SAS: Secret War in South East Asia

by Dickens, Peter;

  Four or five of the enemy broke cover on the far flank and ran down towards the creek, the only way of escape. Skardon again slapped White’s face and scanned it searchingly, comprehending at last that he was witnessing the eternal mystery. Whether or not the body was clinically dead at that moment, Billy White was no longer of this world for anything Geoff Skardon could do about it.

  Awakened, that most compelling of instincts, self-preservation, urged Skardon to instant flight. There was now no reason to subdue it. He rose, fired three aimed shots at the enemy group and without waiting to see the results sprinted for the creek. Leaping in he was hidden by the high banks, but now he must move some twenty yards downstream to where good cover lined the left bank before the enemy could cut him off in the stream. He was slowed up however, helplessly as in a nightmare, by a ‘wait-awhile’ hooked lash that had seized him by the belt. Having no time to wait, he discarded the belt in an instant and pressed ahead. Speed and concealment vied for priority, though his reason told him that the check had eliminated his chances either way; but something, perhaps his shots, had delayed the enemy too. Skardon reached the thick jungle, scrambled up the bank and slipped into safety by what must have been the narrowest margin, later evidence showing that the enemy had indeed moved up the creek and taken his belt.

  Meanwhile, Corporal Wally Poxon of the Plandok patrol had heard the battle. Reporting it to the Haunted House he was told to go straight to Landing-Point 1 and secure it for Blackman’s possible return. Tudor, still in Brunei, flew ‘hot helicopter’ to Long Pa Sia and guided a platoon of the 1/2nd Goorkhas to intercept a presumed enemy. They were all down on Landing-Point 2 by three in the afternoon and hurried to the trade-route just short of the border, a smart manoeuvre which deserved success but failed by a hair’s breadth, signs of the enemy’s headlong retirement being clearly evident.

  It was not until late the next morning that Blackman and Green arrived at, Landing-Point 1. Skardon followed two hours later, the rendezvous drill not having worked as intended and he having had to navigate without map or compass which had gone with his belt; that he would succeed was predictable after his display of courage and resolution in the action, but it was hard and. tortuous going, fraught with anxiety just the same.

  The three survivors were flown out to Long Pa Sia to be debriefed and reequipped, and sent back in with the Gurkhas the following morning. Most of the latter were deployed along the frontier in case some of the enemy were still at large, but the SAS led two sections back to the contact area where they found what they least expected. Apart from Skardon’s belt being missing, nothing whatever had changed. There was the Indonesian, kneeling still with his uneaten food and unfired rifle before him; there were the bergens exactly where they had been dropped; there were the ambush positions of 30 enemies, littered with spent cartridges; and there was Billy White with the same dreadful wound that Ian Thomson would suffer, his femoral artery fully open to prove that he had died within minutes of being hit. Blackman was a young soldier then:

  ‘Never experienced anything like that before; basha-up with a chap and get to know him intimately – nice chap; then next day wrap him in a poncho and bundle him into a helicopter; affects you more than you like to admit.’

  There was plenty of evidence to show that the Indonesians had been in ambush for some days, but their reason for opening fire the evening before the contact could only be surmised. Had they been trying to ‘bait’ the ambush they would hardly have expected the Gurkhas to be so foolish as to march headlong down the track and would have been better placed at a border landing-point. It seemed like an accident, sprung perhaps by an animal, and that their commander took a chance that they had not been heard and stayed where he was. If so, his hopes would have been dashed when an apparent attack came in from the flank, and assuming that those dreadful Gurkhas had already flooded the area he legged it for the border as soon as the shooting was over. White had fired six rounds and if some of those had hit, which at five yards range was likely, the ensuing confusion might well have resulted in the kneeling corpse being overlooked.

  An apparently insignificant brush in which both sides had disengaged as soon as possible was thus a tactical success for the British, the enemy having lost at least one man and recrossed the border without achieving his aim. White’s death could therefore be justified, but when the SAS mulled it over in retrospect they were seized with terrible misgiving at what might have happened under the rules of Shoot-and-Scoot had he been less seriously wounded. True, he might not have been wounded at all had he scooted instantly after firing his first shot, in which case Skardon would not have been tempted to go forward. That indeed was what White and all of them had practised many times, so that the fact that he did not do so indicated that the option was not open to him, visible enemies being so close that to turn would have invited a certain bullet in the back and probably several.

  White was wounded nevertheless. Skardon went to his aid in an act of high and selfless gallantry, which was enhanced rather than diminished by his deliberately contravening the rules, a hard thing for a disciplined soldier to do even though it was emphasized that SOPs were guidelines rather than binding orders. In doing so, he nearly ensured that two men were lost instead of one, which the rules were expressly designed to prevent. But had he scooted as they prescribed, White might have been alive for all the patrol would have known; and acting on that assumption, they could have returned for him ten minutes after the contact, the enemy having left. The rules, however, did not allow for that.

  Throughout the Regiment, honour battled with expediency in innumerable Chinese Parliaments; considerable warmth was generated and no less a pundit than Sergeant-Major Lawrence Smith gave it as his view that ‘Shoot-and-Scoot, was a perfectly correct SOP and that’s what we taught the lads, but if it had been me and, say, Alf Tasker and one of our mates was missing, no way would we have paid any attention to the SOP.’ His word cannot be doubted, ill-disciplined though it was or perhaps because of that for there was no more loyal member of the Regiment than he; and one may wonder, daringly, whether Woodhouse’s own legs would have carried him away had he been faced with the choice of following his own procedure or risking his own life.

  The policy had been instituted to save life, both for its own sake and to preserve regimental morale; but now the question had squarely to be faced whether the latter would be worse affected by leaving a possibly wounded man to die or be captured by a savage foe, or by losing more lives trying to save him. Woodhouse, deeply concerned at the possible backfiring of his principle, now understood that the reason he had not specified the action to be taken was because he had subconsciously assumed that a missing man would automatically be accorded a priority second only to the immediate aim of the mission; with good justification too, both Richardson and Woodiwiss having returned to the scenes of their contacts as soon as circumstances permitted and survived. A mere assumption was not much help to a young patrol commander seeking loyally to obey his orders, and Woodhouse’s first reaction was to write to de la Billière:

  ‘I believe troops will welcome, and morale demands, an order that if a man is known to have fallen the patrol will remain in the close vicinity until either they see for certain that he is dead or they recover him alive. I think we should expect to fight to the death for this.’

  As usual, however, he invited discussion and acknowledged that such an order might send men into danger uselessly, while it failed to cater for the many possible variations on the theme which a commander might face, each demanding a different reaction. The apparently simple aim of saving life was thus shown to be highly complex, and indeed the modified instruction which emerged still failed to bring about the early rescue of Lillico and Thomson six months later (see Chapter 1). Only after that was a satisfactory procedure adopted, which is best not detailed lest it help a future jungle enemy.

  BOOTS, DMS, MODIFIED

  Three days after Billy White’s death, Poxon’s patrol found an inscri
ption on a tree near the border: ‘Go no further, winged soldiers of England’. The point was elegantly made and well taken; but SAS business being always to go a little further, Captain Ray England (regarding himself as personally addressed) and his winged soldiers Corporal Spike Hoe and Lance Corporal Bill Condie were already engaged in changing the tread-pattern of their directly-moulded boot-soles from standard British Army to Indonesian with that express purpose. To find somewhere in the Haunted House sufficiently secluded to prevent a casual enquiry as to what all this was in aid of was not easy, but it had to be done; even if no answer was vouchsafed, an accurate deduction that cross-border operations were at last beginning would not be difficult. The absolute secrecy demanded by the mission could only be achieved by not telling anyone who did not need to know, and those who did were very few indeed.

  To keep a secret on which one’s life may depend is not hard, especially in the SAS where secrecy is the norm and friends do not take umbrage when a barrier of silence descends between them; and now an extra constraint was imposed from above that the whole enterprise must remain permanently sub rosa.

  General Walker had obtained permission to operate in a country with which the British were nominally at peace by his reasoned moderation as well as importunity. He had no wish to invade Indonesia and turn Confrontation into war, but merely to unbalance the enemy by intermittent shallow raids and make him feel too insecure to mount offensive operations in his turn. Thus Malaysia would be defended without being fought over; the clandestine communists would be discouraged from rising; and the Indonesians would eventually acknowledge that they could not succeed. Even so, the political and military risks were considerable and much honour is due to those who supported the policy; particularly Defence Secretary Healey who took the final decision and responsibility, seeing clearly that it offered a real chance not just of containing Confrontation but of winning it, and with minimum casualties to British forces and civilians on both sides. These offensive operations were codenamed ‘Claret’.

  If the secret could be kept from all but the enemy, the hope was that he would keep it too, not wishing to advertise his own reverses. It followed that all encounters must indeed be reverses for him and not for the British because the Indonesians would certainly exploit the latter exultantly. Professional efficiency thus became doubly imperative, and only the most jungle-experienced troops would be used after intensive planning and rehearsal. As for the SAS patrols that would undertake the preliminary reconnaissance in totally unfamiliar terrain, their aim must be leave no evidence of their presence, and any unavoidable traces must be demonstrably deniable. Having already been warned by Woodhouse to prepare for cross-border operations, enterprising spirits like Lillico had envisaged landing by, say, submarine at, say, Pontianak and doing something constructive like blowing up the supply depot. That would have been a perfectly valid SAS activity in war, but this was Confrontation, and the indulgence only allowed penetration of 3,000 yards. Although paltry in comparison, it offered considerable scope nevertheless, and it was quite exciting too when it actually came to doing it.

  England’s objective was the River Sembakung, southeast of Labang which, supplying as it did a considerable number of troops at bases along the Salilir nearly to Kabu, must surely be vulnerable to interdiction. The patrol would watch the river for a week to assess the traffic’s density and regularity, find good ambush positions for the infantry, and return with a general picture of the topography and pattern of native habitation and movement. The 1/2nd Goorkhas would then follow with a strike, so Lieutenant (Queen’s Gurkha Officer) Manbahadur Ale was sent as the patrol’s fourth member.

  Secrecy, security, self-sufficiency and deniability were England’s watchwords in making his plan, which began with what each man was to carry and where, in minute detail. In his hand he would carry his self-loading rifle with full magazine. On his person would be his escape compass, 100 Malay dollars sewn into his clothing for soliciting help in emergency, field dressings, morphine, plasters, torch, notebook and pencil, map (never to be marked with his true position, but a fictitious track entirely in Sabah to imply a genuine navigational error), loo-paper, matches, knife, watch, and wrist compass for those lucky enough to own one. On his belt would be his compass, ‘parang’, two full magazines, water-bottle, mug, sterilizing tablets, two days rations in his mess tin, spoon, cooking stove with hexamine fuel tablets, more matches, paludrine, wire saw, insect repellent, rifle cleaning kit and a hand grenade.

  The bergen’s contents varied from man to man. Hoe was the signaller, carrying the radio with its spare battery, aerial and codes, and the Sarbe, which had at last been issued. Those were heavy items, so most of his food was shared around the others, leaving him with his spare shirt, trousers, socks, boots, poncho, sleeping-bag of parachute silk, nylon cord for contingencies, and book for beguiling the hours when not on observation duty, though not during the eleven-hour nights when the escape would have been most welcome; a candle on a sharpened stake conveniently positioned at the hammock-side was a luxury of the past, for no lights or stake-sharpening would be permitted now. Condie’s extra load was the medical pack, containing surgical scissors, forceps, thermometer, syringe and needles, scalpel blades, suture needles and thread, extra morphine syrettes, sterile water, assorted plasters and bandages, and a comprehensive pharmacy. England and Manbahadur took the binoculars, camera, and two large water-bags. The latter were carried empty; on passing a stream all would replenish their personal bottles and drink their fill – and more, for one can never have too much in the tropics, while too little causes heatstroke which can kill as readily as hypothermia. A night-stop near a stream would not be safe and it was then that plenty of water was needed for brewing, soaking dehydrated foods, cooking and washing-up. The supply was carried up in one load and the water-point never used again.

  Rations were keenly debated and whittled down, for it would surely be acceptable to lose weight for a maximum of twelve days rather than carry an incapacitating and tiring load. England further reduced the weight by specifying the daily allowances for two men rather than one, thus saving containers: two Oxo cubes, 1oz; two oatmeal blocks, 2oz; one tin of sardines, 4½oz; one packet of biscuits, 3oz; two tins of cheese, 3oz; salt, 1oz; two dehydrated meat blocks, 12oz; four vitamin tablets; sugar, 2½oz; milk cube, 2oz; and, of course, tea, ¼oz, without which no Briton can face his future. The total was 16 ounces a day per man giving 2,000 calories instead of the 3,600 they really needed.

  England then looked at the standard operating procedures, trying to foresee everything that might differ from an ordinary border patrol. Remaining undetected was paramount so they would move very slowly and for only twenty minutes before a halt to ensure they missed no unnatural signs. The lead scout would change every hour to maintain alertness. On stopping for the night the main meal of the day would first be cooked and eaten; often curried, for little individual preferences were permitted to add relish to the taste and comfort to the soul. Also before dark so that no lights need be shown, the evening signal was drafted by England to be coded and tapped out in morse code by Hoe; this generally obsolete method allowed the use of high-frequency with its much longer range than ultra-high frequency voice. Daylight time must also be allowed for receiving any messages from base and perhaps replying to them. No restrictions were placed on the volume of signalling, the risk of interception by the enemy being considered slight. Indeed, it was mandatory to send at least two signals a day and if any were missed the emergency organization would slot into gear; three, and the patrol must return to the border.

  The meal washed up, the radio dismantled and all stowed as though for moving, the ponchos were to be produced only just before the light failed. England had even contrived to save weight here by extending the idea of shared rations to the same pairs sharing bashas; he with Hoe and Condie with Manbahadur, so that with only one poncho each they could all have one over and one under. While doing all this, no unnecessary noise would be made and weapons
must always be within arm’s reach; but now, finally, there would be absolute quiet, immediate readiness and intense listening because it is a cardinal principle of conflict unchanging through the ages that one is most vulnerable at dusk and dawn.

  Long before daybreak, therefore, before even the first glimmer of light, everyone would have activated his natural alarm mechanism – which is accentuated by SAS training – and be sitting on his packed bergen, facing outwards with weapon cradled. Breakfast, tea with half a tin of sardines and a biscuit, would either be taken at full light or after the first hour’s march. All rubbish was to be carried at least that distance before being buried below the reach of pig-snouts (to de la Billière’s disapproval even so, had he known; nothing, in his experience, ever being beyond the reach of pig-snouts). The camp site was to be left immaculate with every leaf in place and never visited again unless used as the patrol rendezvous for emergencies. Lunch was a brew of Oxo, the rest of the biscuits and one tin of cheese each.

  Any locals met were only to be shot in self-defence as the ultimate resort; it would be much better to make friends with them, but better still to use every artifice to avoid meeting them at all for then the operation would be compromised and must be cancelled. On detecting anything suspicious, each man would melt, sideways and freeze; if soldiers or locals passed apparently unsuspecting, the line of march would be changed, but if one of the patrol was seen by an enemy, he would at once fire a double-tap; the other three would follow suit whether or not they could see a target, and without an instant’s delay scoot in pairs for the patrol rendezvous. The missing man drill remained much the same as before, there not having been time to assess the lessons of Billy White, but it was emphasized that the most incriminating piece of evidence to leave on the wrong side of the border would be a man, dead or alive.