The CO looked glum and kept silent.
‘I’ve been hard on every department in Malaya that I think has been slack. I think you, maybe not personally, but British officers and NCOs have been.’
The CO looked glummer and still kept silent.
‘I will extend your training period by one month. You were due to go to Kota Bharu. I’ll have to get some other unit for that period. And when you show your faces there I want more than usually good results.’
Before the CO could answer, the General’s ADC came in. ‘Sir, your helicopter is due to take off when you are ready. All the kit is loaded.’
The General stood up, thanked the CO for putting him and his ADC up for the night, and left. As the CO heard the ‘chopper’ fly away he wondered if his own chances would also fly away. He shook his head, sighed heavily and called his Adjutant.
***
Tuesday 16 September 1952, Seremban: The camp that 1/12 GR occupied was, except for one two-storey building used as the Mess, a collection of single-storied wooden huts. Only in the offices were there fans. Turned on any speed more than slow, people found themselves like one-armed wallpaper hangers in their battle to keep cool and get their paperwork done. The CO’s office was no different. A conference had been called and after the officers had assembled, the CO looked round at them standing by their chairs. The Second-in-Command saluted and said, ‘Sir, we are all present and correct.’
The CO said, ‘Sit down, Gentlemen. Smoke if you wish to.’ He never did nor ever had.
Clothes rustled and chairs creaked as they settled down. Only two officers lit up. ‘I expect you can all guess why we are here, why I have called you.’ A slight Scottish burr was heard when he spoke English and Nepali. The look on everyone’s face, stern and unsmiling, showed that they knew why they had been summoned. This was the first time the battalion had had a chance of being addressed by the CO since their return from Operation Janus, mounted to try and capture Captain Hinlea who had secretly left to join the guerrillas. The operation had only been the total success it was because of some brilliant detective work by Captain Jason Rance, who, by using his Chinese language skills, had discovered his destination, till then unknown, and equally brilliant work when he and a 4-man team, with superb tracking and fieldcraft skills, had successfully caught up with the absconding group taking him to the Central Committee of the MCP, a few week’s hazardous journey away in north Malaya. After a fierce fire fight Hinlea and several guerrillas had been killed. Those remaining had surrendered to Rance, saying they were ready to serve under him against other guerrillas if he so wished them to. The forward elements of the guerrilla escort group, clearing the way for Hinlea and his escort, had been ambushed by the main part of the battalion farther on. In all it was an operation perfectly carried out.
‘I will proceed.’ The CO looked the very image of a pre-war regular, which he was. Precise, economical movements revealed his soldierly bearing. Six feet tall, ramrod straight, square-shouldered and flat-stomached, he carried no spare flesh. He had an austere face with compelling eyes, thick dark eyebrows, black curly hair, a high forehead, a straight Roman nose and a clipped, trim moustache. He used half-moon specs for reading. He had served with distinction in Burma during the war. He had a way with Gurkhas that the younger officers envied which belied his outwardly severe looks, today made more severe by the recent trauma the battalion had undergone, though he tried not to show it. ‘The battalion, as all of us know, has recently suffered a severe disgrace, luckily only known about in a very small circle, by the late Captain Hinlea trying to defect to the Communists. Our Gurkhas are, I gather from the Gurkha Major saheb, devastated by the loss of the battalion’s good name and cannot understand how any British officer could behave as a traitor or, probably, why he was ever commissioned.’
Yes, his officers knew all that, felt it deeply and were at one with wishing to regain their good name and wanting their reputation for integrity being even higher than it had been before.
‘There is a Gurkha proverb that says one man’s bad behaviour outpoints one hundred good men’s efforts. You have probably come across it.’ A few of the more senior officers nodded their agreement. ‘I have been warned not to talk about what has happened. Disposal of the bodies has been left to the discretion of Special Branch. Hinlea, who professed no religion, has had his corpse buried in the Christian cemetery below our camp, without any battalion parade, only because the local padre insisted it be. He said some prayers for the “lost” soul.’ The look on the CO’s face showed his antipathy but he had realised that, really, there was no other choice of his final destination, with or without prayers.
‘What I want to tell you is that that incident will in no way, I say again, in no way, be referred to ever again. I won’t say “it never happened” as it obviously did but it has ceased to exist. What I do want to say again is that Captain Rance and his successful team have saved the army and the regiment from a great and soul-searing disgrace. They incurred danger beyond the dictates of duty but under no circumstances can this become public knowledge. A thick, dark, heavy curtain has to be drawn over these recent events, never to be pulled back. Those orders come from the very top.’
He paused, as though making up his mind, plucking at the lobe of one ear as he did. ‘I shouldn’t really tell you what my senior officer told me but, only within these four walls, I will: I asked the Brigadier if he’d support bravery awards for all five operators but,’ and here he faltered slightly, ‘he refused, point blank. Rather pompously, I thought, he said “the Army, like the Royal Academy, desires docility in her children and even originality has to be stereotyped.” I want to thank Captain Rance in front of you all. Stand up, Jason.’
Lieutenant Colonel Williams, commissioned from Sandhurst pre-war, had mixed ideas about Captain Rance, commissioned from the Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun. Wouldn’t have been commissioned pre-war he had felt. He had come to the conclusion that his parents were not quite top drawer, so that was automatically a bad mark against their son, good officer though he might be. The Colonel had already spoken to him and his team in his house. Then Jason had been told ‘Your empathy with the men is as irrefutable as the shorthand of the Recording Angel. You have the indispensable virtues of humour, humility and honesty but sadly, in this instance, the only official and curtailed record of it will be on your confidential Record of Service. Apart from wearing enemy uniform which is strictly forbidden under one of the Geneva Conventions, (he and his men had done this for camouflage as they were so heavily out-numbered) the only law you have broken is the Law of Averages.’
Jason remembered that as he stood up and was applauded by his brother officers. He felt and looked slightly embarrassed. He noticed that the CO had a tiny flash of levity in his eyes that did not quite suit the solemnity of the occasion.
‘Before my last point I wish to let you know that I have already personally congratulated the four men involved with Captain Rance. Now the next series of brigade operations will be to try and find the places on the ground where guerrilla escorts taking Hinlea to the main Communist HQ were to have handed him over to the next escort group and to try and find and eliminate the deep jungle “gardens” the guerrillas are growing to supplement their rations. The less they are able to eat the easier it will be to eliminate them. Special Branch, with its secret, what shall I call them? … connections will do, have a feeling that, by and large, the MCP has started to lose their overall military initiative.
There was a pause, then ‘Monday 2 October will be the day you will move out. Any questions?’
‘Sir,’ OC C Company put his hand up. ‘Is there any way of us knowing how exactly Captain Rance managed to be so successful?’
‘Yes. He will be writing an operational report both for battalion records and higher formations.’ He looked at Rance. ‘Rance, make sure you include more intimate details than for a normal operation report. No hurry but as soon and as full as practicable. Tactics only, “my group:” and “the guerrilla group”, no mention of Hinlea, only what you and your team did and how you did it.’
‘I’ll certainly include all relevant, even non-tactical details, sir,’ Jason said but even so there were certain points he could not put on paper, his ‘brother’, Ah Fat, the same age as was he and who he knew as P’ing Yee, Flat Ears, and who knew him as Shandung P’aau, Shandong (Eastern hills) Cannon, because of his sturdiness. They had known each other since they were young and they had played together whenever they could and later, during school holidays, camping in the jungle where they tracked each other: fieldcraft! It was during his boyhood years that Jason’s ability to work with Asians was implanted by gaining an extra dimension of communication by understanding something not said: a hint, a gesture, a reaction, a glance, a shrug, even an unexpected silence, all of which had formed an unnoticed sediment at the back of his mind, always there to be used unconscientiously. Jason, an only child, had loved the fun of frolicking about with his Chinese friend and having even more fun with a language that Mrs Rance, his mother, never could get her tongue around. He had never lost tonal accuracy from those childhood days and his knowledge, both of spoken and written Chinese, as well as an almost as good a comprehension of spoken Malay, was something he hardly ever mentioned. His father had told him that seeming not to understand what Chinese people were talking about could possibly give him a life-saving advantage.
Ah Fat had spent the wartime years with the guerrillas fighting against the Japanese. His father had advised him to stay with them, although both father and son hated the Communists – the Something-for-Nothing Brigade, Communism being one of the biggest confidence tricks ever played when conventions were far more rooted than morality – and work against them from the inside. So successful had his ploy been that he had been fully accepted by the Central Committee as a non-voting member of the Politburo. Such a closely guarded secret could never, never be bandied abroad so would not be in his report.
The two men had met when Ah Fat had visited the Negri Sembilan Regional Committee’s location on a fact-finding task and a messenger from the Yam Yam dance hall in Seremban had arrived with news about Hinlea wishing to join the MCP. This had allowed Ah Fat to go to Seremban where, happily and completely unexpectedly, the two of them had met up. The very last time they had met was when Jason saved his friend’s life the night before Hinlea and the other guerrillas were killed.
Monday 29 September 1952, somewhere in the Cameron Highlands: Ah Fat, tired and looking drawn after his long and dangerous journey from the south of the country, reached the Central Committee camp. Having washed and changed into clean clothing, he reported to the General Secretary, who expressed surprise at not seeing the expected gwai lo.
‘You’re later than we thought you’d be. Why so slow and where is the new comrade? We were all expecting you and him before now. Why is he not with you?’ he asked, almost churlishly.
Ah Fat felt piqued and unappreciated yet he must never allow his real job to be discovered. Even so, a considerate word would have been welcomed. A commander who had any ‘feel’ for how his men had fared would have seen how exhausted his subordinate looked and that tense expression on his face, so asked about the journey. In fact it had been more hazardous than usual and he would not have been successful if he had not remembered what he had learnt when fighting against the Japanese, how to hide in water, head hidden, breathing through a small tube of cane bamboo. He always kept what he termed his ‘secret weapon’ with him, a 2-foot-long tube of ‘pithless’ cane bamboo in case he was ever caught by a stream deep enough to hide unseen with his head under water. He had used it once successfully during the war and it had saved his life. It was also of talismanic value to him.
It had been of vital use again when his leading scout brought news of a British platoon ten to fifteen minutes distance off coming their way. They were walking along the side of a narrow river, one that had cane bamboo and rushes on both banks. Ah Fat turned round suddenly and jolted the ankle he had already twisted. He tried to follow his men who were quickly moving away uphill but it was too painful. He called softly to one of his gunmen, ‘I’ve messed up my ankle. Take my pack with you and my pistol and ammunition. I’ll have to hide in the water. Come back and help me after the gwai lo have gone.’ Thank goodness I’ve my secret weapon with me.
The gunman took the pack, pistol and ammunition and disappeared into the jungle, automatically erasing traces where he and the others had moved. We will have to engage the enemy if they discover him, he decided.
Ah Fat felt for his tube from where he always carried it, on a string round his neck, but it was not there. Where can I have dropped it? he thought miserably. I must have something else or I’m done for. He quickly cut off a small piece of cane bamboo, useless with the pith still in it. He ground his teeth in frustration. Don’t panic! Looking round he spied an aloe plant at the water’s edge. Aloes stood higher than a man and had tall, fleshy, spiny-toothed leaves. He limped over to it, hastily took a knife out of his pocket and cut a long thorn off. With this he scratched out the pith in the piece of cane bamboo so making it hollow enough to breathe through. He worked fast, with deft movements, hoping against hope that he could hide before the enemy soldiers appeared.
In front of him was an outsize spider’s web, with the huge, hairy, black creature in the centre in the process of bundling up a fly. Ducking under the web so as not to break it, leg paining him so making movement cumbersome, he slowly turned round and, facing the way the enemy troops were coming towards him, stepped on a large stone and deliberately walked backwards into the water. He rubbed his footprints off the stone and splashed some water on it. He saw that there was one footprint he could not properly erase. He bent down, splayed his fingers and made it look like a tiger’s paw mark. He took another couple of paces backwards, making his way towards another aloe plant. Then, putting the piece of bamboo into his mouth as a breathing tube, silently lay down under the water, holding his nose.
He was only just in time.
His companions hiding in a glade saw the British soldiers. An Asian, with heavily tattooed arms, pointed to the ground. The guerrillas did not know that he was an Iban tracker from Sarawak and that Ibans were attached to British troops who were not skilled in tracking. ‘Our comrade has been seen,’ the senior guerrilla said. ‘Get ready to save him.’ He saw the tattooed man bend down as though investigating, stand up and point to the large spider’s web.
The troops took no notice as they moved on past it. They probably didn’t even notice it!
The guerrillas up on the slope breathed a communal sigh of relief when they saw which way the British troops had gone. After judging five minutes, Ah Fat slowly, slowly lifted his head out of the water, looked around and seeing nobody, stood up, taking deep breaths of air with joy. His comrades hurried back down to the track to help him out of the water.
They hid in a secluded spot while Ah Fat changed out of his wet clothes into dry ones and rested his ankle. Half an hour later, revived, ‘On our way now,’ he said, getting up. They moved on as fast as his damaged ankle allowed.
***
The Iban tracker’s mind nagged at him. What was it I might have missed? He thought back and played the scene over in his mind and minutely visualised the pug mark once more. Got it! Two points: there was no tiger smell and, he inwardly cursed, the tiger’s pug mark was as though the animal was moving backwards. Tigers don’t move backwards … Ibans are mercurial people. He inwardly shrank at admitting his error and losing face. He decided not to say anything about it and, anyway, his English was not really up to explaining it. Good luck to the clever man who made that mark: he deserved to get away with it!
… yes, it had been a difficult journey but back to the present.
Ah Fat looked straight at his questioner, feigning sadness and dismay – tradecraft! – licked his lips and shook his head. Time to disseminate: he decided not to mention anything about escaping from the British soldiers. ‘Oh, Comrade Secretary General, let me give you the bad news straightaway: something went so very wrong. All our group, except me, were ambushed. The gwai lo comrade was killed as were all the other comrades, including Comrade Lau Beng, the Regional Committee Commissar. It was only by the grace of Lenin that I was saved by having surprisingly contacted another comradely group when I and my own escort went to shoot a deer for food. I took them to one side so that the group with the new comrade could continue without their knowledge. It was then that the disaster occurred. I stayed back only long enough to find out details of any casualties then moved on with my own escort. So thankful to be alive and back with you, can hardly be said forcibly enough. I humbly apologise.’
