by Pete Scholey
WO2 SQUADRON SERGEANT-MAJOR KEVIN WALSH
The sun struggled to penetrate the dense jungle canopy, creating a gloomy half-light, eerie and unsettling for those unused to such conditions but familiar surroundings to the men of the D Squadron patrol, who lay under the cover of fallen timbers or crouched at the foot of the massive Shorea hardwood trees. In the few places where the sun’s rays burst through the foliage, beaming down towards the forest floor, the ever-present jungle dampness was transformed into a steamy mist, drifting lazily up through the shafts of light.
Kevin Walsh stared intently through the drooping leaves and creepers, looking past the great tree trunks, slowly scanning the sector of forest in front of him, alert for any sign of movement, any hint of a form, shape or shadow flitting through his limited field of vision. Like the others, he had ‘tuned out’ the constant rustling of the foliage, the sounds of the insects and distant animal calls. He had no interest in the background noise, but any unusual sounds – a twig breaking underfoot or the distinctly unnatural click of a weapon being cocked – would reach his ears like a bugle call. Like the rest of the patrol, he was now a veteran of the campaign in Borneo. He knew the enemy Indos were up ahead and exchanged the occasional glance with the others, although they all remained totally silent.
Suddenly a thunderous crash split the air, flooding the surrounding hills with the boom of a mighty explosion. Then the unmistakable howl of a second incoming artillery round heralded another massive blast, then another and another. The high-explosive shells smashed through the upper canopy, sending great eruptions of composted earth, wood fragments and other debris from the forest floor shooting skywards. Where they detonated on contact with the trunks or thicker limbs of the hardwood trees, the shells sent wood splinters as lethal as any shrapnel hurtling through the air, slicing through lesser foliage and embedding themselves in tree trunks, roots or anything solid enough to stop them. Kevin scrabbled to bury himself deeper in cover as shrapnel and shards of wood buzzed past him like deadly insects. Huge branches came crashing down and among the explosions he could hear the screeching of trees being torn apart.
But this wasn’t meant to be happening – not to them. It was the Indos who were now meant to be engulfed in this hell. The barrage was meant for them. Kevin didn’t look up, didn’t dare risk a glance at the patrol’s radio man, but he knew he would now be frantically tapping out a message in Morse to have the barrage lifted. If the gunners didn’t let up quickly, the patrol was going to be torn to pieces.
Then, just as suddenly as it started, the barrage stopped. The echoes from the explosions rolled around the hills, then faded away. Falling debris from damaged trees was still tumbling down as Kevin popped his head out to take a look. The others were doing the same, checking that everyone was okay. By some miracle, no one was hurt. They rose as one and moved out as fast as they could. Someone had cocked up big time, but at that moment no one cared about apportioning blame. They were all just glad to be alive and heading for their helicopter rendezvous. They would all be back at base before nightfall.
Poor old Kevin didn’t have much luck in the jungle. Beginning with his very first experience with the Regiment in the tropics, it seemed like the rainforests had it in for him. Kevin was a fine soldier, one of the best, and went through Selection on the course before mine, but then suffered a slight delay before joining his squadron. He had been sent out to the Far East to finish his Continuation Training on a jungle exercise before going to Borneo. Towards the end of the exercise, he and his squad were clearing vegetation from the jungle floor to create a helicopter LZ. They were using the parang, a kind of machete knife with a blade that is over a foot long. The blade is curved to deliver the maximum cutting force from its extremely sharp edge when used for chopping away anything from light undergrowth and bamboo to small trees. It is heavy enough even to be used like an axe for cutting down really big trees. Different parts of the blade, in the hands of an expert, can be used for skinning game or even carving. Unfortunately, Kevin was not yet an expert. While taking a huge swipe at a large branch, he got the angle of attack wrong and quickly found that he had his stance all wrong, too. The parang glanced off the branch and buried itself in his leg. I was not, of course, there at the time but I don’t have to try very hard to hear exactly what he said in that instant after the blade sliced through his flesh and just before the real pain hit home. It would be unprintable.
Kevin was hospitalized and spent some time recovering from the wound, but fought his way back to fitness in time to join D Squadron in Borneo. His luck in the jungle, however, was not to change. Kevin was part of the Geordie Lillico patrol that was ambushed by the Indonesians. Unlike Geordie Lillico and Jock Thompson, Kevin was not in the line of fire and was not wounded – but he suffered the agony of guilt at having to follow Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and withdraw from the ambush to the predesignated RV, not knowing whether the two lead members of the patrol were alive or dead. No one ever wants to be in the position of having to leave friends behind, but it wasn’t until Jock and Geordie failed to make the rendezvous that Kevin and the rest of the patrol knew for certain that something had happened to them. When they went out later with a search party, Kevin was the one who found Jock, badly wounded, lying in a stream bed. They couldn’t get Jock out by helicopter that night, but Kevin was the one who held him all night, keeping him warm, helping the medic Ginge Tyler to keep him alive until the casevac chopper could reach them at first light.
By the time I first met Kevin in 1965, when he was posted to 18 Troop and joined the patrol that consisted of me, Paddy Millikin and patrol commander Lofty Large, Kevin was regarded as something of a Jungle Jonah. Would you want to set off into an extremely hostile environment with someone who was known to have almost chopped off his own leg, was ambushed on his first patrol and was subsequently nearly blown to bits by our own artillery? You can understand that we were slightly wary that he might be some kind of jinx. Little did I know then what a good friend he was to become.
It turned out that we had quite a lot in common. Like me, Kevin had come to the Regiment from the Paras, having served with Support Company, 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment. Like me, he had also seen active service against the EOKA terrorists in Cyprus and like me, he had a sense of humour that was not always appreciated by our esteemed officers. During one classroom theory session, an officer had put it to him that while being pursued by a superior enemy force, Kevin had fallen and broken his leg. The officer proposed the hypothetical situation that the patrol was in a bad way, short of food and ammo, and would not be able to make their escape while carrying the burden of a lame trooper. He suggested that he would leave Kevin with enough food and water for 48 hours and two rounds for his rifle and asked him what he would do. Without hesitation, Kevin replied, ‘As you walked away, Sir, I’d put both rounds right between your f***ing shoulder blades!’
Having Kevin as part of our patrol turned out to be a real boon, but he was not the most impressive of soldiers at first sight. He was just over 5ft (1.5m) of bull-strong Yorkshireman with a face like a crumpled dishcloth (he was nicknamed ‘the airborne wart’) and a voice that sounded like a frog in a biscuit tin gargling with pebbles. Once, while back home in Hereford between ops, my wife Lyn and I went to the cinema to see Snow White – not really the kind of guts-and-glory action film you might expect an SAS soldier to want to see, but sometimes you need a complete break from all that. When one of Snow White’s dwarves, ‘Grumpy’, appeared on the screen, I nudged Lyn and said in a voice that was a little too loud, ‘He’s just like Kevin!’ The frog voice rumbled out of the darkness from somewhere behind me, ‘Shut it, Scholey...’ Kevin was there, too, and, from the sniggering that then erupted all over the cinema, it was obvious that most of the audience was composed of members of Her Majesty’s elite fighting force, all out for the evening to watch a Disney movie.
In Borneo, Kevin soon proved his mettle on countless operational patrols, but we never
got over the fact that the jungle seemed to be out to get him. He was with us when we penetrated deep into Indonesian territory to find the Indos’ Koemba River supply route, the operation that is described in detail in chapter 4. The enemy believed the jungle would be impenetrable due to the flooding of the swamps caused by the monsoon rains. They thought that they were safe to use the river to transport men and supplies to their positions without fear of being detected or ambushed. They were almost right. Wading through swamps and crossing swollen rivers is dangerous, exhausting work. Even when we took to the higher ground to try to avoid the swamps, we had to cross hill streams that had turned into raging torrents.
Crossing one such stream, a parade-ground punishment may well have saved Kevin’s bacon. How many times have you seen an archetypal sergeant-major on TV bellowing at a raw recruit, ‘You ’orrible little man. Down! Twenty press-ups! Now!’? We hadn’t ventured very far into Indonesian territory when we had to cross a fast-flowing stream that was about 18in (46cm) deep and about 6ft (1.8m) wide. Lofty leapt it easily. Paddy and I followed suit but Kevin, bringing up the rear, made a complete hash of it. Lofty and I had moved well forward from the stream by the time we realized that the others were no longer following on. When we returned to the stream, we found Paddy weak with laughter. Beyond him was Kevin, his boots tangled in a tree root just below the surface and the rest of him stretched flat out across the stream. He hadn’t made it. Not only that, his feet were so entangled that he couldn’t move and was doing press ups in the slimy mud to push his face out of the water so that he could breathe.
After a long, arduous journey we finally reached the Koemba River, the first patrol to have done so, and were able to send back information detailing all of the enemy’s river traffic. Before withdrawing, we also managed to destroy one of the enemy’s supply launches. We watched the traffic for some time before deciding which boat to attack. Eventually one was chosen but, before we could fire on it, Lofty stopped us. He’d spotted a woman with a high-ranking officer on the deck of this particular launch and thought there might also be children aboard. We allowed it to pass unharmed. We later learned that the first launch had been carrying Colonel Mordano, one of the enemy’s top brass. Twelve years after that ambush, the then brigadier of the Regiment, General John Watts, was walking the corridors of power in Whitehall when he met Colonel Mordano, by then a politician in the Indonesian government. During their conversation, they talked about the Regiment’s operations in Borneo and the incident on the Koemba cropped up. Colonel Mordano mentioned the ambush that had sunk the launch behind his. When told that two members of the patrol involved were still serving in the Regiment, he asked if he could meet them.
Kevin and I were summoned to the office of the then commanding officer (CO), Colonel Wilkes. We were instructed to dress smartly in blazers as we would be going to London to meet Mordano. On the appointed day, we were flown in the CO’s helicopter, accompanied by him, to SAS Group HQ in London where we introduced to Colonel Mordano. He greeted us warmly and congratulated us on a brilliant tactical operation. He was about the same height as Kevin and seemed quite a cheerful sort. His last words to us, having chatted for some time, were ‘Thank you for letting me live.’
As we walked out of the office, Kevin wrung his hands in a strangling motion and said to the brigadier in a loud voice, ‘Can we finish him off now, Sir?’ He took one look at us and snapped, ‘Get out of here now!’ But he did have a smile on his face.
On our return to the UK from Borneo, the squadron was put on alert for a quick move to Aden. The codeword was ‘Free Beer’. Wherever we were when we received the message, we all had to return to base immediately and prepare for departure. Within a couple of hours of the codeword being sent, we would be on an RAF aircraft en route to Aden, where we were to be deployed against the ‘Red Wolves of Radfan’, as the communist-backed hill fighters had been dubbed by the press. It was supposed to be a highly secret move. We were all in operational gear, with no obvious signs or badges that would identify us as SAS, ready to move immediately into enemy-held territory in the mountains. On landing in Aden, the squadron was led to the arrivals lounge at Khormaksar. Having been told time and time again that our deployment was a sensitive issue to be kept totally secret, you can imagine our surprise at being met by an HQ captain and his aides in ‘full Monty’ SAS uniforms – beige berets, winged daggers, the lot. To cap it all a loud greeting boomed out over the tannoy – ‘Welcome to the SAS!’ Kevin’s response was, ‘So much for top secret. I bet we’ve even got a welcome card from the Red Wolves.’
Kevin had an eventful tour in Aden. He was sent up-country with the troop officer to a village where they were to act as liaison reps. He thought this was quite a cushy job, but it was a strange one for Kevin. Being nice to the locals while in the company of an officer could never be described as something at which he would excel. He was no diplomat, after all. He had, however, been on a language course and could speak Arabic, the main reason why he was sent. Everything seemed to be going well. The mountain village was hot and dusty, but still cooler than being down in Aden town, and strolling along the street in the sunshine certainly beat humping a full load of kit up a mountain track. Then it all went wrong. The crack of a rifle discharge was followed by the sound of a round smacking into the mud wall of the building they were passing. Kev and the officer dived for cover as more rounds bit into the dusty path where they had been standing. Not all of the villagers, it seemed, were pleased to see them. They were pinned down under heavy fire for 15 long minutes until the volleys of rifle fire from the distant hillside and not-so-distant rooftops eventually subsided. Kevin was glad to abandon his ‘cushy’ job and spend the rest of his tour in Aden within the bosom of 18 Troop.
I got to know Kevin quite well during our time together in D Squadron, and when we were back in the UK between jobs, before either of us was married, he used to come home with me to Brighton on our weekends off. Sadly, those days when we could let our hair down without a care never lasted as long as we would have liked. As if growing up and starting families didn’t bring enough pressures of its own, the Regiment was fast becoming busier than ever. When we were not on operations, there were constant rounds of courses and refresher training. One of these courses was the annual escape and evasion exercise. This involved being parachuted into ‘enemy’ territory, evading the hunter forces, resisting interrogation if captured and making every effort to escape. It was a very important part of our training and was run very professionally and realistically. On one occasion, we were dropped into the Pyrenees mountains on the French/Spanish border, and had to evade capture by the French Paras.
Eventually, Kevin and I were both run to ground, captured and escorted to the interrogation centre, where we were immediately stripped down to our underpants and made to stand facing a wall in an old, disused barn. We stood at arms’ length from the wall, with our arms outstretched, leaning forwards so that we balanced with our hands against the brickwork. Hoods covered our heads so that we could see nothing. We were left standing there, shivering, for hours on end with nothing to eat or drink. Occasionally we were taken and interrogated by a British unit called the Joint Services Interrogation Unit (JSIU), highly skilled soldiers of the Intelligence Corps. They were very experienced interrogators whose methods ranged from the soft, persuasive, almost friendly approach to outright aggression.
Having got nothing out of Kevin using the aggressive treatment, they took him into a cold, bare room containing only a small table and one chair. The interrogator was a sergeant-major of the Intelligence Corps. He sat behind the table while Kevin was left standing about a foot in front of it. The guards waited just outside the locked door.
The interrogation started with about ten minutes of soft talking; no information given. Kevin stood there looking knackered and ill, just as we had been taught as a delaying ploy on our SAS ‘resistance to interrogation’ training (not too much acting required). Knowing that Kevin had had nothing to eat or dr
ink for hours, the interrogator thought he could break him. He took a large bar of chocolate out of the table drawer, snapped a piece off and asked Kevin if he would like it. Kev just gave the reply we’d been instructed to give, ‘I’m sorry, Sir, I cannot answer that question.’ The officer put the piece of chocolate into his own mouth and made a show of savouring the taste. With his mouth full, he said to Kevin, ‘Just tell me your regiment, and you can have some.’
Still no response from Kevin.
The interrogator continued to break off one piece of chocolate after another, slowly chewing as he chatted away. To Kevin it seemed like the entire room was now filled with the scent of chocolate. Parched though he was, he could feel himself salivating; the smell of the chocolate was so strong that he could almost taste the stuff. The interrogator continued to chat casually, slowly trying to persuade Kevin that talking to him really was his best option. Leaving the rest of the chocolate on the table, he rose to stroll around the room, teasing Kevin as he burbled on through a mouthful of chocolate. Then, just for a moment, he turned his back on Kevin and the table. Big mistake! Kevin lunged at the table and snatched up the chocolate. By the time the interrogator realized what was happening, Kevin had the remains of the chocolate in both hands and was stuffing it into his mouth as fast as he could, drooling down his chin with a big smirk on his face.
The interrogator stood stock still, spluttering with shock. Then he completely lost all control and shouted, ‘Guards! Take this man away!’ Kevin had actually broken the interrogator.
It was easy to underestimate Kevin. He gave the impression of being a really grumpy old sod, but it was difficult not to laugh when he was around. His appearance, combined with a deep Yorkshire drawl, sardonic sense of humour and straight-from-the-shoulder attitude made him a great morale booster. Yet, Kevin’s appearance and demeanour belied a highly intelligent and competent soldier. He was particularly skilled at running a mortar line; a young officer once commented that he was like ‘fire control without a map’. Because of this he really came into his own in the desert and mountains of southern Oman.
