Malayan Spymaster

by Boris Hembry

  At first I felt that the two organisations would be better amalgamated under SOE, as there was much overlapping of responsibilities, and consequently duplication of effort. But from the beginning of 1945, when Force 136 concentrated almost exclusively on preparing the resistance movements for their part in the forthcoming invasion, and channelled all their intelligence through ISLD so that I could present a comprehensive review in my daily intelligence reports, having the two organisations made sense. Anyway, there was no chance that the Foreign Office would have agreed to lose ISLD.

  During these early weeks I was planning that ISLD would have units in the field along the whole length of Malaya, covering the main lines of communication that the Japs would have to use to counter our invasion. I was also giving much thought to establishing intelligence cells in all the main towns – KL, Ipoh, Seremban, Malacca, Penang, JB and, of course, Singapore. This we eventually did all too successfully, as some of our cells were to form the basis of the Min Yuen, of which more later. There seemed no shortage of young men willing to risk their lives on these somewhat nebulous projects, to travel thousands of miles and then to parachute into an inhospitable country, with a fairly good chance that the Kempeitai would be waiting for them. Although almost all my volunteers were in the Army and, to all intents and purposes, would continue to serve as uniformed soldiers, they would receive no recognition whatsoever for their services and bravery, unlike those in SOE with whom, very often, they shared the very same aircraft or submarine, and the subsequent dangers and hardships. And ISLD, more often than not, had to drop blind, with no DZ (dropping zone) party waiting for them, to wave them away if the Japs were too close. There was to be only one exception to the awarding of decorations, as I will relate later, and I had to go to the very top to obtain that.

  I decided that EVIDENCE would be in two parts. EVIDENCE 1 was to consist of Charles Knaggs, Donald Gray, a planter, George Brownie, a businessman formerly based, I think, in KL, and three Straits Chinese, Ban Ho, Ah Lieu, and the second radio operator Wong Weng Fong. Nothing having been heard from GUSTAVUS, I decided to drop them south of Sungei Siput, near Dovenby Estate, on an open area east of the main road. From there I felt it would not be too difficult for the party to make their way into the jungle around Gunong Korbu, where I was sure they would be contacted by the MPAJA who would take them to John Davis, assuming they were still alive and free. The second party would follow into the same general area at the next full moon.

  Donald Gray was an old friend and very hard-playing rugger forward. I had heard that he was somewhere in India with the Indian Army, so I sent word that I wished to see him in Calcutta as I might be able to offer him more interesting employment. Poor Donald confessed, well after the end of the war, that he was not a bit keen on the job I had offered him, but it was difficult for him to refuse without loss of face – Asians are not the only ones to dislike losing face. Whatever his initial doubts, Donald was soon hooked and became a first-class member of the team.

  The follow-up party, EVIDENCE 2, would consist of Douglas Lee-Hunter, Nigel Crompton and two Chinese, one of whom was the radio operator. Lee-Hunter had distinguished himself in Burma and had won the MC and Bar. Outwardly he was a cheerful, happy-go-lucky chap, but in fact was ruthless, cold and calculating, and completely selfish. Nigel was a regular gunner officer who had escaped from France at Dunkirk and, after service in Burma, had volunteered for an Indian Army parachute brigade and so was one of very few members of ISLD who came to us as an experienced parachutist. Neither had been to Malaya.

  EVIDENCE 1 got away on 25 January in one of the newly arrived Liberator Mark IV bombers, fitted with extra fuel tanks in the bomb bay. I must admit to certain qualms as I saw the aircraft disappearing with six young men that I was sending away to drop blind into an area that I had not seen for over three years. But at least I was sure that the whole operation had been carefully planned, the personnel well trained, and as little as possible left to chance.

  The drop was scheduled for just after midnight. Should the pilot fail to locate the DZ he was to return to try again the next night. There were three main possible hazards: enemy action, low cloud or storms over the DZ, and navigational error. There could be three attempts over the full-moon period. I knew of one Force 136 mission having to make the three attempts. As the round trip took over 20 hours one can imagine the feelings of frustration and discomfort for the aircrew and agents alike. In the event of an abortive drop the heavy supplies would have to be jettisoned as the weight would be too much for the aircraft, even with additional fuel tanks, to make it home. This, in turn, meant that we always had to have our stores triplicated. Aircrews were instructed that the one container that should never be jettisoned was the one with the radio set. But they were not told that this also invariably contained large amounts of currency, opium and, sometimes, gold.

  The first news came in a signal from the aircraft: ‘Operation successful’. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. We were to learn later from experience that this signal only meant that the ‘bods’ and stores had been dropped, whether on to the correct DZ, or into the enemy’s lap, was an entirely different matter.

  Each ground party had certain scheduled times and radio frequencies for sending and receiving. We had hoped that EVIDENCE 1 would come up on the air within 24 hours of landing, so I naturally remained close to our radios throughout the time. But no signal came. I was not unduly worried; I thought that they might have landed close to the enemy where it would be unsafe to start fiddling with their wireless sets. But after four sleepless days and nights I did become very worried, and began to harbour doubts as to the wisdom of despatching EVIDENCE 2 in just over three weeks, even though I knew from reports of similar operations into Burma and Siam that had gone wrong that the Japs would invariably try to get the captured radio set on air. Hence each radio operator had a code, usually a few innocent words, which would be included in each transmission to confirm its authenticity. I did not completely despair.

  On the sixth day, I was in my office with Harry Hays and our RAF liaison officer discussing details of an operation I was planning to put a team into northern Malaya, to cover Penang and the railway route down from Siam, when the radio operator rushed in shouting, ‘They’ve done it, they’ve done it!’ I read the actual signal which said, ‘You might as well have dropped us into Sungei Siput police station stop all well stop exhausted stop in contact with MPAJA stop full report later stop.’ The radio operator confirmed the signal genuine; the code words had been included. My first reaction, of course, was total relief. Reg Heath and other senior officers then burst in, having heard the news, grabbed my hand and congratulated me on our first successful op. I had to remind them that this was the easy part. They had yet to set up their spy networks, the whole object of the exercise.

  Subsequent signals filled in the details. The six parachutists had been scattered over a fairly wide area, far nearer to Sungei Siput than planned, and in the middle of extensive working tin tailings. How they missed the high-tension electricity power lines or landing in some very deep mining pools is a mystery. Luckily some MPAJA informers had spotted the drop, as had the Japs who came quickly on to the scene, but not before our six had been collected and spirited away to the jungle edge, minus much of their supplies but with the precious wireless sets and spare batteries, and the cash and the gold and some food. The MPAJA took them over and led them deeper into the safety of the jungle and, after about a fortnight, they met up with John Davis and were able to deliver the spare wireless set and batteries.

  EVIDENCE 2 was despatched as planned the following month and rendezvoused with Knaggs’s team.

  According to Donald, ISLD was not welcome by SOE, who appeared suspicious of our intentions and seemed to be under the impression that we were out to steal their thunder. Nothing could have been further from the truth – in fact the very opposite was true, as I had chosen the area of operation of my ISLD team to help Force 136 – but it was a good indication of t
he ill-feeling and lack of co-operation that existed between our two organisations, and this had even filtered down into the jungles of Malaya. But there was also ill-feeling and lack of co-operation within ISLD, between EVIDENCE 1 and 2. After the close-knit party consisting of Frank Vanrenen, Ronald Graham and myself in Malaya back in 1942, and my later experience in V Force in Burma, I just could not understand it, and turned a deaf ear to many of the complaints that came back. After all, they were having a cushy time compared to Frank, Ronald and me. We were not weeks in the same camp, receiving a major’s pay and allowances which could not be spent, supplied with mail and other comforts by parachute. And, anyway, I had other far more important matters to worry about than agents’ petty complaints.

  Incidentally, my teams had gold wire sewn into the waistbands of their trousers. This could be cut up and used in emergencies for bribery or reward. There must have been many emergencies and much bribery, as not one inch was ever returned. My enquiries were always met by smirks and evasions.

  The EVIDENCE teams split and went their separate ways and were soon sending back valuable intelligence. In addition to information regarding Jap dispositions, troop movements, units etc., there was also much information of a political and economic nature. Some of this set out in great detail the post-war plans of the MPAJA. When I got the first inklings of these I managed to have infiltrated two of my own agents, avowed supporters of Chiang Kai-Shek, into the MPAJA, so I could get it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. This was probably the most dangerous job given to any of my ISLD agents during the whole of the war – and it was not even against our enemy, the Japanese. It was plain that, as soon as possible after the surrender of the Japanese, the Communists intended to oust the British and to seize control of Malaya. I included all this in my daily intelligence reports and discussed the matter with Innes Tremlett and Claude Fenner, as I realised that the high volume of arms and ammunition that Force 136 were parachuting into Malaya was not all going to be used as intended, against the Japanese. They confirmed that they too were worried at the number of arms containers that were not being recovered from DZs. I raised the matter with Brigadier Bowden-Smith and he promised to discuss it personally with Mountbatten at the very first opportunity. Mountbatten’s response was that it was our job to win the war and someone else’s to keep the peace.

  At the time I had to admit that seemed sensible. In June 1948 I was not so sure.

  By August 1945 ISLD had six separate main parties in the field, usually based in the vicinity of a Force 136 unit, spread throughout the country, and each with their paid informers operating out in the towns, railway stations and workshops, coffee shops and estates. The full-moon periods from early 1945 until the end of the war were increasingly busy, with often five or six Liberators flying sorties, dropping personnel and supplies, on behalf of ISLD and Force 136, along the whole length of Malaya, during the three or four nights available. We also had to recruit many more radio operators to man our receivers in Ceylon, as they were open 24 hours a day, to maintain communications.

  Before we moved from Calcutta I had recruited Colin Park, the son of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, commander of 11 Group RAF during the Battle of Britain, and recently arrived out in India as Mountbatten’s chief of air staff. Colin was a fine young man, rather wild, and had been wounded in North Africa. I did not know, until shortly before he was to drop into Malaya, that he had a metal plate in his head, and suffered from the occasional blackout, otherwise I doubt whether I would have taken him on. Sir Keith and Lady Park were a delightful couple and I often used to dine with them in their spacious flat in Government House. They never once asked about the whereabouts of Colin, and I never felt obliged to offer them any information, although often Lady Park would hand me a letter addressed to him for inclusion in the next supply drop. I kept in touch with them until after poor Colin was killed by terrorists near Kamuning Estate, during the Malayan Emergency, whilst serving with Ferret Force. When I made him a major in January 1945 he must have been one of the youngest in the British Army: he was just 21.I dropped Colin into Johore with Harry ‘Piper’ Gray, another Malayan planter, a Scot who was never without his bagpipes and who I was to get to know on Ulu Remis Estate in 1951.

  Towards the end of 1944 I had been called in to see Naval Intelligence who complained that they knew next to nothing about the movement of Japanese shipping around Singapore and the use they were making of the old Singapore Royal Navy Base, and could I help? I studied the maps long and hard when suddenly, lying in my bath one evening, I remembered the jungle-covered bukit on Sungei Plentong Estate, in Johore, overlooking the naval base, that I had climbed with Professor Van Steyn Callenfells looking for Neolithic remains, back in 1934. If I could get someone on that, or one of the adjacent hills, they would have a magnificent and uninterrupted view of the naval base, the docks and every ship that went in and out. So was born Operation MINT.

  That night I pondered the problem and discussed it with Harry Hays well into the early hours. Then, as soon as I had my ideas down on paper, I went to see Heath who, impressed, sent the embryo scheme straight away to the P Division Committee, whose chairman, Captain Garnon-Williams RN approved of the idea in principle. My plan was to get a party down to Australia, whence they would go by submarine to land on the east coast of Johore, near Mersing, and thence by foot to the hill.

  I had also decided on a leader for MINT. It would be John Hart, an officer with experience of landing agents into Siam by submarine, of mixed Dutch and British parentage, and tri-lingual in English, Dutch and Malay. I cannot remember the names of the others in the ISLD party.

  A T-class submarine was diverted to Australia on completion of its patrol and Hart and his party were flown down to Fremantle by Liberator, an uncomfortable non-stop 16-hour trip, where Laurie Brittain and John Sketchley gave them their final briefings and saw them off. But there was much Japanese naval activity in the South China Sea, to the north-east of Singapore island, which had to be avoided – the naval operations staff considered, for once, the placing of this particular team to be more important than torpedoing enemy shipping – and very bad weather, which would have made a beach landing impossible. So the landing was called off and the submarine made its way back to Trinco through the Sunda Strait, the narrow waters between Java and Sumatra through which I had made my escape in March 1942.

  I was extremely disappointed, but determined to try again at the first opportunity. Shortly afterwards Hart and his party embarked in another submarine, this time on a joint Force 136/ISLD operation code name CARPENTER/MINT, on 6 January 1945. The Force 136 contingent was under the command of Captain David Trevaldwyn, whom I was to meet again many years later when we moved to Canterbury to find he and his wife, an artist of great ability, living nearby in Whitstable. They went by way of the Sunda Strait and threaded their way through the islands around Singapore before successfully landing the SOE party and John Hart and his two Chinese agents on 6 February. CARPENTER was a very successful three-stage Force 136 operation. On the third stage they landed 20 Royal Marine Commandos who secured a strip of beach whilst they took off the crew of an American B29 Superfortress bomber that had been shot down during a raid on Singapore, and Sergeant John Cross and others of a party left behind in Johore in February 1942, and long since written off until news of their survival had filtered through to John Davis up in Perak. Cross and his companions were eventually guided to John Hart’s camp, where they also found the American airmen, from where they were rescued.

  John Cross was a remarkable man and he described his adventures most graphically in his fine book Red Jungle. He mentions me briefly:

  In Colombo we were met by Boris Hembry. He had been a planter in prewar Malaya, and had been one of Major Spencer Chapman’s behind-the-lines parties in January 1942 … I had been longing to get out of Malaya and back to civilisation, but now, curiously, it was a pleasure to join up with this man with a Malayan background. He was in radio touch with Hart and kn
ew all about us. I could speak freely to him and he understood everything at once. Our interrogation at Kandy followed. It took the form of daily examinations by specialist officers in a hut at Supreme Headquarters. I did not feel it was a success. Perhaps I had developed some raw edges, but the political affairs officer seemed to be haranguing me rather than interrogating … but the understanding Hembry gave me my head by suggesting that I should sit quietly in his quarters for two or three days while I made a written report, which was a much more successful procedure.

  John Cross’s reference to the interrogation sums up the behaviour and attitude of some officers who never got nearer the war than a headquarters office chair and the mess bar.

  MINT was my most successful ISLD operation and the only clandestine operation using a submarine that I know of that gained the Naval Commander-in-Chief’s full approval. So much so that, after John Hart’s reports had resulted in the sinking of a Japanese cruiser and several other ships, together with much useful intelligence concerning shipping movements, he thanked me personally as we stood side-by-side in the headquarters lavatories. Many years later, while Jean and I were staying at his lovely house at Kyleakin on the Isle of Skye, Colin MacKenzie, the late head of SOE in South East Asia, told me that MINT had been considered in senior intelligence circles to have been the most productive intelligence operation in the whole of the Malayan war.