The two soldiers with Jason listened. Where is this leading? The Saheb is always one to take a chance.
‘Will you take us there in a way nobody will see us and help us back?’ Jason asked.
‘How can you help us if we do? If we are found out we will be drastically punished.’
‘I only have very little Malay currency on me and no Thai baht. Finance is difficult. Help? As I said before, if you want to go back to Nepal I will help you all I can.’
‘We’ll take you and bring you back. We can talk about the future after we are back here.’
Back in the patrol base Gurkha Lieutenant Pahalsing Gurung took the OC’s batman, Rifleman Kulbahadur Limbu, to one side and said, ‘The OC saheb has, in my view, most rashly decided to go in uniform, armed, and only to take some hard tack, biscuits, bars of issue chocolate and tea to drink from his compo rations; with three men, two unarmed. It is a great risk.’
Kulbahadur Limbu was a tall, paler than normal lad, broad-shouldered, upright and strong who almost glided rather than walked. He was the battalion’s expert tracker.
‘What if you don’t come back, Saheb?’ someone asked Jason who answered with a smile ‘I’ve had no bad dreams recently. I’ll be back alright. I have my lucky krait with me.’
Pahalsing continued quietly talking to Kulbahadur. ‘Keta, we know the saheb will not stop at anything once he has made his mind up. However, he always has our interests at heart’ and he looked at the batman with gimlet-like eyes. ‘He is your personal responsibility and if he does not come back, in your next incarnation you will be a dung beetle,’ to which there was no answer save a nod of the head.
***
Around the same time considerable activity continued elsewhere in Malaya. The Royal Australian Air Force had bombed Chin Peng’s camp and only just missed killing the entire Politburo. The decision to move north into Thailand was not taken until late 1952 but detailed reconnaissances for a new camp had already been made. To the east of the eventual camp site elements of the Kuomintang Army, known to the Communists as ‘bandits’, the same name originally given to the guerrillas in Malaya. – hence the name of ‘Communist Terrorists’– would periodically visit. The Kuomintang soldiers were no military threat as such, only an armed nuisance: they had strayed south from the ‘Golden Triangle’, the opium-growing area where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet. They wore ‘puffy’ brown peaked hats, some of which still had the wreathed badge of the Chinese National Army in them.[1]
After a drink of tea and an early meal Jason’s group set off at dawn with the greys of the sky turning to rose. They had a brew at midday. As they rested they were momentarily startled by the staccato drilling of two woodpeckers on a tree trunk for insects and a monkey high in the trees above them beating on the branches with sticks. By travelling light and walking fast, it was late afternoon when they came across an area that had been cleared of some trees and certainly been worked on but it was in such a non-tactical site Jason could not believe that it was a possible military base. He queried it with the elder of the two wartime men who looked blank.
‘Saheb, there are two camp sites. This is only the first one. The other is much too far to reach in the time we have.’
‘Have you seen Chinese soldiers working here?’ Jason demanded, feeling frustrated that his journey might well have been in vain.
‘Yes, a group did come and look around.’
‘And what happened then?’ – if anything. Yet there must have been a reason for the work done here.
‘Other people came, some Thais and a few Chinese, with saws and axes to work on the foundations of the camp.’
Then Jason saw that even if initially the area might have been chosen as a military base it was now a logging area so there was nothing for them to do but to go back. In a way it was a disappointment but, being rational, it saved a lot of bother by it not being occupied by any military force. They moved to an empty hut they had seen on their way in to spend the night.
‘Let’s doss down here. We’re all tired enough’ Jason said. There was not a lot of choice, anyway.
Kulbahadur grinned. ‘We’ve been in more dangerous places before so why not?’
They opened up their hard tack, cooked a brew of tea and, before settling down for the night, talked amongst themselves as only soldiers can. They then settled down, covering their face against the many mosquitoes as comfortably as they could and drifted off to sleep.
Sometime later they were woken by a dog barking. They sat up and, in the dark, Jason and Kulbahadur grabbed their weapon, their lives in the tip of the index finger of their right hand. Spiders of alarm ran a web over their skin. They saw a torch light flashed and heard Chinese voices. ‘Ah, here’s a place we can spend the rest of the night. What a god-forsaken place this is. Nothing worth taking.’
‘No, and I expect there are no women either.’
‘You ham saap kwai. Can’t you ever take your mind off horizontal refreshment?’ asked the other man with jovial affection. The four men in the hut froze. ‘Shh,’ whispered Jason. ‘Leave this to me.’ Later, thinking over how he reacted, he gave himself full marks. In a shrill falsetto, in Chinese he squawked ‘No women, did you say? How could you forget me? So, you have come at last? How long have I been waiting for a really ham saap kwai to satisfy me?’
There was a yelp from outside, a silence then, ‘Are you real?’
‘Come and find out for yourself. But first tell me who you are. You don’t sound as if you come from the south and your unveiled instincts are not those of a decent comrade. You are not bandits, fei toh, are you?’
‘Them? Kung fei, Communist bandits? We spit on that kind of person. We are Nationalists, never kung fei.’
This time it was Jason who was surprised. This was the last complication he wanted, cursing himself as being too foolhardy. I must get rid of them but how?
Still using his falsetto and giggling, he said, ‘I’ll give you a test before you can have me. Are you afraid of snakes?’ getting his krait out his pocket as he said it.
‘Snakes? I can hear you moving around. What are you doing? Waiting for our short snakes?’
‘Taking off my knickers for you. But before I allow you to uncoil your snakes, shine your light at the door of the hut.’
As he did so Jason threw his dummy krait on the ground so it could be seen and hissed loudly as he did.
There was a joint yelp as the intruders ran away as fast as they could. ‘Kulé, get that snake back quickly. Up, you others, and we will have to move out and hide some distance away. They may come back.’
They got out and moved off a hundred yards or so and sat with their backs to some trees. Not long afterwards they heard people returning to the hut. Three rifle shots were fired, the hut was set on fire and the prowlers made off.
Shortly afterwards there was a horrific cloudburst and there was nothing to do but sit, get wet through and shiver violently. When it was light they started on their way back. They passed through some marshy ground with a salt lick they had noticed on their way in when there were no animals – but now! A herd of almost black, great wild bison – bulls, cows and calves – the bulls enormously horned and dangerous, standing six feet at their shoulders and nine feet long from nose to tail – were grazing.[2] In Malaya Jason knew them as seladang. Pawing the ground as they smelt men from about two hundred yards away, two bulls charged at the four men. ‘Gaur,’ Kulbahadur yelled.
Sprinting to some nearby teak trees with sturdy liana vines strong enough to bear their weight, they clambered up, just high enough to be out of reach of the angry animals’ horns.
‘Saheb, we’ve won out again,’ said Kulbahadur approvingly between pants of breath as the two bulls angrily pawed the
ground below.
Jason smiled back. ‘I have come across pink-coloured buffaloes that dislike Europeans’ smell but don’t seem to mind Nepalis’. I have had to escape from them but these creatures! Is it the same with them or is it their mating season I wonder?’ There was no answer from the others who merely made themselves more comfortable as they got their breath back again. ‘We’ll have to wait a while for these animals to leave us alone,’ which they did about twenty minutes later.
Jason looked at his watch. ‘Time to move. We must hurry. Top gear all the way. No need to take any security precautions now so no need to keep quiet.’
