voice.
The courier made a moue and pulled back his shoulders. He was tired and hungry. If he had known any more details, he would have given them. Hiding any irritation, he said, ‘I personally have no first-hand knowledge but the weight of rumours says he is stationed in Seremban and wants to join us as soon as you can allow him. Once permission is given the local contacts can arrange his disappearance. After that it is up to you, Comrades.’ He waved his hands at the others and stifled a sneeze as he did.
Even the Secretary General saw that Xi needed a rest so he thanked him, as did the others, told him to go and have a meal, a wash, a sleep and they would meet on the morrow, having read his report.
Chin Peng, who had a large mouth, perfect even teeth, eyes, when animated, that grew round and eyebrows that rose about an inch and a half, now merely frowned and said, ‘That first report is extremely serious. We have never before lost so many at one time. It is a far cry from what we had expected from the Gurkhas a couple of years back.’ The comrades’ glum faces showed that they agreed with him.
‘As for the second report, we cannot, must not, dismiss it. Comrade Ah Fat and your team will keep your ears open when you are in the Seremban area and check that such a man really does exist. If he does, you must try to vet his credentials before reporting back to us. Only then can we decide on his future.’
All agreed. At that stage that seemed the best method of finding out about him.
‘Now, what can we do about trying to remedy the military situation, especially in Johor, and recover the initiative? Think about it and later on today we’ll have another session.’
***
On re-assembling, the Secretary General asked ‘Has anyone any ideas, any possible solution to the military problem outlined earlier on? The real point is, is it a one-off fluke or a permanent trend?’
Comrade Lee An Tung, well known for his accurate analyses, said, ‘Comrades, yes, I have an idea that, fluke or trend, could result in events moving back to being in our favour. Let me dilate.’ He glanced around and began. ‘When we started our military campaign we had successes almost every time we engaged the imperialists as we knew we would. Now that is less and less the case. Instead of being warned of enemy movement as well as being given food and rations by our reliable civilian comrades,’ he was referring to the many ‘squatters’, Chinese families living on unregistered plots of land on the jungle fringes, known as the Min Yuen, the Masses Movement, ‘our active comrades have had to move deep into the jungle to grow their own food, their original sources now having dried up.’ He was referring to what was known as the ‘Briggs Plan’. This was when Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, recalled from pension, ordered all squatters be re-settled in ‘New Villages’, so cutting off the guerrillas from any contact with them. This was not quite the surprise it was intended to be as an unscrupulous reporter found out about it and published it before the prescribed date but, apart from a few guerrillas hiding in squatter areas managing to escape, no one else was prematurely alerted.
‘There are now many more Goo K’a bing, Gurkha soldiers, than there were in the beginning’ Comrade Lee continued, ‘and they are much better trained than they were to start with. It seems we misjudged their potential. British troops are noisier by far so much easier to deal with, either by ambushing them or avoiding them while the Malay Regiment’s two battalions operate in areas of less importance.’ He wondered how his listeners were reacting to what he was saying so looked round, saw they were interested and, from the look on their faces, still wondering what he was aiming at. ‘If the Goo K’a bing carry on like this it will take us much longer than we had first thought to win and make the country the Democratic Republic of Malaya.’ He spread out his arms and made a gesture almost of despair. ‘So maybe, drat it, the civilian population will become disillusioned with us and … I dare not say it out loud.’ His audience looked at him, not daring to believe that any disloyal and unParty-like idea would be mentioned or ever accepted. But … but no one interrupted him and he went on, ‘what we must do is to get the Goo K’a bing away from Malaya. Then win we will.’
A pregnant hush descended as his listeners mulled over such a revolutionary and, on the surface, impossible proposal.
The Secretary General blinked, gulped – he was not a man for radical solutions to any problem – and said, ‘Comrade, that is certainly an attractive, attentive and original thought but, sadly, unachievable. However, knowing you would not have mentioned it without believing in it, how do you plan to achieve it?’ Unconscientiously he shook his head in despondence.
‘Comrade Secretary General, I agree it sounds impossible but, given time, we can make it work. Listen! We need to persuade the British government that the Gurkhas are untrustworthy and so must be disbanded … no, wait … and if not quite that, get our Indian comrades to persuade them not to return from leave and, at the same time, cause enough trouble in Borneo, especially in Sarawak, which I believe does not have any proper army, so get any remaining Gurkhas sent there from Malaya’ and his voice trailed off as he let his suggestion of a Gurkha-free Malaya sink in. It was greeted with gasps of surprise and head-shaking of disbelief.
The Secretary General broke the silence that had descended as each listener pondered this seemingly impossible proposal. ‘But how … how can you, or anyone else come to that, organise such a plan for any success?’
‘No, of course there can be no guarantee of success, there never can be, but I really do believe it can be done but it will take time to accomplish. I can get it started. First I want to “feel the pulse” so to speak. There needs to be a kind of recce for the basis of this and there are two people I know whom we can make use of for this task.’
‘And who are they?’ queried Chin Peng in a dubious tone of voice, not liking to appear in ignorance.
‘To start off he is Comrade Xi Zhan Yang and others whom he will persuade to be useful.’
‘And how do you expect to use him?’ the Secretary General asked, a touch acidly.
‘To get any Gurkhas over to Borneo Comrade Xi can contact our comrades in Singapore who, quite how I personally don’t know, can contact our Borneo comrades to make plans for serious disruption of normal life sufficiently to get the Gurkhas over from Malaya. The man to arrange for this to happen is Sim Ting Ong, Secretary General of the Sarawak United People’s Party, who lives in Kuching. He will be contacted by comrades going there by boat from Singapore. The man to contact in Singapore is Chen Geng, he has the same name as a general in the People’s Liberation Army which he is secretly proud of. He has an office in Pedder Street. Wait.’ He took a note book out of his pocket, searched for and found what he was looking for and continued, ‘at number 47. His work there is in a normal trading concern so it is safe to ask for him by name. That is the outline for that part of my plan. For the other, the “disillusion” part shall I call it, do you remember what Comrade Lee Soong told us when he came back from that meeting in Calcutta in early 1948?’
‘Remind us, remind us,’ was chorused.
‘That a renegade Nepali from the Darjeeling branch of the All-India Gorkha League’ – he used the English words, even pronouncing the ‘r’ – ‘with some comrades, has enlisted in the army and is, I believe, in Singapore. He was at one time in Seremban. I have learnt that his name is Padamsing Rai of the 12th Gurkha Rifles. He is the senior renegade to have been infiltrated. To start with he was a clerk in their first battalion. He is a well-educated man, far more so than the average Gurkha soldier and I have heard that he is now instructing Gurkhas in an army educational school in Singapore, an ideal place to disseminate our philosophy. He and any others like him could indeed be the catalyst we need for gradually influencing Gurkha soldiers to leave the army and behave in a mutinous fashion till they get home. As you probably know he will have visited one or more of the three rubber estates in Negri Sembilan that have a Nepali workforce to make contact with them. He will have great influence there as I believe he has relations among them.’ Again he looked at the other comrades. ‘Do you agree with me so far?’
‘We approve, we approve,’ was shrilled with applause.
Comrade Lee An Tung continued. ‘Once we have made contact with him and heard how the renegades plan to work, we will plan how best we can help them. I don’t see how we can fail but fail we must not. Getting the Gurkhas away from Malaya, east and north, so preventing them from winning, will be the juin jit dim, the “turning point” for our victory. Let “Turning Point” be our operational codeword.’
Sitting quietly at one side was the non-voting member of the Politburo, Ah Fat. He listened carefully, saying nothing. He knew that ‘tipping’ rather than ‘turning’ was the English equivalent to what was meant in Chinese and also that while ‘turning point’ was not necessarily irrevocable ‘tipping point’ was, even if ‘history turned on a very small point’. In his mind’s eye he saw that his secret work in the south of the country would be his personal Operation Tipping Point to thwart such plans. He had no conception of how he could achieve such a task. It won’t be me if I can’t he thought. The art will be to recognise the chance when it comes rather than bank on it beforehand. A thought struck him: they have not considered stopping Gurkha recruiting!
In due course Comrade Ah Fat and his team moved off southwards in their quest for possible leaks. There was no given time for their return as there was no point in skimping such an important job, was there?
***
Friday 12 September 1952, Seremban, Negri Sembilan, Malaya: After thirty months of continuous jungle operations a period of six weeks ‘re-training’ was decreed for 1/12 GR by Higher Authority. Men were tired and needed refreshing and re-training, so all companies withdrew into their permanent base camp. This not only included certain aspects of modern warfare and weapon classification on the range but also involved a drill competition, inter-company soccer and basket-ball matches making the overall winner the Champion Company. When it was over and before the battalion re-deployed, it was decided to have a ‘Mess Night’, the time-honoured mystical communion of a communal meal undertaken according to strict protocol handed down over many military generations. However, it so happened that the battalion was caught up in an operation code-named Janus, caused by the renegade British officer Hinlea, trying to abscond to the guerrillas. The ensuing attempt to capture him – successful, to everyone’s relief and satisfaction – had meant that the Mess Night had had to be postponed. The following week would see the battalion deployed once more on operations so this Friday was the only day it could be arranged.
Tropical mess kit had not yet been introduced so officers wore ‘Penguin Order’, black trousers edged with black ribbon, white shirts, black bow ties and a green cummerbund. On the long ebony Mess table silver and crystal floated and a row of candlesticks seemed to march in stepless union. In the middle was the centrepiece of two silver cannon, opposite which sat the Commanding Officer, the ‘Karnel Saheb’, father of the battalion, whose word was law and who represented, in person, the Queen. The meal was over by half past eight, the table cleared and dusted down. Only three glasses remained in front of each person, one for each of the individual preference of drink for the loyal toast. At the top of the table sat the President and at the other end the Vice President; from either end three decanters, port, Madeira and whisky, were religiously started on their left-hand journey to the other end, to be passed on by each officer after filling his glass. They only left the surface of the table when raised to pour out their precious contents, otherwise they were slid from person to person to finish up at the opposite end from where they had started.
The buzz of chatter stilled, resurged, then died down at a knock on the table with a gavel. All eyes turned to the President, Major O’Neal, the Second-in-Command, a pre-war regular, now standing up, glass of port in his right hand, blinking with the nervous tic caused from having been a prisoner in Japanese hands for over three years, to propose the loyal toast. ‘Mr Vice, the Queen.’ ‘Queen’ still sounded strange after so many years of hearing ‘King’ since August 1947 and ‘King Emperor’ for so many years in India beforehand.
The Gurkha Mess Sergeant stood rigidly to attention behind his chair.
Major O’Neal, sad-faced, balding and wrinkled, was now burnt out. From the earliest days of his service he tried hard to get to know his men, speaking their language ‘well enough’ although not as fluently as some of the wartime commissioned officers spoke it. To him the soldiers were ‘the little men’: he had been accepted by them because he was acceptable, an English saheb in the same mould as they, their fathers and their forefathers had known British officers for nearly a century and a half. Over those many years of soldierly comradeship, in war and peace, a most remarkable bond of trust and friendship, loyalty and devotion, had been acquired and developed, seemingly unending.
At the other end of the table the Vice President, Captain Rance, now stood up, clutching his glass of port in his right hand. He personally had been instrumental to the success of Operation Janus. Before joining 1/12 GR he had served in Burma with 4/1 GR. He had been engulfed by the war and, like so many others of a similar age, had quickly become older than his years. With his linguistic ability, nimble brain and tactical flair, he got the best out of the soldiers. He had a sense of humour and was slow to show anger even when he felt it, to say nothing of the gift of always appearing cheerful. Initially the Gurkha officers of 1/12 GR, finding him of a different calibre from the staider pre-war regulars, had not quite known how to react to him but they accepted him quickly enough once they found he was genuine, tolerant, reliable, firm, just and fully understood them. He was, in fact, the quintessential regimental officer, yet his obvious ease with the soldiers had drawn caustic comments, mostly behind his back, from the elder generation of British officer who either envied his ability or just did not understand it. Bad for discipline some muttered but they were, in fact, gravely wrong.
‘Gentlemen, the Queen.’
In answer to those sonorous words of the toast, everybody stood up, as one, clasping their filled glass in their right hand, scowling sternly as they faced their front, their turn to intone this semi-mystic litany:
‘The Queen,’
As glasses clattered back onto the table, the field officers added their privileged amen, ‘God bless her!’
Seated once more, from either end of the table the three decanters were once again religiously started on their left-hand journey to the other end and glasses were refilled. Cigars were cut and lit; snuff was sniffed. Then, pleasantly relaxed, Major O’Neal leant back in his chair, head slightly turned, and the Mess Sergeant bent forward to hear what was to be said although he knew the order would be for the pipers and drummers to come and play. At his sign through the open door at the end of the room there was a drone and squeal as the pipers, bags full, started piping. Seven Gurkhas, four pipers and three drummers, two tenor and one base in his leopard-skin apron, dressed in rifle-green jackets with miniature medals peeping through and trews, black leather belts and Highland pattern shoes with white spats, entered the room and what little talk there was dried up. In step, they moved, with slightly swaggering gait, round the table, pipes squealing and drums thumping. They moved with a striking dignity in their bearing and how they comported themselves, erect bodies, in step with slightly swinging gait, brown faces inscrutable and medals aglint. They circled the table twice before the lead piper, the Pipe Major, who carried the Commanding Officer’s personal banner, embroidered with his family crest, swayed gently as a signal for a change of tune. After two more circuits they halted behind the Colonel’s chair, turned towards the table and continued playing.
Some officers nodded their head in time to the tune, some strummed on the table and a few sat stock-still. The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Williams, caught the eye of Captain Jason Rance, who met his senior’s gaze unflinchingly. Of all my officers, thought the Colonel, that young man will either go the furthest or be the most disappointed. He is brave, clever and has a wonderful rapport with the soldiers who respond to him in an unusually out-going way. As a linguist he has fully made his mark and his razor-sharp brain with almost total recall are all hallmarks of potential. Very different from when I was a young officer, he mused, drawing on his cigar and watching the pipers and drummers march out.
