By afternoon the patrol was back in the camp area, their last stopping place before entering automatically becoming the emergency rendezvous in case they should become separated. Tired and strained, though with due professionalism, they looked first at the TNKU camp. It was presumably sited so that a British force following the incursion track would attack it first, the TNKU being expendable, and allow the Indonesian élite to exploit the diversion. Nothing had changed either there or in the main camp, showing that the enemy force was still at large. Having done their bit and the day ending, the patrol continued eastwards to find a suitable place for a really good night’s sleep.
The area was new to them, but it was good and thick; gratefully they discarded their bergens and stretched luxuriously in the evening twilight. Allen even permitted himself the voluptuous pleasure of taking off his shirt; in a jungle environment shirts are always wet and clinging whether from sweat, rain or both, and fresh cool air on sticky skin is a rare delight. But he went further, back into the bush whence they had come, with no shirt, no weapon, just his ‘parang’ to cut poles for what would be such a bed as would carry him softly to oblivion. None suited in the immediate vicinity so he went a little further, and then further still; it was madness, an aberration caused by utter weariness, and incomprehensible to himself afterwards.
Four men – soldiers – armed – were looking at him; and what they saw was a white man, chalky white because there is no tan to be had in the jungle. Allen switched on and ran, looking over his shoulder once and seeing that they were running too, away, obviously to report. ‘Move!’ he barked to the others as he burst into their circle. They bundled their clobber together and did so without wasting time in futile questioning, stopping after a short distance to dress and resume battle order. Then they heard voices ahead, just where they would have run to had they continued for another few yards; normal, unexcited conversations and domestic sounds of men preparing for the imminent night. Not another camp? Jesus!
More voices, behind them now and of altogether different timbre; sharp, tense, executive, and close. Richardson, Allen and Condon had their bergens on but not Allison and there was no time to pick it up. They whipped round, Richardson leaping to the front, and lay down with rifles at the ready; Allen’s face nearly touched Richardson’s bootsoles, then came Allison, and finally Condon with the precious radio. They lay very still, hoping to be missed in the half darkness though they were clearly being searched for. At first they could hear not voices but rustling, then a single bush waved sharply and unnaturally amid the stillness; that was followed by others, and murky figures appeared fleetingly, recognizable as human only because they moved; four of them – no six – ten – more, advancing directly towards them in extended line. Finally, in screaming silence, two broke cover completely at twenty yards.
Allen saw only one, through the circle of his backsight, an Indonesian with a light automatic who may have been an officer by the red patches on his lapels. He saw Allen and they both froze. Richardson was apparently aiming at the same target so Allen waited, not only to allow his commander the initiative but, more significantly, because his trigger finger was limply impotent. He had trained and trained again for this moment but, now that reality had come, it was just not real.
The man stood staring, helpless because he had not raised his weapon at the first suspicion as a good jungle soldier should. As he stared, Allen could read his thoughts with absolute precision because they were on the same ultra-strung frequency as his own. At first there was a startled wide-eyed awareness of danger, followed by frantic calculation of what to do about it. Then came the realization that there was nothing to be done, nothing at all, and the eyes grew wider like a dog’s when about to be punished. Death, immediate and personal, now forced itself to the front of consciousness. Wider yet, the eyes half hoped, half pleaded that Allen would not shoot. But he would, he must, the impasse admitted of no other outcome. Death was now certain, but it was not accepted. The eyes were huge, and awful.
Richardson fired, but the man remained erect and Allen thought, ‘He’s missed!’ Though he had not because he was engaging the other target, who did fall. The spell was broken; double-tap. Both bullets struck slightly off-centre, and what must already have been a corpse before it was enfolded by the jungle was spun and hurled backwards as though by the punch of a giant; but the eyes did not die for Allen, and never would.
This was a Shoot-and-Scoot engagement and the drill was well understood and practised. The shooting had been satisfactory if a little slow, though probably not so slow as it had seemed to Allen. Allison, as third man, was making a formidable contribution by standing up and firing his SLR in rapid from the hip over the two leaders. They were not aware of that, and when they sprang up to scoot were in mortal danger from which only luck and quick reaction by all three saved them. They raced away, sideways and to the rear. Each took a different direction at first, according to the plan, to mislead the enemy as to their escape route and to disperse his fire, which now began in earnest; but they were soon out of sight and unscathed.
They re-converged on Richardson, or rather Allen and Allison did, heartened to be of one company again. It seemed as though Condon was comforming too for they all glimpsed him, but then he swerved to the right and was gone. Why, no one could tell, then or afterwards when the others spent many hours in wretched speculation. They all knew, as he at the rear probably did not, that the enemy’s line reached to just where he now headed. The firing redoubled in violence, shredding branches and saplings which fell about them, then slowly died away.
Richardson headed for the sentry-post; with enemy camps on either hand and the main river in front, there was no alternative to blasting a way through with speed and firepower if necessary. But nobody was there. The enemy did not pursue so they crossed the stream and set course for the rendezvous, where Condon would go if he was all right. Darkness overtook them, however, and they huddled into a thick bamboo clump for their most miserable night yet.
Paddy Condon was lost, possibly wounded, but they could do nothing for him until dawn. Furthermore, he had the radio, and the serious implications of its loss became apparent. Between them and their base were hundreds of men and a large enemy complex through which they must look for Paddy; the enemy would surely use the night to organize a massive search for them in the morning but the patrol could not report their plight or ask for help. All they had for comfort was the certainty that Roger Woodiwiss would spare no effort on their behalf as soon as he realized they were in trouble, but as yet, he would only know that they had missed their evening call which was nothing out of the ordinary. No radio was infallible, a patrol commander might well think it imprudent to transmit when close to the enemy, and only when three consecutive calls were missed did emergency action become mandatory. Woodiwiss was worried nevertheless and spent as sleepless a night as the patrol; even if he wanted to send reinforcements, SAS or Gurkhas, where should they go?
Dawn broke on the 15th and the second call was missed, but the Haunted House operators strained to hear something and thought they had. ‘The sets only had an output of 0.8 of whatever it is sets have outputs of recalls Woodiwiss, a Devon and Dorsets officer, ‘and you had to be clever to hear them, though my operators were.’ Nevertheless, he was scarcely reassured, and as the day progressed with no further crackle, he asked for a helicopter search to be flown. It found nothing. Even if it had gone to the patrol’s landing-point it would have found nothing, because Richardson and his men were not at all concerned with being lifted out, only with finding Paddy. The lengths they went to and the risks they ran placed them in the noble company of those who risk their lives for their friends. ‘He was an “A” Squadron lad,’ Allen explains, ‘and we felt a special responsibility for him.’
The patrol spent its fourth day in close proximity to the enemy, now alerted. Allison was left to guard the bergens while the other two prowled around the rendezvous, Camps 1 and 2, even the area of the contact itself. Ther
e they found the new footprints of the soldiers who were looking for them but whose skill at tracking and concealment did not match their own. Rain fell depressingly without stopping and the stream rose to breast height, which made it difficult to ford. But, on balance, the downpour was advantageous, because the leaves were softened and their own sounds were drowned by its noise. Nevertheless it was a dreadful day of tension, and hard physical effort demanded by slow, gliding movement with every muscle under precise control. Added to all that had gone before and their present failure to find Paddy, they had been reduced to near exhaustion when they reached the token refuge of the bamboo clump. It had been no fun for Allison either; alone, listening, and afraid.
Without Allison’s bergen, shortage of food became a worry. The only safe and certain way home was back on their tracks, which would take many days; so, since their search for Condon could hardly have been more thorough, the time to start had presumably come? Had it hell! They could not comprehend that Paddy might be irretrievably lost. He must be hiding somewhere. The luck of the Irish would pull him through. They couldn’t just push off and leave him.
The inactivity of the night, cold, restless, uncomfortable and wet, did little to revive their bodies and nothing at all for their spirits; mind over matter having been their spur for several days, they had now to exercise mind over mind as well, and their reserves of mental energy were very low. Allison again guarded the two bergens, a lonely and fearful responsibility; and Richardson and Allen found Condon’s, slashed and rifled. It might have been booby-trapped, so they lay hidden and watched it, considering. In theory, it did not necessarily mean the end; to slip the clumsy pack when being chased was standard practice, but in the circumstances of the enemy having been so very near at the last fusillade, and they themselves having searched everywhere that Paddy might have hidden had he survived, they knew in their hearts that hope was negligible. Their gloom was leaden and proved too heavy for nerves already strained beyond reasonable limits; they snapped, allowing hate and fury to flood in where self-control had held sway for so long.
Richardson jumped upright, shouted ‘I’m going to get the bastards who killed him’, and strode noisily and purposefully out onto the big track between Camps 1 and 2. Allen’s gorge rose too, but he soon became alarmed; to think such things was one matter, but actually to do them quite another. Perhaps it was easier for him to reimpose restraint upon himself, because the strain borne by a leader is double that on the led; common sense surged back and it was terrifying.
‘“Smokey”, stop!’ he called, but Richardson pressed on, adamant. Allen ran and used all his greater height and weight to throw him to the ground and into the bush.
‘Don’t be bloody wet, there’s hundreds of ’em.’
‘I’ll get as many as I can before they get me, let me go.’
‘What good’ll that do Paddy?’ Allen asked, still struggling, ‘or me and Jock either?’
There was no response and he had to keep talking; ‘Look, we haven’t been back to the landing-point, he might have gone there.’ The tension eased slightly, and the fight between friends began to seem ridiculous; there was a pause.
The trauma ended, and Richardson went straight back to duty as befitted an SAS soldier; except that he was now more like a Guards Sergeant on parade, marching at the quick with head up, chest out, shoulders square to the front, heedless of lesser beings who might be in his path for they would surely scurry out of it – and if there were any, they did. Allen hastened to follow, at first timorously and trying to pretend he was somewhere else, but then, in a strange metamorphosis, his stress and fear fell away. ‘Smokey’s’ outburst had revealed not weakness but absolute fearlessness, and he a man to be followed with supreme confidence; so Allen, too, straightened up and fell into step.
They heard a helicopter, but could not tell from the sound whether it was friend or foe. In fact, Woddiwiss was in it; an emergency was now in force and the Gurkhas were keen to mount a search in strength, but he wanted first to use his own judgement, instinct, and considerable knowledge of the Bulge, which he had built up by constantly flying over it visiting patrols. Furthermore, like Richardson, he had pierced the mental barrier of the physical border, becoming ever more inclined to think that the patrol was on the wrong side. His pilot was ‘Chunky’ Lord, an old friend who conformed to his every wish and whim. He flew the helicopter up and down what they believed to be the border, dropping into every landing-point and edging well over into Kalimantan, but without ever a sign of the patrol’s new clearing.
Richardson and Allen collected Allison and the bergens and marched to the landing-point. The rain and the wind stopped, making their every movement audible. The sun came out, tripling the visibility on the ground, and all the old tension returned as they approached their goal, where they fully expected the enemy to be waiting for them. But there was no one; now, surely, selfpreservation would become their duty?
‘We’re going back for Paddy’, said Richardson; ‘Come on.’
They left Allison again, and were gone four hours, finding nothing. SAS training has been criticized for unnecessary hardship, which has sometimes ever resulted in death on the Welsh hills. But these men had far outdone the worst that Selection or the harshest escape and evasion exercise had ever imposed, and they would have been ill-prepared and so endangered without them. ‘The best form of welfare for soldiers’, says Woodhouse, quoting Rommel, ‘is training.’
When bad light stopped flying, Woodiwiss suffered the anguish that is the heavy price to be paid for the delights of commanding a Squadron; having complete responsibility for his men’s safety, it seemed there was nothing he could do for them. At the landing-point too, all was again gloom; but anguish and gloom were moods, to be surmounted and dispelled; objective thinking leading to sensible action were what mattered. Woodiwiss and Richardson both spent the night thinking very hard indeed. Guided perhaps by common training and experience, mutual trust and the ability of each to put his mind into that of his friend, their thoughts converged.
Richardson and Allen might have concluded that they should start walking before the enemy found the landing-point or their food ran out; but they decided to wait because they believed that Woodiwiss would somehow arrange for a helicopter to come where one had been before. Woodiwiss might have reasoned that air search had failed and the Gurkhas should go in. Though where would they go? And what about that 150-strong enemy force swanning about somewhere? There must be a way of finding the landing-point; and as so often when a problem seems intractible the answer comes by wrenching the mind to a completely new approach. Of course! Don’t waste any more time probing from the north, but fly the route the patrol had walked from the south. Perhaps the terrain there would reveal the vital clue.
Accordingly, on the morning of the 17th, Lord flew Woodiwiss to Ba Kelalan, turned east, climbed to the border ridge at Ba Kelalan and followed it northwards, guided by Woodiwiss who tried to imagine how the country would have seemed to Richardson on the ground. Gradually the ridge curved northeast as it should have done, a bit sooner than expected perhaps but navigation could not be precise with no aids other than a compass and frequent short diversions to verify features and avoid cloud. And there, entirely logically, distinct in the turbulent ocean of otherwise virgin forest was a small circular hole. Felled trees showed the clearing to be man-made, but by whom? Lord circled tentatively before committing himself to what might prove to be a whirlpool, but Allen, at the vortex, realized his doubt and for the second time revealed himself without a shirt. Even from the air, Woodiwiss sensed the tension in the white, waving figure and was infected by it.
Down, with weapons protruding from the doorless cabin, a light landing, rotor blades held high at flying speed, and Allen was the first to hurl himself prone onto the floor as being the quickest way inside.
‘Paddy’s had it’, he shouted; ‘get out quick, there’s hundreds of ’em.’
From elation to finding them to depression at losing one
, Woodiwiss was nevertheless prepared for such news; and trusting Richardson to have done all that could be done, nodded his agreement without further questioning while the other two clambered aboard. They rose, excrutiatingly slowly with the extra weight but bristling with augmented weapons. At just above tree height Lord urged every knot out of the little aircraft to present an impossibly fleeting target to anyone on the ground, swooping, soaring or skidding sideways into valleys to obtain the most cover and attenuate engine-noise. Soon they were clear away, but when, or if, they crossed the border they still could not tell.
Paddy Condon was dead; Indonesian soldiers in Long Bawan had boasted of having killed him and word came back. They had failed to do so in the fire-fight when he had run towards them, but wounded him grievously in the groin and captured him. They tried to interrogate him, but he pretended not to understand Malay, which he did well; except to indicate that the British patrol was fifteen-strong which may have deterred the Indonesians from following up, and have been intended to do so. Admittedly this was only hearsay relayed through the jungle telegraph, but it rang true to those who knew Condon. Allen and Richardson were in no doubt at all. Why otherwise should the enemy allow them to wander through and around their camps for two days? Or not seek to annihilate them at the landing-point, which he would have detected from the initial resupply? He must have fenced himself into Camp 3 and awaited attack. There was no other explanation.
Then, because Paddy Condon could not walk and the Indonesians could not be bothered to carry him, they killed him.
SAS: Secret War in South East Asia Page 12