The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)

by Norman Sherry

  *

  What the British delicately referred to as the Malayan ‘emergency’ was called by the communist guerrillas the ‘War of the Running Dogs’, a contemptuous name for those in Malaya who remained loyal to the British. War had come to Malaya after the Japanese occupation and a State of Emergency was to last from 1948 until 1960.

  The war took on a new urgency when three British planters were murdered. On 16 June 1948 Arthur Walker was at work on his estate in Perak. His wife was shopping in the town of Kuala Kangsar. At 8.30 in the morning three young Chinese rode up to the manager’s office, leant their bicycles against the building, and walked into Walker’s office. The Chinese followed their polite greeting, ‘Tabek, Tuan’, with shots to Walker’s head and chest. They then calmly remounted their bicycles and rode away.

  Half an hour later, only ten miles from Walker’s estate, John Allison and his young assistant, Ian Christian, were at work on the Sungei Siput estate. Two Chinese walked into Christian’s office, tied his hands behind his back, then went into the manager’s room and tied his hands. They said to the clerks, ‘These men will surely die today; we will shoot all Europeans,’ and shot them. A fourth European manager escaped because his jeep had broken down while he was on his rounds of the rubber estate. Three Chinese had ridden up to his office also, but became worried by his delay and left without killing him.

  The previous High Commissioner, Sir Edward Gent, had had no wish to declare a State of Emergency, but there was such an uproar (reflected by a newspaper editorial in the Straits Times, ‘Govern or Get Out’) that he yielded. Many, especially the planters and tin miners, felt that Sir Edward saw their problems as simply an increase in lawlessness instead of a highly developed attack by the communists aimed at bringing down the lawful Government and ending a hundred years of generally beneficent British rule. Malcolm MacDonald, then Commissioner-General for South-East Asia, was aware that Gent would not recognise a wart on his nose, never mind a war, and told him he was going to telegraph Whitehall to replace him. Whitehall recalled Gent to sack him, but when his plane reached London the York freighter aircraft he was travelling in collided with another and he was killed. The Malayan proverb would describe this as not only falling from the ladder, but having the ladder fall on you.

  In the vast jungles, Chin Peng, Secretary-General of the Malayan Communist Party, felt sure he could replicate Mao Tse-tung’s success in China. Chin Peng was setting out to run a nationwide guerrilla war, an insurrection on a massive scale similar to the one developing in Indo-China. His army was made up of 5,000 communists who faced 4,000 British and Malay soldiers without jungle experience. There were also 10,000 police officers, who were untrained for jungle guerrilla warfare.

  By the time Hugh Greene had arrived in September 1950 the war did not seem to be going well for the British. During that year almost 650 civilians had been murdered and another 100 were missing. Hugh, who was with the BBC, was on loan for one year to General Sir Harold Briggs, the Director of Operations in the war. Hugh’s task was to fight for the hearts and minds of the Malayan people: Chinese, Indian and Malay. His primary goal was to bring back to the fold those communists who had once fought alongside the British as guerrillas against the Japanese during the wartime occupation of Malaya.

  He established a sound information service and conducted a highly successful campaign of psychological warfare against the communist terrorists. He knew he had to increase the belief of the public in the fairness of the British administration, undermine the morale of the communist underground (the Min Yuen) who were supporters of the communists in the jungle, and try to separate the rank and file from their leaders. He determined that there would be no exaggeration in the reports sent out from his office by radio, pamphlet or letter.

  He understood the limits and the power of psychological warfare: ‘The task of propaganda is to persuade a man that he can safely do what he already secretly wants to do because of disillusionment, grievances or hatred of life in the jungle and to play on those feelings.’12 Various ingenious methods were used to get his message through, not only to the general public, but to the guerrillas. Captured documents were studied to give a guide to valuable intelligence. It was Hugh Greene who suggested printing surrender leaflets on waterproof paper (so that they could survive the incessant jungle downpour) which would show the dead faces of their comrades: ‘Would you rather be dead like these? Or surrender and live like these?’ He also contrasted scenes of the dead with photographs of local people living a civilised existence – visiting coffee shops, the cinema and the park – while the communists lived a hard life in the jungle without amenities.

  Soon after he arrived in Malaya, Hugh Greene experienced two pieces of good fortune which were to assist him in developing his programme. The first was his appointment of C. C. Too, a brilliant Chinese who had had personal experience with the communist character, as his assistant. The second coup was the defection of Lam Swee, an important leader who had fallen out with Chin Peng and had surrendered rather than be executed.

  His surrender meant that Hugh Greene could rely on his intimate knowledge of the killer squads lying deep in the jungle. It was Lam Swee who ghosted a letter, supposedly written by a communist called Chin Kuen, to persuade the rank and file to surrender. It was known that the ordinary communist in his jungle hideout missed female companionship and that sometimes the only man to have a woman would be the leader of the group. Half a million copies of this simple but effective letter were dropped by plane over the jungle: ‘I surrendered after my commanding officer had stolen my girl-friend … Have you a girl-friend? The upper ranks can make love in their huts, but if you want to find a lady friend then you will have to wait until there is one left over from the upper ranks.’

  Hugh Greene also approached the authorities about the need to increase the bounties for leading terrorists. When the Government substantially raised the reward for betrayal the Straits Times provided a full price list: ‘$60,000 on Head of No. i Bandit’, $50,000 for members of the Malayan communist politburo; $40,000 for members of the central committee; $30,000 for State, town and regional committee secretaries; and $2,000 for information on, the capture of, or the killing of ordinary party members. If a communist brought in another communist he was offered only half the reward. Greed sometimes led to terrifying consequences, as when a communist brought in the severed head of his leader to collect the reward. Unquestionably, playing on man’s cupidity was an important means of bringing about a steep decline in the morale of the communist terrorists.

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  On 27 November Greene wrote: ‘Arrived 1/2 hr early at Singapore at 1.30. Overjoyed to see Hugh waiting.’13 The next day he flew to Kuala Lumpur and had dinner with Noel Ross, adviser to the sultan. At once he was discussing his journeys and seeking information about the conditions of war: ‘Discussed doing the danger area of Pahang with Gurkha adjutant … Young Chinese ex-member of Ferret Force who wants to return to jungle.’ The aptly named Ferret Force was a group of mainly British soldiers who lived for weeks at a time in the jungle like the terrorists, trailing and attacking them wherever found. The British brought in Dayaks from Borneo, skilled trackers, to read the signs of the jungle and to help hunt down the ambushing terrorists. The terrorist stalker was himself being stalked.

  It was very hot in Kuala Lumpur, the mosquitoes took their pint of blood and Greene slept in bed with what the locals called a Dutch wife: ‘this is a bolster in my bed which I am supposed to sleep with like a woman and sweat into, but it doesn’t feel a bit like you,’ he wrote to Catherine.14 When Greene stayed at the Majestic in 1950 there was no air conditioning, only an overhead fan, so a Dutch wife was a necessity. By wrapping both legs and arms around the bolster, sweating skin was separated from itself which prevented painful prickly heat.

  Two days in Kuala Lumpur seemed enough for Greene: ‘Last night’s train to Singapore was dynamited so there aren’t any trains today. I fly down tomorrow [to Singapore] and Father Frost is t
o meet me. K.L. bores me and I want to get away.’15 But his journal shows that he was extremely active: ‘Afternoon read secret document on Malay Communist organisation. Drinks with Ross & then very sticky formal black tie dinner with Commissioner of Police [Nicol Gray, an old Palestinian hand] & two of his officers. A terribly conceited &, outside his work, unintelligent man.’16

  To avoid depression, Greene kept his days filled: ‘On December 1–3 I’m in Singapore, then back to K.L., then December 9, 10 and 11 to Malacca with Ross the Adviser, then December 12 to 22 in Pahang [the terrorists were particularly active here] … People think I have rather perverted tastes in going to Pahang … The main dangers are staying with planters and patrolling with Gurkhas. Then with Hugh to Malacca for Christmas, 23–26 and quiet.’17 Greene had brought the unrevised manuscript of The End of the Affair and by 1 December he started ‘re-revising the novel … I’m not nearly so gloomy about the book. I’ve reached p. 87 and taken out quite a bit – a few “narrow loin” cuts do make an enormous difference … The book is working out. I really think that with Eddie’s [Edward Sackville-West’s] help, I see what is wrong and I’m going to rearrange the journal – all chronological except the first entry which will be a different one. I believe the book won’t be bad after this revision.’18

  By now he could have had his Chinese girl, for his journal records that he visited Chinese and Malayan dance halls (where taxi girls dance with you for a small sum of money and you have the opportunity of taking them home or to a hotel – subject to paying the Mammasan) and took a trishaw to one called the Happy Land. However, he wrote to Catherine that he loved and missed her, ‘80% of my waking time. I carry you around like a sore.’19 With a touching sense of how unimportant he might be to her, Greene asked: ‘Dear heart, you will tell me, won’t you, if this absence makes you want to be free of me?’

  Greene soon grew tired of Kuala Lumpur and was restless for danger and anticipating death: ‘everything is happening elsewhere – there are about half a dozen [terrorist] incidents every day in the country, but K.L. is completely peaceful’.20 The city did not know what was going on in the countryside for the terrorists never attacked the capital. Thus the British Civil Servant and businessman of Kuala Lumpur could still drink in peace at the famous Spotted Dog (the Kelantan Club) facing the padang, where cricket was played in a calm, relaxed atmosphere. It was just the scene to make Greene shudder.

  Among the rubber plantations and tin mines terror often reigned. Posters attached to trees demanded blood: ‘Destroy the Running Dogs’, or ‘Death to the Running Dogs’. During the time Greene was in Malaya, and for the rest of 1950, war conditions were bleak. There were over 6,000 communist terrorist incidents, calculated to instil fear in Asians and Europeans alike. For example, in the isolated village of Jurantut in Pahang, the first villager found in the street was tied to a telegraph pole and formally executed; the police station was set on fire; the labourers’ quarters of a near-by rubber estate were raided while the terrorists demanded food and subscriptions. When one of the labourers tried to fight the terrorists he was killed. The dead man’s wife and child were tied up, placed in a bamboo hut, and the hut set on fire.21 The labour force on the rubber plantations was always in danger because dispersing it was a means of disrupting the economy and destroying the profitability of the rubber industry.

  The killing of children was another terror tactic used to get the Europeans to return home. Soon after Greene left, a two-year-old, Susan Thomson, was murdered. The British instituted registration cards, which, of course, the communist terrorists did not possess. When particular groups accepted registration the terrorists would attack families. On an estate near Kota Tinggi four labourers’ children and the planter were shot dead; only his fourteen-year-old child escaped, into the jungle. In Johore Bahru a six-year-old saw her father shot dead and an eight-year-old was burned to death with her family after her father had refused to surrender his registration card.22

  In the midst of all this violence Greene kept his eyes open for copy: ‘Strange little points emerge. The other day [in Singapore] a man who had escaped from the terrorists got into a crowded Singapore bus with bleeding hands tied together and nobody in the bus would even untie them. He went on with his hands tied until the bus reached the police station.’23

  Yet war was not the only source of violence. Before Greene left for Pahang to visit a planter, serious riots took place in Singapore over a young girl named Maria Hertogh. Through no fault of her own she belonged to two separate, opposed communities and religious groups. Greene wrote to Catherine about meeting her:

  I prayed this morning, not for you but for this little Dutch child. Yesterday I was driving round all day with … ex-Anglican-Catholic priest and he asked me to have a cup of tea with the nuns of the Good Shepherd. When we got to the Convent we found it surrounded by armed police with Tommy guns. The Dutch child Maria had been put into their care pending the foster-mother’s appearance and they were being guarded against a Malay attack. The child had just arrived – a pathetic little creature who looked younger than 12 [she was 13], in a Malay Sarong and little gold earrings with a resentful dignity and a sense of great strain. The nuns were innocently delighted and the Mother Superior managed to make her smile once. They were quite unaware of the ambiguity of the novel situation – the child had been baptised a Catholic and she was being saved for the church. Maybe, but one was reminded of a ‘liberated’ town. When she arrived at the Convent she carefully and emphatically asked to be allowed to wear her sarong and said firmly, ‘You will not expect me to attend your prayers, will you? I am a Moslem.’ The nuns had already abstracted a Koran from her suitcase. They were so kind and so gentle and so sure that they were right.24

  Maria’s parents were Dutch Eurasians and when the Japanese overran Indonesia where they once lived her father was made a prisoner of war. Mrs Hertogh insisted that she had only let Maria stay with a Malay woman, Che Aminah, for a few days. Che Aminah said that she became the child’s foster-mother.

  After the war the Hertoghs were repatriated to Holland and tried to get Maria back, but Che Aminah had disappeared. When she was finally found in Singapore, Mrs Hertogh brought suit for the custody of her thirteen-year-old daughter. The case was complicated by the fact that Maria had been brought up as a Muslim and had married a young Malay school teacher. The parents argued that she should be returned to them because the marriage was null and void since Maria was under age and they had not granted permission. But Maria did not wish to return with her parents to Holland; she considered herself a Muslim, knew her Koran, and spoke only Malay.

  Greene arrived on the day that Maria was returned to her mother: ‘[Maria] slept the last night in a room in the Girls’ Home of the Convent of the Good Shepherd, in Thomson Road, Singapore.’ The poor girl was not allowed to see her husband and Mr Justice Brown declared that her marriage to Inche Mansoor Adabi was invalid and indeed a ‘discreditable manoeuvre designed to prejudice these proceedings’. But the affair was not to end here. A Malay friend of the foster family uttered prophetic words: ‘We are very poor in contrast to the Dutch, but we have thousands … of supporters.’

  Eight days later in the Straits Times, 3 December 1950, the headlines read: ‘FIVE DEAD, 100 HURT IN RIOTS: MOB RULE IN S’PORE STREETS: Cars, Buses Burned: Troops Called Out.’ At the end of the rioting the death toll stood at eighteen, with over 180 injured. The rioters set up their own roadblocks and were armed with wooden sticks, iron rods, clubs, bottles, and bricks to use against Europeans and Eurasians travelling in cars or buses. Some drivers were knocked out cold or blinded by the objects thrown through their car windows. When the cars crashed or overturned, the occupants were hauled out and severely beaten or stabbed with broken beer bottles. These attacks took place in the Muslim sections of Singapore, and even though Muslim leaders appealed to the Malay crowds to disperse their microphoned voices were lost in the mad shouting of the mob.

  Meanwhile, up-country nothing had changed
and three other European planters were murdered by ‘bandits’. On the train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur Greene was made aware of war’s reality: ‘The train crammed with troops and police guards is just going to start … A notice in the carriages: “Terrorism: In the event of firing on the lineside passengers are advised to lie on the floor of the carriage and on no account to leave the train …” At the last stop – whole village load of Chinese were corralled by police beside the lines. They were being questioned over somebody’s death in an ambush.’25

  Returning to Kuala Lumpur, Greene found letters from all kinds of people offering him hospitality and especially one from a railwayman who had been in fourteen ambushes in twelve months: ‘he wants to show me his side of things’.26 The invitations held out the promise of adventure which Greene longed for as an antidote to depression. He wrote to Catherine from the Majestic hotel in Kuala Lumpur:

  How often you’ve talked me out of melancholia in Thriplow, in Italy, in London, but you can’t talk me out of it over 8,000 miles. Tonight it’s very bad – the worst I’ve had since Germany. It seems so senseless to come all this way to be so bored and depressed. Perhaps next week when there’ll be a tiny bit of danger things will look up … I’d like to take a big sleeping draught and wake up with another day gone … In this mood one can’t work or even read properly … If only I could twist my ring and be in Anacapri with you … Tonight I feel like hell and long to pick up the telephone, but I don’t even know your number. [The Walstons had moved from Thriplow Farm to Newton Hall during his absence.] I love you … more than God, more than all my family lumped together. I feel a wretched, useless failure when I’m away from you.27