SAS: Secret War in South East Asia

by Dickens, Peter;

  ‘I don’t want to hear of you lot taking any heads.’

  The approach down the spur from the Pueh Range took three days. Nibau and his Ibans used their jungle skills to the utmost, so the chances were good that the patrol went unobserved. On the fourth morning the battle was set in array on the crest of the spur as Hardy had planned, so many patrols having been there that he knew exactly what he would find. The wide, well-trodden, north/south track led down to Bemban on the right and Sawah to the left, and was intersected by a smaller ridge-track which was handy for approaching and withdrawing. The junction resembled a roundabout rather than a crossroads with the central clearing 40 yards across (a helicopter landing-point without a doubt). The ambush extended for 25 yards beyond this area on either side; the flanks were dropped back at right angles behind claymores pointing outwards to guard against a ‘rollup’. On the right was 7 Troop, Captain ‘Duke’ Pirie, augmented by a patrol from 9 Troop and nine scouts. 8 Troop on the left, similarly reinforced, was commanded by Sergeant Bigglestone, who had been promoted since the last tour when he had shown his worth. Captain Andy Styles and 6 Troop protected the rear.

  Just behind 6 Troop was Squadron Headquarters of eight men, one of whose tasks was to check every man through on retirement when urgency, noise and confusion might make it extremely difficult. Hardy, however, was not there but in the centre of the front, supported by Jim Penny (now a Lance Corporal) and Jeb Aitcheson; they were both armed with silenced submachine-guns to deal with any small enemy groups without compromising the ambush for bigger game later.

  Two locals came by carrying bananas and it seemed, eerily, that 100 eyes intent upon them from only a few feet away must surely excite an extra-sensory response; but they passed on oblivious. The next travellers, however, a man and a boy, did indeed receive a message though it was wholly carnal: somebody in the rear, who could not know that his moment was ill-chosen, farted. The sound rumbled comfortably rather than blared, but its frequency spectrum was so manifestly human that the pair halted involuntarily right in front of Hardy, turned their heads and – obviously – thought furiously. Penny reacted too, lifting the muzzle of his weapon very gently and his eyes to Hardy’s, with a grimace intended to convey a strong recommendation to mercy.

  A slow head-shake relieved Penny profoundly as Hardy thought rapidly. Killing locals was not allowed, thank God, so that was not the issue. These might be detained but would then be missed at their destination and a search by their fellows could compromise the whole force. Let them go and they could report only their suspicions. The man muttered to the boy and no interpreter was needed to understand him:

  ‘Keep moving; pretend you didn’t hear.’

  They walked on, pictures of innocence, but having passed over the brow and out of Hardy’s sight they paused again while the man blazed a tree with knife-cuts; and the tree he chose was the one behind which the left-hand man of the ambush, Sergeant Jimmy Hughes, was hiding.

  Word came back to Hardy, who realized that an enemy reaction was now likely. The Indonesians would probably send up a platoon to investigate what was, after all, no more than a bad smell. That would suit the aim of the operation very well. Even if he deployed a company, ‘B’ Squadron was in a commanding position with probably superior firepower and certainly superior training. The enemy might, of course, send a battalion or cut off the Squadron silently from behind, but to take counsel of those remote possibilities, when he probably thought he was dealing with a four-man patrol, smacked of overdoing prudence to the point of timidity.

  The waiting was trying nevertheless, and hours must elapse before the enemy could appear; but the men were in good heart for this their first major operation, the largest to be mounted by the SAS in Borneo. Hughes on the left and Bigglestone next to him were very experienced and knew that the first, contact might well be theirs; but then came someone who was not experienced at, all, Trooper John White, Billy’s brother.

  Billy White had been buried in Singapore, but John had accompanied the family to a memorial service at Hereford and had been so impressed by the SAS itself that he joined. The Regiment had hesitated to accept him at first, fearing he might be motivated by revenge, but that was nonsense; he was merely picking up his dead brother’s sword and continuing the good fight. Now he lay cocooned in shrubbery with just a peephole view of the track in front and a cord knotted to a, twig that dangled above his nose. He was feeling lonely because although he knew his Troop commander to be five yards on his left and a veteran trooper, Jake Vaughan, the same short distance to his right, he could see neither. More isolating still, they were both quite at home in circumstances very strange to him; he read his book, but desultorily for it failed to grip him.

  He dozed a bit too, every other man being allowed to, until three-thirty in the afternoon, ‘When all of a sudden I heard these heavy feet running; crash! What the hell’s that?’ Hughes and Bigglestone were in no doubt that it was the enemy beginning his attack, and their experienced ears told them much of how he planned to do it. Having approached silently, speed was now his policy; thought not in one charging phalanx but in dashes with one half covering the other forward. His force was spread on both sides of the Sawah track for a classic ‘roll-up’.

  The first enemy to break cover stepped onto the track opposite Hughes, obviously not yet expecting trouble and going hard for the ambush centre. Having already appreciated that this was an assault and not a group in transit, which should be allowed into the ambush, Hughes shot the man dead. Instantly, others appeared to his right and left and 8 Troop was in action, firing fiercely at very close range; John White saw figures flashing by his peephole and let fly, for the first time in earnest. The enemy retaliated commendably quickly though his shots were mostly high, except for one which hit the ground in front of White. Dirt blasted into his face and, worse, eyes. He was blinded, permanently he thought in a moment of real dread and what a time and place for that to happen; but copious tears washed out some of the grit, admitting first a glimmer of blessed light and then allowing him to shoot again, blearily.

  On the nearside of the track, five of the enemy charged towards the flank patrol, but Hardy had sited his claymores well and one was detonated. The result was shocking even to the watchers who expected it; hats, limbs, bodies flew and then lay grotesquely still, ‘a right mess’. The remaining two claymores pointing down the track were fired blind and produced screams and groans, evidently from a follow-up force which must have been halted in its tracks for it never appeared.

  A stunned lull ensued and Hardy realized that mortar-bombs were flying right over his own head and landing not far to his rear, he hoped not among 6 Troop. Alerted, he spotted the weapon’s next discharge at the far edge of the clearing, where its field of fire was unimpeded but its crew of two were just visible. Penny and Aitcheson killed one with their submachine-guns and the other made off without the mortar.

  ‘Stop!’ ordered Hardy, so as to hear whether the enemy was still engaging. He was not. Eleven visible bodies were reported with no SAS casualties, and Hardy spent little time deciding that immediate and fast withdrawal was the right course of action. He might have waited for more of the enemy to come up. Indeed, Styles with 6 Troop in the rear was fretting at missing the action and urged Hardy, ‘Come on, let’s sort ’em out.’ But the enemy had already been hit hard 10,000 yards inside his own territory, the point was made and the law of diminishing returns would surely operate from now on. What purpose would be served by risking casualties which were particularly undesirable in the ‘Claret’ concept? Much better now to concentrate on avoiding any.

  The drill whereby each Troop’s withdrawal was covered by another and every man was checked by name had been carefully rehearsed, for the good reason that when a static formation suddenly becomes fluid and a running man first seen five yards away may be anybody, trigger-fingers become tautly sensitive. Now, the enemy had been neutralized, but not everyone knew that. On the left wing of 6 Troop, where they had listene
d to the noise in front and mortar-bombs bursting nearby without being at all sure who was winning, they were particularly alert for an enemy break-in.

  8 Troop’s turn came to go, by curving into the centre-line and back along the ridge-track; and how Vaughan and White failed to hear either the order or the movement, while Hughes and Bigglestone outside them did and conformed, can only be explained as one of those things that happen in the jungle.

  ‘Suddenly everything was deadly quiet,’ says White, ‘and Jake said, “Christ! They’ve all gone.” And I said, “What do we do Jake?” And he said, “Get to hell out.” So we went roaring back, not across the front but straight towards the check-point at an angle. It was quite an experience. “Turn your hat inside out,” Jake said (to show the recognition band, which was red), and then started shouting, “Jake Vaughan, John White” at the top of his voice; and there were a couple of guys ready to open fire, but one of them said, “Hold it! I can see the band.” And then we were through and bounding away up the road.’

  The two guys in question blasted the jungle hip-high behind Vaughan and White preparatory to retiring themselves. They were 6 Troop Sergeant, Dick Cooper, and another newcomer, Ken Elgenia, who had passed Selection with White and was now considerably sobered by having nearly shot his friend. The recognition procedure had worked but, hell, it needed to in the fleeting moment between detection and action which was all the jungle allowed. It could easily go wrong: a hat-band was only effective if the man still had his hat; and British names shouted by British voices might well be drowned by the noise of battle.

  Later, when he had time to reflect further, Elgenia became uneasily aware that he had a problem which was all his own. His name was not British (though he himself was) but French Canadian. No one outside Canada had ever heard of it; neither could they pronounce it – Eljeeny – which in any case sounded like a first cousin to Ali Baba or the equivalent in whatever country he happened to be campaigning. Worse still, he and White had joined the Squadron after the tour started and were by no means intimate with all its members, what with the constant coming and going of patrols. It worried him a little.

  The passage back was exhausting, uphill all the way at full speed with one night-stop, but Hardy’s assumptions proved right and if the enemy did try to intercept he was far too slow. Intelligence indicated about 20 enemy killed, and although John Slim would have liked more, he pronounced the operation a success. General Lea expressed no judgement either way, but was probably well satisfied, for at the end of November when at least 120 Indonesians had died over the First Division border for the loss of one Gurkha soldier, he thought that was enough for the time being and imposed another ‘be kind to Indos’ break.

  Lea found himself strangely undecided, nevertheless. Sound military doctrine teaches that one does not give a half-beaten foe time to recover, but harries him until he gives in. The Indonesians showed no sign of doing that, probably because their government, such as it was, had no idea that its frontier troops were indeed being beaten and ‘Claret’ secrecy prevented the truth being told. On the other hand, the border seemed secure, and Lea was confident in his troops’ ability to deal with any incursion. There were the usual restraining counsels too, with which for the first time he surprised himself by instinctively agreeing. He enjoyed his command hugely, gratefully aware that no general could ask for a better one and that most would never put their long years of preparation to such a worthy task with such splendid troops; but now he found himself wishing, quite simply, that he could call a halt to ‘young men killing each other’.

  That revelation of the British military mind may seem unconventional, but, in truth, our armed forces are a peace-loving pressure-group in the most literal sense. Now, the issue was when and how much to relax the pressure, though one such easement happened by routine. Nick Neill and his hatchet-men, those purveyors of death and scourges of the border the 2/2nd Goorkhas, reached the end of their tour and left. An honest pacifist would surely expect their going to result in blessed peace descending upon a strife-torn Borneo; but for some inapprehensible reason the reverse occurred.

  Not at once, though, for December was an uneventful month in which the enemy licked his wounds and no doubt wondered where he was going to be hit next. Even in Djakarta all seemed calm, but below the surface turmoil seethed. The generals tried to topple Soekarno, whose great personal charisma and political skill could not be quickly overriden. He would not ban the communist party, but an ominous groundswell of resentment against it heaved among the people and that Suharto exploited; not only did he turn a blind eye to anti-red excesses, but when the communist leader Aidit was captured, he was quickly shot and it was rumoured that thousands of his followers were being locked up.

  In the wilds of Borneo, however, the communists were still able to infiltrate Malaysia. Lea drew a clear distinction between them, who would never give up even when Confrontation ended, and the Indonesian Army who presumably would. The search for Batu Hitam and the CCO trail was therefore pressed ahead with vigour; and with high hopes too after Saunt’s patrol saw fourteen armed Chinese heading westwards on a track which came over the mountains in a direct line from Lundu and could not but lead to the camp nearby. Yet, when he took his whole Troop in for a final shoot-out that the communists would remember as a ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’, there was still no camp, and nobody used the track. The anticlimax was overwhelming. A little further, but how far it was.

  Styles and twenty men tried the area west of the Bemban where Roberts and McGillivray had so nearly succeeded; then again with Charles worth and a company of 42 Commando Royal Marines; followed later by Howell lower down the river. None of them found anything; ‘B’ Squadron’s tour would end in February, and laugh as they might that the CCO, like the Irish, changed the question when somebody looked like solving it, their mood was quite grim and very determined.

  1966 came, bringing reasonable hope to the Borneo peoples that the New Year would be a happy one. No major raids crossed the border either way, but SAS patrolling continued so as to check that the enemy was as quiescent as he seemed. Pirie took his Troop to the Koemba and found the river traffic to be much curtailed; no longer did large diesel launches bring up stores and troops. He had been authorized to remind the enemy that he was never safe, so a pathetic two-man boat had to be the target.

  ‘APA NAMA?’

  In the light of hindsight it might have been better if more patrols had acted similarly. Towards the end of January 1966, Intelligence warned of an imminent incursion from a place called Sentas across the border from Tebedu. Brigadier Cheyne was for once able to order a pre-emptive strike in the manner originally envisaged for all ‘Claret’ operations. He selected Hardy’s ‘B’ Squadron, and thereby greatly disgruntled the 2/7th Gurkhas whose area it was.

  No patrol had ever visited Sentas, surprisingly because Tebedu had always been one of the enemy’s favourite targets. There was no time now for preliminary reconnaissance except from the air, which showed the village to be dilapidated and deserted by its inhabitants. Believing that the village had been converted into an armed camp, the British employed artillery fire against it, a rare expedient but practicable in this case because the longhouse roof could be seen from the border ridge and accuracy was assured. But bombardment alone could not ensure that the place was unusable, so the SAS went in.

  A total of 44 men were mustered from 6, 7 and 8 Troops. 9 Troop was engaged on a mission which it should hardly be necessary to specify, so numbers were made up by eight New Zealand and Australian SAS, a few Cross-Border Scouts, and a Royal Artillery forward observation officer whose guns waited ready behind the border ridge. Accompanying the force to the River Sekayan was a platoon of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, whose task was to hold the crossing, the enemy camp being, inevitably, on the far bank.

  The final approach had to be in darkness to achieve surprise, so Hardy struck the river 1,200 yards upstream from the objective on the third evening and waited for nightfal
l. Then bergens were left with the Argylls, faces blackened (Fijians and Ibans excused), a strong swimmer wearing flippers took a rope across the Sekayan to enable the rest of the group to pull themselves over, more swimming then wading. A main communication track bordered the far bank, with a telephone wire looped along it which was quickly cut. Then 6 Troop, whose turn it was to lead, set off for Sentas with Sergeant Dick Cooper in command and Hardy well up in front. Charlesworth’s 8 Troop followed, and Pirie’s 7 Troop brought up the rear.

  It rained, making the night dark but the track was easy to follow. Some 300 yards short of the village, a log bridge over a steep-sided tributary reached the end of its useful life just as the men were crossing and fell with a hideous crash into the muddy stream. No one was hurt and the noise could have been mistaken for a dead tree falling. The place was ideal as a defensive position through which to withdraw and Pirie made a note of it.

  The plan was to surround Sentas silently by night and attack at dawn, but two small features revealed by air photographs had to be taken into account before the village could be reached. Situated on knolls to the right of the track, the first feature was a collection of huts interpreted as a pepper farm, and the second a heavy anti-aircraft machine-gun post. The latter would on no account be disturbed until the morning when it would receive special attention; but Hardy thought that the farmer and his family should be gently persuaded to stay quietly where they were and resist any temptation to influence events.