Six days later, a Force 136 team that parachuted near to Batavia (Jakarta) on Java reported that nationalists supplied with weapons by the Japanese were determined that there should be no interference from the Dutch colonial authorities and were controlling the administration. However, Japanese units were assembled in concentration areas awaiting orders. In the midst of the chaos were 68,000 thousand Allied prisoners of war and 200,000 internees, many of them Dutch, at the mercy of vengeful extremists; several thousand would be murdered. News was limited because correspondents in East Java were being confined to the Oranje Hotel in the port of Surabaya.
In mid-September 610 FSS had landed with the 26th Indian Division at Padang in Sumatra and, basing themselves in the former Dutch barracks, found that the Indonesian administration tolerated the British but not the Dutch. Nevertheless, fresh rations drawn from the hill station known as ‘Fort de Kok’ had to be protected by the Punjab Regiment or re-armed Japanese soldiers from ambushes. A useful source proved to be the small Netherlands East Indies Field Intelligence Service, which had been formed by former Dutch internees to maintain internal security. When the Japanese formally surrendered in front of the town hall, Sergeant Bob Spiers successfully applied for a Japanese officer’s sword. In 1946, 596 (Lines of Communications, Karachi) FSS absorbed 610 FSS, which had been weakened by demobilization and postings to 356 FSS in Singapore, and became the Divisional FS section. It also administered Intelligence Corps in Sumatra listed for demobilization, which included a sergeant who had served with Force 136 and who turned up unannounced, having travelled across the island on his own.
Meanwhile, 625 FSS landed at Medan and was involved in tracing British agents who had disappeared in occupied Sumatra. Several Kempei Tei were less than forthcoming. They also traced British weapons and ammunition captured by the Japanese in 1942, in one instance, a consignment dumped at sea from an Indonesian boat by the Japanese and recovered next night by local divers. It also sought out former British prisoners of war and detainees to ‘gather as much intelligence of a military or general nature as you can’ on Indonesian political aspirations. In November, 556 (Karachi) FSS, formerly a port security section, landed at Palembang as part of XV Corps reinforcements. One of its NCOs was a Burmese-speaking Chinese lance corporal who, in 1943, had interviewed a large number of Chinese businessmen and students permitted to leave Germany and collected a substantial amount of information on the effects of Allied bombing, the economic situation and on documents used.
Simmering tension on Java exploded on 7 October when the Netherlands East Indies Government rejected political reconciliation and XV Corps was despatched from Malaya to restore order and repatriate military and civilian prisoners and the Japanese.
The 23rd Indian Division landed on Java with its 605 FSS and several sections in late October. The 622 FSS diary reveals that the section had an ‘exciting time’ when it was attached to the ad hoc Buitenzog Brigade on the tactically important road between Batavia and Bandung. Accompanying 49 Independent Infantry Brigade, which was commanded by Brigadier George Mallaby, was 611 FSS, whose FSO was Captain H. Shaw (Queens), a Short Service Commission officer with little FS experience. Arriving off Surabaya on 25 October, the next day Brigadier Mallaby sent CSM Noel Lunn and three sergeants ashore to collect information but, as they walked toward the city noting plenty of evidence of anti-Dutch sentiment, they were bundled into a car by several Indonesians. Although they explained that they were part of a British force ordered to accept Japanese surrenders, repatriate prisoners of war and internees and restore order, they were confined to two bungalows.
Later in the day, Mallaby met with Indonesian mediators to discuss Mountbatten’s orders but HQ 23rd Division, with its experience of the fighting in Burma, disapproved of his conciliatory approach and instructed him to occupy the city and repatriate prisoners and detainees. Next day, tension escalated when the RAF dropped leaflets advising armed Indonesians to surrender their weapons within forty-eight hours, or risk being shot. Although Mallaby explained to the mediators that he had no alternative but obey orders, tension escalated after rumours circulated that a negotiator had been murdered by the British. The extremist Black Buffaloes incited armed response and several representatives of the Repatriation of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees organization were arrested on fictitious espionage charges and some murdered. In severe clashes, 49 Infantry Brigade lost eleven officers and forty-four Indians killed over the next four days, some massacred when their positions were overrun from want of ammunition and others killed when convoys of released internees were ambushed and drivers and escorts massacred. Ambulances were not spared. Several 611 FSS were based at the Hotel Oranje and, as the fighting escalated, Sergeant John Thompson and two other FS sergeants and a young soldier decided to return to Brigade HQ in a requisitioned Studebaker but they drove into the ambush of an Army jeep at a bridge. Taking cover in an alley, they were captured by an Indonesian policeman who escorted them through a mob to a police station where they were relieved of their Stens and only revolver and spent the night in cells, the second group of Intelligence Corps to be captured by Indonesian extremists. Next day, they were taken to a large house where the abiding memory of Thompson was of the wonderful coffee.
A ceasefire was agreed on 30 October; however, the mediators had lost control and when rumours circulated that the British had surrendered, there was more unrest, particularly around the International Bank Building, which was being used as a company base by 6/5th Mahratta Light Infantry. Mallaby sent his Brigade Major to the area but he, another officer and their driver were murdered. Unaware of their fate and rejecting the advice of his Deputy Brigade Commander, a veteran of the fighting in Burma, not to go, Mallaby arrived by car at the Bank accompanied by two Brigade liaison officers, Captain Shaw, who was familiar with the area, and several Indonesian mediators to explain the conditions of the ceasefire. But the crowd, egged on by agitators, including a Japanese officer, demanded that the Mahrattas surrender and that all British units retire to the agreed safe zone at the airfield. Mallaby was about to enter the Bank to tell the Mahrattas to withdraw when the mob seized Shaw and dragged him toward the Bank. Mallaby and the two liaison officers were then disarmed and placed in his staff car. Controversy surrounds what happened next, most of it focusing on Captain Shaw apparently advising the Mahratta company commander that he was acting under orders from Mallaby that the Bank should be defended. When the Indonesians then deployed a machine gun to cover the front entrance and the Mahrattas were suspicious and opened fire, killing several people, a gunman fired into the car, killing Mallaby. One of the liaison officers threw a grenade, which he had secreted while being disarmed, and then he and his colleague dived into the River Kali canal and spent the next five hours in its brown sluggish water. Although the murder of Brigadier Mallaby encouraged the British to take a tougher line with Sukarno, it seems that the Indonesian agitators realized they had overstepped the mark and among the prisoners released during a truce were the two groups of Intelligence Corps. When the three 611 FSS returned to Brigade HQ, Captain Shaw was no longer the FSO.
By November the situation in Surabaya was so grave that Headquarters XV Corps landed to command operations. It is said that when the all-British 356 (HQ South-East Asia Command) FSS was formed at Delhi Racecourse in March 1944, racing was in progress. While accompanying Lord Mountbatten on a six-day train journey across India to Kandy in Ceylon, one night Sergeant Best doused a fire in an office caused by an electric light left on to prevent mildew spreading to Mountbatten’s uniform and regalia. In March 1945, during the advance through Burma, 356 FSS handed over its security role to 608 FSS and two months later entered Rangoon as a town section with 575 (2nd Division Lines of Communication) and 589 (HQ 202 Lines of Communication) FSS and passed under the control of the Defence Security Officer and was employed in rounding up collaborators. Sergeant Best was on duty at one of Mountbatten’s conferences when a jeep pulled up and two uniformed Burmese alighted. W
hen Best asked for their passes, a British officer told him, ‘It’s OK, sergeant, this is Major General Aung San’. Two months before, he had been on the Field Security Black List.
Now commanded by Captain Tracy (Indian Army), 900 Port Security Section had been formed in Wentworth Woodhouse in 1944 and among its duties was marshalling Japanese troops awaiting repatriation and nightly joint harbour patrols with the Dutch Navy. Meanwhile, 5th Indian Infantry Division also landed at Surabaya, bringing 601 FSS. Formed on 3 October 1945 in Madras, 597 (Cocomada) FSS had been flown to Singapore by flying boat and three weeks later was sharing offices, interpreters, typists, a Dutch liaison officer and several reliable Indonesian police officers, led by Inspector Henry Sneep, a redoubtable Eurasian who spoke Dutch and Malay and had survived the occupation. He had knowledge of the Japanese-trained Islamist Indonesian Republican Army extremists formed into a militia known as Hezbollah. During one raid, the FSO and a sergeant were wounded. In another incident, Sergeant Arden Winch was with Indian troops when they retreated with some haste after extremists commandeered a Japanese tank. Both sections used a police patrol boat crewed by Japanese sailors to search for pirates in the Straits of Madura. Sergeant Burton-Smith of 597 FSS took part in the identification of some of the victims and Sergeant Gerry Rooke and Inspector Sneep arrested two suspects. While investigating war crimes, one suspect, a Japanese admiral, committed hari kari.
In early 1946, Captain John Morton (Indian Army), the 356 FSO, learnt from an informant that Carla Wolff, the Eurasian mistress of the Japanese Captain Hiroshi Nakamura and now employed as the section clerk, had loot buried by Nakamura in her garden. On 9 March, Morton and CSM Dawson led a raid and recovered gold, jewellery and bank notes worth £9 million (in 1945) concealed in two petrol cans and a trunk. Several months later, claims by Wolff that those who had raided her house had misappropriated the treasure led to a criminal investigation that soured the relationship between Field Security and the military police Special Investigations Branch, particularly when 611 (49 Brigade) and 900 Port Security Section were also placed under house arrest, as were 605 (23rd Indian Division) and 624 (Allahadad) FSS, more because of their association with the two sections than for evidential reasons. CSM Gall of 605 FSS was acquitted after being court-martialled for refusing to attend an identity parade for two Japanese officers. He had been with the 23rd Indian Division in the savage fighting around Imphal in 1944. When the Dutch authorities agitated for information about the allegations, 356, 611 and 900 FSS were exchanged for 358 (Ceylon) and 762 FSS and 481 Port Security Section flown from Singapore. Meanwhile, Dawson had been posted to the British Control Commission in Herford, Germany. He admitted complicity to the Special Investigations Branch and, although he was nearing demobilization, the War Office rushed the legal proceedings so that he, Morton and Tracy could be court-martialled. The two officers were acquitted while Dawson was dishonourably discharged from the Army. A Special Investigations Branch major was convicted on one count of the fraudulent conversion of a currency. The scandal was covered in the Straits Times and by the time that 356 FSS returned to England, the press had picked up the story of ‘Nakamura’s Gold’, particularly in the News of the World. Meanwhile, off Java, Sergeant Fred Halliday and his interpreter had interviewed a Goanese sailor, who had appeared to be agitated during a routine check of a coaster, claiming that he knew of a Japanese officer on an island, who may be important because he had a light aircraft. Within two days Captain Nakamura was arrested by the Dutch authorities.
Following good military intelligence reports relating to numerous kidnappings of Chinese citizens during inter-communal violence in Medan on Sumatra, on 9 May 1946 five 625 FSS and two interpreters, a half-Chinese and a Sikh, both resident in Medan, were on their way to raid a house when they were ambushed and the FSO, Captain Norval Williamson (Indian Army) was wounded in the head. The party sheltered in a house but were captured. Staff Sergeant Duncan Methuen and Sergeant Boris Norman escaped but on their way to seek help from 1 South Wales Borderers were both shot and wounded. During the next six weeks of negotiating their release in exchange for Indonesian prisoners, Williamson died and the Sikh was executed. The half-Chinese survived by pretending to be a British soldier.
Fresh from French Indo-China, 80 Infantry Brigade arrived on the Celebes (now Sulawesi) with 604 FSS and took over from the Australians. Unlike the rest of the Dutch East Indies, the internal security situation was relatively calm, the greatest problem, according to Captain Frost, being the recklessness of local driving. His Indian batman had a leg amputated after a crash.
When XXXIV Corps reformed as Malaya Command in early 1946, eleven FS sections were spread throughout Malaya with four sections and 900 Port Section in Singapore, still reporting to their parent Corps and divisional HQs. At Command HQ, Major Peter Leefe was the GSO 2 (Intelligence). The closure of the Intelligence Corps (India) Depot and School in Karachi, after Indian independence in 1947, led to Malaya Command forming HQ Field Security Wing (Malaya) at 5 Princes Road in Kuala Lumpur under the command of Captain Gary O’Driscoll; however, demobilization saw Field Security reduced to:
• 355 FSS – Central and South Malaya from Kuala Lumpur with detachments in Seremban and Port Dickson.
• 1 FSS – Johore Bahru with detachments in Kluang and Muar.
• 358 FSS – North Malaya including Ipoh and Penang.
• Singapore District – 95, 356 and 566 FSS amalgamated into the Singapore Special FS Section.
No. 1 Interrogation Unit, which was subordinate to Headquarters Allied Forces, South-East Asia Command continued to investigate Japanese suspected of war crimes. Meanwhile, the Malayan Communist Party was continuing to agitate for one-party state for Malaya independence.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The National Service Years
Security is rarely as expensive as insecurity
Palestine
When, in November 1945, the Labour Government ignored its long-standing policy to create a Jewish state, militants escalated their operations by attacking troops and installations in pursuit for a home state in Palestine. The Army found itself on unfamiliar ground from the previous five years against extremists, many of whom had served in the Armed Forces and exploited their knowledge of military procedures to steal vehicles, weapons and equipment.
The counter-intelligence structure developed by the Palestine Police Special Branch during the Mandate remained; however, the Army was hampered by a police culture of sharing information only when military assistance was sought, a practice that was common in post-1945 operations. The Intelligence Corps had been represented in Palestine when 257 FSS was raised in Cairo in late 1940 and then based in a house on Mount Carmel with responsibility for Haifa and the Galilee area. After 252 FSS was evacuated from Greece in September 1941, it took responsibility for Gaza and south to the Egyptian border. Also formed in Cairo, in May 1940, 272 FSS took part in the later stages of the North African campaign before arriving in 1944 to cover Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A divisive character throughout the war had been Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini, an ambitious Arab nationalist who had been the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1937 and who opposed the British during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt. Promoting Arab nationalism against Zionism, he found refuge in Italy and Germany and had been a collaborator during the war and was an opponent of the UN 1947 Partition Plan.
In 1945, the 1st Infantry Division and its 3 FSS was recuperating after the Italian campaign while 6th Airborne Division, with its 317 (Airborne) FSS, was the Middle East Strategic Reserve. Although little is known about its activties, 292 FSS was also in Palestine. As the concentration camps emptied in Europe and Jews began making for Palestine, intelligence from European Port Security sections gave advanced warning of the departure of refugee ships. The counter-intelligence role of Field Security had not changed, however, practices were being adapted to meet internal security needs. This included the carrying of ‘Green Card’ authorization and adopting the longstanding p
ractice of going anywhere at any time in or out of uniform and collecting information in areas where military patrols had no reason to go. They continued to test security. Three 257 FSS NCOs entered the 1 Royal Horse Artillery camp on motor cycles and, copying an officer’s signature, used it to requisition a Jeep and two Sten guns from the armoury. But when they returned to the camp to report their findings, the commanding officer had them strip-searched and thrown into the Guardroom until they were released - as heroes to 257 FSS.
By the end of the year, 3rd Infantry Division, based in Egypt, had exchanged places with 1st Division. After the Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem had been raided by the security forces and members of leadership were detained, on 22 July, Irgun Zwai Leumi, literally National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, retaliated by blowing up the headquarters of British Troops Palestine and Transjordan in the King David Hotel, Tel Aviv, killing more than 100 people. HQ 6th Airborne Division cordoned the city to screen all 170,000 inhabitants. Commanded by Captain Eric Linklater, 317 (Airborne) FSS was heavily involved in identifying hardliners and sympathizers. In early August the British Government started interning immigrants on their way by ship in Cyprus. The bombing of the British Embassy in Rome by Irgun hardened the military response and former commandos and Special Air Service were assembled into Special Squad patrols, their killing of a teenager saw an escalation in mutual retaliation. The appeal, in April 1947, by the Opposition leader, Winston Churchill, that the Mandate should be referred to the United Nations led to clashes between Jews and Arabs. After three Irgun had been arrested and sentenced to death for their part in the escape of several prisoners from Acre Prison, Irgun was determined to kidnap hostages to be exchanged.
Sharing the Secret Page 28