SAS: Secret War in South East Asia

by Dickens, Peter;

  There were no signs of compromise, but Indonesian patrols had again come over and left more of their notices – ‘Winged soldiers beware!’ – which they evidently thought rather good. ‘Tanky’s’ patrol was given an escort of Gurkhas for their servicing rounds in future. At an ambush, the Gurkhas would guard both approaches while Smith and Ted Stafford went in to do the job. Mike Seale, the signaller, on his first operation, stayed outside with earphones on, exchanging morse-key taps with the operator at base to hold the line open in case of accidents. It was, he says, ‘trembly’, for even if nothing had been disturbed – one ambush had been partly blown by a falling tree leaving the rest extremely dangerous – explosives could become unstable in such damp conditions and once, despite all precautions, a detonator burst in Smith’s hand.

  The wound was most painful; frightening, too, because he was also holding a tin of pig-repellent which was injected forcibly into his bloodstream. The tin had announced its contents as deadly poison which was on no account even to be touched, but Smith survived to declare later: ‘Let that be a lesson not to believe everything you read on tins.’ Seale called for a helicopter, Smith was ‘casevac-ed’ and ‘Darkie’ Davidson, another constructive demolitionist, relieved him later.

  Jim Penny, that fugitive from bullshit, found none when he was sent with Dave Abbott to join the Cross-Border Scouts, now commanded by Major John Edwardes previously of ‘A’ Squadron. Edwardes had returned to Borneo for a task that would fully exercise his talents for adventure, initiative and snake-collecting.

  ‘It was a laugh a minute with him’, says Penny, though one’s sense of humour needed to be robust. ‘He’d suddenly pick up a scorpion and throw it at you; grabbed snakes by the neck and got them to bite his handkerchief, which he then tied round the head with a neat knot. The Ibans wouldn’t go near his bergen.

  ‘It was all recce that time. We were supposed to take the scouts so far and then push them off on the job, but it didn’t work; great little guys, always cheery and far better than us in the jungle, but we never knew what they got up to and they didn’t achieve much, so halfway through the tour John Edwardes decided we’d stay with them all the time.’

  That was Edwardes’s way; no one knew so no one grieved, while he suffered no flicker of conscience nor fear for his career, which mattered little to him anyway so long as the task was accomplished.

  By mid-December 1964 ‘B’ Squadron had been spared a major test, but now felt able to take one on. The work had been hard with Watts himself working harder than any, both to operate his patrols – a job demanding ceaseless exertion accompanied by nagging anxiety – and to nurse them along as well. The idea of a restorative evening off occurred to him with growing insistence, though he suppressed it as impossible to gratify. But on the 16th, circumstances combined to allow a break without detriment to duty, indeed to its advancement. He therefore vanished from the Haunted House to pursue his excellent aim, and minutes later a personal message arrived from General Walker demanding his attendance at 7 o’clock in the morning.

  A search was instituted, but the SAS are not easy to find when they decide to get lost. It was only when billowing white mist floated in the still dark valleys below pinky sunlit ridges, the dawn chorus of insects, birds and monkeys shrilled in Watt’s head with more than usual resonance – for the jungle dominates Brunei even around the capital – and the deadline drew perilously near that a well-loved commander reappeared, contented certainly, and potentially restored though in the slightly longer term. His loyal band set about him in their rough, kindly way with a cold shower, brisk massage, stimulating potions, crisply starched uniform, and delivered him at the appointed hour, the convincing image of a spry and receptive officer.

  ‘This is absolutely Top Secret’, the General said; ‘cut your throat if you breathe a word’. Watts did not so breathe, but concentrated with negligible difficulty on what was clearly going to concern him directly. It was nothing less than the likely fulfilment of Walker’s long-held belief that the Indonesians were planning a major thrust. Intelligence had reported at least a division of their best troops massing opposite the First Division of Sarawak while their main parachute force was at readiness, putting Kuching itself at risk. Genera] Panggabean, commanding in Kalimantan, and Colonel Supargo, his Director of Operations, were efficient professional officers with successful combat experience against the Dutch, and the political atmosphere in Djakarta pointed to some such initiative, the Left faction being dominant and Soekarno in a state of more than ordinarily excited fantasy.

  General Walker had asked for reinforcements and got them; not as many as the threat warranted, but they marked Britain’s resolve to uphold her friends and her honour. The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were also strengthened, not very much but with disproportionate publicity, and all this happened in time to act as a deterrent instead of the more usual last-ditch, last-minute defence.

  Walker told Watts that he intended to enhance the deterrent effect by mounting ‘Claret’ strikes against the enemy’s preparations to an increased depth of 10,000 yards; not as a pre-emptive offensive nor even with the expectation of causing serious disruption, but as psychological rapier-thrusts to make Supargo think defensively and take his mind off other things. The first essential was thorough reconnaissance of the enemy’s border territory by the SAS, so Watts had been booked on the next flight to Kuching where he was to confer with the Brigadier, West Brigade, assess the task and report back to the General. He left, still without a word.

  The 400 miles to Kuching in a slow aircraft was refreshing. Brigadier Bill Cheyne of West Brigade welcomed the SAS to serve under him; if, that is, they agreed with his orders, since their unorthodox command structure allowed them to appeal directly to the General if they did not. But Woodhouse had prudently entertained Cheyne at Hereford before his posting to Borneo, so he understood the relationship; and the SAS, finding him to be a good guy by their lights – short, bouncy, radiating energy, above all professional – strove to please him.

  Cheyne’s command was crucial to the outcome of Confrontation and a splendid one for a dedicated soldier. His three infantry battalions faced several times their own strength along a 150-mile front, and no Briton can ask fairer than that; nor is there usually much point in asking, given Britain’s habitual parsimony in defence. Cheyne could lose the war at a stroke; but he could also defend his territory so thoroughly that its people would hardly know there was a war on, while he presided over a vigorous campaign across the border which would exercise all his leadership, daring and finesse, his troops’ enterprise, skill and courage, and be professionally fulfilling for all. Morale was high in Walker’s army, and its attitude to the threat, eager and confident.

  The First Division was as different as could be from the Sabah front. The original Sarawak, it was now more densely populated and cleared of jungle than anywhere else in Borneo. Many of its people were Chinese, whose hard work stimulated the economy but a proportion of whom were infected by the communism of their spiritual motherland and thus posed a major latent threat. The land being mostly flat and extensively cultivated, with a road running the length of the division with branches to places like Tebedu, there was nothing to prevent the enemy deploying large formations which would have only 25 miles to traverse from the frontier to Kuching. Although some stretches of the border were marked by ridges, these were not difficult to cross, while in others one could march on wide trade-route tracks without even climbing.

  There was much to find out, more than could possibly be achieved by one Squadron in a short time, but at least nearly its whole strength could be devoted to the task. Ever since ‘A’ Squadron’s first tour the infantry had here taken care of border surveillance with hearts and minds, working from their jungle forts close up to the frontier, and constantly patrolling the area with greater numbers and higher frequency than the SAS could ever have managed. That being so, Watts realized that infantry cooperation would be essential to SAS success on several coun
ts. Firstly, nasty accidents could occur on the way to and from the border without very careful joint planning. Secondly, previous SAS cross-border patrols had each been sponsored there and back by another, responsible for securing the crossing-point and for sending them off fresh and with full packs and bellies; why not therefore try and persuade the infantry to undertake this duty, thereby achieving greater safety from friend and foe alike and freeing all SAS patrols for the main task?

  Thirdly, cooperation for cooperation’s sake could not be taken for granted; some infantry officers, but particularly those of the Gurkhas, by no means conceded that the SAS could achieve any more than their own men. That was as might be, but the SAS had been tasked to find targets for the infantry to attack and might well have to lead them there. Thus, it behoved the SAS to observe the enemy through infantry eyes; it behoved the infantry to make clear what they wanted and give every facility; and it behoved both not to argue over who was the greatest but develop the sort of companionship that alone would achieve high success. Watts therefore visited all the commanding officers to make friends as well as to learn the lie of the land and set up the scheme. Then he agreed final details with Cheyne, asked for a headquarters and accommodation to be found in Kuching, and flew back to Brunei in clear-sighted though pensive mood.

  ‘It was a tall order; we were an untried Squadron being asked to do more and go further than the other two, and in far more difficult country; but I was most grateful to Peter de la Billière for all the typically thorough work he’d done on cross-border ops. When I’d come out on a visit during his tour, I joined the sponsor patrol which saw off Maurice Tudor the time he got ill so that was a help. Anyway I went to Walter Walker and reported, “Everything’s fine, we can do it” – actually there was no goddamned option – and then to Harry Tuzo and told him, “Hey! You’re losing your Squadron.” He hit the roof. Typical of Walker, never told anybody anything except personally, good for security I suppose.’ The Gurkha Independent Parachute Company, now trained to augment the SAS, relieved ‘B’ Squadron in the north. As each patrol came out, Watts sent it south, leaving only the ‘Viper’ team and one or two others. Daubney’s patrol, staging through an up-country airstrip, arrived by chance just before General Walker himself and were hustled behind a hut by local officialdom as being no fit objects for a discriminating and potentially critical eye and nose. But the General had already spotted them from his helicopter, for they were undeniably conspicuous, and, Hartill relates, ‘He got out and made a bee-line for us, asked who we were and what we’d been doing, listened to what we told him and then went to meet the officers. A really nice fellow.’

  A soldier’s general; and an effective one too, for 1965 had come and Malaysia was far from crushed.

  Lieutenant-Colonel John Woodhouse left the Army in the New Year for other activities, and Mike Wingate-Gray took over 22 SAS. General Walker thanked Woodhouse for his great contribution to the Borneo campaign and the border peoples, ‘among whom you and your men are worshipped’. And he added: ‘You enjoy a unique, unchallenged reputation as an expert in counter-guerrilla warfare and it is my hope, shared by many others, that the powers that be will recognize this and continue to employ you in this sphere.’

  The General tried hard to persuade the powers that be that they could not afford to lose Woodhouse. His advocacy was ineffective, perhaps because he too was a man who did his duty as he saw it, without fear, favour or affection; a fine moral principle but one that is often too disturbing for establishments to live with. When the Hereford Headquarters was to be inspected by the local General, Woodhouse used to order, in print, that no special arrangements, rehearsals, kit-polishing or anything else were to precede it. The great man would be shown the Regiment that Woodhouse loved as it really was. He must be made to see that it was good without frills or hard selling, which, if he was a good General, would repel rather than impress him; but he could think little or nothing of Woodhouse personally for all the latter would do to push himself.

  Yet – or perhaps because he understood himself and his friend so well – he told Johnny Watts in a farewell message, ‘Work hard to be a General’, while knowing perfectly well that Watts would not take the smallest designing step to that end. He would not have known how to begin and did not want to know, abhorring the very thought of promotion politics like all in the Regiment and perhaps a little more; but regiments need generals for their advancement and survival, and Woodhouse saw that Watts could make the grade on merit alone if at least he did not go out of his way to alienate his seniors other than in the course of duty.

  Woodhouse’s premature retirement was a greater setback to both himself and the Army than either admitted; but as to his main labour, the same inexorable law of cause and effect operated to reward him unequivocally. The Regiment under him had never been better. More than that, he had implanted it with the seeds of its own regeneration so that it was to become better still, and as it did so his own renown grew within it until, alone among that band of ‘finger-poking’ brothers, he never has a finger poked at him.

  Kuching was an attractive small town of 50,000 people who went about their peacetime occupations without a thought for the threat that reared up against them. The Army had not been given wartime powers of requisition so it was hard to find ideal accommodation for a Squadron of SAS at short notice. The place actually rented was not, in Watts’ view, ideal. ‘A long upper room,’ he says – and although usually a master of direct language this memory is so painful that he has to recall it in hesitant steps – ‘built over a bar; a girlie bar; it was a brothel, god dammit, a screaming brothel!’ He stormed the verandahs of power, declaiming against lack of security and moral hazard to the innocents in his care, but even so there was no alternative for several weeks. The only mitigation was his planned operational intensity, which would allow the men very little time and excess energy in Kuching.

  Watts and his operations officer Wilf Charlesworth worked very hard. Pressure was on them for quick results, but there would be nothing headlong or slapdash about their methods; the more difficult the task the more carefully did the SAS prepare for it. This one being dangerous as well as difficult, the same intensive briefing, rehearsal and minute attention to detail was imposed on every patrol as had been on England’s first one. Most dangerous and difficult of all, but with the highest priority, was the area of border closest to Kuching, between Stass and Tringgus. Intelligence indicated that the enemy was building up his forces here by way of the River Koemba and its tributaries, though with the usual poor maps the SAS had to go there before they discovered the full extent of the problems. The task was purely reconnaissance, of the enemy, the locals and topography; all signs of a patrol’s presence must be concealed and offensive action was not allowed.

  Parts of the border here were marked by hills up to 1,600 feet, but swathes of lowland ran between them which were sometimes cultivated and thickly populated by Borneo standards. The weather was very wet when the first three patrols took the plunge on 29 December, and Captain Angus Graham-Wigan had a most miserable time, sitting in the rain on Gunong Jagoi for a fortnight watching a track along which nobody came. That was too long to be static except for some special reason, Watts decided; it was bad for the circulation, digestion, muscles and morale.

  Corporal Joe Little passed over Jagoi and down into the plain beyond to watch the main track between Babang and Stass, which the enemy had previously used for incursions; but he never reached it because concealment was impossible in such open country with many locals working in the ‘ladangs’. He prowled around for a week where the terrain permitted and came away with much topographical information and the distinct impression that the enemy did not patrol the area regularly.

  The third patrol of the initial wave was ‘Tanky’ Smith’s. He had returned from hospital with some pieces of detonator still in his hand, but not where they mattered. His old team of Seale and Stafford was brought up to strength by Paddy Byrnes. They approached the little pla
in from the north, where a border ridge covered with good primary jungle ran east and west parallel to the Separan tributary on which stood the village of Kaik. As soon as the patrol descended, they too were frustrated by ubiquitous ‘ladang’ dotted with toiling peasants, and then by impenetrable swamp as they tried to approach the river. Nevertheless, they confirmed the enemy’s presence by his tracks right up to the border and his practice of firing mortars sporadically, though at what targets was unclear.

  The first pieces of the jigsaw were thus placed on the table. To be sure, Watts was forced to conclude that the Kaik/Babang plain was unsuitable for the present type of patrolling, but that was useful information in itself and there were plenty of other places where the SAS could profitably go.

  Watts next sent a patrol to the south of Gunong Brunei where the Koemba itself swings east close to the border. Bennett was the commander, a trooper still but that is no obstacle to leadership in the SAS if a man is up to the job. The place proved more promising than any so far, the ground between ridge and river being real ‘ulu’ with steep hills, primary jungle and rocky streams where men could move, hide and leave no traces, though enemy patrols had done so. Pressing on downhill, Bennett made the remarkable discovery of a high rock containing a group of caves that were quite clearly used as shelters by travellers both civilian and military. One hundred yards on through a belt of bamboo was a veritable motorway of a track running east and west and presumably connecting Seluas with Siding. The patrol crossed it very carefully. Feeling cut off and vulnerable, they inched their way another 300 yards through swamp to the river, which was navigable to small craft.