The Rose of Singapore

by Peter Neville

  Concealed in his ambush position, Fong Fook watched with grim amusement as a military police corporal, his whole body ablaze, crawled from the burning jeep and staggered a few feet before collapsing in a flaming, twitching heap. Fong Fook then continued to toss grenades at stalled vehicles and to fire round after round from his rifle at the panic-stricken unfortunates desperately seeking safety beyond the roadside drop-off. Fong Fook seldom missed his target. Below him the dead and the dying lay strewn the whole length of the road. Fong Fook was enjoying this massacre no more or no less than during the many other killings in which he had participated. On this occasion, however, his curiosity was aroused by the flurry of whiteness that he had glimpsed disappearing amid the topmost leaves of the jungle opposite. Why was the object so important that the driver, at the risk of his own life, should attempt its safeguarding? These questions nagged him even as he continued shooting at those unfortunates fleeing and seeking cover.

  Suddenly, during a momentary lull in the gunfire, he heard the faint cries of what sounded like a young child in distress. Listening intently, he heard more cries, which seemed to come from the treetops directly across the road from him. My curiosity is answered, he told himself. A child had been a passenger in the shiny new car, and now she is alone and hidden somewhere among those trees beyond the road.

  Although within the last ten minutes the destruction of vehicles and loss of life on the road below had been great, Fong Fook’s enemies were now not only taking up defensive positions just beyond the road’s edge but also were returning the fire in rapidly increasing intensity. Fong Fook knew only too well the security forces superior armaments, also their accuracy at finding their targets was not to be underestimated. Already, on either side of him, he had seen several of his men topple down the steep embankment after being hit by enemy gunfire. If his comrades were not dead on hitting the road, they were dispatched quickly by the avenging security forces. He could not afford to lose a single man much less several men; the time had come for him and his men to retreat to their jungle encampment, content in their knowledge that their mission had been accomplished. He had plundered no arms, ammunition, nor even medicines from the enemy. He had, though, accounted for at least a score of lives—not mercenary killings of military men, but by murder, half his victims being civilians, both men and women, as well as a Chinese couple with three young children who, one after another, he had picked off with his rifle. He was satisfied.

  Three miles east of where the road began its winding climb up Fraser’s Hill, six Daimler armoured cars bounced and rattled their way along a neglected dirt road meandering its way through swampland and patches of jungle. This same road, which was really no more than a muddy, potholed path had once been a main commercial highway for the local rubber and tin industry. But that was many years ago, even before the Japanese invasion of Malaya.

  Within the cramped confines of these stifling hot armoured vehicles sweated a commando-trained British Army patrol of the little known Special Forces Seek and Destroy unit or SAD.

  On that hot and humid afternoon, the patrol, accompanied by an Iban tracker from Borneo, had already covered twenty miles on the dirt road, passing through a government-controlled native village en route. Except for a few inhabitants peacefully going about their business in the village and a number of civil police guarding the place, there had been no other sign of human life for the last twenty miles. The whole area, though, was still considered to be a ‘black area’—infested and controlled by Communist terrorists.

  Corporal Bill ‘Killer’ Burns, on lookout from the leading armoured vehicle’s specially designed gun turret, suddenly spotted a wisp of smoke curling upward from a patch of thick jungle less than half a mile away. Like an oasis in a desert, the small patch of jungle was surrounded, not by sand, but by a wide area of waist-high lalang-covered swampland.

  “Hey! That’s smoke!” exclaimed Corporal Burns. “Take a look over there, sir, to our right.”

  He was speaking to Lieutenant Gates, commander of the patrol, who was riding in the same vehicle.

  Lieutenant Gates stuck his head out of the gun turret, took one look at the wisp of smoke, and then raised an arm signalling the vehicles following to stop and for all engines to be silenced.

  “What do you make of it, Killer?” the officer asked the young man at his side.

  Southampton-born Corporal Bill Burns, a five-year man who was already a two-year veteran of the Malayan conflict, answered dryly, “Well, sir, where there’s smoke there’s got to be fire. And from my experience, where there’s fire in the jungle, there’s got to be people. I bet there’s a hideout right smack in the middle of that patch of ulu.”

  “You’re probably right,” replied Lieutenant Gates, a forty-two-year-old officer who had seen warfare in many parts of the world, mainly with the Eighth Army in North Africa, Italy and Germany, then a brief spell in Korea, and now in Malaya. “Let’s investigate it.” It had been such a boring day for him, he was impatient to see something exciting happen. He was thinking, I’d like to take a patrol on foot through the grass and see what’s over there. However, he was well aware that under very few circumstances should he or his men leave the armoured cars to go chasing on foot after Communist terrorists.

  Reading his thoughts, Corporal Bill Burns said cautiously, “Sir, if there are people over there, then they’ll have look-outs. In that case, they’ve already seen us.”

  “I know, Killer. You’re right. The moment they see us moving in, they’ll be gone. Our best plan is to send Selso over to that patch of ulu. Let him see what’s over there.”

  “You’re right, sir.”

  “Well you tell him. He understands you.”

  Corporal Bill Burns smiled to himself at that last remark by his officer in charge. Yes, Selso, the Iban tracker, did indeed understand him, as much as any Iban tracker would understand a corporal in the British Army. Having shared each other’s company in Malaya these past two years, fighting alongside each other and often living together in primitive jungle encampments, they understood each other well.

  Disappearing into the bowels of the armoured car, Corporal Bill Burns got on the radio to the Daimler armoured car stopped next in line behind his vehicle and in moments he was speaking in Malay to Selso.

  Now Selso, like all other Iban trackers used in the Malay uprising, was from Borneo. The Sarawak Rangers is the official name for their small regiment. They are not only brave and dependable warriors but are also keenly observant and able to tell just by looking at grass or at surrounding jungle whether or not man or animal has passed that way, how many and how recently. Often used by British units, especially infantry units unfamiliar with jungle warfare, the Iban tracker almost always went ahead of British foot patrols.

  On his return to the turret, Corporal Burns reported to Lieutenant Gates, “He’d already seen the smoke, sir. There he goes now.”

  The two men in the turret watched as the Iban tracker sprang from the armoured car to the ground. Clad in jungle-green trousers tucked into soft running shoes, Selso, whose only weapon was a razor-sharp machete, was indeed a fearsome-looking warrior. His ears were pierced and stretched into long loops almost to his shoulders, his whole body, that which could be seen, was almost completely tattooed in colourful leaves and flowers, and his black, shaggy hair hung in ragged strands from beneath a jungle-green army hat. Just the sight of this man was enough to put the fear of death into any enemy.

  Crouching down as he entered the lalang, Selso quickly slid from sight among the tall grass. To those watching from the patrol vehicles, it was as if the lalang had swallowed him up and was now devoid of human life. Across the swampland, as far as the eye could see, not a blade of grass moved.

  Lieutenant Gates and his men patiently waited.

  Inside the stationary armoured cars the heat soon became stifling. The minutes ticked slowly by until almost an hour had passed. The lieutenant, Corporal Burns and Sergeant ‘Basher’ Rusk, the commander of the
second armoured car had by now got out of their vehicles and were standing talking together at the head of the column.

  “Well, where the fuck is he?” asked the sergeant.

  “He ain’t gone for no haircut,” replied the corporal. “He can take care of himself.”

  “Yes, just relax,” said the lieutenant. “We’ll see him when he’s good and ready to be seen.”

  Suddenly, out of the waist-high lalang grass emerged a grinning Selso accompanied by a Dyak head-hunter who, through broken black teeth, was also grinning and proudly wearing a recently gained trophy, a severed woman’s head hanging by its hair from a belt of dried grass worn around the man’s waist.

  “Damn it! The Dyak’s broken government regulations,” snorted the lieutenant. “Recent orders are that bodies are to be left whole and taken back to camp for identification purposes without bits and pieces being chopped off them.”

  “Well, I suppose we can’t blame them if they don’t follow all our orders. Anyway, the Dyaks have beaten us to it,” said Cpl, Burns ruefully.

  “Yeah. We’ll find no living enemy over there now, that’s for sure,” said the sergeant.

  Selso and the triumphant Dyak warrior approached them at a jogging pace, the woman’s head bouncing up and down grotesquely.

  “We’re too late,” Selso said to Corporal Burns in Malay. And, nodding to the Dyak, he continued, “He and his friends found the camp first. Nobody was there apart from one old woman and two old men. They’re dead now.”

  “What did he say?” asked the sergeant.

  “I think he said they’re all dead, didn’t he, Killer?”

  “You’re right, sir,” and with those words Corporal Burns translated into English what the tracker had said.

  Selso then continued, “There’s much to eat at the camp. Cooked pig, cats, monkeys, yams, a big pot of rice. Enough to feed an army.”

  Corporal Burns translated what the tracker had said.

  “Really!” exclaimed the lieutenant, with growing interest.

  “I think plenty of men went hunting. Return soon very hungry,” said Selso.

  Again Corporal Burn’s translated every word to both the officer and sergeant in charge.

  “All right. Let’s go in and have a look around,” said Lieutenant Gates. “Sergeant, this might be an ambush meant for us. Also the approach may be mined. Therefore, I’m going to do the unusual. First I’m going to send in a foot patrol, led by you, Killer.”

  “Right, sir,” said Corporal Burns.

  “Selso and his blood-thirsty cohort can lead the way. They’ll know if there’s any danger to our men,” said the lieutenant. “We’ll use a couple of mine detectors on that higher ground over there. If it’s clear of mines, we’ll follow the patrol in. Corporal Burns!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go over and inspect the place. Something fishy is happening, and I don’t like it. Take as many men as you need.”

  “Yes, sir,” acknowledged Corporal Burns. “I’ll ask for volunteers.”

  Every one of the men immediately volunteered. Anything to get out of those stifling hot vehicles. Corporal Burns chose eight.

  “All right men, let’s go,” Corporal Burns said quietly. “I’ll be behind Selso and his pal. Thompson, you and the others follow at ten paces apart. You, Apa Kayu, you take up the rear.”

  Apa Kayu’s real name was Watwood, but as the word ‘what’ in Malay is ‘apa’, and ‘wood’ is ‘kayu’, Lance Corporal Watwood became fondly known as Apa Kayu by everyone, including his commanding officer.

  “I always guard your bloody arses,” Apa Kayu jested. “I never get a chance to shoot anybody.”

  “You’ve shot your share,” said Corporal Burns. “Right then, fellows, now remember, as little noise as possible, and once we’re out in the grass, no talking. Let’s go.”

  A black cloud of mosquitoes rose from the ankle-deep watery swamps as the patrol from the SAD unit entered the waist-high lalang grass, each man following the other at about ten paces apart, their Sten guns held in sweaty hands, their fingers babying hot triggers ready to kill. But no opposition was met except for the myriad of whining mosquitoes, gooey water and mud sucking at their boots, and the long, sharp lalang grass that seemed intent on ripping their camouflaged jungle uniforms from their bodies.

  A huge python measuring at least twenty feet in length, slid silently through the grass across Lance-Corporal Thompson’s path.

  “Fuck you,” Corporal Burns heard Thompson fearfully mutter. Turning, he was quick enough to see Thompson levelling his Sten at the snake.

  “No!” Corporal Burns hissed. “Stay quiet.”

  Unharmed and unharming, the snake slithered its huge body through the long grass within spitting range of Thompson.

  Apart from the loud grunting of a startled wild pig running away from them, the patrol arrived at the outskirts of the patch of jungle without further incident. Now, at least, the ground underfoot was reasonably dry. Selso and his Dyak companion were met by another fierce-looking Dyak who grinned at the soldiers and held up for all to see a grisly, blood-dripping, man’s head. The Dyaks then led the soldiers almost a quarter of a mile into the interior, to where rude huts, or bashas, made from dry lalang, palm fronds and branches of trees had been built, the living quarters, it seemed, for a sizeable regiment. Also, latrines had been dug. Shielded by cut brush, a fire of about eight feet in diameter smouldered, with very little flame or smoke to it; just that tell-tale wisp. On the fire, in its glowing embers, sizzled and baked at least fifty yams. A wild boar on a spit cooked over the fire, also what appeared to be two big wild cats and several monkeys, all skinned and hanging from tripods over the fire and already baked a deliciously golden brown. The aroma from the cooked meat was mouthwatering. Keeping hot at the edge of the fire stood a huge iron cauldron brimming with cooked rice, and nearby was stacks of about fifty empty rice bowls and a paraphernalia of eating and cooking utensils.

  A headless old woman dressed in a ragged, bloodied samfoo lay near the fire; the body of the camp cook, it seemed. A scrawny old man, also dead and headless, lay a few yards away.

  About six more Dyaks who had been searching the camp appeared the same moment as the six armoured cars entered the encampment and stopped some yards from the fire. The lieutenant, on getting down from the leading vehicle, disdainfully prodded the body of the old man with the toe of his polished shoe. “They shouldn’t have severed their heads,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “However, it’s not our fault.” Turning to Corporal Burns, he asked, “What do you make of it, Killer?”

  “Well, sir, there’s enough food here to feed an army,” replied Corporal Burns solemnly. “It seems as if our luck’s in. During their absence, we’ve stumbled into the Commies’ lair.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. Maybe as many as fifty of them,” said the lieutenant.

  “It could be that we’ve run smack into their district headquarters,” ventured the corporal.

  “I think you’re right, Killer. But where are the bastards? Their lunch looks just about ready,” said the lieutenant.

  “Yes, that’s what’s bothering me.” pondered the corporal.

  “They can’t be too far away,” said the sergeant.

  “That’s true,” said Corporal Burns. “And there must be a hell-of-a lot of them or there wouldn’t be this much food being prepared. Where the hell are they, I wonder?”

  Suddenly, what sounded like the sharp crack and rumble of thunder in the distance made him say, “Christ! That’s gunfire and exploding grenades.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. And I bet I know from where,” shouted Corporal Burns.

  “From Fraser’s Hill, that’s where it’s from, God damn it! I don’t believe it! They’re hitting the convoy!” the sergeant exclaimed angrily.

  “I bet it’s happening at the Gap,” said Corporal Burns.

  “It’s too late now to race over there and help,” said the exasperated lieutenant as the noise in th
e distance intensified.

  “The Gap’s about three miles from here,” anguished Corporal Burns. “We’d never make it in time, not on a dirt road. They’ll be retreating back into the jungle by the time we get anywhere near them.”

  “That right, they will be retreating, and they’ll be returning here,” said Lieutenant Gates. “By God, we can’t help the poor sods at the Gap, but we sure as hell can stop those Commie bastards from ever eating this meal.”

  “You’re right, sir,” said the sergeant. “They’ll all come back here, and they’ll be returning in dribs and drabs; ones, twos and threes, hungry, tired, and off their guard. That’s when we’ll ambush them, a few at a time.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m thinking, Sergeant,” agreed the lieutenant. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll catch every one of them as they return. This is indeed where the hunter becomes the hunted. Detail the men as you see fit, Sergeant.”

  “Right, sir! I suggest that we form into groups and surround the whole encampment,” said the sergeant.

  “There are three paths leading into the camp,” said the Iban tracker to Corporal Burns.

  Corporal Burns translated the tracker’s words to both Lieutenant Gates and Sergeant Rusk.

  “Good. That makes our job much simpler. I’m sure these Dyaks will be only too happy to assist us. We’ll line the paths with hiding men and wait there for the bastards to return. And as they straggle back to camp, we’ll kill them as quietly as possible. Now remember, I want silent killing, no screams and no gunfire. We’ll use just our knives and machetes.”

  “Good thinking, Sergeant,” replied the lieutenant.

  “Yeah, you’re right. We could get the whole fucking lot of ‘em,” said Corporal Burns.