It started to rain heavily and, making best time, they reached their patrol base just before last light, soaked to the skin, hungry and dead tired – but at least they were safe.
Gurkha Lieutenant Pahalsing Gurung welcomed them effusively. He had been on tenterhooks since they had left. ‘Saheb, there’s not much tactically to report,’ said Jason tiredly. ‘I’ll tell you what happened after a good night’s sleep.’
‘Hunchha Hajur’ replied the Gurkha officer then, to Kulbahadur almost under his breath, he said, ‘No need now to be reborn as a dung beetle.’
They changed their clothes, lent the two wartime men some spare kit, made a fire of logs, got warm, dried their clothes and the two men with Kulé had a drink of rum. Jason, not liking the stuff, had a mess tin cover of tea. After their meal they had an early bed, being tired out.
The OCs briefing next morning did not take long. ‘It was hardly worth the trouble but to find Nationalist Chinese soldiers as far south is something people should know about. I’ll tell them when we get back.’
His senior Platoon Commander looked at him knowingly and, with the quiver of a smile, said, ‘Not if you are as wise as you normally are, Saheb.’
Jason looked at him sharply. ‘Meaning what, Saheb?’
‘Letting people know that you have broken all international laws by entering another country without any authority, armed and in uniform. That’s trespassing, isn’t it? A court-martial offence!’
‘O-ho, Saheb. Sorry,’ and he twisted his ears emulating being punished by a superior. ‘I can say the two men we met came over the border and told us about it.’
After their meal he asked his two guides ‘So, what will you do now? Have you made your minds up?’
‘Can you guarantee our getting back to Nepal?’
‘No, I personally can guarantee nothing but I certainly can say that my Commanding saheb will do all he can. I cannot see you being unsuccessful. And, just, just suppose, although I can’t imagine it, he was unsuccessful, we could always get you back here if you wanted it. All I have to ask you is to say we found you in Rantau Panjang.’
‘Of course, Saheb,’ said with a smile only Hill Gurkhas are capable of.
***
The rest of their stay spent in that area was an anti-climax. Jason reported into HQ at the end of the time, told the Colonel that he had found two wartime Gurkhas in Rantau Panjang who had told them about strange soldiers wearing strange hats and now wanted to be taken back to Nepal and this was what he was going to do once he was back in Seremban.
The Colonel said that strange soldiers in strange hats in Thailand were the Thais’ business not his and did not pursue the matter. He thanked Captain Rance and dismissed him. Before the company left Jason managed to get Rodney Mole to come and have a meal with his men, who put on an impromptu dance, much to the OCPD’s delight. They next day they were away. Thankfully their return journey was without incident.
Back in Seremban Jason handed over the two wartime Gurkhas to the CO and they were almost stultified to meet him. He did not tell the CO about his journey into Thailand, he’d keep the information to himself. What he did tell him was that the unnatural proclivity of one Sergeant Padamsing Rai, a member of the battalion now instructing soldiers in the Gurkha army school, was causing distress and dishonour amongst students. There was also a British sergeant who had similar tendencies.
Jason met the wounded man who was ‘line sick’, recovering in barracks and excused parades until he was fully fit. ‘By the time I’m back within a month you’ll be good as new,’ Jason told him.
The soldier smiled his thanks rather than saying anything, the way it happens in the Hills.
***
Matters moved surprisingly fast: before the Eastern Queen reached Singapore, the British sergeant working at the Gurkha school had been flown back to England and the Gurkha ‘administratively discharged’. So that he could be got rid of as quickly and quietly as possible he was to be escorted back to Calcutta aboard the next ship carrying a leave party, the Eastern Queen.
Jason was told that an officer on the reserve was coming out for his annual ‘refresher’ and he would take A Company over. He turned out to be an Irishman who had served with Gurkhas in the war and had ‘second sight’, although certain circumstances had to pertain. He was Major James McGurk, a small, fey, sour-apple of a man, grey-skinned and shrivelled.
***
Wednesday 29 October 1952, Alipore Park Road, Calcutta: The Rezident had been in Calcutta long enough to have had his ‘scouts’ look around and find that there was a sizeable Nepalese population in the sprawling city. Some of them drove buses or taxis, others were security guards or shop keepers. A number of them had been in the army, ‘seen the world’ and did not want to return to Nepal and live under an undeveloped and authoritarian government, especially having served in the army of a democratic government, something their own country did not have. The most fretful and at odds with their home country were those who had been forcibly converted to Islam by marauding bands of Muslims in the two years before partition in 1947 and, despite repeated requests to be re-accepted by the Nepalese authorities, found themselves as permanent religious outcastes. Some of these were ripe material for Communist recruitment: one in particular had found work in the Nepalese consulate in Sterendale Road so had a direct line to Kathmandu.
Over the weekend this man was contacted and ordered to report to the Soviet consulate. He was told about the coded phone call from Singapore by Chen Geng, of course no details of names being given. On the following Monday a letter explaining about the next boatload of Calcutta–bound Gurkhas being a mutinying battalion of now-Communist Gurkhas sent back to Nepal on disbandment, was slipped into the weekly diplomatic bag to Kathmandu. The message– the Rezident never asked how it was sent – reached King Tribhuvan, who the previous August had overthrown the Rana regime that had ruled the country since 1846, and had imposed direct rule. He reacted most strongly, hating the idea of Communism. He called one of the few men he trusted, his senior General, and told him the bad news. He did not say how he got it but merely from ‘unofficial sources’. ‘How can we absorb so many people who will be against our Government?’ he queried anxiously.
‘Sarkar’, said the General, using the word all royalty were addressed by, ‘this is a grave problem indeed. We could ask for details from the British ambassador but as you have not received it from official sources is there just a chance of it being a malicious rumour?’
‘Rumour or not, we cannot afford to take any chances.’ His Majesty directed that a secret message be sent to the Nepalese consulate in Rangoon telling the Consul on no account whatsoever was he or any member of his small staff to visit that next boatload of Gurkhas passing through. However, if there was a British officer on board he could be asked for background details. The General felt it was not up to him to suggest that the Consul would surely contact some Gurkhas if he went on board to meet any British officer in charge of the draft, so remained silent.
Instructions were readied and shown to the King for approval: such was essential for everything.
***
Wednesday 29 October – Monday 3 November 1952, Kuching, Sarawak: The SS Kimanis had made a leisurely journey, stopping at Jesselton in North Borneo before sailing west along the coast to Kuching. The man calling himself Ah Ho and his friend had return tickets and, before disembarking to carry out their task, they asked the purser when the vessel was returning. They were told that they should be back by Sunday night if they wanted their berths confirmed. Just saying they’d be back wasn’t good enough. The two men agreed they would be back by then. Their travel documents were in order and, having nothing to declare, they left the dock area without any hassle.
At that time the Sarawak United People’s Party, SUPP, was not illegal and the two found out that the office of Sim Ting Ong, the Secretary General, was in Jalan Tan Sri Ong Kee, an out-of-the-way place not easy to find. Find it they did eventually, hot and tired, and Ah Ho knocked on the door. No answer. He looked to see if there was a bell: no. He knocked again, louder. An eye appeared at the Judas window, the two men were studied and the door was opened as far as the chain securing it allowed.
‘Who are you?’ a Chinese man asked, tersely.
They gave their names, adding ‘We have heard a lot about Mr Sim Ting Ong and would like to meet him. We come from Singapore, where we have commercial interests.’
‘I am his secretary. Stay here. He normally doesn’t want to meet strangers. I’ll go and ask.’ He was back in a few minutes. ‘Follow me,’ he said curtly, leading the way upstairs and knocking on a door. They heard a gruff command to enter. They went inside and saw an elderly, gnarled and desiccated Chinese man, seated on an upright chair behind a desk. His eyes were like extinct craters, grey, inaccessible and hard as volcanic rock.
The two men from Singapore introduced themselves and explained that, although one of them was a businessman, both had other significant interests. ‘He who sent us here by boat, on which we have to return on board on Sunday, needs a report, positive or negative, about a proposition he has for you. He has heard so much good of you he hopes that he and you are tung chi’ – equal thinkers – ‘about common concerns.’
‘Equal thinkers’ was a term that almost invariably defined a ‘comrade’, nearly always a Communist one.
‘Common concerns? What have you and I in common? ‘The voice was like gravel on a chalkboard, the result of throat cancer surgery which had left him with a profoundly unnerving intonation and a repulsive neck scar to match. He muttered some imprecation under his breath. ‘I say again, concerns about what? I am only a simple politician and not a businessman.’
‘I think it will help you understand if we tell you who sent us to contact you. You may have heard of him.’
‘I’m not interested but, yes, tell me his name.’
‘His real name is Ong Boon Hua but he is widely known as Chin Peng and, like you, is Secretary General of a party. He is a little hazy on details but he remembers hearing, in 1946, the White Rajah, Charles Vyner Brooke handed Sarawak to Britain’s Colonial Office. There was an incident when two youths stabbed Duncan Stewart Brooke, who would have been his successor, wanting to have Sarawak independent and not under the British.’ Ah Ho was delighted that the research he had done in Singapore’s public library was coming in so useful. ‘Chin Peng’s idea is for history to try and repeat itself and Sarawak become ours, the Party’s, not Britain’s.’
