In the first large-scale operation post 1945, the in-depth interrogation procedure concentrated on the 2,000 prisoners held in three interrogation centres. When in early January 1963, Captain Alan Edwards arrived to run the Muara Lodge interrogation centre for important rebels, he stayed with the Head of Special Branch, Assistant Commissioner David St J. Forrer, a former Intelligence Corps National Serviceman. Instructed to ensure that the prisoners were not ill-treated, Edwards, nevertheless, had some difficulty persuading a military medical officer to visit the centre weekly. Staff Sergeant John Tucker, from 19 (Headquarters 17 Gurkha Infantry Division) Intelligence and Security Platoon, helped collate reports at Headquarters Special Branch. Intelligence coups from in-depth interrogation included information on the complete rebel order of battle and confirmation of Indonesian support for the insurrection. The only other Corps in the area was Major Peter Cox, a photographic interpreter and Japanese linguist; however, he was the Garrison Administrative Officer on Labuan providing base support for Operation Ale.
After achieving independence in 1950, President Sukarno of Indonesia promoted a greater Indonesia to include the Philippines and Malaya, a concept that was rejected by Malaya, which preferred federation with Sarawak, North Borneo (later Sabah) and the Sultanate of Brunei. On 20 January 1963, Walker’s view proved correct when the Indonesian Foreign Minister broadcast a policy of konfrontasi (confrontation) opposing the federation. The lack of Indonesian military activity forced Walker to return his men to Malaya; nevertheless, he insisted that 17 Division be the regional strategic reserve as opposed to the War Office preference of despatching the United Kingdom Strategic Reserve. Then, on Good Friday, irregular Indonesian Border Troops attacked Tebedu Police Station in Sarawak. Immediately, 3 Commando Brigade reinforced 99 Gurkha Infantry Brigade and took with it a composite Intelligence Platoon assembled in Singapore and Malaya under command of Captain Edwards. The Brigade had been supported by an FS section in Burma. By May 1963 the cinders of the Brunei Revolt had been quashed but at the expense of a Military Intelligence Officer killed in the final days during the pursuit of the leadership.
With jungle covering Brunei, North Borneo and the five administrative Divisions of Sarawak, the Special Air Service (SAS) laid a tripwire along parts of the mountainous border. Their application of ‘hearts and minds’ by providing security, medical support and, in one instance, the rigging of an alcohol still, proved crucial. The indigenous Border Scouts provided Home Guards for the scattered longhouses. A longhouse was essentially a community living in a single building. The rivers were the roads. As the threat of Indonesian incursions supported by Chinese communists increased in a campaign that became known as Confrontation, Major General Walker was appointed Director of Operations, Borneo. To cover the incursions, he deployed his Brigades into sectors, each supported by their Intelligence Platoons.
In 1959, an important change in intelligence collection had occurred when Field Intelligence Officer posts in the Aden Protectorate were transferred from the RAF to the Army. Under circumstances that were similar to the deployment of PAI Force FS detachments along the railway to the Soviet Union, the Field Intelligence Officers were principally Intelligence Corps NCOs. They initially deployed in First and Second Divisions in West Sarawak and reported to all Arms Military Intelligence Officers accredited to Special Branch and independent of local commanders. The system is more accurately known as Field Intelligence NCOs or FINCOs. Since the Corps was understrength as National Service came to an end, Royal Army Service Corps and Royal Army Ordnance Corps SNCOs filled several slots. Expected to combine enterprise with military skills and yet live in the community, as opposed to the camps, their role was to collect information on external and internal military and political intelligence and subversive threats to British Borneo.
Corporal Mobbs arrived in September 1963, a month after he had returned to Malaya with 22 Intelligence and Security Platoon. The senior Military Intelligence Officer was Major Kevin Rooney (17/21st Lancers). Lodged in a Government bungalow in Serian and supported by an Auxiliary Police Sergeant interpreter, he wore civilian clothes, was armed with a 9mm Browning pistol and often travelled by bicycle. Uniform was worn and a Sterling sub-machine gun carried only when visiting longhouses on ‘hearts and minds’ visits. Helicopters eased travel but when the monsoon grounded aircraft it usually meant a wet walk along slippery tracks or a ride in a rickety bus, always at the risk of ambush. Mobbs recalls:
We never really worried about the danger aspect in our travels around border longhouses and considered the biggest risk to be the food and unhygienic conditions. On arrival, usually late afternoon, one would enter the communal part and call on the family (private room behind the communal area) with whom you would stay. In 1st Division, some longhouses had bachelor huts where we would sleep. Next, you would make your way down to the river, followed by a crowd of children and have a wash. After dark, you would have a meal in the family room and then join everyone else outside in the communal area for discussions, talks, drinks (tuak) and sometimes entertainment. Eventually we would say that we were tired, otherwise everyone would sit up all night talking, and retire with the family. We picked certain families that we knew had spare mattresses like a duvet and we would sleep on these, sometimes under a mosquito net. The next morning you would eat the leftovers from the previous meal along with tea made with condensed milk before moving on to another longhouse or returning to base.
Staff Sergeant Thompson, a Simanggang FINCO, had served in a cavalry regiment before and during the war and had been a teacher and sheep farmer in Patagonia before re-enlisting into the Corps. Mobbs recalls one legendary visit:
Ralph Thompson was a great story teller and the Iban put great store in tale telling. He may be remembered to this day in some longhouses for teaching them to dance the Hokey Cokey. Seeing a mass of people of all ages, many the worse for drink, shouting out the words and jumping up and down on the bouncing bamboo floor was an unforgettable sight.
When the Federation of Malaysia was declared on 16 September 1963 and a mob attacked the British Embassy in Jakarta, in an act of defiance that is part of British military folklore, Major Roderick ‘Rory’ Walker, the Military Attaché and a member of the Corps, ignored missiles and pleas from the police to desist, inflated his bagpipes and blew. Commissioned into the Sherwood Foresters, and awarded the Military Cross while serving with the SAS in the Middle East, he had transferred in 1960.
As the Indonesian threat increased, British force levels rose so that by early January 1964, four Brigade tactical areas of operations emerged, with the UK Strategic Reserve and Australians and New Zealanders from 28 Commonwealth Brigade supporting the Malaysian brigades, usually on six month rotations. For the first time, the Intelligence Corps was applying the Intelligence Cycle in an operational environment. Photographic Interpreters and Royal Engineer draughtsman in the Intelligence Platoons and Joint Air Reconnaissance Centre (Far East) in Singapore produced maps from imagery and patrol information and Signals Intelligence assets in Singapore and Hong Kong plotted Indonesian positions. Predicting Indonesian incursions was not easy but once in Sarawak, the Intelligence collected meant they could hardly move without someone reporting it, a factor that led to Indonesian officers believing their incursions were being tracked by special radar equipment.
The trouncing of a raid at Kalabakan by 1/10 Gurkha Rifles in December 1963 saw a strategic shift when Major General Walker, in one of the best kept secrets of modern warfare, gained political permission to retaliate in Operation Claret. His aim was to force Indonesian commanders onto the defensive by using infantry companies to raid Indonesian bases, initially up to 5,000 yards south of the border, in the knowledge that Sukarno could not complain without being reminded that in August 1964, small Indonesian parachute and amphibious forces had landed in West Malaysia. Walker stipulated ‘The Golden Rules’ that were mandatory for all patrols crossing the border, including that all evidence of a British presence was to be brought
back, including the dead and empty tins of ‘compo’ rations. The ‘need to know’ principle was strictly applied to preserve operational security and journalists were fed disinformation about casualties. Intelligence was critical. Captain Nigel Flower an infantry officer and Staff Sergeant Tucker formed a Forward Interrogation Team at Jesselton Police Station and developed the concept of deploying mobile interrogators, including by helicopter, to units holding prisoners. By mid-1965 it had increased to two officers and six other ranks, commanded by Captain Tony Crawford, later a Director. By the end of Confrontation, more than 200 prisoners had experienced detailed interrogation, including an Army Headquarters signaller and a Marine Corps battalion commander and four others rescued by 42 Commando in February 1965 when their boat capsized near Sebatik Island on the border with Sabah. Corporal Tom Wall had little success extracting the location of an Indonesian base until he decided to teach the prisoner how to read air photographs. He pinpointed his base, which was then attacked by the Gurkhas.
In 1964 HQ Intelligence Corps (Far East Land Forces) formed 2 Intelligence Company to administer the Field Intelligence Officers. Corporal Mobbs, on his second tour, took over Batu Lintang, the site of the Japanese prison camp, from another corporal and joined the trend of troops collecting wild animals by obtaining a hornbill. Since the town was the trading focus of eight Indonesian longhouses, Mobbs and the corporal set up the ‘Field Immigration Office’ and instructed that traders must register with them, during which they were debriefed on military activity south of the border on the basis of ‘No talk – no trade’. A conscripted Indonesian art teacher captured by the Gurkhas lived with them and spent several months sketching Indonesian uniforms and badges. A female singer, who had one brother who was the Pontianak Police Chief and another who was an Army commander opposite Batu Lintang, was strongly suspected of supplying information to the Indonesians. Mobbs supplied her with a Box Brownie camera that he bought in the market to take photos when she crossed the border and convinced her to arrange a meeting with her Army brother. His suspicions about her were confirmed in mid-June 1964 when a 2/2nd Gurkha patrol, searching thirteen Indonesians ambushed near Empedi longhouse, found a sketch of Batu Lintang and mention of ‘three tanks’ (in fact Saracen Armoured Personnel Carriers) drawn by the singer. Several new Instamatic cameras sent from Singapore were rejected by most Field Intelligence Officers because they were unobtainable in the markets.
In spite of the importance of ‘hearts and minds’ was crucial; however, the demeanour of some Malaysian soldiers was counter-productive. When a battalion in Batu Lintang relocated several border longhouses, Mobbs mediated with an angry delegation claiming that the soldiers had stolen blowpipes, knives and baskets. In another incident, a corporal arranged for a helicopter to fly a woman with labour complications from a longhouse to Simanggang Hospital; however, mother and baby died. The corporal knew her longhouse would not believe both were dead until they returned home but when the RAF were unable to help, Mobbs and the corporal helped pay for a boat and decided, in future, to let nature take its course.
Corporal David Kitching arrived as Field Intelligence Officer Sarikei in December 1964 and, while investigating local Chinese communists, photographed documents discreetly removed from the subversive Sarawak Advanced Youth Organisation offices. When a trusted trader mentioned the People’s National Commando of Sarawak, Kitching debriefed four members persuaded to cross the border and then met their leader, who confirmed that while their philosophy was to subvert Dayaks, most of his members were Catholic and unarmed. When President Sukarno’s promise to crush Malaysia by the time the cock crowed on 1 January 1965 looked decidedly precarious, attacks on 2 Parachute Battalion at Plaman Mapu and the 18th Milestone Police Station in mid-1965 led to Operation Claret patrols penetrating up to 10,000 yards in a period usually known as the Battle of the Rivers. One operation penetrated to 20,000 yards. In September, the Indonesian Army reacted to an attempted Indonesian Communist Party coup d’etat by overthrowing Sukarno. As hostilities de-escalated, Kitching received several letters from the paramilitary police 203 Battalion, Mobile Brigade company commander, who had recently been deployed to Aruk. But when there was a major incident, Kitching responded with a sharp letter and a bullet-ridden Indonesian army jacket, warning that any incursions would be dealt with firmly. Eventually, he met several officers in a jungle clearing astride the border and struck up a profitable relationship with an inspector and his sergeant. The last act of Confrontation was the capture of Lieutenant Sumbi in Brunei in September 1966 after he had been tracked for a month through jungle sodden by monsoon rains.
Confrontation was the first campaign to involve the restructured Intelligence Corps and, while markedly successful, HQ 17th Gurkha Infantry Division commented in its 1969 report ‘Lessons Learned from Borneo Operations’ that:
There was no Counter-Intelligence presence at Force level and the CI element of the Brigade Intelligence Platoons was rarely used. This led to unsatisfactory standards of security, both physical and personal. An Int (b) officer at HQ DOBOPS could have improved the situation considerably both by training and educating officers in their security responsibilities and in the control and tasking of the CI elements of the Brigade Intelligence Platoons.
An example of a breach of the Golden Rules occurred before 42 Commando attacked Sedjingen in April 1966. A model, as expected by the Golden Rules, was built in the Commando base at Biawak but it was sometimes uncovered before local employees had left during the afternoon. Although there is no evidence to suggest the Indonesians anticipated the attack, the Commando fought a tough battle but lost a corporal posted ‘believed killed’. His body was found twenty-five years later by the British Defence Attaché in Jakarta several miles from the border. After the battle, Corporal Kitching was tasked to discover the extent of enemy casualties and undermined Indonesian claims of a ‘few’ when he met a boatman press-ganged to crew several longboats, who said that each of the twelve body bags being shipped to a cemetery contained two dead soldiers.
Of the Field Intelligence Officer concept, the report commented:
The FINCO (FIO) organisation was a great success and the NCOs themselves displayed great initiative and efficiency. They showed themselves capable of accepting responsibilities far in excess of those normally given to comparatively junior NCOs. This demonstrated the care which must be taken in the selection of men for these tasks.
In many respects, Confrontation contributed to changes in the culture of the Corps, in particular, proof that it could provide operational intelligence. The Field Intelligence NCO concept was sufficiently successful to be resurrected in Northern Ireland, Hong Kong and Belize.
Midway through Confrontation, in 1964 Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s new Labour Government Defence White Paper concluded that the Armed Forces were overstretched, inappropriately equipped and in some situations in which political necessity did not match military capability. While instability in Africa, such as the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence, and communist subversion in South East Asia was of concern, the principal threat to the United Kingdom was nuclear and the Group of Soviet Forces, Germany and, therefore, the Priority One task must be to support NATO. One saving saw the three Service ministries merge into the Ministry of Defence and the associated establishments of the Defence Intelligence Staff and overseas subsidiaries.
With the ending of Confrontation, in 1967 Lieutenant Colonel Goss formed Intelligence and Security Group (Far East Land Forces) of:
• Singapore: 2 (Intelligence) and 8 Security Companies.
• Malaysia: 9 Intelligence and Security Company.
• Hong Kong: 10 Intelligence and Security Company supporting HQ British Forces, Hong Kong and 48 and 51 Gurkha Infantry Brigades.
In addition, 8 Company provided support to the Defence Intelligence Staff (Far East), which reported to the Joint Intelligence Committee (Far East). Since much of the strategic attention focused on Vietnam, Australian Intelligence Corps
provided desk officers. The Australians generally had a good Vietnam war but were often let down by their allies. For example, a NCO working with the 1 Royal Australian Regiment found a large file in a leather satchel that listed the entire Viet Cong order of battle and infrastructure in South Vietnam. However, it went missing after it was sent back to a US HQ, probably intercepted by South Vietnamese officers who were integrated into the US HQ as interpreters and for document translation. Several SNCOs on Y4 Assistant Defence Attaché appointments in British Embassies witnessed the 1968 Tet Offensive and fall of Saigon in 1975 and the clearing of Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge.
Several Corps who visited US and Commonwealth forces in South Vietnam included Major Anthony Bedford-Russell, an entomologist, then serving as the Assistant Military Attaché in Saigon. An Australian brigadier later commented, ‘A British major was here three weeks ago exhibiting sang froid by going on patrol with a butterfly net’. From 1961 to 1970, the Intelligence Corps provided three-week counter-intelligence and operational intelligence courses for South-East Asian officers, including South Vietnamese, as part of the Foreign Office Services Training Assistance Programme. Some foreign NCO delegates were promoted to ‘Third Lieutenant’ to avoid Mess complications. When the South Vietnamese requested more courses, the length was reduced to two weeks. Each course was assisted by two interpreters. Some Intelligence Corps attended Vietnamese language courses in Australia. The Vietnamese delegates often spent their pay by buying luxury items, to the extent that Major Keith Wilkes, the last Group second in command, gave up restricting them to their authorised 40lb flight allowance. Ten-course Chinese dinners were part of the social programme. After years of negotiation, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Parritt, the last Group Commanding Officer, visited South Vietnam and, while impressed with the quality of US imagery, topographical study and electronic collation, he found interrogation techniques to be ‘robust’. He noted two interesting concepts. Divisional J2 (Intelligence) had authority to deploy a reconnaissance platoon to investigate an intelligence lead and the South Vietnamese ‘Intelligence Corps’ was a combat organization tasked to collect facts. As Far East Land Forces was preparing to leave Singapore and Malaysia in 1970, the South Vietnamese Army J2 Assistant Chief of Staff visited Singapore and took part in a ceremony that ended an interesting episode of Intelligence Corps history. The final link with South Vietnam was the transfer of Corporal Robin ‘Roo’ Rencher, who had fought in the iconic battle of Long Tan with 6 Royal Australian Regiment in 1966 from the Australian Intelligence Corps.
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