Guerrillas in the Jungle. Shaun Clarke

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