by Boris Hembry
One morning Perumal and Arumugam appeared on the muster ground and, in front of the best part of 250 workers, stabbed to death one of my conductors. They did not use guns, as the shots would have been heard and they knew that my well-armed Specials would have come running. I was so angry I kept all the workers on the muster ground until the body had been removed and then tore strips off them, calling them all the names I could think of in Tamil, Malay and Anglo-Saxon, pointing out that they outnumbered the two bandits by over 100 to one. They hung their heads in shame, as well they might.
Throughout all this time, Jean, like many other wives, was a tower of strength. I think that if I had suggested that we pack it in she would have poured gallons of scorn on my head. She loathed communism and its creed as much as I, and was not going to give in.
By the end of 1949 Ferret Force had been formed. For some time they were based on Dovenby Estate, the other side of Sungei Siput from Kamuning, so we saw quite a lot of them when they came out of the jungle. By now they had been joined by both Donald Wise and Colin Park. They were operating in the jungles around Gunong Korbu and achieving some success. Equally as important as actually killing bandits was the lift to our morale and the subsequent fall to the enemy’s. Until then they had thought that they could operate off the roads with impunity. Ferret Force proved to both the CTs and to the Security Forces that the jungle was neutral, and could be equally home to the Army as to anyone else. Through Ah Kim, my bud-grafting contractor and another undercover agent, I was able to give Ferret Force the information that a gang of CTs was living in the jungle behind my Sungei Buloh division. John Davis, fluent in several dialects of Chinese, and I interrogated Ah Kim behind the ruins of the old manager’s bungalow, well out of sight of anyone. As Malay was not the prime language of either Ah Kim or myself, I had felt it better for the conversation to be in his own tongue. I was able to promise Ah Kim $600 should his information prove correct. In the event, the Ferrets chalked up two kills and the destruction of the bandit camp. I had endless arguments with police headquarters in Ipoh to get payment of the promised reward and in the end had to threaten to telephone the Chief of Police in KL.
When I handed over the money to Ah Kim I told him that under no circumstances must he go on a spending spree. To my dismay he turned up the very next day on a brand new Norton motorbike, and I feared that he would not last long. But he survived to continue being one of our most reliable informers.
Ah Lieu was another notorious local bandit, with a large sum on his head. Ah Kim told me that Ah Lieu would be in Kanthan village at a certain time on a given day. The police raided the village and arrested a number of suspects. I was anxious to find out whether my information had proved correct, but was told that Ah Lieu was not amongst them and that, after screening, they had all been allowed to go. I called Ah Kim to my office on some other pretext and found him almost speechless with anger and despair. The very first suspect the police had interrogated was Ah Lieu. He lived for another year, committing many murders, before being gunned down in one of the limestone caves near Kanthan.
In addition to managing Kamuning Estate and my work with one or other of the war committees and the Perak Planters Association, it seemed that scarcely a day went by when we were not visited by top brass of one form or another – the Police Commissioner from KL, the British Resident, Guthrie directors, even the Commander-in-Chief on occasions when he came up to Perak, and ministers and Opposition leaders out from England. Jean coped with all and sundry with her usual aplomb.
During the first few months the CTs seemed to have everything going their way. The majority of Chinese, if not actually supporting them, were very sensibly sitting on the fence, waiting to see which side would gain the upper hand. The Malays were definitely opposed to the Chinese attempts to take over the country because, of course, they regarded Malaya as theirs, and if anyone was going to supplant the British it should be them. The Indians were generally with the Malays. But, of course, it is difficult to refuse to co-operate with anyone if the alternative is to have your wife and children murdered, and often in the most brutal way. I know I would have co-operated.
Bill Hillyer arrived as the new police chief for Sungei Siput. Without the gravitas or experience of Bill Powndell, nor the avoirdupois, he was young and very enthusiastic, and did not spare himself or the men under him. We worked closely together and organised several sweeps through the neighbourhood, but with only limited success.
Towards the end of 1948 the Police Commissioner H. B. Langworthy, was replaced by Nicol Gray. The former was a prewar Malayan police officer, had spent three and a half years in Changi, and was just not capable of coping with the situation. Most of his senior officers had also been POWs, and as such had had no experience of warfare other than the few weeks in 1942. To add to the problem there had arisen between those who had escaped in 1942 and those who had been captured feelings of bitterness and animosity: I have even heard one of the latter accusing one of the former of having run away. I could never understand the sense of that accusation, as what use was anyone to the Allied cause in captivity? It was just that many of the older prewar police officers were simply out of their depth.
Gray was an entirely different man from his predecessor; ruthless, obstinate, and determined to get his own way. He had won the DSO as a Royal Marine commando during the D-Day landings. He had been a successful inspector general of police in Palestine. But his appointment to the highest police post in Malaya was most unpopular with the majority of the senior officers in an already divided force. While disagreeing with one or two of his early decisions, what worked in Palestine would not necessarily always work elsewhere, I liked and admired Nicol Gray. He visited us on Kamuning several times, and later, when attending Federal War Council meetings in KL, I sometimes stayed with him. We met in London on several occasions when we had retired, usually at the Special Forces Club, but seldom after he had become clerk of the course at Newmarket.
One of the first things that Gray did was to recruit several hundred ex-Palestine policemen, mostly of sergeant rank. These men were posted as police lieutenants around the rubber estates and tin mines, where they took charge of the Special Constables, and general security on their patch. This freed the regular police for more conventional and important duties, but was not always popular with some of the more hidebound career Malayan Police officers, as many of the more capable ex-Palestinians threatened their promotion chances.
Nicol Gray very quickly made his presence felt. Weapons, radios and other essential items of equipment to carry the fight to the enemy began to arrive. But for some reason he was against the police use of armoured vehicles, almost to the point of it being a phobia. This resulted, in my opinion, in many unnecessary casualties. Acts of terrorism would be committed in outlying areas, and the police, rushing to the scene, would in turn be ambushed in their soft-skinned vehicles. In one ambush alone 24 police were killed. The Army, too, had few armoured vehicles, I suspect because of parsimony by the Treasury in London, rather than any reluctance by soldiers to use them.
In October and November 1948 two tragedies occurred along the Plus and Jalong roads, within sound of my office on Kamuning Estate. In the first incident 10 Gurkhas were killed and 10 severely wounded, and in the second 17 soldiers of the Fourth Hussars lost their lives. I will refer to these terrorist ambushes later.
In 1952, when I visited Kamuning as VA, Charles Ross and I calculated that upwards of 120 soldiers, policemen and civilians had been murdered by CTs within a radius of only five miles of the Kamuning bungalow. I think Sungei Siput must be considered to have been one of the blackest of spots during the Emergency.
Towards the end of November General Neil Ritchie, commander-in-chief Far East Land Forces (FARELF), with his second-in-command, General Harding, and Brigadier Scone, commander of North Malaya District, visited Sungei Siput, with what appeared to be half the Army as escort. I had invited several planters to meet them at the Kamuning Estate hospital where we we
re addressed by these top brass. But mainly they were on a fact-finding mission, as it was obvious to all concerned that we were losing the battle. Unfortunately, because of the short notice of their arrival that I had been given, I was unable to correlate all the managers’ suggestions and ideas and so present a united overview, which was a pity as we must have appeared a rather wishy-washy crowd, with no single plan of action to propose
We saw Colin Park quite often; whenever he had a few hours to spare he would come up to the bungalow for a hot bath, good food and music. Ferret Force was proving to be the one bright light in our armament, and beginning to have successes deep in the jungle, consisting as they did of intelligent war-experienced officers, highly trained in guerrilla tactics. They operated in parties of only half a dozen men and, I believe, it was these successes that finally brought home to the military the value of small, well-trained and well-armed units, capable of taking on the CTs at their own game and winning, rather than the more usual army formations fighting their traditional way.
One day Colin was in a Ferret Force patrol along the Plus River, where it was known that a substantial party of CTs were harassing the squatter community, and from where they were carrying out atrocities against the local estate labour forces. It seems that Colin and another officer took a canoe on to the river, leaving the rest of the party to trek through the jungle. They came under fire from bandits on the bank, which killed his companion and badly wounded Colin, both falling into the river. The rest, hearing the shooting, rushed to the spot and found nothing but the empty canoe. After a search they found the body of the companion, but no Colin. They camped nearby and during the night the sentries kept hearing groans and choking noises which they put down to wild animals. At first light they found Colin’s bullet-ridden body only 20 yards away.
Jean and I were terribly distressed. Colin was cremated and the ashes scattered in New Zealand.
During the exchange of correspondence following this tragedy, Sir Keith Park offered me a job in New Zealand. Bob Chrystal also wrote strongly advising me to chuck it in and to join him in Perth, where I could be a partner in a business he had started, manufacturing a special kind of waterproof cement. There were to be several times over the next few years that I regretted not having taken up one or other of these kind offers. Bob’s business prospered, and I would have been a wealthy man.
On 6 October 1948 I sat down in the Kamuning office and wrote the long letter, which I had been formulating in my mind over the previous weeks, to the Central Perak Planters Association, with copies to the United Planters Association of Malaya, Guthrie’s KL, Keith Anderson, the Kamuning Estate company secretary in London, and Innes Miller, the British adviser in Ipoh. Shortly afterwards a colonel rang me up from KL and asked if I would provide another copy to Major General Charles Boucher, the director of operations. My letter was headed ‘State of Emergency – Sungei Siput Area’. I like to think that it had some beneficial effect.
I started off by listing the Communist outrages in the Sungei Siput area during the first three months of the Emergency:
– murders: 13 (this was shortly before the two major ambushes of the Gurkhas and Hussars mentioned above)
– estates attacked & buildings destroyed: 10
– estimated cost of damage: $500,000
– estimated loss of revenue: $2,000,000.
In addition, the police stations at Lintang and Salak North had been attacked and destroyed, the Penang to KL night mail train had been attacked (this on the section of line that ran through Kamuning), and only narrowly missed derailment, and the Perak Hydro Electric sub-station in Sungei Siput blown up, bringing most industry in the area to a temporary standstill.
I complained about the Army’s refusal to provide adequate protection for Jalong Tinggi Estate, which was in an extremely isolated position, and was in fact closed down, with the consequent loss of jobs and revenue. I criticised the reduction of the number of troops during the previous fortnight, despite the increased CT offensive.
I pointed out that the CTs moved mainly at night, in small numbers, seldom above a dozen, and that it was fatuous to billet security forces of company strength or more at the Kamuning Estate hospital, and to send them out by the lorry-load, invariably after the event. I also criticised the abortive sweeps through the estates, kampongs and nearby jungle, all accompanied by the rattle of weaponry, the clanking of mess tins, the crunch of standard issue army boots, and the thunder of heavily laden three-tonners crossing wooden bridges, all of which gave any bandits for miles around ample warning to retire deeper into the jungle, or to don their tapper’s clothes and get to work on the trees.
I said it was obvious that the army must have proper equipment – rubber boots, for instance, and a more suitable weapon than their normal .303 Lee Enfield rifle, which was totally unsuitable for jungle work. I suggested that the Army should operate in sections, or even half-sections, to go out and lay their own ambushes on likely routes to and from the squatter areas, that they should garrison certain ‘black’ areas, if only with a platoon, to provide rapid deployment to an incident – within minutes rather than hours.
I commented on the obvious strained relations between the army and police, particularly noticeable in the higher ranks in KL, but also evident at local level. This problem, I said, must be overcome without delay, because unless there was absolute unanimity of purpose and total trust between the military, the police, and the planters and miners, nothing much would be achieved and we might as well all pack up and go home now.
I suggested the various strategic points around Sungei Siput that I thought should be garrisoned, and that the local commander, whether he be of a platoon or a company, should have a free hand in deciding his dispositions in consultation with local police and planter or miner. I considered it absolutely essential that a substantial force, at least a platoon, should be positioned within the Tikus squatter area. This would serve not only as an ideal base for continual offensive sweeps through this notorious area and up the Korbu valleys, but would keep the area open for government officers to spread the anti-communist gospel, and allow the squatters to go about their lawful business without hindrance.
I also mentioned my hobbyhorse – the need to control the ability of the CTs to obtain food and other essential supplies to sustain their activities. I was able to expand on this particular theme in greater detail at a meeting held at Freddy Ferguson’s bungalow on Changkat Kinding Estate with the new High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney, a few weeks later. I believe that my ideas would eventually form the basis of what was to become known as the Briggs Plan, later to be fully implemented under General Gerald Templer, and which played a great part in the winning of the war in Malaya.
Shortly before delivering my letter personally to the British Adviser in Ipoh I added a postscript: ‘Since writing the above, news has just been received of an ambush in broad daylight on the Lintang road resulting in the deaths of 10 Gurkhas and the severe wounding of 10 others.’ Consequently, at least two of the wounded also succumbed.
Innes Miller said that I would not be popular with the military or the police. I said that worried me not in the slightest. All I was concerned with was the defeat of the enemy as quickly as possible.
In fact this took nearly 10 years, at a cost of more than 20,000 casualties and many hundreds of millions of dollars.
Guthrie’s in London had an wholly unexpected fit of generosity when the Board announced that, with immediate effect, they would grant a monthly allowance of $250 and $100 respectively to their European and Asian staffs, to permit them to take a long weekend away from their estates, once a month. This was most acceptable, as we could all do with a couple of days away from the fear of being murdered. Most Europeans took themselves off to Singapore, KL, Penang or Cameron Highlands. We tended to go to Penang and stay either with the Brittains or at the E&O.
Tommy and Jean Spence were on Sungei Krudda Estate. Of all the planters in the Sungei Siput district they lived in
the most dangerous position, about 10 miles up the Plus road, with an ideal spot for an ambush every couple of hundred yards or so. This isolated stretch of road, where the Gurkhas, the Hussars and several civilians had been murdered, was ‘no-man’s-land’ during the daylight hours, and definitely enemy territory after nightfall. Jean and Tommy were marooned in their bungalow compound for days on end and relied very much on the telephone for contact with the outside world. The Hembry and Spence Jeans spoke to each other on most days when the line had not been cut. The Spences were certainly the bravest planting couple that we knew, determined to stick it out and not to let the Communists win. On one occasion, following a particularly harrowing time when Sungei Krudda had experienced a night of siege, Jean and I went over there, escorted by a section of Gurkhas, and spent a day with them. I left Jean there overnight, with some misgivings, to give Jean Spence support. When I collected her the following afternoon Jean told me that the whole bungalow was riddled with bullet holes, and that at least a dozen shots had been fired at it during the previous night, apparently about par for the course. Tommy and Jean Spence stuck it out until their leave was due and then to their surprise, and to the disgust of all who knew this brave couple, Tommy’s contract was not renewed. No doubt the London board, whose only contact with any shooting was on the grouse moors, had decided that Sungei Krudda’s profits were not quite what it thought they should be.
In December I was appointed to the Review Board, a committee of about six, whose task it was to interview internees, mostly Chinese, who had been picked up as suspects, to decide whether they should (a) remain interned; (b) be charged with a criminal indictment; (c) be deported; or (d) be released. I recall releasing just one; most of the rest were deported back to China.
