SAS: Secret War in South East Asia

by Dickens, Peter;

  Second across was Corporal Wally Poxon’s patrol, who went to the Three Camps on the River Pa Raya and made a more leisurely and thorough inspection than Woodiwiss could do. But they also had to contend with the uncompromising isolation of such operations; a man developed glandular fever from a septic cut and could have been taken home, for he could still totter, but completed the course instead for nine days. That has to be the SAS attitude to their chosen way of life or their boast that they go always a little further would be arrogant and meaningless.

  Sergeant Lawson followed the track used for the Billy White ambush to Long Tapadong and found, together with useful military information, that sleeping bags of parachute silk were miserably inadequate at 5,000 feet. Sleep was just possible until one in the morning after which the four men huddled together to share what warmth they generated. Three patrols reconnoitred the Highlands area, Catterall’s sighting 45 armed men, and their findings were later exploited by the 2/6th Gurkhas. Sergeant Saunders went to Nantakor and found it still ruined and empty.

  Although England had seen so little activity during his patrol, the main Selalir/Sembakung river must have been of primary importance to the enemy, and much more had to be found out about it. He was not supplying his forward units by air or that would have been apparent, and no one in his senses would use porterage for bulky loads when boats on a navigable river were available, unless for a very good reason. There was as yet no such reason, though the British aimed to provide one, and the stretch of river near Labang was an admirable place to watch.

  Accordingly, Sergeant Maurice Tudor took his patrol to a point not far from England’s tree and settled down to watch. On the second day he felt ill and ran a temperature which, on the third, shot up to 104°F. Tudor was totally incapacitated with lepto-spirosis. He could not move; he could not even think through the raging fever, blazing headache and griping stomach pains, while vomiting and coughing blood drained him of strength too until he was left with so little that life was barely sustained and death drew near, perceptible to them all.

  SAS rules prescribed Immediate Medevac’, but since that was out of the question the patrol stayed where they were, counting the boats and again being surprised by the apparent absence of military traffic, while Trooper Russell the medic discharged his dismaying responsibility. He succeeded, just, with the aid of chloramphenicol, Tudor’s unfaltering will to live, and medical advice by radio; though coded messages tapped out in morse did not convey the patient’s true extremity, which de la Billière was later appalled to discover.

  After twelve days on the river bank, Tudor could just drag himself to his feet and with the support of his companions began the painful, halting, three-day march to the border landing-point and base, where de la Billière took one look at the haggard face and wasted limbs and hurried him to hospital. He recovered, so all was well that ended well, and the patrol having been ‘uneventful’ the illness was largely forgotten. Only the demonstrative affection of these two fast friends add any colour to the story:

  Tudor: ‘I felt quite sick’.

  de la Billière: ‘You nearly died, I’m glad you didn’t.’

  As Tudor’s patrol came out, Captain Arish Turle led in another, a little further upstream. He had the same aim of building up the river picture, but in contrast his stay was short. On the second day, a dog sniffed its way into the observation post and yelped when it saw the men. Appeasement was attempted – ‘Sh, Fido, there’s a good dog; have a biscuit?’ – but to no avail for it leapt away bristling and tumbled helter-skelter down the slope. The dog rejoined its master who now appeared on the towpath and looked up intently. Then he moved on, not apparently alerted.

  Next day the sudden appearance of two locals on the patrol’s little track between the camp and observation post could have been quite innocent too, though momentarily terrifying. The intruders seemed equally scared at first, but Turle managed to detain them for a conversation in jungle Malay which became relaxed and friendly, if not entirely sincere. The SAS were unhappily lost, he said, and would be most grateful to be put on the track to Bantul, but they were frightened of meeting Indonesian soldiers so were there any about? None this side of Lumbis came the equally specious reply; Turle knowing perfectly well that the nearest garrison was much nearer, only two miles upstream at Labang.

  The men said they were hunting, but although they might reasonably have been investigating the spot where their friend’s dog had behaved strangely, they had no dog themselves and carried no traps, spears or blowpipes, only ‘parangs’ which are not hunting weapons. When they left in the direction of Labang, studiously unhurriedly as it seemed to Turle, he decided to leave too. That was in any case obligatory on being discovered by anyone; and it was also prudent, as Sergeant Paddy Freaney’s shaggy dog story would illustrate.

  Freaney’s patrol, which included Hoe on his second cross-border venture, started on the same day as Turle’s, but was allowed longer to observe the river without distraction. Again there were no soldiers but plenty of boats, and scrutiny of the visible parts of their cargoes led at last to the simple deduction that the enemy was using local transport and labour for his supplies.

  Then came the dog, standing in the bow of one of two boats being paddled up from Labang and quivering with excitement at something it detected in the bush some 25 yards short of the patrol. The crews, clearly a hunting party, caught the excitement and turned for the shore, the dog leaping the last two yards and sprinting for his quarry. It was a wild boar. The SAS knew that because with a, grunt and a squeal the massive brute hurtled directly into the observation post with the dog snapping at its heels. Right behind them raced a hunter who had made astonishingly good time up the slope and burst into view with a tally-ho and stabbing-spear at the high port.

  The company thus precipitately assembled was ill-adjusted to social intercourse and dispersed with similar dispatch. The boar and dog pressed on regardless of the patrol’s convenience, while the man froze in mid-stride, his eyes wide and white with terror. Then he spun round and tore downhill to his boat, which he boarded without waiting for his friends and paddled downstream as one possessed. Freaney was shaking his head and wondering whether all this had really happened when another man approached, circumspectly this time and clearly in order to see what had caused the flurry. Compromised already, Freaney used all his Irish charm to make friends and influence the newcomer favourably; but when circumstances require one to materialize suddenly and unexpectedly at very close range, it is hard not to appear more like a malevolent djinn than a fairy godmother. The man hastily excused himself, murmuring like the White Rabbit that he was already late for an appointment and must be getting along.

  An element of humour has been detected in this action-packed sequence when viewing it from afar; but Freaney was the man on the spot and far from wanting to laugh, his mind concentrated on the pressing need to get off it. The overriding consideration was that the first boatman would reach Labang and its garrison in something under ten minutes at his present rate of striking. The patrol therefore left promptly, but then moved excruciatingly slowly so as to leave no tracks, stopping to listen every half hour in case the enemy should try and cut them off, It was a hard decision. The alternative, which was much more to Freaney’s inclination, was to go like the wind and hope to outpace either movement. Indeed, they had only covered 1,200 yards in two hours when the enemy stormed the observation post with a great deal of explosive noise, and Freaney wished they were much further away. But he had been right, for there were no tracks for the enemy to follow and the patrol was unmolested.

  de la Billière, always trying to keep a jump ahead and never being short of ideas, suggested that since the locals were clearly reporting SAS patrols to the enemy – and there was evidence that they had been threatened with dire consequences if they did not – it should be practicable to stage-manage the Freaney type of incident so that he would find not an abandoned position but a whole troop of SAS or even a company of Gurkhas.
As for the river traffic, they could not shoot the boatmen but there was nothing to prevent SAS stopping them and destroying the stores; indeed, that might be a very good way of inducing an enemy response at a time and place of SAS choosing. The time would come to try these proposals, but tactical expediency now dictated that the area around Labang should be rested temporarily.

  ‘A’ Squadron’s last excursion of the tour was also their first offensive one. The current policy of SAS reconnaissance and infantry strikes was undoubtedly the best division of labour, but cloak without dagger became irksome to those trained as hit-men. Just this once they were allowed off the hook to sharpen up both morale and expertise. The mission had, of course, to suit the overall plan, and nowhere would a small-scale deterrent strike do more good than near Pa Fani just outside the Bulge. Captain Dunseath led ten men of 3 Troop, and Squadron Sergeant-Major Lawrence Smith went along too, as he often did when a project seemed interesting; they stayed a week but nothing eventuated except stomach upsets, caused by substituting small dried fish for the usual sardines.

  Lawrence Smith has not so far been mentioned on this tour because he had been doing something interesting in the First Division of Sarawak. The SAS repertoire includes raising and training irregular forces in almost any circumstances; Major Muir Walker, in a change of appointment from the British Embassy in Djakarta, was charged with creating a team of 40 selected Border Scouts for cross-border operations. It was a task for which the warlike Ibans were eminently suited, having done little else in their entire tribal history until comparatively recently. They would be far better at penetrating undetected and surviving in the jungle if things went wrong than the best-trained foreigners, and were keen for a front-line opportunity of defending their country.

  Training began in the early summer of 1964. A close bond developed between the highly motivated SAS and the equally enthusiastic warriors, simple yet intelligent, charming, hardworking and incomparably sincere. Sergeant Pruang, the chief, and Nibau, his No. 2, were both headmen of their home longhouses and strong characters. Jogong was a jungle operator and a tracker beyond compare even among his peers. Krusin was the intellectual, speaking Cantonese, English and Malay as well as his native Land Dyak, of which tribe there was a leavening among the preponderant Ibans. Soon, however, it became evident that decisive leadership and military discipline were not their strong points, but since, without them, otherwise brave men would rather too readily invoke bird-watching taboos in favour of ‘tidak apa’ (‘swing it till Monday’), much of the training was devoted to developing those qualities.

  Major Walker decided in July 1964 that some of the team were ready for their first mission. He sent them on a shallow incursion to watch a river and ambush an enemy boat, but none came. Several similar attempts were made in August. At the fifth attempt, they achieved their first success, ambushing a track, killing two Indonesians, and returning in triumph with – a head.

  This was a poser, revealing that the long suppressed headhunting urge had resurfaced with the appearance of a legitimate enemy. Forcefully, too, as the SAS soon realized, a head being highly prized as a battle trophy, which a man had to win in fair fight before he could tattoo his forefinger. To tell the Ibans they must not do it might blunt their enthusiasm or make them angry and uncooperative. ‘Why on earth not?’ they would ask; ‘the chap’s dead anyway and it’s part of our religion. If you kill someone in battle you must cut off his head and drink his blood because that makes him part of you so he can’t haunt you, and you get his courage. Besides, it’s kind to him because it frees his spirit, which would otherwise be trapped in his body, and we always do it with proper religious observances, like Holy Communion.’ That comparison may seem inexact, but refuting it was not easy; many of the team knew what they were talking about, being practising Christians as well as animists so as to obtain the greatest possible protection against all the changes and chances of this mortal life.

  Why then did it matter? Was instinctive revulsion a good reason for trying to stop it or should that be suppressed as one had to do when eating ‘jarit’? Honesty had also to concede that the effect on the enemy would undoubtedly be to enhance his alarm and despondency which was the main purpose of these raids. All the same it stuck, as it were, in the gullet, and could be guaranteed to do so to a much greater degree in the world beyond Borneo, indeed outside the team itself, which could not be expected to understand the local ethic. The practice was therefore banned, with stern edict and pious, if fragile, hope.

  October 1964 drew to its close and ‘B’ Squadron was already in Borneo, completing its training and eager to step forward. The turnover was gradual and during it Lieutenant-Colonel John Woodhouse went on his last operational patrol before leaving the SAS and the Army at the end of the year. Sadness was evident then, despite the boisterous fun enjoyed at a hail and farewell party for those of the two Squadrons not in the jungle. No one could fully believe that the man they all regarded as the father of the modern Regiment would soon be gone.

  ‘A’ Squadron had again earned General Walker’s commendation, and de la Billière took the Squadron to Singapore en route for home. There transport was delayed for a week, as his Sergeant-Major, Lawrence Smith, clearly remembers: ‘The delay didn’t worry us because Singapore was a marvellous place to spent our accumulated pay and have a marvellous time; but then he said, “I know! We’ll do some parachute training.” Well I mean, really, after a hard four-month tour! So I said, “You must be joking!” But parachuting we went; quite enjoyed it actually and glad not to have spent the money, but oh dear, what a man!’

  CHAPTER 9

  THREAT TO KUCHING

  ‘B’ Squadron’s First Tour, November 1964 to February 1965

  Major Johnny Watts hoped that his new Squadron would be spared a major enemy incursion before the men had settled into the rhythm and mastered the anxieties of operational life, in which every activity would be more difficult than it had been in training. Medics thoroughly versed in the theory of tooth-extraction found that much practice was needed to perfect their skill, their patients submitting, poor devils, ‘faute de mieux Signallers who had qualified well in Wales often took several hours to contact base, for incomprehensible and infuriating reasons that yielded only gradually to the fine tuning of conditioned instinct: the set was damp, the basha-site was masked by hills, hissing rain and an uncomfortable slope inhibited precise work or the aerial would be better laid out in another direction. But when at last the crackle came, ‘Pass your message’, and frustration was swallowed up in exultation, the weighty text was probably at this time, ‘Nothing to report’, and just as well. ‘They learnt on the job,’ says Watts, ‘fast’.

  Watts walked the SAS frontage as his predecessors had done, but chiefly to assess his men’s problems and reactions to uncompromising reality. He found one or two weak links, men who had surmounted every selection and training hurdle whose harshness they now justified by falling at the very last. He also resolved the odd clash of personalities that could seriously impair a patrol’s effectiveness, raw nerve-endings agonizingly scraping together despite genuine efforts to sheath them. Sergeant Jimmy Daubney, ‘a barbary little NCO, first class’, could not get on with one of his men who was quickly removed, but went on to prove himself an excellent soldier too.

  Apart from those few cases, Watts was greatly heartened by the potential and performance of his Squadron and urged them ever onward with his usual colourful emphasis; but, at the same time, he adopted a private policy of careful ‘pacing’, trying only to give them tasks within their growing abilities so that they would not outrun their strength or suffer some grievous blow to morale. He was only to be allowed a single year with them and conceived it his duty to hand over truly seasoned warriors with plenty of fire left in their bellies.

  To begin with, therefore, cross-border patrols were few. Sergeant ‘Darkie’ Davidson investigated the Long Tapadong track again and found no sign of the enemy, a significant improvement after Billy Whi
te. At Nantakor, however, the enemy had returned, so the Salilirans’ carefree holiday was over for the time being and SAS patrols along the Pensiangan front had to resume their wary existence. Daubney’s beat was the important Bantul area through which the River Pensiangan flows south across the border to become the Sembakung and leads to Labang, where the enemy garrison had been reinforced; an incursion was suspected and a company of Gurkhas took up an ambush position on the river just over the border, guided by Daubney. When the force had settled down comfortably, some locals who had watched them dropped in for a chat and whatever might be going in the way of goodies, which they got; and leaving with expressions of great goodwill went straight and told the Indonesians, who came stealthily up the far bank and poured a heavy Are into the position.

  The Gurkhas were well concealed and none was hit, neither was there an incursion, but Daubney noted two useful lessons. One, that ambush as a tactic can only succeed if surprise is nothing short of absolute; and the other, that to use boats (which he had done) when there was even a chance of the enemy lurking on the thickly wooded banks would, despite their convenience, be Very, very untactical’, as one of his team, Norman Hartill, put it; worse even than walking on a border track.

  On the home front the weather was thoroughly depressing, with constant drenching rain which slowed movement and delayed air resupply. Improvisation and endurance were thus demanded and just what the Squadron needed to set the seal on its training. Kabu was re-roofed as a gift from the Army. Watts put the work in hand because he was told to, while wondering whether it might be overdoing generosity to the point of engendering odious comparisons in less favoured villages and a habit of grasping acquisitiveness rather than genuine liking and collaboration; but Kabu was still not really happy, and its strategic position could make it critical.

  ‘Tanky’ Smith took over the ‘Viper’ ambushes from his namesake ‘Gipsy’ and was professionally impressed as they inspected them together. Using ‘Gipsy’s’ detailed instructions, without which they would have been helpless, they would start by identifying, say, a distinctive tree and approaching it from a given direction. Then they would walk perhaps fifty yards on another line and dig up a buried wire that was not dangerous but led to a forked stick from which the detonator was so many feet on such and such a bearing. ‘Gipsy’ would then disarm the ambush and show every component to ‘Tanky’, who would accept responsibility when he was satisfied and set it all up again.