by Shaun Clarke
‘You’re pig ignorant,’ Marty said. Realizing that the only way to win the hearts and minds of the aboriginals was to share all things with them, Lieutenant Kearney made sure that the members of his patrol ate with them, suppressing their natural tendency to queasiness when they partook of turtle soup, pig, kijang (barking deer), monkey and snake meat, sweet potatoes, lizard eggs, mixed vegetables with spices and ginger, and fried rice– all of it washed down with samsu, a strong spirit distilled from rice. Invariably, the samsu made them drunk, which at least helped the food go down more easily.
‘If it wasn’t for the samsuI couldn’t digest this stuff,’ Marty confessed.
‘One gets used to it after a while,’ Paddy Kearney responded. ‘Don’t you think so, Sergeant?’
‘It goes down a treat with me,’ said Bulldog. ‘I got used to it months ago.’
‘There you are, Trooper Butler,’ Kearney said to Marty in his sardonic manner. ‘All good things come to he who waits. Keep eating! Keep drinking!’
‘I hear you loud and clear, boss.’
On their deep-penetration patrols they usually stowed their unwanted kit in covered trenches beneath the Sakai’s thatched huts, then moved out at first light, following their Iban guide. Even after ditching the kit, invariably they would still be humping 11kg loads each, including an Owen submachine gun, one Browning autoloader shotgun, full magazines for both weapons, six incendiary hand grenades, Browning High Power handgun, a week’s food, water bottles, once change of clothing, ground sheets without blankets, a pair of field glasses, button compass and small-scale maps, parangs, Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, fishing line and hooks, and a basic medical kit that included antibiotics, antihistamines, watersterilising tablets, anti-malaria tablets, painkillers, and a good supply of waterproof plasters and bandages.
‘But no rubbers,’ Bulldog joked with Marty. ‘That means we’re in for some real work. No play at all, laddie.’
It did not take long for Marty to understand why they needed a Sakai guide, no matter how well they, the SAS, had been trained in Jahore. Born and bred in the ulu, the Sakai had a keen eye for the most minute traces of human movement through the dimly-lit forest, including dislodged pieces of bark, broken branches, twisted leaves, threads of clothing caught on twigs, and even broken spider-webs. Sometimes the CT guerrillas would deliberately go without shoes in the hope of making the SF think the footprints were those of the local Sakai, but the Sakai guides showed Marty the difference. If the toes of the footprints were cramped, it was because they belonged to feet that normally wore shoes or boots, the feet of guerrillas, not of the barefoot Sakai. Marty was also shown that when a guerrilla had attempted to obscure his tracks by treading lightly in the footprints of an elephant or a seladang– the wild ox or bison of Malaya– he had to look carefully to discern the human footprint within the larger, deeper print of the animals. The guerrillas were clever.
During such patrols, the three men, with their guide, would spend the night in a hide in some particularly dense part of the ulu. Soon, with the help of their guide, they became experts at constructing relatively luxurious accommodations. Using a changkol– the large hoe that replaces the spade in Malaya– each of them dug himself a shallow scrape to lie in. A large tent was then raised over the scrapes, to keep the rain off them. The changkol was also used to level a platform outside the tent, where they placed a crude table and chairs made from the packing crates. Over this they placed bamboo split in half and laid alternate ways up, again to act as a covering against the rain.
‘Home sweet home,’ Kearney invariably said when they had settled into a new hide. ‘What have we to eat?’
In fact, food was no problem. A staple diet was edible tapioca, which they soon learned was plentiful in the ulu. They also learned to catch fish by dropping small charges of gelignite into the pools. When the minor explosions dazed the fish, they could be lifted out of the water by hand. The Sakai guides also showed them how to find pig, kijang, and even monkeys.
Though the pigs were scarce, Bulldog managed to bring down a few barking deer with his autoloader shotgun. The guides showed them how to attract the deer by hiding in the forest and giving out a piercing scream with the aid of a small section of bamboo split in a traditional Sakai manner. If there were any kijang within earshot, they would reply with their harsh bark and then come closer, doing so each time the SAS men used the split bamboo, until finally the deer were in range of the shotgun.
Marty began using his standard-issue M1 carbine for anything larger than monkeys, though in the ulu, as he soon noticed, he rarely got a good shot in at anything over fifty metres. Nevertheless, he soon became as good as Bulldog and between them they shot, cooked and ate a wide variety of wild creatures, including pigs, barking deer and monkeys, though the latter were low on their list of culinary favourites.
‘Neither tender nor tasty,’ Kearney said. ‘To be recommended only if we’re desperate. I pass on monkey.’
Much tastier were the many mud turtles to be found in the swamps. The Sakai guides taught the SAS men how to look for a slight cloudiness in the mud, which was an indication of the movement of a turtle just below the surface. When they saw the movement, they simply scooped the turtle up with their hands. The resulting soup, which was delicious, included lichens and mosses soaked overnight in clean water; and the meat, when served on its own, was, according to Lieutenant Kearney, ‘quite tender and tasty.’
Snakes also made excellent food, being similar in taste and texture to a mixture of chicken and lobster. After getting rid of the poisonous secretions on the skin or the venom glands from the head (which they did by removing the entire head), the snakes were gutted, then cooked in their skins on hot embers. When the heat caused the skin to split, the meat was removed and boiled. Cooked in a similar manner was the monitor lizard, a reptile nearly two metres long, whose eggs were also very tasty and could be used in mixed vegetable salads. Frogs, which had poisonous skins, were first skinned, then gutted and roasted on sticks.
‘I’ve never even had frogs’ legs before,’ Marty said to Bulldog Bellamy, ‘and always thought that only a Frog, meaning a Frenchman, would have the stomach to eat them. Now here I am, not only having the legs, but the whole bleedin’ frog. I’m a gourmet at last.’
On the ulu’s forest floor were snakes, centipedes, scorpions and giant spiders, all of which were dangerous to various degrees. Just as dangerous, however, was the seladang, which would attack humans on sight. Nevertheless, when Bulldog Bellamy managed to shoot one, the meat went down well with rice, sweet potato and vegetables, particularly when followed by sweet coffee, strong samsu and a good cheroot.
Finally, on the correct assumption that meat would not always be available, the Sakai taught them how to pick out edible fungi, leaves, nuts, roots, berries and fruit from theulu’s wide variety of produce, much of which was poisonous. The more edible fruits and plants had to be brought down from the jungle canopy, which entailed an arduous, dangerous climb and descent, though the SAS men eventually mastered this without the aid of abseiling ropes.
It gradually became clear to Marty that Kearney and Bulldog were, between them, using the ulu as a laboratory where they could constantly experiment and devise new jungle survival skills and operational procedures. As part of this, before setting out on patrols in search of the CT, Kearney made them practise walking and running past each other in a way that ensured that no piece of metal caught the light and nothing could reveal their presence by its rattle, such as ammunition, metallic kit or half-used boxes of matches. They even wrapped their weapons in adhesive tape to stop them shining in the moonlight. Kearney also discovered that if they walked heel first on hard ground and toe first on softer ground, they could pass absolutely silently and would be, with their camouflaged clothes and darkened faces, virtually invisible.
Nevertheless, to follow a jungle path, even on a moonlit night, it was necessary to use light of some kind. This problem was solved by putting a green
leaf inside the glass, not only to make the torch less bright, but to accustom their eyes to a dim light. If the battery ran out, a few fireflies or luminous centipedes in the reflector of the torch gave just enough light to read a map, lay a charge, or even follow a path through the ulu.
The three of them temporarily gave up smoking because of the effect on their sense of smell – and that was often the first means they had of detecting a nearby enemy. Also, they evolved a special system of signals that made talk unnecessary. One was a clicking noise produced between the upper teeth and side of the tongue– the sound used to encourage a horse. This signal carried a great distance on a still night, and, even if heard by the enemy, would be mistaken for a bird, an insect or a rubber nut falling off a tree. A single click meant stop or danger.
The only other signal they needed was a rallying cry– the signal used being the hunting cry of the British tawny owl. This piercing cry carried a great distance, even in thick woodland. It could not be confused with any other cry heard in the Malayan jungle, yet to the uninitiated it would pass without notice in the wide variety of weird nocturnal sounds.
Occasionally they would catch a brief glimpse of a jungle tiger, a few leaf-eating monkeys or some noisy gibbons. There were abundant signs of pig in the deep, muddy puddles that were their wallows, and where the rivers were bordered by meadows of green grass, kept short by water buffalo or Chinese vegetable gardens.
The leeches were everywhere. By now, however, the three SAS men took them for granted (the Sakai guides hardly noticed them) and got rid of them by using the Chinese method: removing them by hand, then putting a pinch of their finely cut tobacco on each bite. This congealed the blood and stopped it flowing, but before long their legs, particularly the shins and ankles, were covered in suppurating, stinking sores about the size of a shilling and surprisingly deep. Pus poured out of them and, as a result of infection, the lymphatic glands in their groins became so painful and swollen that at times they could scarcely walk, much less go hunting or on recce patrols. When sulphathiazole powder had also failed to cure them, they managed to draw the pus from the wounds by smearing the tar-like Chinese substance, kow-yok, on a piece of cloth and cover the wounds with it. This treatment also protected the wounds from the water.
‘We all look like lepers,’ Marty noted wearily one morning as they prepared to move out again. ‘And I don’t feel much better.’
‘We must learn to endure,’ Lieutenant Kearney responded, grinning from a face which, though still handsome, had grown gaunt and dreadfully pale, almost yellow. ‘That’s why we’re here, Trooper.’
‘I’m not about to give up,’ Marty told him. ‘Where you lead, boss, I’ll follow.’
‘That’s what I like to hear.’
Once on patrol, they were surprised by the number of rivers they had to cross. Sometimes, through ‘windows’ in the jungle wall, they could see the sheer extent of the forest, its soaring hills, its many rubber plantations farther west. Those hills, however, also turned some of the many rivers into foaming torrents that rushed, roaring, between boulders, slabs of granite, and high mud banks.
Sometimes they took boats, less than three metres long and pointed at each end. With the Bergen rucksacks in the stern, the three men and their Sakai scout could just about fit in, one behind the other, if they stretched out their legs on either side of the man in front of them. The Sakai also taught them to build various kinds of jungle raft. Though primitive, the rafts were perfectly adequate for travel on all but the most violent of rivers.
Often, after coming in off a cooling river or emerging soaked in sweat from the ulu’s draining humidity, they would spend the night in a deserted Sakai village, where all the houses were made of bamboo and raised on stilts. Their Sakai guide explained that the villages were deserted either because the Sakai were up on high ground, clearing the jungle to grow tapioca or maize, or because they had fled from the CT guerrillas. Ah Hoi, the present leader of the guerrillas, had recently been committing dreadful atrocities to terrorize the whole ulu.
The most dangerous activity ordered by Kearney was when he and his men passed themselves off as Malays or Chinese to pick up intelligence at close hand. The least dangerous way was to disguise themselves as Indians and dress like Tamils, wearing the standard white shirt, a dhoti or sarong around the waist, and a white cloth, deliberately dirtied, around the head and hanging down behind. Their complexions were darkened with a mixture of coffee, lamp-black, iodine and potassium permanganate. When going on such missions, they always kept a handgun and grenade tucked into the tops of their sarongs in case of emergency.
Often, they saw Malay cyclists or Tamil bullockcarts moving along the muddy, narrow paths by the river. Following the tracks of those people invariably brought them to a Sakai village or Malay kampong where they could pick up more intelligence on the movements of Ah Hoi’s guerrillas. Though Ah Hoi’s main force seemed to be truly invisible, the SAS men often came across isolated bands of roving guerrillas or, possibly, bandits who had to be ‘neutralized’, ‘taken out’, or ‘despatched’ with ruthless efficiency. This Kearney, Bulldog and Marty did with the M1 carbine, the shotgun, the incendiary hand grenades, home-made bombs, and even, on occasions when silent killing was necessary, with their Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knives. Luckily, Marty never had to use his, though otherwise he had been toughened up and was able to kill the CT using more impersonal weapons without revulsion or conscience.
When engaged in their murderous activities, Kearney’s team adopted a routine of leaving their hide at last light, their faces and hands darkened, wearing battledress carefully camouflaged with patches of mud. Each of them carried a main weapon, plus a Browning High Power handgun and a couple of grenades or home-made bombs. The latter were made by putting a stick of gelignite, with detonator and fuse attached, inside a tin or a section of bamboo, then filling it with up with pieces of metal. The fuse was lit by pressing a small ignitor in a copper tube, thus obviating the use of matches. One great advantage of making their own bombs was that they could vary the length of the fuses, so that the explosions would continue for some time after they left the scene. This would keep the guerrillas from answering their gunfire or following them immediately, thus enabling them to get well away.
On one occasion they followed the tracks of four guerrillas for five days until they spotted their jungle hut. Settling down a good distance from the hut, they waited for an impending storm to commence. When, as they had anticipated, the CT sentries took shelter from the lashing rain, Kearney and Marty, covered by Bulldog, crept up to within yards of the soaked, stillsmouldering camp fire in front of the hut. Kearney then pressed the igniter on a home-made bomb and lobbed it straight through the open entrance of the hut. The guerrillas inside bawled in panic just before the bomb exploded, destroying most of the hut and setting fire to what was left of it. When two of the four guerrillas staggered screaming from the flames and swirling smoke, both of them on fire, they were cut down by Bulldog, who used his autoloader shotgun with methodical, fearsome efficiency.
On other occasions, Kearney’s team separated to pursue guerrillas who had deliberately split up to elude them. Kearney would not normally have allowed this, but he made an exception in their case, confident that Marty and Bulldog could do what was required and come back in one piece.
He was correct in this assumption. Sent in pursuit of a guerrilla who had escaped one of their ambushes, Marty, armed with his M1 carbine and employing the aboriginal tracking knowledge he had gleaned from the Sakai, pursued his quarry relentlessly through the ulu, from the early afternoon to last light. Finally, realizing that he could not elude his pursuer any longer, the guerrilla turned around to face him in a jungle clearing. The two men were barely fifteen metres apart. Marty fired six rapidly repeated shots with his M1, so fast they were like a single shot, and the guerrilla was picked up and slammed back to the forest floor, his hand frozen around his unfired weapon.
Marty didn’t even both to chec
k that the man was dead. He just turned away and retraced his own footsteps back through the ulu, feeling that he had done his job, no more and no less.
When, many weeks later, Lieutenant Kearney finally emerged from the ulu with Bulldog and Marty, the three men had learned all it was possible to know about counter-insurgency warfare in a highly hostile environment. Those lessons were passed on to the rest of the SAS in the former CT camp, now an SF FOB, and the men were duly sent into the jungle, one patrol after the other, to put their lessons into hard practice.
When the time finally came for the SAS to leave the FOB and repeat the whole experience elsewhere, continuing to win the hearts and minds of the indigenous peoples, building more ‘new villages’ and protected fortresses, cutting off the flow of supplies and weapons to the CT, they could correctly judge themselves to be among the most highly trained professional soldiers in the world.
That same year, the Malayan Scouts officially became 22 SAS, and Marty, one of the regiment’s most experienced men, was promoted to corporal.
Chapter Ten
On his first trip back to Penang, three months after first entering the ulu, Marty rushed immediately on a Friday evening to the Eastern and Oriental Hotel, desperately hoping to find Ann Lim in the Board Room Bar with its armed services personnel, rubber plantationers, beautiful Asian ladies, and nostalgic paintings of London Bridge and Regent Street. He was disappointed. Ann Lim was not there. Crushed, he spent the rest of the evening grimly drinking on his tall stool, side by side with Tone, insisting ever more drunkenly that Ann Lim would show up eventually. When this didn’t happen, he continued to drink relentlessly until he and Tone, now practically legless, were politely asked to leave. Marty responded by threatening to punch the barman, but was reminded by Tone that if he carried out his threat, he would not be allowed into the bar again. Mindful that this was the only place he was likely to see Ann Lim, Marty took Tone’s advice and let him lead him out of the hotel.