Malayan Spymaster

by Boris Hembry

  Singapore was only 60 miles away and we tended to spend many of our weekends there, staying with friends. But there was a very strict curfew in Johore from 6 pm until 6 am, so it was necessary always to leave sufficient time to get back to the estate by dusk. Many a young planter had to spend the night in a police cell en route to his estate because the Sunday curry tiffin party had gone on too long.

  In April I was approached by both Piper Gray and Charlton, the factory assistant manager, telling me that they wished to resign. This was a serious blow to both the company and myself. I was assured by both of them that their reasons had nothing to do with my appointment, which was a relief. In the case of Harry Gray it was very definitely the Emergency, and the consequent wish of his wife to live somewhere free from danger to her husband, her family, and herself. Charlton gave the same reason, but over drinks at his bungalow it emerged that it was really the frustration of his job.

  Charlton was a qualified engineer whereas his immediate boss, Twitchen, was not. Twitch, as factory manager, earned a great deal more money, yet relied on Charlton’s expertise to retain his post, for without a qualified engineer in the factory the company would be breaking the law. Based on what Charlton told me it also appeared that Twitch had treated him somewhat shabbily over the years, a situation not helped by Thorburn’s management principles. Apart from having his bungalow furnished with cast-offs, Charlton’s salary had not kept pace with those of similar seniority on the planting side.

  Twitch was a man of enormous energy and outstanding ability, but he also had weaknesses – haven’t we all? – so there was an obvious need to exercise stricter control over him. As Sir John later very aptly put it, ‘The realisation of his dependence on his better-qualified juniors should surely induce a more modest bearing and greater consideration for those upon whom he must rely if he is to continue to occupy his present position.’

  As the two men held key positions in the Ulu Remis company, the directors in London were particularly concerned about the resignations, and Sir John Hay took the almost unprecedented step of writing a confidential letter directly to me, the gist of which was whether the reasons given were the truth, or whether there were others undisclosed. Sir John went on:

  The fact that the country is unsettled and labour difficult makes it more incumbent upon us than ever to keep a staff which is experienced, has acquired a knowledge of the country and labour, and has proved its practical competence. Replacement of these men with special qualifications is at present extremely difficult.

  I would be glad if you would write to me quite frankly regarding these two resignations and any other matter which has a bearing on the staff situation.

  I give you my assurance that whatever you write will be treated as entirely confidential.

  Taking him at his word, in addition to the matter of the resignations, I wrote back raising the subject of salaries, retirement and career prospects. I think our exchange of letters makes interesting reading today. I wrote:

  There is widespread feeling, particularly amongst the more senior planters, that despite the higher incomes drawn in Malaya compared to those at Home, the continual fight to make ends meet, the feeling of insecurity and the constant danger of being killed or maimed, the separation from one’s family, and the total inability to save other than through the provident fund, is not worth the candle, and many feel it is better to get out while one is between forty and forty-five and find alternative employment elsewhere than wait until they are over fifty, with so much less chance of getting a job and when one’s savings may be of less value than they are today.

  On re-reading this, after a period of 30 years, I do not remember any struggle to live on my salary, allowances and commission, at least after the initial years. Also, we all chose to live and work in Malaya and, in spite of the dangers, I for one would not have chosen to be anywhere else.

  Sir John, whilst acknowledging the obvious disadvantages of the current situation, pointed out, with complete justification, that our incomes compared most favourably to those in the United Kingdom.

  Out of a population of fifty million people, in the years 1948/49 only 86 people enjoyed an annual income of over £8,000 net. If you tot up what a planter receives in the way of housing, allowances, substantive salary and commission, I think you will conclude that, on the whole, the planter does uncommonly well.

  Even though he was one of the 86 mentioned I would not quarrel with his sentiments. Whilst there were, of course, many planters in Malaya of outstanding ability and devotion to their chosen calling, there were, as in any profession, just as many useless ones, drawing large salaries, whom I would not have had on my estate as a junior conductor. Nevertheless, I do acknowledge that there was not much advantage to be had in drawing a commission of, say, £4,000 one day, and lying on a mortuary slab the next

  I had not been on the estate many weeks before I realised that the resident Special constables, who were stationed on all the bungalows and at the factory and offices, required better supervision and training, if possible by an experienced senior NCO. Compared to HOBA they were shambolic. With Guthrie’s permission I recruited just such a man, whose name I regret I cannot now remember, and provided him with an armoured vehicle. He was billeted with one of the assistants on Home division.

  The new security officer had not been there long before he was in action. Although there was a nightly curfew, and to ignore it was foolhardy in the extreme, it was somewhat relaxed on the Home division, as the bungalows were fairly close to each other, and after-dark visiting, by prior arrangement, was the rule rather than the exception. A minute before the scheduled time of arrival the Specials would open the perimeter gates, so that the short journey between the respective bungalows could be made at speed.

  One night we had Piper Gray to dinner. Shortly after nine o’clock a Special sent word in by the boy that he wished to see me, so I went downstairs to see what it was all about. The Special said that he thought he had seen a cigarette glowing just outside the perimeter fence. I told him to fire at the spot where he had seen it. He fired one round. This was immediately answered by fusillades, including tracer, from several other places. Harry and I dashed around organising the defences and taking potshots at the muzzle flashes outside the fence. All the time our dogs were barking furiously, which added to the confusion. After about 15 minutes, during which time the CTs succeeded in penetrating the perimeter only to be driven back by a very gallant Malay NCO, the shooting stopped and we reviewed the situation. Several of our guards had been wounded, one seriously. Jean’s ambulance training came in handy and she carried out first aid on the casualties, warning that the one Special was losing a lot of blood and would have to get to hospital quickly.

  The telephone rang – the CTs had forgotten to cut the line – and it was the Security Officer to say that he would be driving over, at speed and with headlights blazing, with welcome reinforcements, and would we open the gates at the very last moment. He had also contacted the military who were on their way.

  It was an exciting and anxious quarter of an hour. Fortunately the bungalow was built of brick so afforded good protection, and we were lucky to escape with so few casualties.

  Our Malay guards were first class and came through their baptism of fire with flying colours. I was very proud of them, and saw they were rewarded.

  I do not know what made the bandits respond in the way they did, to the one rifle shot, but I soon found out the reason for their presence. A week or so later Jean questioned the cook as to why he should need over 40 pounds of flour in a week for the small quantity of bread required by two people. He was unable to offer an explanation, even when I accused him of supplying the CTs. Shortly after that he was arrested for illicit distilling of samsu (rice wine) – in our own kitchen! He pleaded that this was permitted by Tuan Thorburn. When in court he said that he had asked Thorburn whether the new tuan would let him carry on with the distilling and Steve had, so he said, replied that the new manager was
a good tuan and would not object. If this were true, and I believe it was, then it shows Thorburn up in even a worse light than even I had come to perceive. Quite apart from a senior manager and respected figure being involved in an illegal racket, he had allowed his own cook to supply succour and sustenance to communist terrorists, bent on destroying the very industry and way of life that provided him with his living. I was quite happy to see my cook go to gaol and was absolutely furious when Twitchen, for reasons that I found frankly incomprehensible, agreed to provide bail. Needless to say, the cook disappeared. I considered reporting the matter to the police but decided not to as, of course, with the cook missing, it would have been impossible to prove a case.

  I discovered another racket, and as with most such lucrative rackets it was simplicity itself. The local bus service was fuelled at the estate petrol pump near my office. A bus would draw, say, 30 gallons but only pay for 25, and the difference would be put down to our estate lorries. Thorburn would then take a cut of the bus contractor’s savings. I had the pumps removed to the factory compound and placed under Twitchen’s direct responsibility. Thorburn was furious when he found out what I had done, although I cannot believe that he missed the extra income.

  John flew out for his school summer holidays. There was much to see and do. He spent many hours driving our railway engines while shunting the trucks around the factory compound. I would not allow him to go off around the estate. We swam in the estate swimming pool on most afternoons, joined by Pedro and Greta floating on their tyre inner tubes, and went down to Singapore on several weekends to stay with friends, and for John to play cricket. I foolishly agreed to pay him a dollar a run and a dollar a wicket. He kept wicket. In the first match, Schoolboy Visitors against Schoolboy Singaporites, played on the Padang, he took five dismissals – standing up to the fast bowlers most impressively – and scored 45 not out. I did not make the same mistake the next game, when he was chosen to play for the Civilians against the Services, again on the Padang. He went on to play regularly for MCC, and the St Lawrence Club, whose home ground was the County Ground at Canterbury, where Jean and I were to spend many happy days in later years watching Kent.

  In March we had an official visit from Richard Peters, the newly arrived American Consul in Singapore. He stayed for two nights, and I showed him around the estate, heavily escorted by Gurkhas, to acquaint him with life under siege on a Malayan estate. In his letter of thanks to Guthrie’s he said, ‘the visit to Ulu Remis has evoked tremendous admiration for the calm, courageous and cheerful spirit in which the men and their ladies are carrying on under the trying conditions that prevail. Please be assured that I shall not fail to convey these feelings to my Government.’ He wrote to me personally saying, ‘I can’t resist saying that you and Jean have restored my faith in the British. It had begun to wane in what we found to be a rather supercilious atmosphere prevailing in Singapore.’

  The close proximity of Ulu Remis to Singapore meant that we were ideally situated for official visitors to spend the day with us, to get some idea of the situation ‘upcountry’. Hardly a week went by when I was not required to entertain and educate someone ‘fact finding’, such as Sir Robert Wilkinson, chairman of the London Stock Exchange. On that occasion, I was due to meet him somewhere on the main north-south road but, while I waited on the road side for several hours with an armoured escort, he somehow had made his own way quietly and unescorted through bandit-ridden country to arrive in front of a very surprised and worried Jean. After this I wrote to Peter Taylor to stipulate that, henceforth, visiting VIPs would have to be responsible for getting themselves to the estate. In return I was reprimanded by Peter for ‘allowing’ Sir Robert to take such a risk – as if it were my fault – and he pointed out that it was in the interests of both Guthrie’s and the Malayan planting industry that as many VIPs as possible visited estates, to see for themselves the conditions under which we worked. I pointed out that I was general manager of an oil palm plantation, and that what I saw as unnecessary tours of inspection around CT-dominated countryside put not only the visitor’s life at risk but, more importantly to me, my own, and that I was not a public relations officer. He replied that, on the contrary, I was expected to be just that, and was paid the necessary allowances. I felt it fruitless to argue further, so agreed with a certain amount of ill grace to continue to play the diplomat.

  Sometime in July Guthrie’s asked whether I would take over Bukit Asahan Estate, a rubber estate of some 8,000 acres, 20 miles east of Malacca, well run but extremely isolated, at the end of a long and lonely road, overlooked by Mount Ophir, where Malacca, Johore and Negri Sembilan states meet. I had assumed that I would return to Kamuning after acting for Thorburn, for one last spell before taking over Ulu Remis permanently when he retired. But as it had now been decided that he would only be returning for a year, they considered that it would be too unsettling for all concerned if I were to go back to Sungei Siput for such a short period. I accepted this with great misgivings, but realised that a period away from the ‘front line’ would probably do me good.

  I was unaware of it at the time, but I was getting tired and, after four years of a reasonably active war, and now three years of the Emergency, beginning to live on my nerves. Also, unknown to me I was building up to a far more serious illness that was to curtail my career, just when I was about to reach the top of my chosen profession, and at a much earlier age than most who achieved such a well-paid and prestigious position. These problems are insidious and are seldom recognised in time.

  In addition to the perennial social round, I was in close, sometimes daily, contact with Sir Henry Gurney, the high commissioner, General Briggs, the director of operations, and Nicol Gray, the commissioner of police, so was very much at the centre of all things concerning the prosecution of the war against the Communists. With my senior managership in Guthrie’s, and as confidant and sounding-board of Sir John Hay, the chairman, I had reached the very peak of my career in Malaya.

  We were sad to see John off at Singapore airport after his holidays, to return to King’s. Shortly after his departure Dick Reid, by now a Guthrie’s visiting agent, asked whether we could put him up for the night and show him around the estate as he wished to learn something about oil palms. We were only too pleased to welcome him, and he arrived with John Craig, the secretary in the KL office who dealt with Ulu Remis. We were sitting in my office when the security officer looked in to say that some bandits had surrendered and were at the Kim Foh lines. He was off to collect them, to hold them until the police arrived.

  The SO had only been gone a few minutes when I asked the others whether they would like to see some CTs at close quarters. They positively leapt at the chance so I grabbed my carbine and set off to the Kim Foh lines where a somewhat distraught Special told me that the information was incorrect; there had been no surrender, but the SO’s armoured vehicle had met with an accident and he and two Specials had been taken to the estate hospital with severe injuries. In addition, Geoff Hackney, one of my junior assistants, had run into a bunch of armed CTs and had been shot. All in all not quite what I had expected to be showing the box wallahs from KL.

  I told the Special to remain where he was and wait for the arrival of the military, whilst I would go forward to see what was happening. We proceeded with caution until we reached the armoured jeep lying on its side, in a ditch. It was obvious that, in his haste to get to the ‘surrendered’ terrorists, the SO had taken the bend too quickly. A Special was standing guard, armed with his Bren gun, bravely holding his ground in the face of several armed bandits. He told us where the enemy was; 100 yards or so ahead, spread out over the summit of a small hill. Somewhere between us and the CTs was a wounded Geoff Hackney.

  I took over the Bren gun, gave the carbine to John Craig as Dick Reid carried the revolver he was issued with when visiting estates, and the three of us set off on foot towards the hill, hoping against hope that we would get to Geoff Hackney before the CTs. We had not gone more than a
few paces when we were met by a burst of automatic fire. We took cover, Reid to my left and Craig behind. I found it difficult to fire the Bren from the hip, and the few shots I got off were very inaccurate; I had not used a Bren gun since 1942. I thought at the time that Dick Reid and John Craig were being very brave to follow me without question; they were certainly experiencing what was a fairly common occurrence for many of the planters they controlled. There was a constant buzz around my ears and I shouted to Craig to raise his sights and to be more careful where he aimed. We saw at least eight CTs on the hill, and knew that there would most probably be more. We were completely outnumbered and the situation was becoming somewhat tense, when I spotted Geoff staggering towards us, covered in blood, and obviously in a pretty sorry state, dodging from tree to tree for cover. I handed the Bren gun to Reid, told him to give covering fire, in short bursts, and went forward to meet Geoff. He had blood pouring from his stomach and was trying to staunch the flow with his left hand, whilst holding his revolver with his right. I grabbed him under his shoulders, and dragged him back to the others where I gave the order to withdraw, praying that the CTs would not follow us. To my relief I found that the Special we had left by the jeep had somehow managed to extract it from the ditch and was reversing it towards us. We all tumbled in and I told the Special to drive straight to the estate hospital, pausing for only a moment to tell the subaltern doubling along the road with a platoon of Gurkhas the enemy’s position. After handing Geoff over to the hospital dresser we went home to a late breakfast, forgetting in all the excitement that Jean must have been worried stiff. She would have heard the shooting, have realised that we were well over an hour overdue, and have feared the worst. That such a worrying experience was commonplace to most planters’ wives throughout the Emergency could not have made it any easier. I remembered in time to stop under the porch and to shout up that, not to worry, the blood that covered me was not mine.