Malayan Spymaster

by Boris Hembry

  In May I was involved in a tragedy. Laurie Brittain’s wife Verna – she of the ass limerick – was working for the American forces in Australia and Laurie had been trying to pull strings to get her transferred to India. Out of the blue her transfer came through and she set sail from Perth in a merchant ship. Somewhere off Ceylon the ship was torpedoed and sunk by a Jap submarine. The few survivors picked up by the Royal Navy included the captain who reported seeing Verna, with several other survivors, mostly women, being taken on board the Jap submarine before it submerged. This was the last anyone saw of Verna, her fellow prisoners, and the submarine. It is assumed that it was sunk by the Allies soon afterwards. Laurie sent me a signal describing the event so far as it was known and asking me to go down to Henley-on-Thames to break the news to her parents. This I did. But within a matter of weeks Laurie had been posted to Australia. Another unnecessary waste of a life.

  My course was not very strenuous and I was able to spend a lot of time with Jean and John. We went to several shows in London, and even saw a cricket match at Lords between two Services sides each containing several well-known cricketers. But naturally we talked a lot about what had happened to us since our parting on Taiping Racecourse. Jean told me of the hectic drive down to Singapore, of the dive bombings on the road, of her impatience with some of the Singapore Europeans’ attitude to the war, of her brush with Dawson, the managing director of Guthrie’s, over payment of her fare to Australia, of the stay in Sumatra, of her trip to Australia and the filthy state of the ship, of her stay on the sheep station outside Melbourne, of the very great kindness of all the Australians that she met, of the desperate unescorted dash across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in the Strathallan, and, latterly, of her work as an ambulance driver in and around the East End of London in the air raids. Some of the details were so lurid that I began to think that I had been having the soft life. I had never had to pick up incinerated remains of airmen, or to take corpses to the mortuary, or to drive in the black-out during an air raid, with buildings crashing around. And all the time bringing up a vigorous little boy. In India we had no real shortage except, on occasions, of whisky. I had my moments of danger and discomfort, but at least I was able to escape to the peace and beauty of the Himalayas, be waited on, entertained, and have days of idleness. Not for me the prolonged strain of the flying bomb and the rocket, the food rationing and clothing shortages. I came to realise that, on balance, many thousands of women had a harder war than their menfolk, something that I believe has never been sufficiently acknowledged.

  It was whilst we were at my parents that the Second Front opened on 6 June. It was apparent during the preceding days that something momentous was afoot because of the never-ending sound of aircraft overhead. For those of us who scarcely saw an aircraft that was not enemy, the vast air fleets of the Allies were something to behold. There was an air of fulfilment about; Rome had fallen, bloody battles were taking place around Kohima and Imphal in which the Jap seemed to be taking tremendous punishment and were being beaten back, and the Americans were making good progress in the Pacific. It would all be over by Christmas – so it was said.

  The first V1 flying bomb, the ‘doodlebug’, arrived during the night of 12 June, a week after D-Day. More than 200 fell on London and the Home Counties within a couple of days, followed by another 3,000 during the next few months. Jean, John and I were back in the little house in Hornchurch when the first V1s came over. Our first reaction was that the ack-ack guns were having a turkey shoot, but we soon realised that this was not so and that Hitler’s terror campaign had started. I was really rather frightened, but the British civilian population seemed to take it very much in their stoic stride. To them it was only one more bit of beastliness from old Adolf which would be seen off like all the others.

  On Saturday 17 June we all went over to Walton-on-Thames for the weekend. They were the last two days that my father and I were to spend together. That evening the doodlebugs came over in droves and we could hear the explosions all around. There was an ack-ack unit in the waste ground behind the estate and they were in action constantly. At about midnight we heard a great cheer go up from the gun position as they had brought down a flying bomb – right in the middle of Walton-on-Thames, causing an enormous amount of destruction. It also brought down a lot of soot from the chimney, all over the drawing room carpet, much to the annoyance of my mother but laughter from the rest of us, because she complained bitterly that the charlady had only just hoovered and it was most inconsiderate of the Boche. It was the last laugh that we would have for some time.

  On the Sunday the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks received a direct hit during matins, killing the entire congregation of hundreds. On Monday my father left as usual to go to his office at Brentford. We never saw him again.

  We expected him home shortly after six. When he had not returned by nine we became very anxious and I telephoned round the local police stations to find out whether any incidents had been reported that might have involved him. The answer was no. At about midnight my uncle Fraser Thompson, who happened to be staying with us, accompanied me to Walton-on-Thames police station and we got the sergeant to phone all the other police stations in the district, but again they drew a blank. None of us slept that night.

  Shortly after nine the next morning a Mr Lomax, a complete stranger, phoned to enquire whether Claude Hembry had got home safely the night before. He was most distressed when I replied no. He said, ‘Oh, my God,’ and went on to explain that, as usual, he had met my father in the ‘Groto’ public house at Isleworth, on the way back to their respective homes, for a drink. After only one the air raid warning had sounded and Dad, refusing a second drink, said that he would get on home as he so hated the doodlebugs, and anyway his son was home on leave. As he approached his car a flying bomb landed, quite literally, on top of it. The pub, although badly damaged, still stood and all the people inside had escaped with a few minor injuries. Most of the blast had gone over the pub; apparently a well-known phenomenon. I rang Alfa Laval and arranged for Dad’s old friend Nobby Clarke, the works manager, to meet us at the Twickenham mortuary to help with the identification. My father was buried the following day in Teddington cemetery in the presence of my brother Bill, the board of directors of Alfa Laval and myself.

  Mr Rutherford, the chairman, told us that after a board meeting the directors usually went to a local hotel for a meal and drinks, but on this occasion Dad had refused, giving the same reasons as he had later to Mr Lomax, but had popped in for a quick drink at the Groto nearer home. I resolved never to refuse an invitation for a drink.

  I was due to fly back to India at the end of the month, but was granted a further month’s compassionate leave. Mother did not want to stay in the house on her own and decided to sell up immediately, lock, stock, and barrel, in my view a very great mistake. She kept a few heirlooms, but many were sold, to my everlasting regret. My mother moved in with Bill and Winnie in Yorkshire for a few months, before setting up home with her cousin in a flat in St John’s Wood.

  One day in July I was summoned to an admiralty research establishment in Teddington to look at a two-man midget submarine. For most of the day I listened to an enthusiastic young naval officer trying to persuade me that it would be ideal for operations off the Malayan coast. The idea was that it would be towed by a T-class boat to within a few miles of the coast, the two crew would then transfer to it and submerge, get to within a short distance of the beach, surface, and launch themselves off in an inflatable dinghy, having set machinery to sink the midget sub to the seabed, and a timing mechanism that would automatically bring it back to the surface at the appointed time. I was sceptical in the extreme. Supposing the alarm clock failed and we were left paddling around looking for the sunken boat? Or supposing it went off by mistake and it surfaced in broad daylight? Or perhaps we wanted to beat a hasty retreat earlier than planned? I said no thank you very much.

  Towards the end of July I received a signal from Laur
ie Brittain that he was coming to England for a conference before going back out to Australia, so would carry out the handover of the Malayan Country Section at Broadway. This did not take long, although the section appeared to have expanded even more during my absence in preparation for our ‘moment of history’ – the invasion of Malaya.

  My time in England was now getting short. Broadway had reserved a seat for me on a flying boat leaving Tenby in South Wales during the last few days of July, and I was to hold myself in readiness to leave at a moment’s notice. I spent as much time as possible with Jean and John, although I had to go up to Broadway on most days for discussions concerning intelligence requirements for the forthcoming invasion. These were memorable mostly for the excellent lunches that senior SIS officers seem to be able to order for themselves at fashionable restaurants and their clubs, in spite of rationing.

  I did experience one amusing incident whilst waiting at Gidea Park Station to take the train to London. A middle-aged lady came up to me and enquired why a fit young man like me was not in uniform. I was stumped for an answer so I merely said, ‘Far too dangerous, Madam, far too dangerous.’ She snorted, told me that I was lucky she had not a white feather to give me, and stomped off.

  The Cuthbertsons received the dreaded telephone call. I was to report to the RTO at Paddington Station where I would entrain for Tenby the following morning. Like thousands of other servicemen I said my sad farewells to my wife and son, not knowing when we would all meet again. In the event we would be apart for more than two years. Grandpa Cuthbertson drove me to the station, we said our goodbyes, and I was on my own again.

  The journey to Tenby was dreary and the train crowded. Even though I had a warrant for first class, the compartments were full of senior officers so I stood in the corridor all the way to Swansea, and it was well past dinnertime before I reached my hotel in Tenby. The elderly barman was ex-Royal Navy and had spent some time in Singapore. We reminisced over a shared jar of pickles and a few beers before I turned in. The next day the whole of South Wales was fog-bound so we could not take off until late the following night. My fellow passengers were two brigadiers. They occupied two temporary bucket seats, whilst I lay down, as usual, on mailbags, and travelled yet again in comparative comfort, all the way to Calcutta. We refuelled in Gibraltar sometime in the middle of the day, and landed at Benghazi for the night, before going on to Cairo, landing on the Nile.

  Here I was afforded VIP treatment. There was a car to meet me from the embassy – presumably laid on by the ‘firm’ – with a young man who suggested that I might like to spend the day at the Gezirah Club, then one of the world’s great social and sporting clubs. Quite apart from the magnificently appointed club house, it had every conceivable type of playing field and games court, a swimming pool and a golf course. I understand that both Wally Hammond and Denis Compton had played cricket there. I noticed the two brigadiers looking a bit forlorn, so I asked them to join me. We had a most pleasant afternoon and evening, before taking off on the next leg of the flight early the next morning. Having flown down to Australia by flying boat over the colourful islands of the Dutch East Indies and the Celebes Sea, it did seem strange to be flying in one over the desert. We refuelled at Bahrain, Karachi and Delhi, before finally landing back on the Hooghly at Calcutta.

  Command (August 1944 – December 1945)

  The first week of my return I was involved in taking stock and reviewing the section’s activities, plans, and the organisation. I had had little to do with the Calcutta office for nearly six months, during which time the Malayan section had grown beyond all recognition. A branch office had been opened in Colombo, with the task of managing the training camps at Trincomalee and on Lighthouse Island, as well as the equipment, provisions, and transport. We now had a British warrant officer small arms instructor, with John Sketchley in overall charge, having moved down there shortly before my return. The Calcutta office consisted of myself, Harry Hays as 2IC, a number of conducting officers, training officers up in the Dooars, and Japanese specialists based in Calcutta, the latter shared by all the country sections. I had a most efficient secretary.

  However, I was disappointed to find, in spite of the orders I had given before leaving for England, that we did not appear to have any more agents in training, or any operations actually scheduled. A few outline plans did exist but they all struck me as pretty foolhardy, and doomed to failure before they started. Frankly, I wondered what Heath and my old friend Laurie had been up to, other than engaging in empire building on a grand scale, knowing that they would get approval for most increases of staff and equipment simply because we were the Malayan Country Section, and the next big British-led Allied invasion planned was on Malaya. The bigger their staffs the more important their jobs and, it was hoped, the more senior their ranks. I fear it was ever thus.

  ISLD Headquarters seemed to have trebled in size, mostly with lieutenant colonels and wing commanders. Brigadier Bowden-Smith had now succeeded as our director; a charming man, but in the early days he was greatly hampered by the lack of co-operation between the two principal British clandestine forces, ISLD and Force 136, and also, I thought, by a lack of the support he had the right to expect from some of his own more senior officers. It was to be one of my achievements that, before too much time had elapsed, I and my opposite number in Force 136 had managed to overcome most of the difficulties brought about by the previous inter-unit rivalries.

  With the transfer of Mountbatten and his vast Supreme Allied Command South East Asia (SACSEA) organisation to Kandy, in the central hills of Ceylon, the ISLD Delhi Headquarters had followed. The mess, run by a lieutenant commander RN, who seemed able to lay his hands on anything, was in a large comfortable bungalow. The Supremo (as Mountbatten liked to be referred to) often used to drop in and I chatted to him on several occasions over a drink.

  The first thing I had to do was to instigate some operations. Nothing is worse for morale than to be sitting around with nothing to do. Officers and agents quickly lose their enthusiasm for dangerous work. Besides which, of course, SACSEA would be requiring information about Jap troop dispositions, their intentions and likely responses to an invasion of Malaya. What information we did have indicated that they were switching troops away from the Dutch East Indies to the South Pacific area to try to counter the Americans and Australians. But they still had formidable forces in Malaya, and must have been aware that an invasion was being planned so would be preparing their defences.

  I was surprised to learn that so much planning for the invasion of Malaya was being carried out in London rather than locally, and that they were being advised, to a large extent, by ex-Malayans who had not been near the place for several years. This was most evident by the choice of landing place, near Port Dickson, which I knew to be unsuitable.

  Fortunately I had a first-class leader around whom to build my first operation. Charles Knaggs had been recruited shortly before my return from England. He was a Chinese protection officer from Malaya, highly intelligent, and with a real aptitude for radio work. I immediately sent him to England, together with two or three others, to attend an advanced radio course, where the instructors reported that he was outstanding in all aspects of the work.

  Whilst he was away I began planning my first operation, to be code-named EVIDENCE. I liaised with Force 136 to ascertain their areas of activity, both current and planned. I was told that in the middle of 1943 they had managed to land two Malayans, Richard Broome and John Davis, both of whom I knew from prewar, together with some first-class Chinese agents, by submarine on the mainland under the code name GUSTAVUS. They had established contact with elements of the MPAJA, (Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army, communist Chinese-led) and had sent back much useful information, including the good news that Freddy Spencer Chapman was alive and living in the jungle. Unfortunately, they had then gone off the air and there had been no contact for many months.

  I therefore suggested to Hudson and Colonel Innes Tremlett, head of th
e Malayan Section of Force 136, that, if nothing had been heard from GUSTAVUS by the time that Knaggs’ party was ready, we would drop it as near as possible to the last known position of Broome and Davis, taking with them spare radios and batteries. I suggested that the reason for their being off the air was technical rather than anything more sinister because I felt sure that, if they had been captured, the Japs would have kept the radio on air, feeding us with false information and hoping that in return we would give away details of our other operations. Having made contact with Davis and Broome, the ISLD party would then continue with its own mission of establishing intelligence networks in that part of the country.

  I was taking the first steps to improve the relationship between ISLD and Force 136. There had been much jealousy and rivalry previously, much of it inspired, I am sorry to say, by ISLD, which helped no one and had allowed, I felt, the Navy and the RAF, on whose services we both relied, to play one of us off against the other on several occasions. By the end of the war the co-operation between our two clandestine organisations could not have been closer. This was undoubtedly helped by the close friendships I formed with Innes and Claude Fenner his deputy, two more people I had known in Malaya before the war.