The Regiment

by Michael Asher

  The fact that Skardon hadn’t ‘scooted’ but had gone to pull White out, putting his own life in danger, became a bone of contention in de la Billière’s squadron, and the subject of numerous Chinese parliaments. SOPs were in place for good reason, but abandoning a wounded comrade went against the very cement of soldierly honour. A Squadron SSM, Lawrence Smith, a man whose experience and judgement, de la Billière said, ‘he could rely on completely’,4 declared that while ‘shoot-and-scoot’ was a sound tactic, he would have ignored it to save a mate. Finally, John Woodhouse came up with a pronouncement that did him credit: ‘… morale demands … an order that if a man is known to have fallen, the patrol will remain in the close vicinity,’ he wrote, ‘until either they see for certain that he is dead, or they recover him alive. I think we should expect to fight to the death for this.’5

  77. ‘One of the most efficient uses of military force in the history of the world’

  They were stalking through the rain-forest over a thousand metres inside Kalimantan, making for the River Sekayan, where they would bump longboats ferrying Indonesian forces. It was a four-man patrol of D Squadron, three of whom were new to Borneo. The patrol-boss was nine-year SAS vet Sgt. Edward ‘Geordie’ Lillico, the lead-scout Tpr. Ian Thomson, an ex-miner from Fife.

  The patrol had separated from the rest of the half-troop earlier, and had dumped Bergens with them. They carried only belt-kit, but still they moved with a grinding slowness, careful not to disturb a grass-stalk or damage a single leaf. Thomson was carrying a 5.56mm US-made M16 Armalite rifle. Though it had only half the effective range of the SLR, it was a good weapon for a lead-scout because of its fast rate of fire. The others had standard-issue 7.62mm SLRs. Thomson navigated and picked the route through the undergrowth, remaining as far ahead of the patrol as the limit of visibility. As Roger Blackman’s patrol had found out six months earlier, the lead-scout was the man most likely to get whacked. The others had to make sure they wouldn’t be taken down in the same burst of fire, or by the same mine or booby-trap. The ‘shoot-and-scoot’ SOP still obtained. Now the SAS were operating in a foreign country the British weren’t even officially at war with, it was even more important to avoid casualties.

  It was February 1965, and D Squadron, under Major Roger Woodiwiss, Devon & Dorset Regiment, was on its fourth tour in Borneo. Indonesian incursions were escalating. At a conference in Tokyo, President Sukarno had declared that Indonesian troops had every right to be in northern Borneo, as the Malaysian Federation didn’t exist. Since the start of A Squadron’s tour the previous year, there’d been a change in British policy in the Confrontation. Harold Wilson’s Labour government had been elected, but despite its commitment to pulling out ‘East of Suez’, Defence Secretary Denis Healey had proved himself a hawk. He authorized Director of Operations Walter Walker to allow his forces to penetrate Kalimantan on aggressive ops, designated ‘Claret’. At last, the SAS was to take the war to the enemy, though the existence of ‘Claret’ was secret. ‘I couldn’t tell the world about it,’ Healey said. ‘So I had to keep it from Parliament.’ At first a maximum distance of three thousand metres was allowed, later extended to ten thousand.

  There’d been other changes too. John Woodhouse had left the Regiment a few weeks earlier and been replaced by his former second-in-command, Mike Wingate-Gray. D Squadron had just taken over from B Squadron under Major Johnny Watts. The squadron originally formed from 21 SAS, which had vanished after the Jebel Akhdar op, had been re-established to bring the Regiment up to strength. The pressure on 22 SAS had also been relieved by the deployment of two companies of the Parachute Regiment – the Guards Independent Company and C Company, 2 Para, both of which were to be trained up to SAS standards.

  This was the Lillico patrol’s second trip across the frontier in two days. The previous day they’d come across an abandoned guerrilla camp only fifteen hundred metres from the border. The camp, a jungle-shanty of dilapidated bashas, looked as if it hadn’t been used in six months, but Lillico wanted to have an extra shufti before they moved on to the river. Returning to the same place twice was against another Woodhouse SOP, but SOPs were guidelines, not orders, and the place might yield interesting data.

  There was a mass of bamboo on the approach to the camp. This was hard going, because bamboo could make a racket if trodden on. Thomson was only six metres from the camp when he paused behind bamboo fronds to scope it out. The rest of the patrol froze. They watched, they listened, they waited. The shelters were scattered through the bamboo, at the base of the great jungle trees. There was a rock outcrop and a stream, but to Thomson, nothing had changed since yesterday.

  Thomson eased out of cover, and the world blew apart. Automatic fire gobbled air, rounds scattergunned, yocking up dirt, snarfing leaves, clipping in from all sides. Thomson took hits in the left thigh that splintered the thigh-bone and hurled him behind a rock. He tried to grapple himself up, but couldn’t make it. He couldn’t feel his leg, and blood was spouting into his eyes. He clocked an Indo trooper sitting up two metres away, with a bolt-action rifle – not much more than a kid. His eyes were wide and his mouth was going like a beached fish. Thomson groped for his weapon, stabbed it the kid’s way, carved a burst across his torso.

  Rounds were still incoming, snarking soil, smacking leaves. Thomson had copped the same wound that had taken out Billy White of A Squadron the previous year: his femoral artery was punctured. His leg wasn’t in the right place, and blood was whaling from his thigh in long squirts. He clamped his jaws and leopard-crawled into a bamboo clump, his dud leg sliding, globbing blood. His shattered thigh-bone crepitated. He made the brush, ripped the rag off his head, bound it tight until the bleeding stopped. He grabbed the morphine syrette from round his neck, jabbed muscle, squeezed plastic. Then he realized that the patrol commander, Geordie Lillico, was proned out not five metres away, white as a ghost and sodden with blood.

  Lillico had taken a slug through the thigh that had gouged the sciatic nerve but missed the artery. On exit it had pulped one entire cheek of his arse. He couldn’t stand. When Ian Thomson hopped up to investigate with his leg tourniqueted, Lillico opened his eyes. Thomson clocked movement, and saw an Indo step out from behind a tree. He whamped a 5.56mm double tap and the Indo capsized. Enemy fire was starbursting out of the jungle and Lillico already had his SLR braced. The weapon pumped twice. Brass cases pinged. Bat shadows flitted. Acrid fumes wafted. Silence lulled.

  Lillico had seen Thomson on his feet, and thought he was sound. He told him to get back to the emergency RV and bring up the rest of the patrol. Thomson didn’t argue, even though he knew he couldn’t walk, and the meet-up point was over a klick away. Thomson bellied through the bamboo on elbows and one knee, with the jagged bone-ends of his femur crunching. As he crawled off, Lillico clocked three Indos lurking, and sighted-in, squeezed steel. 7.62mm rounds gnashed, and Lillico saw impact and blood-spray. Two Indos spudsacked, the other vanished. Lillico hugged his gunstock, ready to fry anything that moved. Nothing did, so he tore open field-dressings, whopped them on his wounds. He mainlined morphine. He didn’t feel pain. He felt mystical and at peace with the world.

  The patrol’s two tailenders hadn’t been hit in the initial contact. Following SOP they’d bugged out back to the emergency rendezvous. The other patrol had heard the contact and had already tapped out a warning to Roger Woodiwiss’s ops room. When the two survivors reported Lillico and Thomson missing, Woodiwiss tasked the RAF with immediate chopper search-and-rescue. He requested the local company of 6 Gurkha Rifles as back-up.

  The six SAS-men at the RV had two choices. They could scour the jungle for Thomson and Lillico themselves, or they could go for the Gurkhas, three hours’ march away at Sain, and guide them in. The crucial factor was enemy strength. The two survivors thought the Indos were probably a company. The consensus was to go for Gurkha back-up.

  Before dark, Lillico managed to drag himself five hundred metres through thick belukar undergrowth and into a pig-rut un
der a fallen trunk. The light was beginning to mush. Lillico heard the thump of heli-blades above him. He knew the chopper pilot wouldn’t locate him in this dense brush, and was too bombed to remember he was carrying a SARBE search-and-rescue beacon.

  Night came and nightsong enveloped him. Lillico dipped out. When he came round in the morning, six Indos were scattered through the bush within a radius of thirty metres, searching for him. One of them shimmied up a tree and perched on a fork, scoping the area. For a second Lillico’s eyes locked the climber’s, and he thought the Indo had spotted him. Just then, he heard the skittering of a chopper. This time he remembered the SARBE, but knew he couldn’t activate it. The heli was a small Whirlwind, and if she came in low, the Indos would shoot her down. He lay there rigid until the enemy left. After a while he heard gunshots and his heart jerked. He thought they’d bagged Thomson.

  Ian Thomson was splayed out by a stream near the emergency RV about fifteen hundred metres away with his Armalite smoking. He’d lain up in a pig-hole all night, slackening off the tourniquet to prevent gangrene. Thomson was patrol medic and carried the medical pack. There were twenty syrettes of morphine in the pack, and he’d been squidging the stuff in on the hour. At first light he’d started scuffing through bush on his elbows. It took him the whole day to make the RV, where he found the rest of the patrol had split. His and Lillico’s Bergens were still there. He found a full water-bottle, chugged down liquid, puked it back up. He sledded his body to a stream for more. That was when he heard heli-blades looping. He was still high as the moon, and he thought the chopper was the enemy. He whaled off bursts at her through the forest canopy. The rounds never went anywhere near the heli, and the pilot, Flying Officer Dave Collinson, didn’t hear them, but only a hundred metres away a Gurkha lead-scout did. When he glided suddenly out of the foliage, Thomson already had his rifle zeroed-in. The Gurkha patrol had donned their bush-hats inside out so that the scarlet head-bands showed. It was the gash of red that stopped Thomson from blotting him.

  Above them, Dave Collinson was on his eighteenth pass when the Gurkha signaller came through with the message that Thomson had been found. He dipped the Whirlwind down towards the canopy with the winch-motor churning, but this was primary jungle, and the trees towered up to two hundred feet. They were just too tall for him to get the whirlybird in low enough for the winch-cable. He told the Gurkhas they’d have to find a clearing where he could get in lower.

  That day, Lillico scooped himself two hundred metres uphill to a ridge, where he thought the RAF search-and-rescue boys would have more chance of seeing him. It was a marathon, and by the time he’d topped the rise he was feeling faint again. Not long before last light, the squiffing of chopper-blades hacked into his consciousness. He activated the SARBE. Collinson picked it up almost at once, and homed in. His winch-man spotted Lillico and the winch-cable spigoted down. Minutes later, Lillico had the strop round him and was being winched up into the Whirlwind, dropping his precious SLR on the way.

  Lillico won the MM for his grit. Thomson, who was pulled out next day, was awarded an MID. Thomson recovered, but with one leg shorter than the other, and was never fit for active service again. Lillico recovered and soldiered on. Thomson never forgot the look on the young Indo’s face in the split second before he shot him. Lillico never quite forgave himself for losing his rifle. When de la Billière’s squadron took over from Woodiwiss the following month, they heard about the Lillico patrol and were highly impressed. De la Billière called it ‘one of the most extraordinary feats of survival known even to the SAS’.1

  Although ‘Claret’ had been authorized the previous year, it was Woodiwiss’s D Squadron who’d begun deep penetration in earnest. De la Billière now discovered that bigger patrols were needed to take on the Indos, and increased numbers to troop strength. The SAS were back in their old long-range raiding mode – hitting enemy forces on the river or on a track, photographing enemy installations, even tapping Indo phone-lines. De la Billière still felt the urge to lead from the front – a practice that Woodhouse had frowned on as ‘hogging the limelight’ or ‘gong hunting’. ‘Troop operations are for troop commanders,’ he’d written de la Billière the previous year, ‘not you or me.’2

  In September, though, de la Billière accompanied a patrol led by Sgt. Maurice Tudor to hit Indo shipping on the Aya Hitam river, but took care to stay in the background. ‘For me there was the irritation of not being in control,’ de la Billière wrote, ‘since I was merely a guest or passenger – of having different ideas about how things should be done, and of being obliged to suppress them.’3 When Tudor’s troop moved to the riverbank, de la Billière remained behind to guard their Bergens with his radio-operator, Cpl. Geordie Low.

  Low and de la Billière were busy enciphering and tapping off messages when they heard the pop and clatter of small-arms fire from the river. It lasted two minutes. Moments later, Tudor’s men burst out of the undergrowth, grunting that the enemy were after them. They’d bumped two longboats, sunk one and run the other aground, taking out sixteen Indos. The bad news was that the boats had been followed up by two more. They’d immediately put in at the bank, and the crews were already in hot pursuit. The men saddled up their packs. De la Billière and Low crammed the radio-gear into a Bergen. As the eighteen SAS-men legged it through the ulu, the Indos started lobbing three-inch mortar shells. ‘It is no fun being mortared in the jungle,’ de la Billière recalled, ‘as bombs detonate in the tree-tops, and hurl shrapnel downwards.’4 By sunset they had outrun their pursuers.

  A Squadron was relieved by B a month later, and de la Billière returned to Blighty with a bar to his MC. Whether Woodhouse considered his activities ‘gong-hunting’ is unknown: the ‘co-founder of the modern SAS’ had long since left the army, and had taken up a post with David Stirling’s ‘rent-a-fighter’ company, Watchguard International. De la Billière had lost twenty-five per cent of his Squadron in casualties during his two tours in Borneo.

  Though B Squadron had some contacts, theirs was the last active SAS tour in Borneo. That December Sukarno was toppled by a military coup and replaced by General Suharto, who, in May the following year, opened negotiations with Malaysia. Cross-border raids continued sporadically as Suharto manoeuvred for concessions, but during its last tour, D Squadron had no brushes with the opposition. The Borneo Confrontation was over, with the loss of only a hundred and thirty-four British servicemen – as Denis Healey commented, ‘about the same number of people that are killed on the roads on a Bank Holiday weekend’.

  Healey considered Borneo the greatest triumph of his administration. It was a victory for the Stirling–Lewes concept of tiny units operating with maximum efficiency, for the Calvert–Woodhouse principle of hearts and minds, and a final vindication of the conviction that the man is mightier than the machine. ‘The Americans tried to win the Vietnam war by bombing,’ Healey commented, ‘and millions were killed, and they lost.’ The Borneo campaign, he said, was ‘one of the most efficient uses of military force in the history of the world’.5

  78. ‘The covert and clandestine actions for which it is world famous’

  When Major Peter de la Billière arrived back at Bradbury Lines in 1969, after four years of staff work, he found the same neat lawns and ‘spider’ barracks, but the Regiment itself much changed. In the ‘Kremlin’ – the Intelligence and Planning cell – he encountered his new commanding officer and old squadron boss, Lt. Col. Johnny Watts, as craggy as ever, and with the eternal roll-up hanging from his mouth. Watts told him that since Borneo and Aden had fizzled out, the Regiment was having to ‘sell itself’ to the military establishment – winkling out jobs here and there. As second-in-command it was de la Billière’s job to locate suitable assignments.

  22 SAS was now part of a new command structure. The post that Dare Newell had occupied as HQ Major had always been intended to form the nucleus of a higher command, and this was now in place, with a Director, SAS Group – currently Brigadier Fergus Semple. The
Brigadier commanded 21, 22, 23 SAS, and the newly-formed 63 SAS Signals Squadron (TA). The SAS Group was based at Duke of York’s Barracks in King’s Road, Chelsea. Although the TA regiments were smaller than the regular unit, ‘Group’ was good for business. It meant more posts for senior NCOs and officers as permanent staff: sergeant-instructors, training-majors, adjutants. There were now, for instance, three possible slots for regular lieutenant-colonels, and three for regular regimental sergeant-majors.

  22 SAS had expanded back almost to its Malaya level, with four regular sabre squadrons and a new ‘R’ or ‘Reserve’ squadron. ‘R’ Squadron was a TA unit based in Hereford, whose personnel were ‘weekend soldiers’ but trained alongside the regulars with a view to providing individual replacements when needed. The other new squadron was ‘G’, formed around a nucleus of men from the Guards Independent Parachute Company. The Guards Para, the pathfinder company of 16 Parachute Brigade, was already an anomaly – a unit of the Parachute Regiment wearing Para Reg insignia, made up entirely of Guardsmen. Now it was to be converted lock, stock and barrel to SAS.

  Some of the old hands weren’t happy about the addition of G Squadron. The designation itself – ‘G’ for ‘Guards’, when the logical title would have been ‘E’ Squadron – suggested that it was somehow ‘different’. It was sponsored by the Household Division, and since all of its men came from one source, it formed a sort of unit-within-a-unit that to many SAS-men looked suspiciously like a ‘takeover’ by the old elite.