by Shaun Clarke
Worst of all, however, were the valleys full of huge granite boulders half covered with a treacherous layer of slippery moss and roots so entangled that a single false step could send a man tumbling down to the stream below. Also, their Bergens seemed to become heavier and heavier, while their weapons, still snagging on everything around them, became close to unbearable.
Frustrated, Kearney called a halt to the advance and made the men gather around him. ‘We’re having a bit of a problem,’ he told them. ‘When the men on point can’t see the sun or any other landmarks, they lead us in circles. From now on, then, the man out on point won’t carry his submachine gun; instead, he’ll use his parang to cut a path that he can pass through. A second man will then widen the path and mark the route more clearly by bending saplings down or marking tree-trunks. A third man will follow through and check the course with a compass.’
‘That sounds like hell for the first man,’ Marty said, always ready, willing and able to dissent.
‘It will be,’ Kearney responded, actually pleased with the remark because he liked input from his troopers. ‘But we’ll change the man on point every half hour, which should make it easier for all concerned. What are you like with a parang, Butler?’
‘Game enough,’ Marty said.
‘Exactly as you are with your tongue. Okay, you go first.’
The system worked well, though Marty and the men who followed him every half-hour were soon exhausted by hacking their way through the undergrowth. Most of them also suffered minor injuries because of their lack of experience with the razor-sharp parang, despite their training with the Iban in Jahore. Nevertheless, the system certainly hastened their advance and eventually, after another four days on the march, they reached the friendly Sakai village, where a couple of the aboriginals, known to Lieutenant Kearney, agreed to act as their guides to the RV.
The patrol moved out shortly after, this time with the Sakai guides out front instead of SAS point men, but the hike through the ulu was no easier and, at times, even harder than before.
The rain came. It was a torrential downpour that almost washed them away. Even worse, it was merely a prelude to a brutally violent gale – one that began as an ominous roaring in the distance, but gradually increased in volume until it sounded like a squadron of fighter aircraft flying overhead.
Indeed, thinking it was an air-raid, most of the men, including Marty and Tone, instinctively dived for cover. Face down in the mud, Marty soon realized that he’d been wrong – that he wasn’t hearing aircraft but something much worse. Sitting up again, he squinted into the rain and saw, through a narrow window in the rain-lashed, windblown trees, a boiling mass of black clouds streaked by jagged fingers of lightning. The roaring sound was caused by a combination of thunder and wind.
‘Shit,’ Tone said, sitting upright beside him and wiping the mud from his face, ‘that bloody wind is a nightmare!’
‘Sumatras!’ the Sakai guide nearby exclaimed in a hoarse, frightened whisper. ‘Take cover!’ Bulldog Bellamy suddenly bawled, then he threw himself down behind a fallen tree.
The storm exploded over them with awesome force, tearing the trees to shreds, filling the air with flying foliage, picking some of the men up and flinging them back down like rag dolls. The noise was terrifying– a combination of thunder and the wind’s demented roaring– and bolts of lightning daggered down into the forest like crooked fingers of silvery fire. The wind hurled the rain before it, turning it into a deluge, creating a whirlpool filled with flying leaves, plants, broken branches, and sharp-edged palms as sharp as razors. Men were screaming with pain even as a couple of trees toppled over, crashing through the other trees, tearing shrubbery off, created a deluge of more branches, vines, liana, creepers and giant leaves, which rained down to add their own noise to the bedlam. The falling trees smashed through the other trees and crashed onto the forest floor, right across the path being hacked out by the troopers.
As quickly as it arrived, the storm passed on, leaving an abrupt, eerie silence that was gradually broken by the sound of men crawling from the widely strewn debris, many badly cut and covered in blood. Others, not so lucky, had been crushed to death under the falling trees and could not be moved. They were left to rot as the rest of the men, most horrified and disbelieving, some sobbing with grief, others shaking with exhaustion or shock, picked themselves out of the mud and continued the march.
Marty was one of them.
Chapter Eight
Hearing over the wireless set that the foot patrols consisting of Gurkhas, Royal Marine Commandos, Malayan Police and two squadrons of SAS were nearing the RV, Lieutenant Kearney was merciless in pushing his dispirited men even harder. Their damaged morale was not boosted when Roy Weatherby complained of a terrible pain behind his eyes, aching in all his joints, and alternating spasms of fever and freezing cold. Diagnosed by the squadron medic as suffering from benign tertiary, a form of malaria, Weatherby was given a fistful of quinine and ordered back into line. However, a few hours later the march was halted again to let the medic attend to Trooper Neil Gardner, who was suffering relentless vomiting and dysentery, accompanied by agonizing pains in the small of his back and across his pelvis. Diagnosed as having contracted blackwater fever, Gardner rapidly became worse and finally had to be held down by two other troopers as he went into violent spasms. Though eventually the spasms subsided, he was too weak to walk and had to be rolled onto a make-shift stretcher and carried the rest of the way.
Moving on, the patrol soon arrived at a series of parallel rivers. These they crossed on bamboo rafts constructed with the help of the Sakai. Over a metre wide and nearly ten metres long, the rafts were made by lashing together a double layer of bamboo poles. A central area slightly over three metres long was raised above the deck by lashing on an additional deck of shorter poles. The supplies were placed there, amidships, where they remained comparatively dry. As soon as it was light enough to see the feathery bamboo groves overhanging the bank, the troopers started poling the rafts downriver to the RV, now only a sort distance away.
While still poling down the river, they learned over the wireless set that the foot patrols, which had been marching for seven days, had finally reached the CT’s jungle hideout and were taking up positions around its northern perimeter, waiting for B Squadron to take up positions along the southern river flank and form an effective block.
Thirty minutes later, Kearney’s men reached the RV, tied their rafts to the trunks of the trees by the riverbank, and then advanced at the half-crouch through the forest, darting carefully, quietly, from one tree to another, until they saw the CT’s jungle camp spread out in the clearing before them.
The guerrilla camp was a collection of lean-tos with atap palm roofs constructed around a roughly levelled parade ground, open latrines covered with clouds of black flies, and fields of maize and rice to the east and west. Smoke was billowing up from open fires, which were surrounded by kneeling guerrillas, male and female, few over twenty years old, many hardly more than adolescents. Some of the males wore khaki shorts, shirts and military caps, but most wore no uniforms and were either dressed like coolies or wearing white shirts, floppy trousers and felt hats. Most of them were barefoot, though some had terumpas– wooden clogs held on by rubber straps. Almost without exception, the women were in longsleeved, high-necked white smocks and wide black trousers, either with straw hats on their heads or with their hair bobbed up.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Marty whispered involuntarily as
he knelt beside Tone. To his immediate right, Rob Roy Burns and Pat O’Connor were placing the GPMG onto its tripod. Beyond them, Bulldog Bellamy was kneeling with Lieutenant Kearney by the No. 88 wireless being operated by the solemn Trooper Roy Weatherby. At the other side of Tone, to the left, Taff Hughes had removed his jungle hat to scratch his blond hair and was smiling dreamily to himself as he studied the CT guerrillas crouched around their camp fires. The rest of the SAS troopers were fanning out in a long line on both s
ides, taking up firing positions and preparing the GPMGs and mortars.
‘Those are women over there,’ Marty whispered. ‘I can’t shoot at a woman.’
‘You’d better learn,’ O’Connor said. ‘Those pretty wee things all carry knives and know how to use them. They describe bastards like you as “white devils” and who’s to blame them? They’d chop your head off as soon as look at you, mate, so you’d best shoot when you have to.’
‘It’s not right,’ Marty said.
By this time, Kearney had made contact with the SF forces in position north of the CT camp, using an encoded short-burst transmission, and received details of the attack plan before the CT could work out exactly where the messages were coming from. Having received the information he needed – basically, the precise timing of the first mortar attack by the SF units at the other side of the base– he raised and lowered his right hand, indicating that his troopers should open fire.
Marty heard the distant thump-thump of the SF mortars to the north. A few seconds later, the first mortar shells exploded almost dead centre of the CT parade ground, which erupted with a roar into columns of swirling soil and smoke. Instantly, as the mortar shells fell and the SAS on both sides of the camp opened fire with their personal weapons, the guerrillas either dived for cover or grabbed their own weapons and started firing blindly in all directions, still not sure where the enemy was. When more mortar shells fell, with the ground erupting and roaring and spewing soil to the sky, the smoke from the exploding shells swirled darkly across the clearing, fitfully obscuring the guerrillas as they either dropped belly-down on the ground, firing from that position, or ran for the shelter of the thatched huts or fly-covered latrines.
Close beside Marty, as he took aim at a running guerrilla with his SLR, Rob Roy and Pat O’Connor were hammering away with the GPMG, the former feeding in the belt, the latter firing in sustained, deafening bursts which, with the other SAS machine guns, caused the ground between the guerrillas to turn into a convulsion of spitting dust and soil. Bullets stitched the open fires, causing hot ash and flaming sticks to explode in showers of sparks, sending iron pots flying out in all directions. Some guerrillas, also stitched by the hail of bullets, shuddered violently where they lay, or, if they were running for cover, spasmed dementedly, staggered drunkenly backwards, spun away to the side as if punched by an invisible fist, or collapsed face down in clouds of boiling dust.
Feeling oddly remote from what he was observing, Marty fired his SLR in short, careful bursts at a group of guerrillas running for the protection of the latrines. One threw both his hands up, letting his rifle fly away, and quivered as if having a fit, then collapsed to the ground. Another was punched forward, also dropping his weapon, and staggered a short distance until he fell, disappearing, into the monsoon drain that encircled the clearing.
Even as Marty was taking aim at the other two running guerrillas, he saw a female CT coming into his line of vision, raising what looked like a British tommy gun to the firing position and aiming along the sights. Startled, Marty removed his finger from the trigger, unable to fire at her, but then a short, savage burst from Tone’s submachine gun – he was stretched out beside Marty– peppered the woman’s midriff, punching her backwards, tearing her white smock to shreds and soaking what was left of it in blood. She went into what seemed like an epileptic fit in a circle of exploding dust, then dropped her weapon and collapsed, not moving again.
Simultaneously shocked by that sight, relieved that he had not killed the woman himself and feeling guilty that he had failed to fire at her, Marty took aim at another group of kneeling CT, all male, and cut them down with a series of short, sharp bursts. As they fell in all directions like skittles, the ground beside them erupted from more mortar explosions, obscuring their final, anguished writhings in clouds of smoke and showering soil.
Marty kept firing, aiming only at the male guerrillas, torn between excitement and horror, triumph and shame. A series of mortar explosions ripped across the clearing from east to west, blowing one of the thatched huts apart, setting fire to a couple of others. Though partially deafened by the roaring of the GPMG to his right, his head being hammered by the mortar firing behind him, he was aware of the enemy bullets whipping past and above him, thudding into the trunks of trees, tearing the foliage to shreds, and showering him with smoking leaves and smashed branches.
By now the flames from the burning thatched huts had set fire to the branches of the trees rising above them, with tendrils of yellow, blue-tipped flame licking through the black smoke. As more thatched huts exploded, spewing debris in all directions, the guerrillas attempting to hide behind them were either bowled over by the blasts or left without adequate protection. Desperate, the survivors charged the SAS positions, firing on the run, weaving left and right to avoid the continuing mortar explosions. Those not killed by the mortars were brutally cut down by the combined fire power of the SAS machine guns and automatic weapons, their bodies littering the ground under a deepening pall of drifting smoke. Others, managing to escape the murderous hail of gunfire, disappeared into the remaining thatched huts, latrines and monsoon drains, from where they continued to fire on the advancing SF troops.
Marty saw those troops – a combination of Royal Marine Commandos, Gurkhas, Malayan Police and two SAS squadrons – advancing over a broad front down the shallow slope at the other side of the clearing, looking like ghosts in the murk as they emerged from the ulu, their weapons spitting licks of yellow flame. Briefly exhilarated, he was already standing up when Kearney, crouched beside the wireless operator, Roy Weatherby, about fifteen metres away, raised and lowered his right hand, indicating, ‘Advance.’
‘Let’s go!’ Bulldog bawled.
Together, the men of B Squadron advanced into the CT camp, crouched low, weaving left and right, firing at anything they saw moving in the smoke now surrounding them. The SAS mortar teams were no longer firing, leaving the ground clear for the advance, but the guerrillas were continuing to fight back, firing from the inadequate protection of the thatched huts, latrines and monsoon drains. With no choice but to despatch them, the SF moving in from the north and the SAS troopers advancing from the south did the only thing possible: they spread out to encircle the CT camp and moved in by methodically attacking the remaining guerrillas with a combination of hand-held GPMGs, Browning autoloader shotguns, M1 carbines, Owen submachine guns, SLRs, and white phosphorous incendiary grenades.
Practically deafened by the noise, shocked by the sheer number of dead in the clearing, and disorientated in the dense smoke that was drifting from the burning huts and trees, Marty advanced with the others, seeing Tone to his left, Rob Roy to his right and Pat O’Connor just in front, holding his GPMG like a rifle and firing from the hip, the hail of bullets peppering the thatched huts and decimating the guerrillas attempting to fire back. As some of the troopers were taking care of the guerrillas in the monsoon drains by throwing incendiary grenades in upon them, others tore the latrines to shreds in repeated fusillades of semi-automatic weapons fire, killing those inside, and the rest moved methodically from one hut to the next, throwing in grenades, then carefully entering the huts to despatch the survivors with short bursts from their submachine guns and rifles.
Marty was just stepping up onto the porch of a burning hut, intending to enter, when a female guerrilla burst out of the smoke, swinging a parang over her head. Startled and shocked to be confronted by a woman for the second time, Marty stepped back and ducked as the parang whipped through the air just above him. Wearing a high-necked white smock and wide black trousers, hardly more than eighteen years old and surprisingly pretty, the woman screamed a stream of abuse in Mandarin, then advanced again, slashing viciously at him with the parang. Still unable to shoot a woman, Marty kept backing away, ducking the parang, until he stepped on a small log and it rolled beneath his boot, tipping him over. Landing on his belly, he quickly turned over until he was lying on his back, looking up at the girl. She was spreading her
legs to stand over him, raising the parang above her head to swing it down and cut him in two. Marty thought he was finished.
At that moment, Taff Hughes advanced from the swirling smoke, his baby-blue gaze steady, a dreamy smile on his lips, and stopped just behind the Chinese girl. Raising his Browning High Power handgun until it was practically touching the back of the girl’s head, he took aim and calmly squeezed the trigger.
The girl’s head exploded in spewing blood and flying bone. She staggered forward, dropping the parang, then shuddered violently and collapsed in a quivering heap right beside Marty. Shocked again, he rolled away and clambered back to his feet, still holding his SLR, to see Taff smiling dreamily at him.
‘She almost had you,’ Taff said, and then, still smiling in that other-worldly manner, he turned away and disappeared into the swirling smoke and drifting dust, firing his Browning High Power on the move, despatching more guerrillas. Feeling humiliated, shaken by Taff’s cold-blooded efficiency, Marty followed him into the murk as the mopping up continued.
Within an hour, the last of the guerrillas had been either killed or taken prisoner. The CT camp was secured.
Having been informed by Lieutenant Kearney that they were to remain in the camp and turn it into a forward operating base (FOB), the SF soldiers were pleased to relax, most stretching out on thatched mats in the shade of the remaining CT lean-tos, eating, having a brew-up and smoko, or washing and shaving with the aid of hand-mirrors.