SAS: Secret War in South East Asia

by Dickens, Peter;

  This, de la Billière realized, must be the enemy’s response to the 2/2nd’s previous assaults, and that the place to catch enemy boat traffic now was even further downriver beyond the camp. He took 4 Troop there accordingly, accepting the risk of being on the wrong side of all those soldiers because of his men’s ability to lose themselves in the jungle. They marched in a wide detour around the ‘Guitar Boogie’ and ‘Kingdom Come’ ambush sites as well as the camp, crossed another tributary and hit the river again further than anyone had been before where the enemy would least expect trouble.

  The rainstorms had ceased, the river-bank gave good cover among dried-out mangroves, and Tudor had the whole Troop in ambush by one o’clock on 1 September, de la Billière and Low guarded the bergens at the immediate rendezvous 50 yards behind and seized the opportunity to catch up with events elsewhere; but although 1 Troop was only 5,000 yards away, they could not be raised, and de la Billière again felt guilty for being in the wrong place in order to satisfy his personal compulsion. Base responded however, and signals were tapped out and received, coded and decoded, though there was still a backlog when at one forty-five the ambush sprang into murderous life.

  Two longboats out of a possible four (the following ones being but fleetingly seen) were allowed into the killing zone; their eight-man crews were smartly dressed and looked out keenly, though for all the good that did them they might have taken their last few minutes of life easily. The killing was accomplished coolly and professionally, and after two minutes’ firing the stillness of death lay on the water. The leading boat had sunk and not a ripple emanated from its occupants. The second had grounded within two yards of the nearest trooper, and its crew lay in its bottom without a twitch or a groan.

  The first men to return from the ambush burst into the rendezvous before de la Billière and Low had collected their codes, maps and signals. They all left hurriedly nevertheless, prudently because the crews of the rear enemy boats again justified the Indonesians’ reputation as worthy opponents by landing and advancing rapidly. A mortar opened fire from the direction of the big camp before long, and signal-shots then indicated a large-scale follow-up. A lengthy journey to the border lay ahead, made longer by the need to give the camp a very wide berth. But by nightfall it became clear that the enemy assumed the Troop to be taking the direct route and had lost the trail.

  4 Troop reached the border in three days without incident, unlike earlier Indonesian raids deep into Malaysia when heavy retribution was usually exacted on the way out. That was not only because the British had more helicopters with which to position cut-off groups, but largely because the Indonesian soldiers, despite their undoubted courage, were not trained to anything approaching the standard needed to pioneer a diversionary route through unknown jungle and had to plod back on the well-worn track by which they had come. On this occasion, however, they were also otherwise engaged, as will be apparent.

  Maurice Tudor received a Mention in Despatches for this action as a culmination to his many and invariably successful operations. He had commanded his Troop as a sergeant for three years and de la Billière saw no need to replace him by an officer. Rather, Tudor was to become an officer in his own right and the first ranker ever to command a Squadron, an honour that is not bestowed lightly in the SAS since the Regiment’s quality depends more on that of its Squadron commanders than any other single factor.

  Meanwhile, the Gurkhas had arrived on the Poeteh, guided by Lawrence Smith, who underwent the split mental condition common to the SAS in those circumstances: delighted to be surrounded by large numbers of brave and competent soldiers, but appalled by the clashing of mess-tins, the thwacking of kukris and the tramp, tramp, tramp of the boys marching. Also present was a gunner officer from New Zealand, Captain Masters, forward observation officer for the guns that were now being lifted by helicopter to remote spots whence they could best support cross-border operations from friendly territory. The technique had been pioneered during this campaign and would make possible the advance on Port Stanley in the Falklands.

  Bullock put 40 men in ambush on the Poeteh and its track, with 25 in a secure base to the rear where Smith also stayed:

  ‘Once you’ve taken them in you’re better off out of the way and let the Company commander get on with it; which he did. Young chap, quite good really.’

  Smith was ready to take action should the need arise; though what he might have done, but could not, was to keep in touch with the SAS in the field. Thus Bullock did not learn of Tudor’s action, which would certainly have interested him greatly, and neither he nor Wilkes knew that they were rather too close to each other for comfort.

  Collaboration between Gurkhas and SAS may have been loose, but apparently it worked, for the day after the latter’s engagement a company of Indonesians hurried down the track from Berjongkong and straight into the ambush. The Gurkhas were outnumbered by three to one, but that only became evident after the first 25 enemy had walked into the trap and lost twelve men. Then it was no longer an ambush but a battle. The main body came storming in from the flank, perhaps expecting the usual SAS patrol, but not in any way dismayed by the fomidable force they actually met. The ferocity of the Indonesians was hardly surprising after their recent losses, even without their knowing that they had picked the right outfit on whom to wreak revenge, if they could.

  Bullock was quick to see that withdrawal was imperative and urgent. His machine-guns were well sited to cover this, but as each group fell back on his orders to a check-point just behind the ambush, so the enemy was equally quick to realize that they had left, following into a hail of fire with unheeding courage and to the admiration of the Gurkhas. The mêlée around the check-point surged in to five feet at one moment and seemed dangerously confused, but Gurkha discipline held and Bullock was able with great skill to withdraw his force to the secure base with only three men unaccounted for.

  The missing men were the Company Sergeant-Major, the signaller, and Masters the gunner, whose absence was critical at just this moment when gunfire was essential to check the still-advancing enemy and enable a clean break to be made. But, and here lies the justification for touching on this exciting encounter which would otherwise be out of context, Smith came to the rescue.1 Inactive, unseeing, but with the sharp ears of long experience, he formed in his mind an amazingly accurate picture of the developing situation:

  ‘You note the volume of fire and where it comes from; mortar there – burst there; that’s a rifle, rifle, rifle, rifle; light machine-gun, one of ours …’

  Realizing that the Gurkhas were retiring with the enemy after them, Smith alerted the guns on the border, worked out a fire-plan which he presented to Bullock on his arrival and, with the latter’s ardent approval, put into immediate effect. Smith had never been a gunner, but the SAS pride themselves on being able to fill any breach; had a tank surprisingly materialized among the trees, he would equally confidently have driven it into battle.

  Smith’s first sighting round startled the jungle very close to where Wilkes and 1 Troop still lay in ambush on the Ayer Hitam. That was the alarming climax to an hour’s anxious listening to the savage din of a major battle not far behind them, and seemingly coming closer to judge by the occasional mortar-bombs which also exploded nearby. Enough being enough, Wilkes withdrew the Troop some distance and tried to find out what was going on from his Squadron commander, who was, of course, miles away and out of touch. Then he asked base, who told him about Tudor’s ambush for the first time, advising him that the river-banks were probably being searched. Later, at the evening call, Wilkes was ordered to move and did so. It was not a happy time.

  Smith found the range and the effect was telling, the enemy halting and keeping his distance. The Indonesians tried engaging with mortars, but whenever one fired, Smith gave that a salvo too. Bullock waited 90 minutes for the three missing men; that is to say, his Company did, but he himself went back with two Gurkhas to find them. They ran into a large party of enemy, which was su
rely inevitable, and killed several instead of all three being killed themselves, which was surely not. Culpably foolhardy? Sublimely brave? No one can say who was not there, but such acts by a commander for his men will make his unit invincible.

  The final withdrawal went smoothly with one night-stop; shell-bursts controlled by Smith brought up the rear and in the last stages heavy mortar-bombs too, discouraging the enemy and earning Bullock’s generous thanks: ‘Without his help we would have been faced with a running battle back to the border.’ And that could hardly have been accomplished without more casualties. He thanked the gunners too for an impeccable performance, in person because the gun position was also the border landing-point.

  There too was the Gurkha signaller with a riveting story of how he had shot one of a group of enemy surrounding him at such close range that the body fell on top of him, and of how after a discreet, death-feigning pause he had crawled out, evaded the enemy, who were everywhere, and walked the five miles back without map or compass. But Master’s story capped even that and it was not yet ended. Arriving later in the day with his strength nearly gone, he told how he and the Sergeant-Major had been similarly isolated in the battle of the check-point; how the Gurkha had been shot in the leg and completely immobilized; how he himself had fought back to earn a respite; and how when the main battle flared up and distracted the enemy, he had hoisted his companion onto his shoulder and staggered with him out of the combat area and for an incredible 6,000 yards further. That was his absolute limit so he had laid down his burden and come back alone for help, utterly exhausted but ready to turn straight round as he knew he would have to do if the man was to be found.

  And so it was; Bullock led the search party, which Smith – who can doubt it? – joined and further endeared himself to the Gurkhas by finding a winching-point, homing-in the helicopter in a thunderstorm and supervising the lifting of the Sergeant-Major whose life and limb were saved, but only just for gangrene had begun.

  A serious casualty meant inescapable publicity so it was put out that the battle had been in Sarawak. Thus the only people in the know apart from the participants and a very few on the British side were the local Indonesian commanders. They should have told Djakarta, but probably did not so as to leave their high command with the comfortable impression that aggressive operations into Malaysia were continuing splendidly. Unwillingly therefore, the British abetted the enemy’s propaganda on which his Confrontation largely depended; but that was unavoidable because the military security of Malaysia came first.

  At the Kuching base the masculine environment permitted that delicious sensuous pleasure, the discarding of sweaty clothes, de la Billière stretched luxuriously on his verandah with nothing on his mind but the next operation, a wholly congenial preoccupation, and nothing on his body but his Army issue briefs, tropical cellular. Immediately below him several cars drew up at the front door, but without disturbing his absorbed tranquility, until a tingling at the back of his neck caused him to turn in alarm and behold with awe the Brigadier West Brigade Bill Cheyne, the Director of Borneo Operations Major-General George Lea, the British High Commissioner for Malaysia Lord Anthony Head (later to become Colonel Commandant of the SAS Regiment) and full supporting cast of staff officers.

  ‘We’ve come’, they said, ‘to be briefed.’

  ‘FIND BATU HITAM’

  September 1965; and now the Gurkhas were on their own, the SAS having told them all they knew and helped them all they could. The operation de la Billière had been mulling over was quite different in nature, and also in the manner of its initiation; without giving him any opportunity of dreaming up his own ideas or exerting his usual pressure, Brigadier Cheyne had told him, straight, to go and find Batu Hitam camp. Nevertheless, the job was a proper SAS function; communist subversion in the Lundu district had increased and the continuous stream of revolutionaries from across the border must be stopped.

  A colourful article entitled ‘Picnicking in the Lion’s Den’ by one such individual shows how simple it was for a small team to evade detection by the skilful use of jungle and acceptance of hardship. This group lay-up by day and moved on tracks at night ‘when the enemy patrols were very passive which is an English characteristic’, and avoided Land Dyak villages which were ‘despicably primitive and pro-English’. Arriving near their destination, they were looked after by local Chinese communists, hatching plots and disseminating their message of hope, or vicious doctrine, depending on the viewpoint. Life was still hazardous; a Gurkha patrol once came within ten yards of their hideout. It was very clear from the article that the organization depended greatly on the system of camps in Kalimantan for training, assembly and jumping off.

  Batu Hitam, the camp that never was, presented a challenge that ‘A’ Squadron was delighted to pick up. Intelligence knew it existed but not where, nor whether it was moved from time to time as a further impediment to finding it. Taking a line from Gunong Kalimantan where the trail was well marked, across the Pueh Range to Lundu, the final staging-camp must surely lie somewhere in the six miles separating the rivers Bemban and Sempayang. de la Billière determined that such an area needed the whole Squadron, less 2 Troop who were still with the Cross-Border Scouts. He would go too, of course; if his recent exercises in commanding from the field had fallen a mite short of expectations, there would be more advantage to be gained this time and every reason for developing the techniques until they worked. ‘When will he ever learn?’ muttered Condie darkly, but no attention was paid to him.

  Planning and rehearsal were conducted normally, that is to say painstakingly, with particular emphasis on communications and the function of base in relaying messages between outstations when an addressee could not be raised directly by the sender. Also high in priority was snatching prisoners as a promising means of finding the camp, an exercise that was not easy to accomplish neatly and safely because it was necessarily done with both arms at the critical moment before the rest of the enemy group could be engaged. Sergeant Malcolm Allen was appointed 1 Troop snatcher and practised the art on his fellows with such assiduity that they never knew when he would jump and began jumping involuntarily themselves.

  The whole force crossed the high Pueh mountains on 10 September and then separated for three troop areas. The scope and daring of the enterprise deserve to be recognized; a dozen four-man patrols, carefully coordinated for optimum coverage and to avoid muddle, would search for up to three weeks in a confined area that was fully garrisoned by the enemy and, for Borneo, thickly populated. It was not just a matter of each patrol combing its area, but of constant change in the light of discoveries so as to localize the goal and finally reach it. Should one patrol be compromised, the others would be set back or even endangered. Being in the jungle himself, de la Billière could meet troop and patrol commanders to hear their news at first hand and take decisions far more realistically than by relying on cryptic signals. His HQ comprised four men, including his Sergeant-Major, which was both prudent and allowed him to patrol on his own account. Maurice Tudor and 4 Troop were given the southern area between the Sempayang and its tributary the Batang Ayer, in the centre of which was Batu Hitam village though that was no longer regarded as anything but the roughest guide to its namesake camp. Almost universal cultivation made searching extremely difficult at the best of times as previous patrols had found, and September was the worst of times because the season required the locals to be out in force on the ‘ladangs’. Experienced though he was, Tudor could do no more than inspect the area through binoculars from the jungle fringe, which revealed nothing significant. No prisoner was snatched because none of the likely tracks had enough cover and locals were everywhere.

  3 Troop were in the centre bordering the Batang Ayer. The initial task of the Troop commander, Foley, was to snatch a prisoner and the best place to do that was on the Sawah to Bemban track, first discovered by Graham-Wigan of ‘B’ Squadron back in January and regarded as a most promising objective ever since. Foley planned to use
the whole Troop, but first went forward himself with Troopers Jackson and Blackburn to find a good spot. While they were there, a platoon of 30 soldiers toiled up the ridge and rested at the top, as people do after a climb when they apprehend no danger. Yet there were two curious circumstances which might or might not have been significant; they carried no packs and were seen before they were heard, so silent was their approach.

  The same platoon returned in the afternoon, but now made no effort to conceal their presence. They rested as before, rattled their weapons to check them, talked, smoked and relieved themselves in the bushes just as any group of soldiers would do; but there was something intangibly abnormal in the atmosphere and the watchers caught the tension, as well they might with three of them against 30. There was no question of snatching one of this lot, but it could easily happen the other way round, and adrenalin served its vital functions of intensifying perception, strength, and speed of reaction for fighting, flying or both.

  One man stooped to pick up his rifle, quite casually it seemed, but was it? Then he and a companion strolled over to another pair and after a few words all four lined up and entered the jungle where the patrol hid breathlessly some eight yards in. The man opposite Foley could not have seen him because his eyes were on the ground; but he did see something that made him tense, stretch out his hand as a warning, raise his weapon, and sign his death-warrant. Foley shot him three times, Jackson and Blackburn followed suit against their nearest targets upon the instant, and all three turned and ran so quickly that Foley’s man was still falling.