The next stretch of 40 miles posed a problem because it was not just uninhabited but virtually unexplored. Known as The Gap, its rugged mountains and lack of navigable rivers made it uninviting even to the local tribe, the Muruts. As the border could not be watched without their help, it had to be given a miss for the time being. Eventually something would have to be done about it, primarily because access was easier from the Indonesian side but also its magnificent wildness challenged the SAS pilgrims irresistibly.
Westwards again, to a region that was centred on the village of Pensiangan and was still satisfyingly wild with peaks up to 3,000 feet and great areas of primary forest. Much of the border was watershed ridge, but there were two gaps where a large Indonesian river and its tributary flowed across, and further dividing provided the Muruts with the main condition for community life. The villages were isolated and vulnerable, and Sergeant ‘Tanky’ Smith commanding 3 Troop, in the quite usual absence of an officer, went in to redress the balance. The Troop split into patrols which did not see each other again until the end of the tour, Smith taking one. In his maturity his impressive perception, experience and lucid ability to express them call to mind a tranquil elder statesman, and it is only an involuntary twinkle that makes it just possible to envisage his earlier boisterous irrepressibility, of which those whose duty it was to try and repress speak with much feeling.
Smith’s experiences were typical. ‘When we arrived at this village near the border a baby looked as if it was dying and I said to my medic, “You’d better get this right or we’ll be kicked out.” He gave it a quarter of an aspirin dissolved in milk and it got better, so we were made welcome and that was a good start. It was a happy time, better than Malaya because although I loved the abos they weren’t so civilized as the Muruts, who took us into their hearts and homes.’
The Muruts had a reputation for hard drinking, but they worked hard too. In their ‘ladangs’ they cleared the jungle and cropped the land until it was exhausted, rice (dry ‘padi’) and tapioca being their basic diet; they foraged for jungle fruits such as figs, durians, mangosteens; they hunted wild pig, deer, birds, monkeys and other animals with blowpipes, traps and the odd shotgun, and they fished the rivers. They built and repaired their own houses with materials from the forest, and could be completely self-supporting as they had had to be during the Japanese occupation. But trade improves any economy, and jungle products like timber, rotan, swiftlets’ nests for Chinese soup and jelutong for American chewing gun could be exchanged for the products of so-called civilization such as clothes, paraffin, baked beans, shotguns, or corrugated iron for roofing, which offended the occidental aesthete but kept out the rain much better than palm leaves. There was also trade between the villages to balance surpluses and shortages, so the boat people and porters were hard at it too, the border being no obstacle.
What more natural and sensible, therefore, than that the Muruts should take three days’ off a month for what the Army calls rest and recreation, and the SAS would have won no hearts by refusing their hospitality, though ‘Tanky’ Smith had to steel himself to endure it; ‘What they do is split a length of thick bamboo and fill it with uncooked pork, salt and rice; then they bury it for a month, and when they dig it up it’s called “jarit” and, oh God, the pong. But we had to eat it. You just could if you’d drunk enough “tapai”’; though Lillico adds, ‘even so I had to go outside and spew it up. The things we did for Queen and country.’ ‘Tapai’ was wine, for want of a better word, made from rice or tapioca, and looked like rough cider because the Muruts could not wait for it to ferment out or clear, but drank it through straws out of huge Chinese dragon jars as soon as the alcohol content was sufficiently fiery. ‘Great climate for wine-making’; comments Frank Williams the publican. ‘Anything would ferment, even your socks.’
‘Tanky’ Smith relates another sore trial. ‘After a month the headman said we’d been away from home for a long time and would we like to refresh ourselves with four of their girls who rather fancied us? I said we’d be delighted’ – and there is no reason to disbelieve him for these people were primitive only in consequence of their environment, and he would have been less than a man who was not awakened by the girls’ intelligent sweetness and bare-breasted charm – ‘but there’s a snag. Even if they themselves fancy us, they’ve probably each got a boy friend so we’ve made four enemies, and those four will have families so we may have twenty enemies when we’re supposed to be here making friends. Besides I didn’t want a blowpipe dart in my back and my head added to their collection. My youngest unmarried trooper said, “Speak for yourself, I think it would be impolite to refuse”; but I told him, “No”, and that was an order. It was a talking point for an evening and then we got on with something else; though I did just wonder which one had fancied me.’
There being as yet no enemy and, consequently, no warlike tension, the tour took on the nature of an idyll among people living in a state of nature, with nature untamed and dominant. The SAS felt themselves enfolded by the vast harmony of the jungle and its peoples, the more palpably because in sad contrast to modern, western values. There, a ‘jungle’ means a concrete waste and an ‘animal’ a hooligan, whereas the real jungle is alive to the smallest twig and no animal would be so stupid as to seek pleasure in violence. A myriad miraculous life-cycles intertwine to render each dependant on all and all on each; and man can only make his life there if he forgets or has never learnt that he is the zenith of creation, wisely submitting himself to the salutory and life-perpetuating law of the jungle. The SAS found it exceedingly satisfying.
All patrols were ordered to cache some rations for use in emergency, and secrecy was essential. Not that the Muruts would have betrayed their friends from malice, but every happening however small was news which they loved to disseminate, and the information would soon have crossed the border; so the patrol took four days searching for the wildest spot and covering its tracks with all the jungle skills acquired in Malaya. On return to his village base Smith was cheerfully handed his ‘porter money’, an immense fortune to the Muruts, which he had left lying about and not even missed; trust grew, and the soldiers, having set out to win the Muruts’ hearts and minds, involuntarily surrendered their own. Their main offering was medicine; ‘It was a great thing to see a man’s disfigurement which he’d had for years clear up in a few days when you gave him penicillin; or the father of that baby, his first child. No way could they be anything but your friends for life. We only had to say what we wanted and they’d rush over the border to find out.’
Medical aid was not one-sided. In a neighbouring patrol Trooper Roger Blackman contracted lepto-spirosis, a tropical disease foul in all its aspects from its origin in the urine of rats borne by water, which is why it was not only permissible not to bathe but desirable. Raging fever, violent headache, severe abdominal pain with vomiting and coughing blood combine to cause death more often than not.
Blackman was very ill indeed, losing two stones in ten days. His life may have been saved by the aureomycin that the medic dispensed; but the whole village was deeply concerned for him, too, and their witch-doctor was in constant attendance, professionally attired, with spells and incantations administered with that intensity of faith which we are told can cure and may, who knows, have helped. As convalescence supervened, he continued unflagging in his ministrations, bringing comforts of all sorts and delicacies to eat which happily did not include ‘jarit’, but even eggs with half-formed chicks inside proved too much for poor Blackman. He declined weakly as graciously as he could, but his complaint was judged to be frivolous.
‘You eat chickens don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And new laid eggs?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Well then.’
Another bank holiday weekend came round and the headman said to ‘Tanky’ Smith: ‘That “jarit” you put out so carefully last month must be just about ready and we thought you might like us to bring it in. We know w
here it is.’ Ethereal among the shadows, hunters had watched the patrol’s every movement, intrigued that putting tins up trees was the British way of making ‘jarit’. A pause ensued while Smith, who was rarely at a loss for words, recovered himself sufficiently to reply, ‘Oh that’s the long term stuff, takes three months’; but without conviction as he pondered the implication thus vividly presented. To win hearts and establish an efficient Intelligence-gathering organization could indeed prove the key to defence, but what if they were lost to the enemy? Not only would information be denied, but how could even the SAS survive on the frontier? It was a solemn thought.
Moving on westwards the hinterlands of Long Pa Sia and Long Semado were so rugged and mountainous as to be uninhabited; they were, however, accessible from either side and long-established trade routes crossed the border. The area was thus vulnerable to incursion and proved later to be a thorn in the flesh, but at this early time border surveillance depended and could only depend on the skilful and willing cooperation of the locals, so that, where there were none, patrols had to be stationed well back where people did live and hope to profit from reports of hunters and traders.
Southwards into Sarawak the mountains soared even higher, river navigation to the coastal plain was blocked by falls and rapids, yet where one would expect to find another Gap there existed as near an approach to Arcadia as may be found in the twentieth century world. The massifs encircle a fertile plateau to which in distant times the peaceful Kelabits had been driven by warlike enemies, and here they had developed an advanced form of agriculture centred on rice from wet ‘padi’ in fields irrigated by an ingenious and complex system and ploughed using water buffalo. They were highly sophisticated in their ideas too, not being content just to follow tradition but constantly experimenting and innovating, as Tom Harrisson found to his admiration when he lived with them during the war.
The plateau embraced the border, Ba Kelalan and Bareo among many smaller villages on the British side with Long Bawan and Long Medan on the other, and of course it meant nothing to the Kelabits. But the area was crucial to defence, commanding the narrow waist of British Borneo with oil-rich Brunei at risk. As elsewhere the patrol wrote their Domesday Book, made friends and had fun. A particular hearts and minds winner in the Kelabit Highlands was cosmetic surgery. Beauty had traditionally demanded the piercing of a baby’s ear lobes from which were hung increasingly heavy rings until the extended loops of gristle dangled to the shoulders or below, the longer the lovelier; but now that outsiders had at last arrived, many youngsters yearned to have neat ears like theirs and the SAS medics were happy to oblige with a quick snip and a few stitches.
That particular importation was undoubtedly an improvement, but the same could not be said for all. As in ancient Arcadia where the rustic paradise was often disrupted by gods descending uninvited and pursuing their incomprehensible activities among the shepherd boys and girls, so did Christian missionaries descend at Be Kelalan by light aircraft and with selfless devotion to duty succeed in introducing conflict where there had been none before. One half of the village was teetotal and took its recreation at prayer meetings with hymn singing, while in the other the usual large quantities of ‘tapai’ was consumed to a less restrained type of entertainment. Smith could not detect any difference in quality between the two, their general standard of morality being in any case higher than many allegedly civilized communities, but there was no doubt which was the more cheerful and content.
Progress, so-called, is inexorable however, and, enjoy themselves as they might, men as perceptive as the SAS could not but be saddened at the prospects for the border tribes to whom they were becoming increasingly devoted. Lieutenant-Colonel John Woodhouse saw the danger early and briefed his men to do all in their power to allay it. The coming frontier war would greatly accelerate the opening up process, the effects of which could be disastrous to the tribes’ own self-contained and almost perfect economy, especially after the departure of the British. Medicine was the one major service the outside world could provide to improve their lives significantly. Once accustomed to it, how terrible if it were to be cut off. Perhaps saddest of all was the thought that they, so happy and free of stress – which were blessings the soldiers learned to admire and indeed envy – should be introduced to western pressures and anxieties.
Such sensitivity for the welfare of simple dependant peoples was peculiarly British. Those representatives who had reached the Kelabits and their like – Rajah Brooke’s District Officers were not even allowed to marry the better to serve them, devotees like Tom Harrisson, many excellent missionaries among the cranks and now the SAS – were dedicated to the good of the tribes. The people were certainly not overburdened by government, but there was enough of it to impose that absolute fundamental, the rule of law, between the tribes. Nothing approaching Arcadia had been known on the island in the savage, headhunting, pre-colonial days when fear and stress had been the norm.
The tribes envisaged no change for none was wanted, and when it was mentioned, as honesty demanded, that the British were planning to leave, they were first incredulous and then dismayed. Such loyalty boded well for the coming war, yet it also became clear that the tribes did not regard the other alternatives to the British as much better than the Indonesians; the Malays were the traditional aristocrats, but they tended to look down on the jungle people and were in turn disliked, and the Chinese were either ruthless traders or communists. Southwest-wards from the Kelabit Highlands Sarawak widened into its Third Division, watered by the great River Rejang and its tributaries. Here the Kalimantan border was 100–150 miles from the sea and ran through wild and mountainous country where there were no settled villages and only the really primitive semi-nomadic Punans were occasionally found. It was difficult to gain access from the other side too, and an intruder would then have to cover a great distance in Sarawak to reach any significant objective, so SAS patrols were again deployed well back where villages began. Captain Bill Dodd of 2 Troop was given this considerable responsibility; he placed one of his patrols at Long Jawai under Corporal George Stainforth, who because he was lent from ‘D’ Squadron stayed there until the summer.
The SAS were thin enough on whatever ground they occupied so it was important to place them where they could do most good, and a glance at the map will show that it was in the First and Second Divisions of Sarawak that both the Indonesian threat and British vulnerability were greatest. Kuching, the capital, was but 25 miles from the border, which was crossed by innumerable trade routes with easy access from both sides. Much of the land was cleared for cultivation, making possible the deployment of major military formations. Half the country’s entire population was concentrated there, including many Chinese of whom a substantial proportion were undoubtedly clandestine communists. Maximum SAS effort was thus called for.
Patrols went into the Second Division where the Ibans lived, after the Chinese the most numerous race in Sarawak. They were a warrior race, having entered the country as invaders, and were also called Sea Dyaks because they had not been averse to piracy either. Tattooing and headhunting were their specialities, the latter indulged without restraint until the Rajahs Brooke clamped down on it; but when restrained by the rule of law, military aptitude can be a virtue, and many Ibans had been recruited as trackers for the Malayan Emergency and would now contribute more than any other local community to their own country’s defence.
The First Division, strategically the most important of all, was screened by what might be thought a very thin red line indeed, though by 1963 standards in Borneo it was lavish, the whole of 1 Troop commanded by Captain Ray England. No fewer than sixteen men watched the equivalent of the English border with Wales. Put another way, this amounted to six miles? man, though in practice the 16 were divided into four patrols about 25 miles apart with about 25 villages to each.
Like Wales too, the First Division was where early refugees, Land Dyaks in this case, had been driven by waves of aggressive Ibans. Their
historical aim was to keep out of trouble, often building their longhouses on defensible hilltops while being more reliant than other tribes on good spirits to protect them and help them prosper. Such spirits, being good, usually cooperated without being asked. It was the malign ones who had to be pacified, driven away or avoided by complicated and time-consuming rituals. Some of these the SAS learned and observed, thus gaining in respect, but it could nevertheless be frustrating to go exploring with Land Dyak hunters and be told that because a hornbill had flown from left to right across the track the expedition must be cancelled; though as understanding grew it was sometimes possible to invoke some good spirit to neutralize the evil one.
England established his base at Padawan, an outpost of civilization where there was an Anglican Community Centre comprising a school, a medical dispensary, an agricultural adviser, a chapel, and a football pitch, which would later be handy for helicopters, though in these early days those invaluable workhorses were rarely seen. England did not spend long there, however. Leaving his signaller as a receiver of local information and a link with headquarters, he journeyed constantly with the other two men to map the country and meet the people. Peace was as yet unbroken so he used the tracks, but as the first incident could occur anywhere at any time, he required the patrol to be always alert, well spaced, and ready to melt into the bush either to offer ambush or avoid it.
On first visiting a longhouse, England would engage the headman in conversation:
SAS: Secret War in South East Asia Page 7