Malayan Spymaster

by Boris Hembry

  Shortly after nine o’clock smoke was seen coming up from the south, and very soon we identified six destroyers of the Asashio class which proceeded to patrol up and down, six or seven miles off the island. We naturally feared the worst; that our presence was already known and they were searching for the submarine. However, we were heartened to notice that the fishermen made no attempt to attract their attention. After an hour the destroyers suddenly turned away and headed north as quickly as they had come. I immediately gave instructions for the red recognition panel to be placed out on the rock for 10 minutes each hour on the hour, as arranged with Collett.

  In the afternoon we had to stop this as we sighted two large merchant ships sailing in the direction of Langkawi Sound, between the island and the mainland, but these became temporarily obscured in a rain squall. We also saw several aircraft and were convinced that there was a concerted effort to find us. However, after a little while, when the ships had passed out of sight and the planes had left the scene, I began to think that, perhaps, the destroyers were not searching for Tactician specifically, but rather keeping the sea lane under surveillance to protect their merchant ships, and that my idea of an OP on the island was not such a bad one after all. But there was obviously too much enemy activity to permit us a staging post there for agents.

  As soon as it was dusk we loaded our boats and paddled seawards. I had taken the precaution of roping the boats together. In the event this was wise as there was a very strong tide running around the island, and it appeared to be changing direction constantly. Once again it was very dark and squally. From time to time I flashed out our pre-arranged recognition signal, but with still no contact with Tactician after several hours, our spirits began to flag and imaginations to run riot. Had the submarine been sunk, or sent away on patrol far away? Had it failed to spot our signals? How long would it be before we were picked up by the Japs if we returned to the island? How long should we go on paddling before I decided to return to Langkawi? All these things were going through my mind when suddenly the ear-splitting trumpeting of a dozen bull elephants rent the air, closely followed by a stentorian shout of, ‘Hembry, where the bloody hell are you?’ across only a couple of hundred yards of water. I recognised Collett’s voice immediately, but it was coming from behind us, to landward. Eight very tired but very relieved men were dragged on board after having been paddling for over five hours. (The elephants were, of course, the boat’s siren.)

  Tony Collett’s first words to me were that he had received a signal from Trinco to abandon MULLET forthwith and to patrol the Malacca Strait with the intention of intercepting the Japanese main battle fleet which was thought to be heading north from Singapore. My immediate reaction was to ask to return to Langkawi Island. Collett went on to say that he had signalled us at nightfall to re-embark as quickly as possible and had kept on doing so for some time. He denied seeing our recognition signals. He had also failed to spot the destroyers, the aircraft or the merchant ships.

  I realised that we had left the island before he had started signalling. And when we had flashed our torches we were already to seaward of him, so he had been flashing his away from us, landwards. Only Tony Collett’s sense of duty and comradeship towards us, and willingness to disobey an order, had allowed us to be rescued.

  I quote verbatim extracts from the Submarine Commander’s report dated 9 March 1944:

  8. It is felt that MULLET had to contend with bad luck from the start. Alteration of plans, alteration of patrol for priority Naval operation, lack of moonlight etc.

  9. The operation has, however, conclusively proved that Langkawi and adjacent island are indeed ideal as an observation and W/T station for reports on enemy shipping.

  I confirmed similar findings in my report and that ‘many large vessels were sailing between the island and the mainland, giving good protection from British submarines’. My idea to establish a ‘safe house’ and route in and out of Malaya for our agents would not be feasible, at least on Langkawi Island, although I did wonder whether there would be more suitable islands further south, around Pangkor Island for example. In fact, this did not matter, as help was shortly to hand in the form of the Liberator bomber, which could fly the return journey to southern Malaya from outside Calcutta in a matter of hours rather than days, and parachute our agents and their supplies directly into their target area.

  The submarine stayed on the surface for the remainder of the night, and dived at dawn. We had not been submerged for more than an hour when the Officer-of-the-Watch spotted through the periscope a very large German submarine on the surface gliding slowly towards Penang. Tony Collett allowed me a quick look. It looked huge. Although it was almost out of range Tony decided to fire off a couple of torpedoes. He followed the tracks until they disappeared, whilst we held our breath and counted up to 60 when we hoped to hear the thud of the ‘fishes’ striking home, but we heard nothing. Most of us passengers were happy enough that they missed their target because, if they had hit, every Japanese ship and aircraft would have been out looking for us. Tony lowered the periscope and dived deeper, altering course to avoid the island by as great as distance as possible just in case the torpedo tracks had been picked up by the German’s ASDIC. All was peaceful again, and we relaxed in the overcrowded and extremely smelly wardroom.

  We spent the whole of the next day submerged, running south until nightfall when we surfaced to cruise slowly to the northern end of the Malacca Strait. When we dived at daybreak we must have been level with the Selangor coast on the one side and Bagan Siapiapi on the other. I did not know it at the time but there were another three T-class submarines with us, strung out across the strait, waiting for the Japanese battle fleet to sail through. Had they done so it would have been impossible for them to have avoided serious losses, but I doubt very much whether our four submarines would have escaped. The sea depth in these narrows scarcely exceeds 10 fathoms, the absolute minimum that a submarine needs to submerge. From keel to the top of the conning tower is 40 feet, so even when lying on the seabed there could be only 20 feet or so of water cover. All this was common knowledge to us passengers, so we viewed the forthcoming naval engagement with grave misgivings.

  Tactician patrolled backwards and forwards at periscope depth until about midday when smoke was seen. This turned out to be a tanker travelling east to west, probably from Port Swettenham to Bagan Siapiapi or Belawan Deli. Collett closed with the vessel and, after making sure that there were no naval escorts or aircraft in the vicinity, surfaced, and scrambled the gun crew and opened fire – he wished to save his torpedoes for the battle fleet. I was allowed on to the conning tower to watch the fun, but to our consternation the Japs retaliated with two medium-calibre machine guns that Collett had failed to spot on the tanker’s deck, which splattered the conning tower around us. I beat a hasty retreat down the ladder, but when I was only half way down Collett sounded the klaxon for an emergency dive, whereupon the other ship’s officers who were on the bridge tumbled down on top of me and we collapsed in a cursing sprawl of legs and arms at the bottom. Within a minute or two we had submerged and began to circle the tanker whilst Collett chose the best angle from which to sink it with torpedoes – all the time conscious of the fact that it would have signalled our presence and ships or planes would have been on their way to deal with us.

  Collett gave the orders to fire two torpedoes and after the hiss of their release we counted to 30 when there was an almighty explosion. He called me to the periscope; all there was to be seen was some debris, a mule, and several human figures in khaki falling from a great height. If I had not witnessed it I would not have believed that a ship of that size could have completely vanished in a matter of seconds. Collett then lowered the periscope and we got away from the scene as quickly as possible – all of 10 mph on our batteries.

  The next 10 hours were quite the most terrifying in my whole life. We were bombed and depth charged almost continuously. We could hear the enemy ships criss-crossing the sea only a
few fathoms above us, and just when I thought they had given up and gone away, over would come the bombers to drop their loads, and then the ships again with their depth charges. We stopped engines and just sat on the bottom. Not a word was spoken except in the quietest of whispers and then only by the First Officer reporting the damage. A dropped spanner on the steel deck could have been heard on the surface hundreds of yards away. There seemed to be a leak somewhere because I could hear the sound of rushing water. And, of course, just when one most wanted to use the heads one could not, under any circumstances. The stench of sweat, fart and fear was indescribable. It was particularly difficult for us passengers, as we were not trained submariners, had no duties to perform or stations to man, and could only sit tight and fear the worst.

  At last the Japanese departed, whether because they had used up all their depth charges or had concluded that we had got away, we could never be sure. Collett told me later that it was touch and go whether the oxygen would hold out. We were lucky, too, that the waters in the Strait of Malacca were very muddy or we could well have been spotted, and that the Jap ASDIC was not up to the German or our own standard.

  After all that, the Japanese fleet failed to put in an appearance.

  We sat tight for another hour, just to be certain that we were on our own, before starting the port engine – the starboard engine had been damaged and was beyond repair by our ERAs (engine room artificers) – and limping away at snail’s pace. As soon as it was dark we surfaced, and opened all the hatches to let the fetid air out and the sweet smelling sea air in. And everyone used the heads. We dared not break radio silence until we were within a short distance of Trinco harbour, to report our presence so that we were not depth charged by our own forces. We were seven days overdue and had been written off, so received a great welcome from other ships, with much hooting of sirens and cheers when our Skull and Crossbones was hoisted. When we secured alongside Adamant the Captain S came aboard and ordered Tony Collett to ‘splice the main brace’.

  As soon as I was on board Adamant I sent a signal to Laurie Brittain at ISLD Headquarters in Calcutta confirming our return. They had, of course, also given us up for lost so it was a great relief when they learnt of our safe return. Laurie replied with the news that I had been promoted to major, and that I would be taking over from him as head of Malayan Country Section as soon as I returned from leave in England. This last bit of news was most welcome, as it was now nine years since I had been back to England, and I had had only one home leave in 14 years. And, of course, I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing Jean and John again. It appeared that ISLD Delhi had arranged for me to attend a special course.

  When I got back to Calcutta there were all the usual debriefings and postmortems. During the long, slow journey home Tony Collett and I had long talks about the op and agreed that we should recommend to our respective senior officers that we should try again as soon as possible. Now, as it was to be my responsibility to organise such an operation, I could put in hand the planning and recruiting of suitable agents and personnel, so that they would be ready for my return.

  At last the great day came. Laurie cabled Jean, ‘Get rid of lodger, Boris on his way!’ The flight from Calcutta to Karachi was in a Liberator bomber that had been converted to take passengers. On arrival at Karachi, Frank Smitherman, who was with the Burma Country Section of ISLD and on the same course as me, and I were informed that a dozen or so brigadiers, all recently sacked by Lord Louis Mountbatten, recently appointed as supreme commander, were being sent home and had higher travel priority than us, so we would have to wait. We hung around Karachi for over a week getting very bored and frustrated until we palled up with a squadron leader who was flying back to England in another Liberator (unconverted), and if we did not mind sitting on a whole lot of parachutes in the bomb bay, we would be welcome to hitch a ride with him and his crew. We lay back like Eastern potentates and, having stopped off at Habbaniya for fuel, limped into Cairo on three engines. It required two days to do the necessary repairs, as aircraft in transit had a low degree of priority with the maintenance units. More frustration for Frank and I, relieved only by the opportunity to stay at Shepheards Hotel, and to hear at first hand the experiences of those who had fought in the desert – and those who had spent three years living it up in Cairo at His Majesty’s expense.

  We obviously had gremlins aboard our Liberator because on landing at Gibraltar we bounced a good 20 feet in the air, crashed back on to the runway, and broke one of the our tail fins. I was beginning to think that in future I must keep my feet firmly on terra firma. Life in the air and under the sea was beginning to be dangerous.

  We were put up at the Bristol Hotel, then an officers’ transit camp, where to my amazement who should come into the bar but Colonel Steveni, my ISLD director, who, to my horror and great disgust, introduced me to his drinking companions with the words, ‘Here is Boris Hembry, one of our officers who has just been to Malaya’.

  We hung around Gib for a week, going down to the aerodrome each day to try our luck for a lift. On the eighth day our squadron leader pilot of the Liberator met a friend who was flying a Wellington back to England and he got us a ride, again sitting in the bomb bay, this time on mail bags. We flew as far out into the Atlantic as we could to avoid the Luftwaffe – Frank and I had not been issued with parachutes – and eventually landed at Lyneham, in Wiltshire, this time with no mishap. It was raining.

  Home (April 1944 – July 1944)

  My first thoughts on landing on that Sunday morning were of Jean and John. I wondered how much they had changed since we had last been together on Taiping Racecourse, on 1 December 1941. A lot of things had happened to all of us since we had said our goodbyes. John, I was sure, would have grown a lot. And I had not seen my parents and family for nine years. I felt a thrill at being at home in England – many of us then really did believe it to be the ‘sceptred isle’ – even though it was raining, and there was a war on.

  Smitherman and I made our way to London by train and went straight to the Royal Empire Society, in Northumberland Avenue, where I was a member. My other club, the Sports Club, had recently amalgamated with the old East India Club and was camped out somewhere because their clubhouse in St James’s Square had been taken over by the American military. I immediately telephoned Granny Cuthbertson to tell her of my arrival, so that she could inform Jean who was not on the telephone at the little house she rented, when she came off duty – she drove an ambulance. She was on the phone within the hour, and at the sound of her voice the years seemed to slip away as if we had never parted. It was agreed that she and John would come up to Liverpool Street station where Dad would also meet us, and drive us all over to Walton-on- Thames.

  That afternoon ..Smitherman and I made our way to SIS Head-quarters in Broadway, off Victoria Street. Contrary to all expectations the office was open, although, of course, the director was away for the weekend. His secretary, an elderly FANY, was most courteous and said how disappointed ‘Master’ would be to have missed us, and would we please come back the next day. She then took us in to see the paymaster, a bad-tempered captain who suggested that I was ‘another bogus major’. I put him wise none too politely.

  The reunions at Liverpool Street station were utterly joyful. I saw no change in Jean. John, of course, had grown. And my parents looked much the same, too. They had been living for several years in the house they had built for themselves in Walton-on-Thames, and were now well established in the area.

  My recollections of my first reactions to England in general and London in particular remain vivid. The countryside viewed from the train from Lyneham to Waterloo was simply beautiful – England in the spring takes a lot of beating. Everywhere was so lush and green and fresh. The India that I was used to was arid, dirty, stale and suffocatingly hot. I was prepared for scenes of devastation in London, but not for the scale of such devastation. The pictures I had seen and the descriptions I had heard had grossly understated the real situatio
n. I was horrified to find so many old familiar landmarks razed to the ground or gutted by fire. I compared it to Calcutta which had experienced some bombing, but nothing like London. I understand that 2,000,000 Indians fled the city after one small air raid, which had left a few craters along Chowringhee and on the Maidan.

  After a week at Walton-on-Thames we moved to the little house that Jean had rented near her parents in Hornchurch. The Cuthbertsons had altered even less than my parents. Grandpa was a stalwart of the ARP, which meant being on duty for most nights, in addition to his vital war work supplying tubes of all sorts for the armaments industry. My parents-in-law usually had RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) fighter pilots from Hornchurch aerodrome billeted on them. Just before I arrived they had had the sad task of parcelling up the belongings of one young pilot who would not be returning. He had always given his egg ration to John.

  The course started on the third week of my homecoming and meant commuting to London on most days. But, to be honest, there was not much that could be of any use to me. Neither I nor my agents were likely to be able to penetrate the Japanese High Command to photograph important documents, or to sit in the middle of Tokyo murdering top brass. But I did go to several most interesting lectures at the Code & Cipher School at Bletchley Park, where we were taught methods of encryption which were simple and unbreakable, and ‘invisible’ writing. But, of course, I had no idea of the real contribution that Bletchley was making to the war effort. I am fairly certain that one of my fellow students was Kim Philby, but for security purposes we did not bandy our names around.

  To my surprise Reg Heath turned up one day. He did not tell all and sundry that I had been to Malaya recently, but he did quietly tell me that I had been recommended for the DSO, and that it would be gazetted sometime soon. I felt very honoured, but did not honestly feel that I had done enough to merit it, certainly not compared to the many heroes of all three Services that one continually read about who had been admitted to the Order. I told no one but Jean – which was just as well, because, a few weeks later, Heath invited me to meet him for a drink at the Café Royal where he informed me that my DSO had been turned down, on the grounds that I had risked capture in Sumatra (which was rich, as I had no part in planning the operation and had only followed orders) whilst knowing too much about the Secret Intelligence Service (I knew next to nothing – even about my own section) which I could (almost certainly would!) have given away under interrogation by the Kempeitai. And anyway service in SIS/ISLD was ‘unheralded and unsung’ as I had known from the beginning. On reflection, I wondered whether Heath had in fact recommended me for the decoration, as he must have been equally aware that such awards were not given to field personnel of SIS, even those in uniformed quasi-military sections such as ISLD, so I doubt whether he would have even wasted his time. But I was rather disappointed all the same.