‘Yes, I can. I’ll book a call as soon as I have rung off and pay for five minutes’ worth.’
The connection was cut and Leonid Pavlovich Sobolev leant back in his chair. It isn’t anything to do with the Borneo visit, surely? He had been kept up to date about that and could think of no other reason for a call from Singapore. His blood tingled expectantly.
***
It was two hours before the phone rang again and the Rezident picked it up, annoyed with himself to see his hand trembling slightly. In English the caller said, ‘I want to speak to Mr Tangra.’ The phone was handed to Wong Kek Fui who was waiting expectantly and, in Hak Wa, said, yes, he was listening.
‘On his next visit Law Chu Hoi will be bringing a battalion of Loi Pok Yi who have joined us and are being sent back from Malaya as no longer wanted. Tell Big Brother to get the news to our man in the wooden temple and him to spread it.’
Just to make sure Wong Kek Fui repeated it.
‘Yes, correct’ and the line went dead.
‘What was that about?” the Rezident asked.
His Hakka agent who spoke basic English and understood it if it was spoken slowly enough, looked glum as he repeated the message slowly. ‘A battalion of Gurkhas have changed sides and joined us, and you must get the news to our man in the wooden temple.’
The Russian nodded with evident satisfaction. ‘Good but what and where is the wooden temple, I wonder? Is it one of yours’ – he nearly said, ‘heathen ones’ but quickly decided not to – ‘in Tangra?’
‘Sir, we don’t have any wooden temples in Tangra so it must be somewhere else.’
The Rezident tried not to appear angry at such an obvious comment. ‘No, in that case it wouldn’t refer to Tangra but the rest of the message is clear, isn’t it?’
The Hakka nodded, was thanked and dismissed with a fistful of small notes as a retainer. Alone once more the Russian considered the message. Gurkhas. Nepal. Wooden temple. Who could explain that? Vikas Bugga is the only man I know who can. He looked at his watch. By then it was close on seven o’clock and his man should be home by now. He got out his note book, found the number he wanted and rang it from his special phone.
‘Your luck is in so let’s begin,’ came the cheery voice from the other end without introducing himself. ‘I was just about to go out so what’s all this about? Don’t shout or be so rash as to ask me for any cash.’
The Russian shook his head at the unexpected effervescence and gave the word Bugga knew him by when phoning. ‘I have a question for your son’ – ‘Son’, the code word used for an emergency. ‘Talking about Gurkhas what does wooden temple imply?’
‘Oh my goodness gracious mee, is that an emergencee?’
‘It may be for me. Can you tell me – or if not, who can?’
‘Yes, it is the English translation of Kathmandu.’
‘Kathmandu? What do you mean?’
‘Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal.’ By Lenin, you really are ignorant Vikas Bugga thought.
‘Thank you. I’ll let you get drunk as a skunk when you next visit me.’ The conversation ended abruptly, leaving Vikas Bugga shaking his head in wonderment at what the Soviets thought was so urgent and the Rezident’s ignorance.
***
Tuesday 7 October 1952, on the East Coast railway: A quarter of an hour before the train was due to leave Gemas, the men of A Company, 1/12 GR, were marched to the station and shown the separate coach put on at the rear especially for them and no one else. In they got. Nobody knew that the mi seller of the previous evening had contacted the train’s assistant guard who, in turn, had put a call through to someone in Kuala Lipis, just short of halfway up the line. He, in turn, managed to get a message to a group of five guerrillas who lived ‘in plain sight’ in a kampong just farther on who moved off early the next morning. Had anyone been there to see them walking up the track, they would have taken them for workmen carrying their tools. About five miles up the line, overlooked by a steep jungle-covered slope, they moved round a bend which trains had to slow down for. Three of them opened their tool kits and set to work while the other two stayed as sentries on either end of the target area.
Back in Gemas the guard blew his whistle, waved his flag and the train moved off. The men settled down, some started talking, some looked out of the window at the countryside, the same as ever though subtly different, yet others nodded off with the train’s movement making them sleepy. Some people wondered why such movement did this to Gurkhas: it was because when small they were rocked to sleep in hammocks strung up on the veranda of their house so any similar movement in later life almost automatically sent them to sleep.
Monotony overtook them, only relieved when they were told when to eat. At Kuala Lipis the down and the up trains passed each other. The next stop up the line was at Gua Musang, not that the soldiers knew anything about it and, even had they, it would have meant nothing to them.
Well before the trains had passed each other at Kuala Lipis the ‘workmen’ had deployed on the high ground overlooking the target bend. They had laid a mine affixed to a tie which they planned to explode remotely, derail the engine, open fire on and kill the Gurkhas and any other passengers. They had unearthed a light machine gun and four rifles to fire on the train when it halted. They knew what time to expect the train and heard it puffing before they saw it coming round the start of the bend. The guerrilla commander held up his arm, looked through the trees and when the train had reached the spot he had chosen to explode the mine, dropped it sharply but slightly prematurely. The satisfyingly loud bang did not damage the engine as planned but both ‘flats’ were thrown into the air, which broke the link with the engine and slid off the track down the far bank. The engine’s bogey wheels were derailed and the train came to an abrupt halt. Even though the speed was slow the front passenger coaches buckled and crunched against each other as machine gun and rifle fire broke out.
The end carriage with the Gurkhas was not hit but some men were jolted onto the floor. 1 Platoon Commander, Gurkha Lieutenant Pahalsing Gurung, immediately stood up, carbine in hand and shouted, ‘Follow me. Leave your big packs here.’ He was an impressive man, slim and wiry. He had a long nose, flared nostrils, a prominent chin and a thick moustache. The first door he tried to open was somehow jammed so he told the man nearest the far door to try and open it. It opened easily and the men lowered themselves onto the ground, instinctively moving their weapon’s safety catch to ‘fire’. They were hidden from the guerrillas who continued firing at the train, causing four civilian fatalities. 1 Platoon moved down the bank and, crab-wise, shuffled back the way the train had come, slipping awkwardly on the slope. Fifty yards farther on the Lieutenant saw they were shielded by the bend so moved up and over the railway tracks into the jungle. As they moved up the steep slope they could hear covering fire for them.
At the same time Rance sent 2 Platoon up the line, out of sight until well round the bend and enter the jungle to take up a position to the guerrillas’ rear to ambush them if they ran away from 1 Platoon’s attack. ‘Watch your firing, Saheb,’ Jason called out. ‘Only aimed shots at the daku.’ The last thing he wanted was what was known as ‘blue-on-blue’.
2 Platoon Commander raised his arm in acknowledgement and moved smartly off, along the bank out of sight of the enemy. Company HQ and 3 Platoon were already engaging the guerrillas with prophylactic fire from between the gaps of the carriages to prevent any attack on the train. This spoiled the guerrillas’ aim and they shot high. Jason was tempted to fire his 2-inch mortar well over behind the guerrillas to catch them if they ran away but he heard the Gurkhas’ battle cry ‘Ayo Gurkhali chaaaaarge’ echoing down from the hill which meant that 1 Platoon was engaging the guerrillas so he desisted. Then came a shout of ‘Cease fire’.
Up on the position five guerrillas lay on the ground, three of them dead. One of the soldiers went to look at the corpses: the less badly wounded guerrilla waited till the Gurkha had his back to him then jumped up and violently slashed at him with a parang, seriously wounding him. The struck man screamed as he fell, senseless, to the ground. The Gurkha next to him wasted no time in killing the attacker with his khukri. That left one guerrilla wounded who was immediately tied up with a toggle rope that each soldier carried.
Jason heard the scream. A wounded man: whose? He called the medical corporal and they dashed off uphill. They found the severely injured soldier and the medical corporal examined his wound, deeming it safe to administer morphine. ‘I’ll clean him up and then I’ll give him some morphine, Saheb. When he’s fully unconscious I’ll stitch him up.’
‘Yes, do that. Also look at the wounded daku. We will have to evacuate both of them.’ He blessed the CO’s foresight to take a medic with him.
Just in case the train was still a target of any other guerrillas he told the 2 ic to send out patrols and to select a position for an overnight camp. He detailed the signaller to try and establish communications with Kota Bharu while he went back down the hill to talk to the Tamil guard, whom he found sitting shivering in the guard’s van, overwhelmed. Frightened passengers were milling about listlessly, some with blood on their face scratched by bits of flying glass. ‘There are four dead men in the front coach’, one cried out.
‘Guard, what are your standing orders in case of an attack like this with dead and wounded passengers?’ he asked. ‘Surely you have some first aid kit for those with blood on their face? Why not use it?’
‘Oh sir, this is the second time this has happened to me,’ the guard wailed, as the engine driver and his stoker, both shaken but unhurt, joined them having heard the ‘Cease fire’ shout.
Jason commiserated and firmly but kindly asked his questions again.
The engine driver interrupted and said, ‘the engine has been derailed and the one recovery crane is in Gemas. We won’t be able to move for at least two days.’
The guard came to his senses. ‘Take the mobile train telephone, hook it to the wire beside the track and contact Kuala Lipis station.’ He turned to his assistant and snarled, ‘Help the wounded passengers.’
‘I’ll give you a Gurkha escort to go down the line to where there’s a ladder up the pole to put the phone on. Once you have done that please let me know if your phone is working or not. While you are doing that I will go back up the hill and try and contact Kota Bharu.’
‘But if the telephone line has been cut, sir, what am I to do? I can’t mend it myself.’
The guard had been badly shaken so Jason tried to placate him. ‘In any case as soon as the people in the next station realise that the up-train is delayed I am sure they will send someone to look and see why. In any case the noise of the battle will have been heard and reported.’
‘Saheb, I have made contact,’ called the signaller as his company commander came into sight. Jason breathed a sigh of relief. Before he had time to take the headset and talk to Brigade in Kota Bharu, he was told that the wounded guerrilla had died. So that makes it five out of five.
Jason put on a head set and said, ‘Roger Nan Tare, Sunray 5 on set, over.’
‘Sunray minor here. Send sitrep, over.’
‘5 …’ and Jason explained what had happened and the current situation. He also explained he had no map so did not know anything more than the last station they had passed through was Kuala Lipis.
‘5. Roger. We will phone Kuala Lipis station and order trolleys to be sent up as soon as possible. The authorities there will provide an escort and take away passengers and the guerrilla corpses. We will warn the hospital to stand by for your wounded man and the police station for the five corpses to be recognised. A train will come and pick you and other passengers up sometime tomorrow. Roger so far, over?’
‘5. Roger. I am self-contained but cannot look after the civilians. Confirm, over.’
The upshot was that the Police Field Force would succour the civilians and leave the troops alone.
The 2 ic had chosen a suitable camp site a little way off from where the incident had occurred, knowing that the men were not happy sleeping near where men had been killed. He had also detailed the CSM to get a stretcher made of branches and stretched poncho capes and take the wounded soldier carefully down to the guard’s van.
The wounded man, dulled by the morphine and parang slash carefully stitched up, was put on the stretcher then oh so carefully carried down the steep slope and made comfortable in the guard’s van. The poncho was washed from its blood stains in a nearby stream and taken back up to the camp. Meanwhile Jason wrote a message for Battalion HQ, telling them about the incident and his contact with HQ 1 Malay Brigade.
