Guerrillas in the Jungle

SHAUN CLARKE

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1993

Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1993

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover photographs © MILpictures/Tom Weber/Getty Images (soldier); Shutterstock.com (textures)

Shaun Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008154974

Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008154981

Version: 2015-10-15

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES

About the Publisher

Prelude

The guerrilla camp had been hacked out of the dense jungle and could be seen only from the air. Its centrepiece was a roughly levelled parade ground, about the size of a tennis court, though such a game was unknown to these people. Built in the natural caverns of red and ochre rock camouflaged by the overhanging foliage, the camp quarters consisted of a lean-to thatched with atap palm, with kitchen, lecture room, and sleeping benches for about sixty newcomers. The older hands were housed in an atap further up the hill, above the boulder and overlooking the parade ground.

A babbling stream, providing water for the camp, snaked around the boulder, past the parade ground and back into the dense, steaming jungle. The latrines were built further away, near to where the stream entered the jungle, carrying the excrement and urine to the isolated dwellings that used the same water for washing and drinking. The latrines themselves consisted of a thatched lean-to over a pit full of seething maggots. The stench was atrocious.

Few of the guerrillas were more than twenty-five years of age, most were under twenty, and a surprising number were little more than children. Some of the males wore khaki shorts, shirts and military caps, but most wore no item of uniform and were either dressed like coolies or wearing white shirts, grey trousers and felt hats. Most of them were barefoot, though some wore terumpas – wooden clogs held on by rubber straps.

Almost without exception, the women were in long-sleeved, high-necked white smocks and wide black trousers. All had bobbed hair and used no make-up. The better-educated taught Mandarin and singing; the others worked in the kitchen and did their fair share of the dirtiest, heaviest male chores. Though all of them acted as nurses, seamstresses and general domestics, they expected to be treated just like the men and could be just as merciless when it came to the treatment of prisoners or traitors.

The daily schedule was strict and demanding. Reveille was at first light, 5.30 in the morning, when the crying of gibbons and the clicking of cicadas dominated the chatter of the jungle. At 6.00, when the guerrillas had bathed and brushed their teeth, they took part in the flag-raising ceremony, singing ‘The Red Flag’. Roll-call was followed by a communal reading of the laws and regulations of the Malayan Races’ Liberation Army (MRLA). Calisthenics lasted until 6.30, followed by a cup of tea and a rest period.

At 7.00 they started drilling with weapons. This included practice in jungle-warfare tactics, racing up and down hills, climbing trees and learning various jungle ambush positions. At 8.30 they washed and rested, then had a breakfast of boiled tapioca or rice with greens – fern tops or sweet-potato leaves – followed by a second rest period.

Classes began at 10.00 sharp, with political and military lessons on a daily alternating basis, the former covering Marxism–Leninism, the writings of Mao Tse-tung and the current international situation; the latter, map-reading, tactical theory, lessons in the tactics of the Russian and Chinese armies, and the general principles of guerrilla warfare.

Depending on the length of the lectures, these classes would last until approximately noon, when the guerrillas would break for a snack of biscuits and hot water, with a rest period lasting until 1.00 p.m. From then until 3.00 they would have individual assignments: special instruction in Mandarin or general study groups for the new recruits; preparation for the next lectures by the instructors; jobs around the camp – collecting firewood, cleaning up, ministering to the many sick – then, at 3.00, another arduous hour of drilling with weapons. This was followed by a thirty-minute wash period and, at 4.30, the ‘evening’ meal, not much different from breakfast.

Even during the so-called ‘free period’ lasting until 6.00, they would be compelled to study or practise their drills.

At 6.00, after coffee, there was a parade of all hands to take down the colours and sing ‘The Red Flag’ again. Then the ‘political research’ would begin, with experienced political warriors leading group discussions about the doctrines of Communism. These discussions would include ‘self-criticism’ and ‘mutual criticism’ designed to eradicate the ego. No one smiled. Jokes were rarely made. Throughout every activity, they would repeatedly give one another the clenched-fist salute.

When the discussions ended, at 9.00 p.m. sharp, they went straight to bed.

Given such a harsh, undeviating routine, to be called upon to join a patrol into the jungle often seemed like a blessing.

All of the men and women in that particular morning’s patrol were Chinese Malays. While some had been born in Malaya, others in China and a few in Hong Kong, Borneo or Sumatra, they all spoke Kuo-yii, the national dialect of China and the lingua franca of the jungle. They spoke in a whisper, and then only for the first few minutes; once away from the camp, deep in the jungle, they maintained a resolute silence, communicating only with hand signals.

Their armament for the patrol consisted of a British Bren gun, three antiquated tommy-guns, ten rifles, five shotguns, five pistols and a parang, or Malay jungle knife, shaped like a machete, one of which was carried by each member of the patrol.

From the vegetable gardens and rubber trees at the edge of the camp, they plunged straight into the darkness of the jungle. The ground was covered with a thick carpet of dead leaves and seedling trees, though no grass or flowers were to be seen. A dense undergrowth of young trees and palms of all kinds climbed to a height of about twelve feet, obscuring the giant roots of the trees. Out of the tangled green undergrowth, however, the countless tree trunks rose straight upwards for 150 feet, where they formed a solid canopy of green that almost entirely shut out the sky. The tree trunks, though similar in that they were all of a uniform thickness and straining up towards the light, were of every colour and texture: smooth and black, scaly and ochre-red, pale grey or green with moss, some as finely dappled as a moth’s wing.

The trunks were often hidden by a network of creepers which in places broke out into enormous leaves. Elsewhere, the vines and creepers hung straight down from the branches to the ground, where they had taken root again, looping themselves from tree to tree like a ship’s rigging. Up in the treetops, where the great trunks suddenly burst into branches, were huge hanging gardens of moss and ferns, themselves covered in tangled webs of liana and creepers. This dense canopy of constantly rotting, regenerating, intertwining foliage provided a few windows through which the sky could be glimpsed, but it served mostly to keep out the sunlight.

In this jungle, then, the average visibility for two men standing up was at most only twenty-five yards, varying slightly from place to place. Any confidence that this might have given to the guerrillas was soon lost when they had to leave the jungle and cross a large area of open paddy-fields, where they would have been easy targets for enemy snipers.

Grateful to reach the far side of the fields, they slipped through the open trees of a rubber estate, where sunlight and fresh air were allowed in. In these isolated patches, rattans and other thorns flourished, and the palms, ferns, bracken and seedling trees became so dense that the guerrillas, male and female, had to hack their way through with their parangs – an exhausting task.

By midday the humidity was making them all pour sweat, and when not protected by trees they were exposed to a heat that not only beat down upon their heads but also rose in suffocating waves from the parched ground.

They soon plunged back into the jungle where, though they were protected from direct sunlight, the humidity was even more suffocating. In fact, this jungle was even worse than the one they had left. Known as belukar, it was land that had once been cleared but gone back to secondary jungle, with swampy thickets of thorn, bracken and bamboo even more dense and impenetrable than the original growth. Also, it contained vast stretches of swampy jungle covered with mengkuang, a gargantuan leathery grass with sharp blades, about twenty feet long and four or five inches wide, with a row of curved thorns along each edge. In one hour of back-breaking work, only a hundred yards would be covered.

Nevertheless, though exhausted, sweating, sometimes bleeding, and constantly attacked by vicious red ants, the patrol thought of only one thing: the successful completion of their task.

Soon they came to the outer edge of the paddy-fields, where the kongsi-house, or company house, of the towkay, the merchant who owned the estate, was located, raised high on stilts. At a nod from the leader, two of the guerrillas entered the kongsi-house and dragged the terrified, struggling Chinese man out. They threw him on the ground, kicked him a few times, jerked him to his knees, then bound his hands together behind his back. In this position he was given a short speech about the glories of Communism, informed that he was being punished for his anti-Communist greed, then despatched with a bullet through the head.

This first job completed, the guerrillas took a short break, during which they relaxed in the grass, eating bananas and pineapple, watching the bee-eaters and bulbuls searching for flies overhead. When the break was over, the guerrillas, who had scarcely cast a nod in the direction of the dead man, marched around the edge of the bright-green paddy-field to the kampong itself, which consisted of a few thatched houses on stilts in a grove of coconut palms, fruit trees and hibiscus flowers.

There, they forced the head of the village to provide them with a proper cooked meal – a chicken curry with brinjol (aubergine), eggs, fried salt fish, rice and several vegetables – followed by coffee and sweetmeats. Afterwards they tied the headman’s hands behind his back, made him kneel on the ground, roped his bound hands to his tethered ankles, then made the rest of the villagers gather around him.

A couple of male guerrillas entered the headman’s house and emerged carrying a table between them. Two of the females then went in and dragged out his struggling, sobbing wife.

‘This man,’ the leader of the guerrillas said, pointing to the trembling headman, ‘is an informer who must be punished for his crimes. You will all remain here and bear witness to his punishment. Anyone who tries to leave, or turns his head away, will be shot.’

While the terrified villagers and the shocked headman looked on, the latter’s wife, eight months pregnant, was thrown on to her back on the table and held down by four guerrillas. The leader of the guerrillas then withdraw his parang, stood at the end of the table, between the woman’s outstretched feet, and raised the gleaming blade above his head.

Knowing what was about to happen, the woman writhed frantically, sobbed, vomited and gibbered like a crazed animal. She was practically insane with fear even before she felt the first, appalling cut of the blade, making her release a scream that did not sound remotely human but chilled the blood of all those who heard it.

When the patrol’s leader had finished his dreadful business, leaving a horrendous mess of shredded flesh and blood on the table, he and his men melted back into the jungle.

The guerrilla leader’s name was Ah Hoi, but everyone knew him as ‘Baby Killer’.

1

The man emerged from the trees and stood at the far side of the road, ghostly in the cold morning mist. It was just after first light. Having been on duty all night, the young guard, British Army Private John Peterson, was dog-tired and thought he was seeing things, but soon realized that the man was real enough. He was wearing jungle-green drill fatigues, standard-issue canvas-and-rubber jungle boots and a soft jungle hat. He had a machete on one hip, an Owen sub-machine-gun slung over one shoulder and a canvas bergen, or rucksack, on his back. Even from this distance, Private Peterson could see the yellow-and-green flash of the Malayan Command badge on the upper sleeve of the man’s drill fatigues.

‘Jesus!’ Peterson whispered softly, then turned to the other soldier in the guardhouse located to one side of the camp’s main gate. ‘Do you see what I see?’

The second soldier, Corporal Derek Walters, glanced through the viewing hole of the guardhouse.

‘What…? Who the hell’s that?’

After glancing left and right to check that nothing was coming, the ghostly soldier crossed the road. As he approached the guardhouse, it became clear that he was shockingly wasted, his fatigues practically hanging off his body, which was no more than skin and bone. Though he was heavily bearded and had blue shadows under his bloodshot eyes, both guards recognized him.

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Private Peterson said. ‘He actually made it!’

‘Looks like it,’ Corporal Peterson murmured. He opened the door of the guardhouse and stepped outside where the skeletal figure had just reached the barrier and was waiting patiently in the morning’s brightening sunlight. ‘Captain…Callaghan?’ the guard asked tentatively.

‘Yes, Trooper,’ the captain said. ‘How are you this morning?’

‘Fine, boss.’ Corporal Peterson shook his head in disbelief. ‘Blimey, boss! You’ve been gone…’

‘Three months. Raise the barrier, thanks.’ When Corporal Peterson raised the barrier, Captain Patrick Callaghan grinned at him, patted him on the shoulder, then entered the sprawling combined Army and Air Force base of Minden Barracks, Penang, where the recently reformed 22 SAS was temporarily housed.

Not that you’d know it, Callaghan thought as he walked lazily, wearily, towards headquarters where, he knew, Major Pryce-Jones would already be at his desk. While in Malaya, the SAS concealed their identity by discarding their badged beige berets and instead going out on duty in the blue berets and cap badges of the Manchester Regiment. Now, as Callaghan strolled along the criss-crossing tarmacked roads, past bunker-like concrete barracks, administration buildings raised off the ground on stilts, and flat, grassy fields, with the hangars and planes on the airstrip visible in the distance, at the base of the rolling green hills, Captain Callaghan saw men wearing every kind of beret and badge except those of the SAS.

In fact, the camp contained an exotic mix of regiments and police forces: six battalions of the Gurkha Rifles, one battalion each of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, the Seaforth Highlanders and the Devon Regiment, two battalions of the Malay Regiment, and the 26th Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery.

And that’s only this camp, Callaghan thought. Indeed, just before he had left for his lone, three-month jungle patrol, a battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers had arrived from Hong Kong and the 2nd Guards Brigade had been sent from the United Kingdom. Subsequently, elements of other British regiments, as well as colonial troops in the form of contingents from the King’s African Rifles and the Fijian Regiment, had joined in the struggle. There were now nearly 40,000 troops committed to the war in Malaya – 25,000 from Britain, including Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel, 10,500 Gurkhas and five battalions of the Malay Regiment.

In addition, there were the regular and armed auxiliary policemen, now totalling about 100,000 men. Most of these were Malays who had joined the Special Constabulary or served as Kampong Guards and Home Guards. The additional trained personnel for the regular police consisted mainly of men who had worked at Scotland Yard, as well as former members of the Palestine police, experienced in terrorism, men from the Hong Kong police, and even the pre-war Shanghai International Settlement, who spoke Chinese.

It’s not a little war any more, Callaghan thought as he approached the headquarters building, and it’s getting bigger every day. This is a good time to be here.

Not used to the bright sunlight, having been in the jungle so long, he rubbed his stinging eyes, forced himself to keep them open, and climbed the steps to the front of the administration block. There were wire-mesh screens across the doors and windows, with the night’s grisly collection of trapped, now dead insects stuck between the wires, including mosquitoes, gnats, flies, flying beetles and spiders. An F-28 jet fighter roared overhead as Captain Callaghan, ignoring the insects’ graveyard, pushed the doors open and entered the office.

With the heat already rising outside, it was a pleasure to step indoors where rotating fans created a cooling breeze over the administrative personnel – male and female; British, Malay, and some Eurasian Tamils – who were already seated at desks piled high with paper. They glanced up automatically when Callaghan entered, their eyes widening in disbelief when they saw the state of him.

‘Is Major Pryce-Jones’s office still here?’ Callaghan asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ a Gurkha corporal replied. ‘To your left. Down the corridor.’

‘Thanks,’ Callaghan replied, turning left and walking along the corridor until he came to the squadron commander’s office. When he stopped in the doorway, the major raised his eyes from his desk, looked Callaghan up and down, then said in his sardonic, upper-class manner: ‘It’s about time you came back. You look a bloody mess, Paddy.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Callaghan replied, grinning broadly. He lowered his bergen and sub-machine-gun to the floor, then pulled up a chair in front of Pryce-Jones’s desk. ‘You know how it is.’

‘If I don’t, I’m sure you’ll tell me in good time. Would you like a mug of hot tea?’

‘That sounds wonderful, boss.’

‘MARY!’ Pryce-Jones’s drawl had suddenly become an ear-shattering bellow directed at the pretty WRAC corporal seated behind a desk in the adjoining, smaller room.

‘Yes, boss!’ she replied, undisturbed.

‘A tramp masquerading as an SAS officer has just entered the building, looking unwashed, exhausted and very thirsty. Tea with sugar and milk, thanks. Two of.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Mary said, pushing her chair back and disappearing behind the wall separating the offices.

‘A sight for sore eyes,’ Callaghan said.

‘Bloodshot eyes,’ Major Pryce-Jones corrected him. ‘Christ, you look awful! Your wife would kill me for this.’

Callaghan grinned, thinking of Jennifer back in their home near Hereford and realizing that he hadn’t actually thought about her for a very long time. ‘Oh, I don’t know, boss. She thinks I’m just a Boy Scout at heart. She got used to it long ago.’

‘Not to seeing you in this state,’ Pryce-Jones replied. ‘Pretty rough, was it?’

Callaghan shrugged. ‘Three months is a long time to travel alone through the jungle. On the other hand, I saw a lot during my travels, so the time wasn’t wasted.’

‘I should hope not,’ Pryce-Jones said.

After spending three months virtually alone in the jungle, living like an animal and trying to avoid the murderous guerrillas, most men would have expected slightly more consideration from their superior officers than Callaghan was getting. But he wasn’t bothered, for this was the SAS way and he certainly had only admiration for his feisty Squadron Commander. For all his urbane ways, Pryce-Jones was a hard-drinking, hard-fighting idealist, a tough character who had won a double blue at Cambridge and given up a commission early in World War Two in order to join a Scots Guards ski battalion destined for Finland. His wartime service included three years in Burma, much of it behind Japanese lines. He had then commanded an SAS squadron in north-west Europe from late 1944 until the regiment was disbanded in 1945.

Pryce-Jones was a stranger to neither the jungle nor danger. In fact, in 1950, General Sir John Harding, Commander-in-Chief of Far East Land Forces, had called him for a briefing on the explosion of terrorism in Malaya, asking him to produce a detailed analysis of the problem. In order to do this, Pryce-Jones had gone into the jungle for six months, where he had hiked some 1,500 miles, unescorted, in guerrilla-infested territory, and talked to most of those conducting the campaign. Though ambushed twice, he had come out alive.

According to what he had later told Callaghan, much of his time had been spent with the infantry patrols trawling through the jungle in pursuit of an ‘invisible’ enemy. Because of this, he had concluded that the only way to win the war was to win the hearts and minds of the population, rather than try to engage an enemy that was rarely seen. The Communist Terrorists, or CT, were following Mao Tse-tung’s philosophy of moving through the peasant population like ‘fish in a sea’, then using them as a source of food, shelter and potential recruits. What the British had to do, therefore, was ‘dry up the sea’.

To this end, Pryce-Jones’s recommendation was that as many of the aboriginals as possible be relocated to villages, forts, or kampongs protected by British and Federation of Malaya forces. By so doing they would win the hearts and minds of the people, who would appreciate being protected, while simultaneously drying up the ‘sea’ by depriving the guerrillas of food and new recruits.

When his recommendations had met with approval, Pryce-Jones, as the OC (officer commanding) of A Squadron in Minden Barracks, had sent Callaghan into the jungle to spend three months supervising the relocation of the kampongs and checking that the defence systems provided for them and the hearts-and-minds campaign were working out as planned.

Throughout that three months Callaghan had, like Pryce-Jones before him, travelled alone, from one kampong to the other, avoiding guerrilla patrols and mostly living off the jungle, covered in sweat, drenched by rain, often waist-deep in the swamps, drained of blood by leeches, bitten by every imaginable kind of insect, often going hungry for days, and rarely getting a decent night’s sleep.

In fact, it had been a nightmare, but since Pryce-Jones had done the same thing for twice that long, Callaghan wasn’t about to complain.

‘It wasn’t that difficult,’ he lied as the pretty WRAC corporal, Mary Henderson, brought in their cups of tea, passed them out and departed with an attractive swaying of her broad hips. ‘Although there are slightly over four hundred villages, most are little more than shanty towns, inhabited by Chinese squatters. Before we could move them, however, we had to build up a rapport with the aboriginals – in other words, to use your words, win their hearts and minds. This we did by seducing them with free food, medical treatment, and protection from the CT. Medical treatment consisted mainly of primitive clinics and dispensing penicillin to cure the aborigines of yaws, a skin disease. The kampongs and troops were resupplied by river patrols in inflatable craft supplied by US special forces, or by fixed-wing aircraft, though we hope to be using helicopters in the near future.’

‘Excellent. I believe you also made contact with the CT.’

‘More than once, yes.’

‘And survived.’

‘Obviously.’

Pryce-Jones grinned. ‘Men coming back from there brought us some strange stories.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Your clandestine warfare methods raised more than a few eyebrows back here – not to mention in Britain.’

‘You mean the prostitutes?’

‘Exactly.’

‘The best is the enemy of the good. We did what we had to do, and we did our best.’

Pryce-Jones was referring to the fact that some of the kampong prostitutes had been asking their clients for payment in guns, grenades and bullets instead of cash, then passing them on to the guerrillas in the jungle. Learning of this, Callaghan had used some of his SF (Security Forces) troops, there to protect the kampongs, to pose as clients in order to ‘pay’ the prostitutes with self-destroying weapons, such as hand-grenades fitted with instantaneous fuses that would kill their users, and bullets that exploded in the faces of those trying to fire them.

‘What other dirty tricks did you get up to?’ Pryce-Jones asked.

‘Booby-trapped food stores.’

‘Naturally – but what about the mail? I received some garbled story about that.’

Now it was Callaghan’s turn to grin. ‘I got the idea of mailing incriminating notes or money to leading Communist organizers. The poor bastards were then executed by their own kind on the suspicion that they’d betrayed their comrades.’

‘How perfectly vile.’

‘Though effective.’

‘Word about those dirty tricks got back to Britain and caused a great deal of outrage.’

‘Only with politicians. They express their outrage in public, but in private they just want us to win, no matter how we do it. They always want it both ways.’

Pryce-Jones sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He sipped his steaming tea and licked his upper lip. ‘But are we winning?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Callaghan replied without hesitation. ‘The war in the jungle’s definitely turned in our favour. The CT groups have become more fragmented. An awful lot of their leaders have been captured or killed. Food’s scarce outside the protected kampongs and the CT are therefore finding it more difficult to find recruits among the aboriginals, most of whom are now siding with us and clinging to the protection of our secured villages and forts. Unfortunately, now that the CT propaganda has failed, they’re turning to terror and committing an increasing number of atrocities.’

‘You’re talking about Ah Hoi.’

‘Yes. Only recently that bastard disembowelled an informer’s pregnant wife in front of the whole damned village. He left the villagers terrified. Now he’s rumoured to be somewhere south-west of Ipoh and we’ll soon have to pursue him. What shape are the men in?’

‘Better than the first bunch,’ Pryce-Jones replied.

Callaghan knew just what he meant. After Pryce-Jones had submitted his recommendations regarding the war, Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert, veteran of the Chindit campaigns in Burma and commander of the World War Two SAS (Special Air Service) Brigade, had been asked to create a special military force that could live permanently in the jungle, to deny the guerrillas sanctuary or rest. That special force, based on the original World War Two SAS, was known as the Malayan Scouts.

Some of those who volunteered for the new unit were useful veterans of the SOE (Special Operations Executive), the SAS and the Ferret Force, the latter being a paramilitary unit drawn from Army volunteers, and former members of SOE’s Force 136. The ‘Ferret’ scouts had led fighting patrols from regular infantry battalions, making the first offensive sweeps into the jungle, aided by forty-seven Dyak trackers, the first of many such Iban tribesmen from Borneo. Though doing enough to prove that the British did not have to take a purely defensive position, the Force was disbanded when many of its best men had to return to their civilian or more conventional military posts.

Unfortunately, too many of the men recruited in a hurry were either simply bored or were persistent troublemakers whose units were happy to see them go elsewhere. One group had even consisted of ten deserters from the French Foreign Legion who had escaped by swimming ashore from a troop-ship conveying them to the war in Indo-China. To make matters worse, due to the speed with which the Malayan Emergency built up, there was little time to properly select or train them.

Shortly after the arrival of that first batch, there were official complaints about too much drunkenness and the reckless use of firearms on the base. According to Pryce-Jones, such charges had been exaggerated because of the nature of the training, which was done under dangerously realistic conditions. Nevertheless, if not as bad as described, the first recruits were certainly rowdy and undisciplined.

Some of the wilder men had eventually been knocked into shape, but others had proved to be totally unsuitable for the special forces and were gradually weeded out. Seeking a better class of soldier, ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert had travelled 22,000 miles in twenty-one days, including a trip to Rhodesia which led to the creation of C Squadron from volunteers in that country. From Hong Kong he brought Chinese interpreters and counter-guerrillas, who had served with him in Burma, to join his Intelligence staff. Another source was a squadron of SAS Reservists and Territorials (many of whom had served under David Stirling), which had formed up in 1947 as 21 SAS Regiment. Most of those men had been of much better calibre and proved a worthy catch when, in 1952, the Malayan Scouts were renamed as the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment (22 SAS).

The original three squadrons, A, B, and C, that had formed 22 SAS, had been augmented by a fourth, D Squadron, before Calvert left for the UK. By 1956 a further squadron, the Parachute Regiment Squadron, was raised from volunteers drawn from the Paras. That same year, C Squadron returned to Rhodesia to become the Rhodesian SAS and was replaced by a New Zealand squadron. This Kiwi connection meant that a number of Fijians joined the Regiment.

‘Do you still have problems controlling them?’ Callaghan asked. ‘If you do, they’ll be no good in the jungle. The CT will just eat them up.’

‘There’s still a lot of hard drinking and the occasional fragging of officers,’ Pryce-Jones replied, ‘but the lack of discipline has been corrected and replaced with excellent soldiering. Unfortunately, it’ll be a long time yet before we live down the reputation we acquired during those early years. Not that it bothers me. We’re supposed to be different from the greens, so let’s keep it that way.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Callaghan said, mockingly clapping his hands together. ‘The question is, can we actually use them or are they still being used for policing duties?’

‘Things have greatly improved on that front,’ Pryce-Jones told him. ‘Due to the recent expansion of the Federation of Malaya Police and the creation of Home Guard units and a Special Constabulary, the Army is increasingly being released from its policing obligations and given more time and means to fight the CT. The men are all yours now.’

‘They’ll need to be separated from the greens,’ Callaghan said, referring to the green-uniformed regular Army, ‘and preferably trained in isolation.’

‘I’ve anticipated that. A new Intelligence section has been opened in Johore. It’s filled with men experienced in jungle operations from the time they worked with me in Burma. I’ve included Hong Kong Chinese to act as interpreters. The head of the section is Major John M. Woodhouse, Dorset Regiment. As so much of the SAS work involves a hearts-and-minds campaign, which requires Intelligence gathering of all kinds, and since we’ll need Chinese speakers, the Regiment will be flown to Johore, where a special training camp is already in the process of completion. The men can complete their preliminary training here, then move on to Johore a week from now.’

‘Excellent,’ Callaghan said. Restless already, even though exhausted, he stood up and went to the window behind the major’s desk. Looking out, he saw a Sikh foreman supervising some Malay coolies in the building of a sangar at the edge of the runway containing rows of Beverley transports and F-28 jets. The sun was rising quickly in the sky, flooding the distant landscape of green hills and forest with brilliant light.

‘I want to get that bastard Ah Hoi,’ he said.

‘You will in due course,’ Pryce-Jones replied. ‘Right now, you need a good meal, a hot shower and a decent sleep. And I need to work. So get out of here, Paddy.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Captain Callaghan said. He picked up his soaked, heavy bergen and camouflaged sub-machine-gun, then, with a blinking of weary eyes, walked out of the office.

‘You can smell him from here,’ Mary said, when Callaghan had left.

‘A rich aroma,’ Pryce-Jones replied.

2

As Captain ‘Paddy’ Callaghan was having a good sleep after showering three months of jungle filth off his emaciated body, the latest influx of recently badged troopers to 22 SAS were settling in for a week of initial training in Minden Barracks, before being flown on to Johore. Though just off the Hercules C-130 transport aircraft which had flown them all the way from Bradbury Lines, Merebrook Camp, Worcestershire, via RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire, the men were in a good mood as they adjusted to the brilliant morning sunshine and rising heat of the mainland, just across the Malacca Straits, facing the lively town of Penang.

‘I’ve heard all about that place from an RAF buddy stationed at Butterworth,’ Trooper Dennis ‘the Menace’ Dudbridge said, as the Bedford truck transported them away from the airstrip to the barracks at the far side of a broad, flat field. Formerly of the Gloucestershire Regiment, he was short, broad-shouldered, and as feisty as a bantam cock, with a permanently split lip and broken nose from one too many pub fights. ‘He said the whores all look as sexy as Marilyn Monroe.’

‘If a different colour and a bit on the slit-eyed side,’ Corporal ‘Boney Maronie’ Malone reminded him.

‘I get a hard-on just thinking about Marilyn Monroe,’ Trooper Pete Welsh informed them in his deadly serious manner.

‘Put splints on it, do you?’ Boney Maronie asked him.

‘We can’t all walk around all day with three legs,’ Pete replied, brushing his blond hair from his opaque, slightly deranged blue eyes. ‘Not like you, Boney.’

‘He doesn’t need splints,’ Trooper Alf Laughton observed. ‘He needs a sling to keep it off the fucking ground when it sticks out too far. Isn’t that true, Boney?’

‘Some of us just happen to be well endowed. Not that I’m one to boast, lads, but you just don’t compare.’

‘I trust you’ll put it to good use in Penang,’ Dennis the Menace said.

‘If we get there,’ Boney replied. ‘I’ve heard they’re not giving us any time off before they send us into that fucking jungle to get bled dry by leeches.’

‘They wouldn’t dare!’ Alf Laughton exclaimed. With flaming red hair and a face pitted by acne, Laughton looked like a wild man. He had been here three years ago, with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and still had fond memories of George Town when the sun had gone down. ‘We’re entitled to a little fun and games before they work us to death.’

‘We’re entitled to Sweet FA,’ Pete Welsh said, ‘and that’s what we’ll get.’

Though they had all been badged recently, most of these men were experienced and had come to the SAS from units active in other theatres of operation. Some had come from the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and the wartime SAS, others had been recruited by ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert from British forces stationed in the Far East; and many, including a number of National Servicemen, were skilled soldiers who had volunteered to avoid the discipline of the more conventional regular Army. At least one of them, Sergeant Ralph Lorrimer, now sitting up front beside the driver of the Bedford, had experience in guerrilla warfare gleaned from wartime operations in North Africa, and as a member of Force 136, the clandestine resistance force set up by the SOE in Malaya during the Japanese occupation. Most of them, then, were experienced men.

Indeed, one of the few with no previous experience in warfare was the recently badged Trooper Richard Parker, already nicknamed ‘Dead-eye Dick’ because of his outstanding marksmanship, as displayed not only during his three years with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, but also on the firing range of the SAS base at Merebrook Camp, Malvern. Brown-haired, grey-eyed and almost virginally handsome, Dead-eye was as quiet as a mouse, every bit as watchful, and very keen to prove himself with the SAS. Perhaps it was because his quiet nature seemed at odds with his remarkable skills as a soldier, which included relentless tenacity as well as exceptional marksmanship, that the men had taken him up as a sort of squadron mascot and were inclined to be protective of him, particularly when out on the town. Even the traditional bullshit, when it flew thick and fast, landed lightly on young Trooper Parker.

‘Hey, Dead-eye,’ Boney Maronie said to him, ‘when they give us some time off I’ll take you into George Town and find you a nice Malayan girl who likes breaking in cherry-boys.’

‘I’m not a cherry-boy,’ Parker replied quietly as the Bedford bounced over a hole on the road leading to the barracks. ‘I’ve had my fair share.’

‘Oh, really?’ Boney asked with a broad grin. He was six foot tall, pure muscle and bone, and sex-mad. ‘Where and when was that, then?’

Dead-eye shrugged. ‘Here and there. Back home. In West Croydon.’

‘In your car?’

‘I’ve never had a car.’

‘So where did you do it?’

‘None of your business, Boney. Where I did it and who I did it with is my concern, thanks.’

‘You’re a cherry-boy. Admit it!’

‘I’m not,’ Dead-eye replied. ‘It’s just something I don’t talk about. I was brought up that way.’

‘You bleedin’ little liar,’ Boney said. ‘If you’ve got as far as squeezing a bit of tit, I’d be bloody amazed.’

Dead-eye shrugged, but said no more. The conversation was beneath him. In fact, he was attractive, girls liked him a lot, and he’d practised sex with the same clinical detachment he brought to everything else, getting his fair share. He just didn’t think it worth boasting about. Being a soldier, particularly in the SAS, was much more important.

‘It’s the quiet little buggers like Dead-eye,’ Dennis the Menace said to Boney Maronie, ‘who get their oats while blow-hards like you are farting into the wind. I know who I’d bet on.’

‘Hey, come on…’ Boney began, but was rudely interrupted when the Bedford ground to a halt outside the barracks and Sergeant Lorrimer bawled: ‘All out back there! Shift your lazy arses!’

The men did as they were ordered, hopping off the back and sides of the open Bedford MK four-ton truck. When they were assembled on the baking-hot tarmac in front of the barracks, Sergeant Lorrimer pointed to the unattractive concrete blocks and said: ‘Argue among yourselves as to who gets what basha, then put your kit in the lockers and have a brief rest. I’ll be back in about thirty minutes to give you further instructions.’

‘The man said a brief rest,’ Pete Welsh echoed, ‘and he obviously means it.’

‘You have a complaint, Trooper?’ Sergeant Lorrimer placed his large hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes. He was sweating and his beefy face was flushed.

‘Complain? I wouldn’t dream of it, boss! Thirty minutes is much too long.’

‘Then we’ll make it twenty,’ Lorrimer said. ‘I take it you agree that’s in order?’

‘Absolutely!’ Welsh glanced uneasily left and right as the rest of the men groaned audibly and glared at him. ‘No problem here, boss.’

‘I could do with some scran,’ Dennis the Menace said.

‘You’ll get a proper meal tonight,’ Sergeant Lorrimer replied, ‘when you’ve been kitted out and had a sermon from the OC. Meanwhile, you’ll have to content yourself with a breakfast of wads and a brew up. And since you’ve only got twenty minutes to eat and drink, I suggest you get started.’

Sergeant Lorrimer jumped back up into the Bedford while the men moaned and groaned. Even as the truck was heading away towards the administration buildings located along the edge of the airstrip, the men continued complaining.

‘Your bloody fault, Pete,’ Dennis the Menace said. ‘We could have had all of thirty minutes – now we’re cut down to twenty. You should’ve known better.’

‘I only said…’

‘One word too many.’ Alf Laughton was disgusted with him. ‘You know what Sergeant Lorrimer’s like when he gets too much sunshine. His face turns purple and he can’t stand the bullshit.’

‘You’re all wasting time talking,’ Dead-eye pointed out with his usual grasp of the priorities. ‘If you keep talking you’ll waste more of your twenty minutes and won’t have time for breakfast. Let’s pick beds and unpack.’

The accommodation consisted of rectangular concrete bunkers surrounded by flat green fields, slightly shaded by papaya and palm trees. The buildings had wire-mesh and wooden shutters instead of glass windows. The shutters were only closed during tropical storms; the wire-mesh was there to keep out the many flying insects attracted by the electric lights in the evenings. Likewise, because of the heat, the wooden doors were only closed during storms.

From any window of the barracks the men could see the airstrip, with F-28 jets, Valetta, Beverley and Hercules C-130 transports, as well as Sikorski S-55 Whirlwind helicopters, taking off and landing near the immense, sun-scorched hangars. Beyond the airstrip was a long line of trees, marking the edge of the jungle.

After selecting their beds and transferring personal kit to the steel lockers beside each bed, the men hurriedly unwrapped their prepacked wads, or sandwiches, and had hot tea from vacuum flasks.

‘Christ, it’s hot,’ Pete Welsh said, not meaning the tea.

‘It’s hardly started,’ Alf Laughton told him. ‘Early hours yet. By noon you’ll be like a boiled lobster, no matter how you try to avoid the sun. Fucking scorching, this place is.’

‘I want to see Penang,’ Dennis the Menace said. ‘All those things you told us about it, Alf. All them Malay and Chinese birds in their cheongsams, slit up to the hip. George Town, here I come!’

‘When?’ Boney Maronie asked. ‘If we’re not even getting lunch on our first day here, what hope for George Town? We’re gonna be worked to death, mates.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Dead-eye said, stowing the last of his personal gear in his steel locker. ‘I came here to fight a war – not to get pissed and screw some whores. I want to see some action.’

Dennis the Menace grinned crookedly and placed his hand affectionately on Dead-eye’s head. ‘What a nice lad you are,’ he said, only mocking a little. ‘And what a good trooper! It’s good to see you’re so keen.’

‘You’d see action if you came with me to George Town,’ Boney Maronie informed him. ‘You’d see a battle or two, mate.’

‘Not the kind of battle Dead-eye wants to see,’ Dennis the Menace said. ‘This kid here has higher aims.’

‘That’s right,’ Dead-eye said.

Boney Maronie was rolling his eyes in mock disgust when the red-faced Sergeant Lorrimer returned, this time in an updated 4×4 Willys jeep that had armoured perspex screens and a Browning 0.5-inch heavy machine-gun mounted on the front. Hopping down, leaving the driver behind the steering wheel, Lorrimer bawled instructions for the men to assemble outside the barracks in order of height. When they had done so, he marched them across the broad green field bordered with papaya and palm trees to the quartermaster’s store, to be kitted out with everything they needed except weapons, which could only be signed for when specifically required.

The standard-issue clothing included jungle-green drill fatigues, a matching soft hat and canvas-and-rubber boots. The men were also supplied with special canvas bergens which looked small when rolled up, but enormous when filled. The contents of each individual bergen included a sleeping bag of hollow-fill, man-made fibre; a bivi-bag, or waterproof one-man sheet used as a temporary shelter; a portable hexamine stove and blocks of hexamine fuel; an aluminium mess tin, mug and utensils; a brew kit, including sachets of tea, powdered milk and sugar; matches in a waterproof container and flint for when the matches ran out; needles and thread; a fishing line and hooks; a pencil torch and batteries; a luminous button compass; signal flares; spare radio batteries; fluorescent marker panels for spotter planes in case of rescue; a magnifying glass to help find splinters and stings in the skin; and a medical kit containing sticking plasters, bandages, cotton wool, antiseptic, intestinal sedative, antibiotics, antihistamine, water-sterilizing tablets, anti-malaria tablets, potassium permanganate, analgesic, two surgical blades and butterfly sutures.

‘Just let me at you,’ Dennis the Menace said, waving one of his small surgical blades in front of Boney’s crutch. ‘The world’ll be a lot safer if you don’t have one, so let’s lop it off.’

‘Shit, Dennis!’ Boney yelled, jumping back and covering his manhood with his hands. ‘Don’t piss around like that!’

‘You think this is funny, Trooper?’ Sergeant Lorrimer said to Dennis the Menace. ‘You think we give you these items for your amusement, do you?’

‘Well, no, boss, I was just…’

‘Making a bloody fool of yourself, right?’ Lorrimer shoved his beetroot-red face almost nose to nose with the trooper. ‘Well, let me tell you, that where you’re going you might find a lot of these items useful – particularly when you have to slice a poisonous spike or insect out of your own skin, or maybe slash open a snake bite, then suck the wound dry and suture it yourself without anaesthetic. Will you be laughing then, Trooper?’

‘No, boss, I suppose not. I mean, I…’

‘Damn right, you won’t, Trooper. A joker like you – you’ll probably be pissing and shitting yourself, and crying for your mummy’s tit. So don’t laugh at this kit!’

‘Sorry, boss,’ Dennis the Menace said. ‘Hear you loud and clear, boss.’

‘At least I know you clean the wax from your ears,’ Lorrimer said, then bellowed: ‘Move it, you men!’

Once the squadron had been clothed and kitted out in order of size, they were marched back across the broad field, which, at the height of noon, had become a veritable furnace that burned their skin and made them pour sweat. To this irritation was added the midges and mosquitoes, the flies and flying beetles, none of which could be swotted away because every man, apart from being burdened with his heavy bergen, also had his hands engaged carrying even more equipment. When eventually they reached the barracks, their instinct was to throw the kit on the floor and collapse on their bashas. But this was not to be.

‘Right!’ Sergeant Lorrimer bawled. ‘Stash that kit, have a five-minute shower, put on your drill fatigues, and reassemble outside fifteen minutes from now. OK, you men, shake out!’

The latter command was SAS slang for ‘Prepare for combat’, but the men knew exactly what Lorrimer meant by using it now: they were going to get no rest. Realizing that this time they didn’t even have time to complain or bullshit, they fought each other for the few showers, hurriedly dressed, and in many cases were assembling outside without having dried themselves properly, their wet drill fatigues steaming dry in the burning heat. They were still steaming when Lorrimer returned in the jeep, but this time he waved the jeep away, then made the men line up in marching order.

‘Had your scran, did you?’ he asked when they were lined up in front of him.

‘Yes, boss!’ the men bawled in unison.

‘Good. ’Cause that’s all you’re going to get until this evening. You’re here to work – not wank or chase skirt – and any rest you thought you might be having, you’ve already had in that Hercules. OK, follow me.’

He marched them across the flat field, through eddying heatwaves, all the way back to the armoury, located near the quartermaster’s stores. There they were given a selection of small arms, including the M1 0.3in carbine with 30-round detachable magazines, which was good for low-intensity work at short range, but not much else; the 9mm Owen sub-machine-gun, which used 33-round, top-mounted box magazines, could fire at a rate of 700 rounds per minute, and was reliable and rugged; the relatively new 7.62mm semi-automatic SLR (self-loading rifle) with 20-round light box magazines, which had yet to prove its worth; and the standard-issue Browning 9mm High Power handgun with 13-round magazines and Len Dixon holster.

When the weapons had been distributed among the men, each given as much as he could carry, Lorrimer pointed to the Bedford truck parked near by.

‘Get in that,’ he said. ‘After the weather in England, I’m sure you’ll appreciate some sunshine. All right, move it!’

When they had all piled into the Bedford, they were driven straight to the firing range, where they spent the whole afternoon, in ever-increasing heat, firing the various weapons – first the M1 carbine, then the Owen sub-machine-gun and finally the unfamiliar SLR. The heat was bad enough, but the insects were even worse, and within an hour or two most of the men were nearly frantic, torn between concentrating on the weapons and swotting away their tormentors. When they attempted to do the latter, they were bawled at by the redoubtable Sergeant Lorrimer. After two hours on the range, which seemed more like twelve, their initial enthusiasm for the sunlight, which had seemed so wonderful after England, waned dramatically, leaving them with the realization that they had been travelling a long time and now desperately needed sleep, proper food, and time to acclimatize to this new environment.

‘What the fuck’s the matter with you, Trooper?’ Sergeant Lorrimer demanded of Pete Welsh.

‘Sorry, boss, but I just can’t keep my eyes open.’

‘A little tired after your long journey from England, are you?’ Lorrimer asked sympathetically.

‘Yes, boss.’

‘So what are you going to do in the jungle, Trooper, when you have to sleep when standing waist-deep in water? Going to ask for tea and sympathy, are you? Perhaps some time off?’

‘I’m not asking now, boss. I’m just having problems in keeping my eyes open. It’s the sunlight, combined with the lack of sleep. We’re all the same, boss.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Lorrimer said. ‘You’re all the same. Well, that makes all the difference!’ He glanced melodramatically around him, at the other men lying belly-down on the firing range, half asleep when not being tormented by mosquitoes and other dive-bombing tormentors. ‘Need sleep, do you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, boss!’ they all bawled simultaneously.

‘If you sleep before bedtime,’ Lorrimer explained, ‘you’ll all wake up in the middle of the morning, so you’d best stay awake. On your feet, Troopers!’

When they jumped to their feet, shocked by the tenor of Lorrimer’s voice, he ran them a few times around the firing range, which was now like God’s anvil, and only let them rest again when at least one of them, the normally tough Alf Laughton, started swaying as if he’d been poleaxed.

‘Get back in the Bedford,’ Lorrimer said, addressing the whole group. ‘You’re just a bunch of pansies.’

Breathless, pouring sweat, hardly able to focus their eyes, they piled into the Bedford, were driven back to the armoury, lined up for what seemed like hours to return their weapons, then were allowed to make their own way back to the barracks. There, in a state of near collapse, most of them threw themselves down on their steel-framed beds.

No sooner had they done so than Sergeant Lorrimer appeared out of nowhere, bawling, ‘Off your backs, you lot! You think this is Butlins? Get showered and change into your dress uniforms and be at the mess by 5.30 sharp. Any man not seen having dinner will be up for a fine. Is that understood? Move it!’

They did so. In a state of virtual somnambulism, they turned up at the crowded mess, where Sergeant Lorrimer was waiting to greet them.

‘Spick and span,’ he said, looking them up and down with an eagle eye. ‘All set for scran. OK, go in and get fed, take your time about it, but make sure you reassemble back out here. No pissing off to the NAAFI.’

‘The day’s over after din-dins,’ Dennis the Menace said.

‘It is for the common soldier,’ Lorrimer replied, ‘but not for you lot.’ He practically purred with anticipation. ‘You lot are privileged!’

They soon found out what he meant. After dinner, which few of them could eat, being far too exhausted, they were marched back to the barracks, told to change back into their already filthy drill fatigues, then driven out of the camp in a Bedford. A good ten miles from the camp, in an area notable only for the anonymity of its jungle landscape – no towns, no kampongs – they were dropped off in pairs, each a few miles from the other, none having the slightest clue where they were, and told that if they wanted a good night’s sleep, they had to make their own way back to the camp as best they could. If they were not back by first light, when Reveille would be called, they would be RTU’d – sent straight back to Blighty.

‘Do we get even a compass?’ Boney Maronie asked. He and Pete Welsh were one of the first pairs to be dropped off.

‘No,’ Lorrimer replied. ‘What you get is the information that the camp is approximately ten miles north, south, east or west. The rest you have to find out for yourself. Have a nice evening, Trooper.’

‘Thanks, boss. Same to you.’

In fact, all of them made it back, though by very different means. Boney Maronie and Peter Welsh marched until they came to a main road – an hour’s difficult hike in itself – then simply hitched a lift from a Malay banker whose journey home took him straight past the camp. Dennis the Menace and Dead-eye Dick had checked the direction of their journey in the Bedford, so they simply used the moon to give them an east-west reference and used that to guide them back the way they had come. After a walk that took them well past midnight, they came to a kampong where the headman, obviously delighted to have a chat with strangers, gave them dinner then drove them back to the base, depositing them there two hours before first light. Alf Laughton, dropped off with a recently badged trooper, formerly of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, became disgusted with his young partner, deliberately lost him, then waylaid a passing cyclist, beat him unconscious, stole his bicycle and cycled most of the way back. Just before reaching the main gate of the camp, he dumped the bicycle and walked the rest of the way, thus ensuring that neither the assault nor the theft could be traced back to him.

Others did even worse than Alf Laughton and, being found out, were RTU’d, as was Laughton’s unfortunate young partner.

The rest, getting back successfully without committing any known criminal act, collapsed immediately on their beds and slept as long as they could. The ones who had the longest sleep were Boney Maronie and Pete Welsh, who had managed to get back two hours after leaving, earning almost a whole night in a proper bed.

Few others were so lucky. Typical were Dennis the Menace and Dead-eye Dick, who, having not slept since leaving England nearly twenty-six hours earlier, managed to get two hours sleep before Reveille, at first light. After that, the whole murderous routine was repeated again – for seven relentless, soul-destroying days.

All of this was merely a build-up to Johore, where, so Sergeant Lorrimer assured them, the ‘real’ jungle training would be done.

Johore loomed like a nightmare of the kind that only this breed of man could fully understand and hope to deal with.

3

The troopers coped with the forthcoming nightmare of Johore by fantasizing about the great time they would have when they were given the mandatory weekend off and could spend it on the island of Penang. This fantasy was fuelled by the stories of Alf Laughton, who, having been in Malaya before, when serving with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, still recalled vividly his wild evenings in George Town, with its trishaws, taxis, steaming food stalls, colourful markets and bazaars, sleazy bars, grand hotels and, of course, incredibly beautiful Eurasian women in sexy cheongsams.

Alf Laughton had the rest of them salivating.

The first seven days, which seemed like seven years, ended on a Friday and most of them, though exhausted beyond what they could have imagined, were looking forward to their great weekend in Penang, after their briefing by Major Pryce-Jones, which took place, helpfully, at six in the evening, when the sun was going down and the humid air was cooling.

‘First, a bit of background,’ Pryce-Jones began. He was standing on a raised section of the floor at one end of the room, in front of a large map of Malaya. Captain Callaghan was seated in a chair to the side of the raised area. In the week he had been back, he had already put on weight and was looking more his normal, healthy self. ‘The Communist Party has existed here in a small way since the 1930s,’ Pryce-Jones continued, ‘when this was a prosperous place. Unfortunately, we then made the mistake of arming the Communist guerrillas during the war, to enable them to fight the Japanese. It never entered our heads that after the war those same weapons would be turned against us. In the event, they were. Once the guerrilla supremo, Chin Peng, had been awarded an OBE in the Victory Honours, he formed his 1,200 wartime guerrillas into ten regiments and used his 4,000 captured British and Japanese weapons to mount a campaign of terror against the Malays. They publicly executed rubber plantation workers, lectured the horrified onlookers on the so-called war against Imperialism, then melted back into the jungle.’

After pausing to let his words sink in, Pryce-Jones tapped the blackboard beside the map, where someone had scrawled in white chalk: ‘Kill one, frighten a thousand: Sun-Zu.’

‘These are the words of the old Chinese warrior Sun-Zu, and Chin Peng’s guerrillas live by them. For this reason, once they had struck terror into the hearts of the Malays, they turned on the Europeans, mostly British plantation managers. Two were bound to chairs and ritually murdered. After that, the war escalated dramatically and British forces were brought in.’

Pryce-Jones put the pointer down and turned away from the blackboard. ‘By early 1950, the Communist Terrorists had killed over 800 civilians, over 300 police officers and approximately 150 soldiers. We can take comfort from the fact that over 1,000 CT have been killed, over 600 have been captured, and nearly 400 have surrendered so far. Nevertheless, there’s no sign of an end to the war, which is why you men are here.’

‘Lucky us!’ Dennis the Menace exclaimed, copping a couple of laughs.

‘The CT attacks,’ Pryce-Jones continued when the laughter had died away, ‘are mostly against kampongs, isolated police stations, telecommunications, railways, buses, rubber estates, tin mines, and what they term the “running dogs of the British” – namely, us, the Security Forces. British infantry, however, with the help of Gurkha and police patrols, have managed to cut off food supplies going to the CT in the jungle. They’ve also booby-trapped supplies of rice, fish and other foods found prepared for collection by the CT. With the removal of over 400 Chinese squatters’ villages from the edge of the jungle to wire-fenced enclosures defended by us, the CT have been deprived of yet another source of food, supplies and manpower. For this reason, they’ve moved deeper into the jungle, known to them as the ulu, where they’re attempting to grow their own maize, rice and vegetables. In order to do this, they have to make cleared spaces in the ulu – and those spaces can be seen from the air. Unfortunately, it takes foot patrols days, sometimes weeks, to reach them. Which is where you come in.’

‘Here it comes!’ Boney Maronie chimed.

‘The hard sell,’ Dennis the Menace added.

‘All right, you men, be quiet,’ Sergeant Lorrimer told them. ‘We don’t have all night for this.’

Looking forward to the first evening of their free weekend, which most would spend in Penang, the men could only agree with Sergeant Lorrimer, and settled down quickly.

‘To win the cooperation of the local tribesmen,’ Pryce-Jones continued, ‘we established a number of protected kampongs. Attracted by free food and medical treatment, as well as by the idea of protection from the atrocities of the CT, the tribesmen gradually moved into the kampongs and set up their bashas next to those of our troops. Medical supplies were dropped by the RAF and treatment given by doctors and Royal Army Medical Corps NCOs attached to the SAS. Once an individual settlement was established with a full quota of tribesmen, it became permanent and was placed under the control of the police or Malayan security forces. We’d then move on to build another elsewhere until we had a whole chain of such “forts” down the centre of the country, effectively controlling the area, keeping the terrorists out.’

‘The hearts-and-minds campaign,’ young Dead-eye said, having already done his homework.

‘Correct. The campaign was successful in winning the trust of the tribesmen. They responded by becoming our eyes and ears in the ulu, passing on information on the whereabouts and movements of the CT.’

‘So what’s our place in all this?’ Boney Maronie asked.

‘You’ll be called upon to be part of patrols based for long periods in the jungle,’ Pryce-Jones replied. ‘There you’ll make contact with the aboriginals, the Sakai, who’re being coerced by the terrorists into providing them with food. Once contact is made, you’ll attempt to win their trust by supplying them with penicillin and other medicines, by defending their kampongs from the CT and in any other way you can.’

‘Bloody nursemaids again!’ Dennis the Menace groaned.

‘Is staying for long periods in the jungle feasible for anyone other than the aboriginals?’ Dead-eye asked quietly.

‘Yes,’ Captain Callaghan said. ‘It’s a daunting task, but it can be done. Indeed, at a time when seven days was considered the absolute limit for white men, one of our Scout patrols spent 103 days in there. The CC’ – Callaghan nodded in the direction of Major Pryce-Jones – ‘has spent six months alone in the ulu and, as you know, I’ve just returned from a three-month hike through it. So it can be done.’

‘If the Ruperts can do it,’ Alf Laughton said, using the SAS nickname for officers, ‘then I reckon we can too.’

‘As Trooper Dudbridge has expressed his disdain for the hearts-and-minds side of the operation,’ Pryce-Jones cut in, ‘I should inform you that your main task will be to assist the Malay Police Field Force at kampongs and in jungle-edge patrols. You’ll also send out small patrols from your jungle base to ambush the CT on the tracks they use to get to and from their hide-outs.’

‘That sounds more like it,’ Pete Welsh said, grinning as his wild blue eyes flashed from left to right and back again. ‘Doing what we’ve been trained to do.’

‘You’ve also been trained in hearts-and-minds tactics,’ Sergeant Lorrimer reminded him, ‘so don’t ever forget it.’

‘Sorry, boss,’ Welsh replied, grinning lopsidedly and rolling his eyes at his mates. ‘No offence intended.’

‘Good.’ Lorrimer turned away from him and spoke to Major Pryce-Jones instead. ‘Will we be engaged only in jungle-edge patrols?’

‘No,’ Captain Callaghan replied after receiving the nod from Pryce-Jones. ‘It’s true that in the past we’ve avoided deep-penetration raids, but because of the increasing success of our food-denial operations, the CT are now heading deeper into the ulu. Unfortunately for them, in order to grow their own food they have to fell trees and make clearings. As our Company Commander has rightly pointed out, such clearings can be spotted from the air, which means they’re vulnerable to attack. We’ll therefore attack them. We’ll do so by parachuting – or tree-jumping, which you’re about to learn – into a confined Dropping Zone near the area. Then we’ll place a cordon around the clearing. It won’t be easy and certainly it will be dangerous, but in the end we’ll win.’

‘We’re going to parachute into the jungle?’ Alf Laughton asked, sounding doubtful.

‘Yes,’ Captain Callaghan answered. ‘If I can do it, anyone can do it – and believe me, I’ve done it.’

‘Is that one of the things we’ll learn in Johore?’

‘Correct,’ Callaghan replied.

‘I can’t wait,’ Pete Welsh said sarcastically. ‘The top of a tree right through my nuts. I’ll be back in the boys’ choir.’

‘Assuming that Trooper Welsh doesn’t lose his precious nuts on a tree,’ Sergeant Lorrimer said, ‘and we all make it down to the DZ in one piece, what problems can we expect to find in that terrain?’

‘Most of the country is dense and mountainous jungle,’ Captain Callaghan replied, ‘considered habitable only by aboriginal peoples, such as the Sakai. The hill contours make for steep, slippery climbs, while the routes off the paths are dense with trees that can trip you up and break your ankles. Nevertheless, as the few paths are likely to be mined or ambushed, you’ll have to avoid them and instead move over uncharted ground. The terrorists have a network of jungle informers and will be using them to keep track of your movements, which will help them either to attack or avoid you. Finding them before they find you won’t be made any easier by the difficulties of navigating in the jungle. You will, however, be aided by Dyak trackers, Iban tribesmen from Sarawak, all experts in jungle tracking and survival.’

‘We go out in small patrols?’ Dead-eye said.

‘Yes. Three- or four-man teams. In the words of the founder of the Malayan Scouts, Lieutenant-Colonel Calvert: “The fewer you are, the more frightened you are, therefore, the more cautious you are and, therefore, the more silent you are. You are more likely to see the enemy before he will be able to see you.” We abide by those words.’

‘What’s our first, specific mission?’ Boney Maronie asked.

Callaghan stepped aside to let Major Pryce-Jones take the centre of the raised platform and give them the good news.

‘Aerial reconnaissance has shown that the CT are growing food in a clearing in the Belum Valley, a remote, long mountain valley located near the Thai border. That valley will be searched by Gurkha, Commando and Malaya Police patrols, all moving in on foot, which should take them five days but gives them the advantage of being more difficult to spot. You men will form the stop, or blocking, party, parachuting in a day’s march from the RV. This operation will commence once you’ve completed your extensive jungle training in Johore.’

‘When do we leave, boss?’ Dennis the Menace asked.

‘Tonight.’

4

The camp in Johore was a primitive affair, shared between Gurkhas, Royal Marines, RAF, British Army REME, Kampong Guards from the Federation of Malaya Police and SAS personnel. Hastily thrown together in a clearing in the jungle, it was surrounded by coconut palms, papaya trees and deep monsoon drains, with rows of wood-and-thatch barracks, latrines, open showers, a mess hut, armoury, quartermaster’s store, motor pool, administrative block, NAAFI shop, airstrip for fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and a centrally located ‘sports ground’ with an obstacle course at one end, used for everything from weapons training to Close Quarters Battle (CQB) and unarmed combat.

‘They don’t even give us one night in Penang,’ Alf Laughton complained as they were selecting their camp-beds and settling into the barracks, ‘and now they plonk us down in this dump. A diabolical liberty!’

‘More dust, heat, flies and mosquitoes,’ Dennis the Menace said. ‘Welcome to Paradise!’

‘You know why these barracks are raised off the ground, don’t you?’ Pete Welsh asked rhetorically, having the answer all prepared. ‘Because this place is crawling with scorpions, centipedes and snakes, every one of ’em poisonous.’

‘It’s crawling with everything except women,’ Boney Maronie said, ‘which is why they should have given us at least one night out in Penang. I think I’m getting ready to explode. I’ll drench the whole fucking ceiling.’

‘Boasting again,’ Dennis the Menace said. ‘You haven’t really got it in you. But that obstacle course out there looks like hell. A few runs over that fucker and you’ll soon get rid of all your excess energy. By the time you’ve finished, you won’t remember what a woman is, let alone what she feels like.’

‘Tree-jumping,’ Dead-eye said. ‘That’s what bothers me. Those trees are 150 feet high and pretty damned dense. I don’t fancy climbing those with a bergen, rifle and knotted rope, let alone parachuting into them.’

‘Piece of piss,’ Pete Welsh said, his grin making him look slightly crazy. ‘You just spread your legs and get spiked through the balls by the top of a tree. If you miss that, you crash down through the branches and get all smashed to hell. Failing that, you snag your chute on the branches and possibly hang yourself. Sounds like a joyride.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Alf Laughton said.

Once settled in, the men were gathered together in the briefing room, given a brief lecture on the history and habits of the jungle natives, told not to call them ‘Sakai’, which meant ‘slave’, and informed that they would be receiving a two-hour lesson in the native language every day. The first such lesson began immediately and was very demanding.

When it had ended, at 10 a.m., the men were allowed a ten-minute tea break, then marched to the armoury, where they were given a selection of weapons, including those fired on the range of Minden Barracks: the M1 0.3in carbine, the 9mm Owen sub-machine-gun, the 7.62mm semi-automatic SLR and the Browning 9mm High Power handgun. They were also given a Fairburn-Sykes commando knife and a machete-like parang.

Having already tested the men’s skills on the range at Minden Barracks, Sergeant Lorrimer knew precisely who was best at what and distributed the weapons accordingly, with the Owen sub-machine-guns going to those he was designating as scouts, or ‘point men’, in his patrols.

‘Here,’ he told the men assembled outside the armoury in the already fierce heat, ‘you won’t have to sign the weapons in and out. Instead, you’ll keep them with you at all times, either on your person or in your lockers. If any man loses a weapon or ammunition he’ll be RTU’d instantly.’

From that moment on, though the men were trained together, they were broken up into four-man teams, first devised by David Stirling in World War Two as a means of combining minimum manpower with maximum surprise. The four-man team was deemed to be the most effective because members could pair up and look after each other, both tactically and domestically, sharing duties such as brewing up, cooking meals, erecting shelters or camouflaging their position. Also, soldiers have a natural bonding instinct and divide into pairs to tackle most tasks.

Though every member of the four-man patrols had been trained in signals, demolition and medicine, and was presently learning the rudiments of the local language, each individual had to specialize in one of these. Trained to Regimental Signaller standard in morse code and ciphers, the team’s specialist signaller was responsible for calling in aerial resup (resupply) missions, casevac (casualty evacuation) and keeping contact with base. While all of the team had been trained in demolition, the team’s specialist in this skill was responsible for either supervising, or carrying out, major sabotage operations. The job of the language specialist was to converse with the locals, on the one hand gaining their trust as part of the hearts-and-minds campaign, on the other gleaning from them whatever information he could. The specialist in medicine would not only look after the other members of his patrol, but also attempt to win the trust of the locals by treating them for stomach pains, toothache, tuberculosis, malaria, scurvy or any other illnesses, real or imagined.

‘Though the basic unit will be the four-man team,’ Captain Callaghan told them when they were kneeling in the dirt at the edge of the sports ground, in the murderous heat, assailed constantly by flying insects, ‘we have three different kinds of patrol here. First is the reconnaissance patrol, usually a four-man team, which is tasked with observation and intelligence gathering, including topographical info; the selecting of sites for RVs, helicopter landings and good ambush positions; location of the enemy; and the checking of friendly defences, such as minefields. Second is the standing patrol, which can be anything from a four-man team to a troop or more. The standing patrol provides a warning of enemy advance and details of its composition, prevents enemy infiltration and directs artillery fire or ground-attack aircraft on to enemy positions. Finally, we have the fighting patrols, composed of either two four-man teams or an entire troop, depending on the nature of the mission. The job of the fighting patrol is to harass the enemy; conduct raids to gain intelligence or capture prisoners; carry out attacks against specific targets; and prevent the enemy from obtaining info about friendly forces in a given area. Sooner or later, each of you will take part in all three types of patrol. First, however, you’ll undergo a weapons training programme more rigorous than anything you’ve imagined in your worst nightmares. They’re all yours, Sergeant Lorrimer.’

Callaghan was not exaggerating. While the normal SAS training programme was the most demanding of any in the armed forces, even that had not prepared the men for the merciless demands that were now placed upon their physical stamina and skill. They were called upon not only to perform target practice in the scorching heat while being assailed by bloated flies, kamikaze mosquitoes and a host of other insects driven mad by the smell of human sweat, but also to carry out numerous tactical movements designed to meet the special requirements of jungle warfare.

Thus, when Sergeant Lorrimer was satisfied that each man had proven himself a crack shot, he moved on to lessons in the actions and drills to be carried out in case of contact with the enemy, the proper order of march when in the jungle, the silent signals required when changing formation, the various drills for encounters with natural and man-made obstacles, and, most important, the Head-On Contact Drill.

‘The HOCD,’ he explained as they were getting their breath back after an exhausting ‘shoot and scoot’ exercise, ‘is the Standard Operating Procedure, or SOP, devised specially for four-man patrols on the move. When contact is made with the enemy, each member of the patrol will move instantly into a position that allows him to open fire without hitting a comrade. You four,’ he said, jabbing his finger at Dennis the Menace, Boney Maronie, Dead-eye Dick and Alf Laughton. ‘Stand up.’

‘Jesus, boss,’ Dennis the Menace complained as he wiped the sweat from his sunburnt face, ‘we’ve just sat down for a so-called break.’

‘The break’s over, so get to your feet.’ When the foursome were standing at the edge of the sports ground, near one of the deep monsoon drains, Lorrimer made them move into position to demonstrate a particular HOCD. He placed Dead-eye well away from the others, at the front as lead scout. Pushing the others closer together as carelessly as if they were shop-window dummies, he said: ‘So! If the patrol is moving in file, these three men behind the lead scout will break left and right as they bring their weapons to bear on the enemy…Break, damn it! Break!’

Though already exhausted from their last exercise, Dennis the Menace, Boney Maronie and Alf Laughton had to quickly break apart while swinging their weapons up into the firing position.

‘The patrol now has the option of advancing on the enemy or withdrawing,’ Lorrimer continued. ‘Should they choose the latter option, two of them will lay down covering fire…Go on, then!’ he bawled at Dead-eye and Dennis the Menace, now forming a couple. ‘Get on with it!’ When they had done as they were told, dropping into the kneeling position required for covering fire, then pretending to fire, much to the amusement of the onlookers, Lorrimer continued: ‘So while these two are laying down covering fire, the other two will withdraw a distance…Come on, you two, withdraw!’ he bawled at Boney Maronie and Alf Laughton. When they had done as ordered, withdrawing a few yards and taking up firing positions, he went on: ‘The second two, as you can see, are now in a covering position, allowing the first pair to fall back – Come on, fall back, you two! – and so on. They keep repeating this movement until they’re out of range of the enemy. You got that?’

‘Yes, boss!’ the men bawled in unison, some breaking into applause and laughter when the four returned sheepishly to the main group.

‘You, you, you and you,’ Lorrimer said, jabbing his finger at another four troopers. ‘Get up and let’s see you do it.’

That wiped the grins off their faces.

* * *

Every day was a relentless routine of early Reveille, hurried breakfast, the two-hour language lesson, ten-minute tea break, two hours on the firing range, an hour for lunch, two hours of battle tactics, both theoretical and physical, a ten-minute tea break, another two hours of Close Quarters Battle (CQB) and hand-to-hand combat, an hour for dinner, then an evening filled with map-reading, medical training, signals training and demolition.

Second best was not good enough. They had to be perfect at everything and were pushed relentlessly hard until they were.

Sergeant Lorrimer was a former Dorset Regiment and Force 136 NCO who was scarcely interested in drill and uniform, but hated sloppiness where battle discipline was concerned. When one soldier accidentally opened fire with a rifle, Lorrimer took the rifle off him, removed the safety-pin from a hand-grenade, then handed the soldier the grenade.

‘Carry that for the rest of the day,’ he said. ‘By which time you should know how to handle a rifle.’

Lorrimer was also of the school which believes that discipline can be imposed in the good old-fashioned way – with fists – instead of with the rule book. More than once, instead of placing insolent troopers on a charge, he told them to ‘step outside’ to settle the matter with fisticuffs. So far, no one had managed to beat him and all of them, even when making fun of him, respected him for it.

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