Out in the Midday Sun

by Margaret Shennan

  The terrorists set fire to buildings on Allison’s estate, leaving the labour force wailing in shock. Dr Reid Tweedie, the local doctor, with Boris Hembry, Manager of Kamuning Estate, drove past the estate entrance, noticed a policeman on guard, and immediately offered their services, but it was too late.50

  The High Commissioner, Sir Edward Gent, had no choice but to declare a state of emergency in Perak and Johore, which was quickly extended to the other states. When the news reached Britain there was panic talk in the press. Eleven days after the Sungei Siput incident John Soper tried to calm the worries of his daughter, who was at school in England:

  You seem to have got the wrong idea of things out here. There has been no rising …

  For the last year or two they [the Communists] have been stirring up trouble by strikes … But these tactics haven’t been working as well or as quickly as they expected, and they have now threatened to kill every European, every policeman and everybody who supports Chiang Kai Shek. The police have rounded up quite a few and have probably put quite a lot of spokes in this wheel, so they are now all out in the jungles again, striking here and there, but no all-out offensive yet; we may be able to stop it before it happens, and are getting well organized for it. The next month is critical; if nothing big happens before mid-August, then I don’t think it ever will.51

  On this occasion his confidence was misplaced. The Communists replied by extending their terror attacks. In Pahang, a gang of forty fired the police station at Jerantut, burned a family alive, and viciously extorted food and money from labourers on an estate near Kuala Lipis. At Voules Estate, Johore, a Chinese headman was severely mutilated; at Senai Estate another was peppered with bullets. In a well-organized strike, five groups of guerrillas, probably totalling eighty men, converged on Malaya’s only coal mine at Batu Arang, Selangor, on 13 July. Before the terrorists withdrew, five men were selected and killed, machinery was sabotaged, the police post was overrun, and the Kuala Lumpur train was hijacked when it stopped at the nearby station. In August tin-mine staff in the Kinta valley became targets. A gang ambushed the General Manager of Meru Tin Mines, Ian Ogilvie, who died in a hail of bullets. A week later the Welsh dredge master of Tronoh Mines, Baden Powell Wills, was attacked, along with a young Scot, James Ritchie. A Sten-gun fusillade killed Wills, and the wounded Ritchie was lucky to escape. A rush of other vicious incidents forced the government to outlaw the MCP, but its objective was already apparent: to undermine the economy by breaking machinery, cutting communications, attacking rubber trees and estate buildings, and targeting European managers and government officials, especially the police, the majority of whom were Malays. In this context, the murder in December 1948 of Alan Blake, who ran the Serendah Boys’ Home, seemed an act of gratuitous violence.

  In reply to the attacks the Security forces – soldiers and police – were boosted by the formation of a Special Constabulary, and later by a part-time Home Guard. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of John Davis and others, former ‘Chindit’ fighters and Force 136 men were brought back to lead special patrols of British, Malay and Gurkha troops, supported by Dayak trackers brought over from Borneo. ‘Ferret Force’ began to scour the jungle for the terrorists, and quickly proved their worth when the Communist military commander Lau Yew was killed with other CTs in a July encounter near Kajang led by Police Superintendent ‘Two Gun’ Bill Stafford, a veteran of fifteen parachute drops into Burma. Planter James Hislop, whose unorthodox military career had started in Dalforce, was given command as Lieutenant-Colonel of 4 Ferret Force, to operate in Johore. His Force 136 experience and knowledge of the jungle and of Communist procedures were invaluable in achieving results. The Johore drive exposed twelve terrorist camps with substantial supplies and arms. Twenty-seven Communist terrorists were killed, and Hislop was mentioned in dispatches. But the Ferret Force initiative proved politically sensitive, and after four months it was discontinued.

  However, in another controversial decision, the federal government imported several hundred ex-Palestine police, headed by Colonel Nicol Gray. The move demoralized the Civil Service and the Malayan police, although to a planter like John Edington the newcomers’ knowledge of anti-terrorist methods made them invaluable colleagues in training the Special Constables.52 With two of the Palestine sergeants, Bob Graver and Jock Sutherland, Edington trained young Malays from surrounding kampongs. ‘Drill, weapon training, fieldcraft and even barrack-room inspections became the order of the day. We dug slits-trenches or weapon pits, using them for the regular duties of stand-to at dawn and stand-down at sunset, such being the likeliest hours for an attack by terrorists.’53

  Ferret Force had demonstrated the kind of tactics needed in special anti-terrorist jungle operations. The Malay Regiment also included officers and men trained in jungle warfare; among them was Hussein, a decorated officer who had joined as an eighteen-year-old in 1935 and he fought the Japanese in Singapore. His loyalty had been recognized in 1945 when he was chosen to march in the victory parade in London. Three years later his battalion was involved in anti-terrorist operations, tracking down bandits in the Temengor region of northern Perak.

  I was with the First Battalion, and my platoon was sent forward to contact them at about six o’clock in the morning, in the fasting month. We had contacted them on top of a hill. There were about three hundred and seven of them and my platoon was only about twenty-five; but, of those Bandits, only eighty of them were armed. The rest were just followers. We captured one. He told everything to my Company Commander. That is how I came to know how many there were.

  I have contacted many Bandits; I have killed two or three also. It’s hand to hand; but very rare. I seldom used tracks. I used a compass bearing to move about in the jungle. If you use the track you may be seen, get ambushed – booby-traps – all sorts of things. I went with a parang [machete] very quietly. We crawled through undergrowth, no noise; we used the parang especially on thorns and creepers. You cut them, otherwise they tear off your shirt. There are leeches, too, especially on wet weather days. We had a type of ointment called DDT. We needed it for scrub typhus; and before we went out they used to give us twenty-four hours’ warning of it, to get our jungle boots ready, and we would rub in the ointment so the insects wouldn’t bite. We had our field dressing bundles; we had medical orderlies and our wireless group was also following us.

  Fighting the CT’s in the jungle, I just gave out the orders. I cannot go too far forward because if I got killed then all will be complicated. So I have to dominate the area, where I can be in command. Number One, check in front. Number Three, to the left. Observe the target, and if you can see the target, then fire. But in the jungle it is very hard to see; you only can hear. Use your ears and brain: those two. Ears and brain. Once you hear a stick go click, you think: has it been broken by animals or by humans? Then the brainwork begins. You have to freeze and wait ten or fifteen minutes. Wait and see what will happen. Don’t be hasty. In the jungle there is no need for hasty command or hasty movement.54

  Infantry operations of this kind tended to last only one or two weeks. As the Emergency continued with no end in sight, another special force, the Malayan Scouts, was established in 1950 to undertake much more prolonged operations in the jungle. Later the Scouts were to become part of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment. But in a guerrilla war the civilians were also in the front line, as James Hislop found when he was forced to make a desperate dash from his bungalow as it was being attacked by a large force of terrorists. In 1948 John Edington and his proprietor’s Visiting Agent, Dato H. E. Mackenzie, had a close shave while travelling by car to Kulai:

  We were accompanied by two special constables who were both seated on my right at the back. He [Dato Mackenzie] drove himself with his driver sitting in front of me. We were just approaching the estate entrance at speed when we were fired on from our left. I could see figures moving, up on the forward slope of rising ground about 150 yards away. I struck my sten gun out of the open window, emptying a full
magazine at them. By that time we were through the ambush and the road ahead was clear, and thanks to the very skilful driving we soon reached the main tar road near Kulai, and thence to the police station to make our report. From the spent cartridges recovered it was shown that automatic weapons including a Bren gun had been used, although the CTs only hit the car three times … Fortunately no obstruction had been placed across the road such as a felled tree.

  On a second occasion, in 1950, terrorists from the 5th Independent Platoon laid an ambush for Edington as he took his regular morning jeep ride to Division 2 of the estate. He was saved by a lucky change of itinerary that day, but a police vehicle with a number of special constables and wives was caught in crossfire.55

  ‘The CTs went for miners and planters because they had guns. We were easy sitting targets,’ said miner’s wife Daphne Davidson. She came out to Rawang, Selangor, in December 1948, and four days later ‘we had this very big first ambush … There was a platoon of Scots Guards, and they were all under twenty-one!’ It appeared they were National Servicemen, quite unprepared for what they had to face, and ‘they didn’t know one end of a gun from the other!’ It was a tough, wearying existence for wives. Rawang had a tin dredge and a power and railway station but

  no church, no doctor, nothing. There was just a dresser with a dressing-post … Planters, in particular, were very isolated; miners were mainly in camps, but the CTs got them on the roads, or going to their places of work. We weren’t supposed to go anywhere without armoured cars, but we reckoned we were safer if we just nipped out when we thought of it instead of going in a convoy.56

  Donald Macpherson was a planter on Rasa Estate, Kuala Kubu Bharu, Selangor, in l949-51. It was his friend James Robertson of Force 136 who had dropped by parachute in 1945 just south of Rawang, ‘so we always had a laugh. He trained the Commy terrorists, who had so many goes at me and who killed the Assistant Manager before me in 1948. I’ve always said he made a poor job of training as they were b— bad shots!’57 The terrorists also took risks carrying out forays into Rawang. Daphne Davidson again:

  One Sunday we heard a lot of shooting and we went out on our verandah and saw this chap leap out at the back of the coffee shop and run across the tin tailings, and he was shot down by the police. They were always doing this. They’d come into a little shop on the edge of the town, and they’d sit among the people and hear information; or they’d hold up the proprietor, snatch tins of food, and then nip back into the jungle.58

  Despite – or because of – their willingness to take risks, the terrorists scored successes. Donald Macpherson pointed out that in two years at Rasa, ‘we had numerous lorries burned, our special constables killed and my driver was burned by Communists. Our Chinese linesite and our estate office were burned down. In one week we were attacked at night three times. Rasa Estate was considered a most unhealthy spot by Army and Police, possibly the worst estate in 1949-50 for incidents.’59

  James Robertson took over Sungei Tekal rubber estate, near the town of Kuala Krau, after the previous Manager had been shot; at the time, Pahang had become a focus for Malay recruitment for the Malayan Races’ Liberation Army, starting with a spectacular attack on the little railway town by 300 Communists. Such was the level of danger Robertson faced that ninety Special Constables, a platoon of British troops and five European police sergeants were needed to guard him and his Assistant, the estate headquarters, the rubber and palm-oil factories and the living quarters.

  Tom Kerr was Assistant Manager at Sungei Way, Selangor. He rated his a reasonably quiet area – only two murders were committed on his estate around the end of 1948 or early 1949: they happened ‘at the Chinese tappers’ latex collection when two terrorists appeared and cut the throats of the Chinese conductor and kepala [headman]’. Extortion and intimidation had become routine. In 1950, as Kerr was about to take over as Acting Manager, ‘the Chinese tappers returned to the factory and said terrorists had appeared and told them to go on strike or die’.60

  The planters had to meet impossible CT threats resolutely, as John Anderson found in 1951 when facing a demand to raise his workers’ pay to $7 – a three- to fourfold increase – within ten days. But, when he found a pair of CTs in the rubber lecturing his tappers on the benefits of Communism, one of his Special Constables ‘charged forward, shouting a suitable Koranic war cry, firing rapidly from the hip’, and the two men rapidly disappeared.61

  In a war in which the battlefields were lonely estate roads, dark rows of rubber, ugly mining camps and the ubiquitous rainforest, planters, miners, police, officials and their wives – and thousands of innocent and defenceless Asian villagers – found that their daily routine was fashioned by the Emergency. But the Europeans adjusted to siege conditions, surrounded by barbed wire, floodlights and armoured vehicles, and guarded twenty-four hours a day in their bungalows by dogs or constables. They learned to vary schedules and never to divulge their routes and venues. Curfews were in operation from 3 p.m. to 6 a.m. away from main roads and from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. elsewhere. Although planters were issued with passes, ‘To venture out socially in a remote area required a lot of courage and determination, particularly at night,’ said Jim Winchester.62 In fact, there was very little social life or chance for relaxation in the early part of the Emergency. John Edington recalled infrequent trade-union meetings of the Incorporated Society of Planters in the Johore Civil Service Club; otherwise, going to Kuala Lumpur for the AGM and ‘a rumbustious weekend’ was a rare highlight.63 There was a general view that the planters as a group were ‘really incredibly brave’: ninety-nine of them were killed in the Emergency.64

  Meanwhile, people in the towns were largely unaffected by the conflict. Life in Singapore in 1948 was very vibrant, John Loch recalled. He was in his early twenties and a member of the Special Constabulary: I was a marine policeman and one used to go out patrolling the Straits of Singapore … I never knew what we were trying to stop – it was quite a lark – and we used to leap on to junks and inspect them.’ Even as Assistant District Officer, Parit, in 1949, taking due care on the road between Parit and Ipoh, his riverine district of Malay kampongs, padi and rubber was largely exempt from terrorist activity. ‘One was aware of the Emergency but not concerned with it.’65

  Shrugging off occasional incidents which occurred in places like Balit Pulau, Europeans in Penang found the pleasures of life had in no way diminished.66 Not so for those upcountry in the front line. The casualty figures may not have seemed high compared with a conventional war: 886 civilians and security forces killed or wounded in 1948, some 500 civilians killed or ‘missing’ in 1949, rising to 646 civilians murdered, 409 wounded and 106 ‘missing’ in 1950. However, behind the figures were unpalatable facts and personal tragedies. The Cameron Highlands, long a popular area with the British, became a focus for terrorist activity, and, as the Communists kept up their operations, women and children were no longer safe. In 1951 there was clearly no improvement in the trend. The Lucys, a British planting couple with twin baby boys, whose estate was a mere half a dozen miles outside Kuala Lumpur along the Betong road, endured twenty-five attacks within the space of a fortnight. It was a sign that ‘things were floundering’, as one MCS officer put it with typical understatement.67

  Sir Edward Gent’s two unhappy years in office had ended sadly with his death in a plane crash in July 1948. His successor was Sir Henry Gurney, a man well equipped to deal with terrorism from his experience as Chief Secretary of the British administration in Palestine. But progress was slow, and in January 1950 British Malayans were mortified when Prime Minister Clement Attlee officially recognized the Communist regime of Mao Tse-tung in China. With the perception growing in Malaya that Britain was losing the Malayan War, in April 1950 General Sir Harold Briggs came out as Director of Operations to co-ordinate the offensive against the Communists. Though both he and Gurney had a sound grasp of the situation, neither felt satisfied with their achievements when within the space of a month in 1951 fate dealt a doub
le blow. Ill health forced Briggs to resign in November 1951, but not before Gurney himself was the victim of a terrorist ambush. Sir Henry, his wife and his secretary were being driven up to Fraser’s Hill for the weekend. Jim Winchester would not forget that October day in 1951.

  We often went to Fraser’s Hill, where our Company had a holiday bungalow, on local leave. [But] I was driving from a posting on a rubber estate in Selangor [Batang Berjuntai] to another in Pahang [Kuala Lipis]. It was, therefore, just a coincidence that I caught up with the tail end of the convoy as it was attacked. I didn’t know Sir Henry was in the convoy (or indeed that there was any sort of military movement) but opinion seemed fairly certain that the CTs did. The ambush occurred somewhere between Kuala Kubu and the Gap.

  In fact, the thirty-eight-man unit of the 11th Regiment of the MRLA, Pahang, was expecting to seize a convoy of military arms. Instead, they saw a Rolls-Royce with escorting vehicles, and when they started shooting Sir Henry stepped from the car into the line of fire to save Lady Gurney. He was killed instantly. ‘I was turned back by police in the last A.P.C. [armoured personnel carrier]’, said Jim Winchester, ‘and spent the night at the Kuala Kubu Rest House, reading the story in the Straits Times the next morning, by which time the road had been re-opened and I was able to complete my journey.’68

  The murder of the British High Commissioner, the Queen’s representative, in broad daylight horrified all races in Malaya. The security forces responded swiftly against the little village of Tras near Fraser’s Hill, burning it to the ground. A young Volunteer Red Cross worker, Pearl Cox, recalled:

  There had been a fair amount of Communist activity in that area, so the Army were made to round up every single person, every man, woman and child in that village, and they were all pushed off to Perak! I can remember driving through the place and not a single soul lived there. Everybody had been taken out. Every one of them was a Chinese. It was a very, very harsh thing to do.69