SAS: Secret War in South East Asia

by Dickens, Peter;

  Log steps led up to the pepper farm and 6 Troop deployed for its preliminary task, of hearts and minds or gunboat diplomacy as circumstances demanded, keenly alert for the unexpected. Among the men who advanced up the steps and spread out around the edge of the little plateau were Mason and a scout leading, Cooper, Lou Lumby and ‘Ginge’ Ferguson with silent weapons, Ken Elgenia, Bob Bennett, an Australian, two Maoris, and Fred Marafono, who noticed a telephone wire as he climbed and thought it significant, but said nothing assuming that Hardy had seen it too. All being ready, the latter moved towards the largest of several huts with his weapon in one hand and a bag of sweets in the other, an imaginative provision for winning the farmer’s heart through his children’s stomachs but which is now a rather sensitive recollection for his only return was a bullet past the ear.

  Lumby and Ferguson supported Hardy with their silent weapons while he retired quickly behind a small hut near the entrance which he had thought was the cookhouse but now proved to be a reinforced sentry-post, though unmanned. Mason meanwhile had spotted a washing-line and crept forward to retrieve a shirt from it which was unmistakably military and confirmed that this was no pepper farm but an armed camp, perhaps the one they were looking for.

  The SAS certainly got the better of the fire-fight which ensued, for none of them was hit while many of the enemy were, to judge by cries of distress and the cessation of firing from individuals who had revealed their positions by gun-flashes. It was frightening when the big machine-gun opened fire from the next knoll but its aim was high, either because it could not depress sufficiently having been positioned for air defence or because its gunner was afraid of endangering his friends.

  Then Elgenia had what nobody denied was a good idea and hurled a phosphorus grenade at the main hut to set it alight and illuminate the enemy. He maintains that it did so, but others say that it hit the sentry-post roof and bounced back among some of the SAS before exploding and they have painful evidence to authenticate their version. Cooper, in particular, was drenched in blazing phosphorus which set his hat and clothes alight and burnt him severely. Others suffered in lesser degrees, including Elgenia himself. But much more seriously, their tactical advantage was reversed at a stroke, from being still able to exploit the enemy’s surprise and quite possibly carry the position, to being picked out individually in a glare of light.

  Retirement was inevitable and imperative, but it was not done precipitately; standard operating procedure and conditioned instinct both affirmed that to run away from an alerted enemy would invite casualties because he could shoot accurately and unimpeded, and now that several men carried illuminated bull’s eyes it would have been suicidal. The five or six men in the phosphorus patch therefore got down again into firing position, one inadvertently in ‘the big shit-pit that was there and stunk pretty bad’, and emptied two magazines each into the huts with forceful deliberation. Enemy fire which had been heavy slackened, anc then the word was ‘Go!’ All reached the river track safely.

  Nevertheless, the enemy could not but know that he had won the seconc round and quickly prepared to exploit his luck. First with grenades; ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard a grenade coming through trees?’ asks Elgenia; and in case you haven’t, it goes swish, smack, thud as it hits foliage and branches. Hardy shouted, ‘Grenade!’ and dived off the track; Charlesworth, with whom he was discussing the next move, disappeared in the other direction and the missile exploded where they had been. It was also of phosphorus and two more men received searing doses. Further greandes came down and Hardy saw that he had now lost the initiative as well as the position; he ordered retirement, at least to behind the tributary barrier which Pirie of 7 Troop in the rear, hearing the firing was already preparing for defence.

  Elgenia, however, missed hearing the order to withdraw, as White had done on the Bemban track, but instead of just staying put he began a series of adventures which were logically comprehensible but not credible. Assuming that the setback was only temporary and that the Squadron would at once return to the attack, he went straight back up the steps. Half blinded by the flashes, in visibility that was negligible anyway, he felt someone jostle him and try to snatch his rifle; he pushed the man away rather roughly, thinking him to be a panicky Border Scout, and carried on to the top where he settled himself into a comfortable firing position, changed his magazine and waited for battle to recommence. Screams came from the main hut, confirming that the enemy had suffered casualties.

  People moved close to him and at first he assumed them to be friends in line with his fixed idea, but very soon a prickly sixth sense demanded an intellectually painful and physically terrifying reappraisal. They did not speak, which would have clinched the matter at once, but made small sounds and moved in a way that was indefinably but distinctly not European. Elgenia was unusually sensitive to such influences, and becoming convinced that they were enemies, squarely faced his predicament.

  He got up slowly, walked quietly down the steps and the enemy followed; not presumably, because they knew who he was or they would have shot him. They may even have thought him to be their leader in some definite purpose, his delicate perception sensing a confidence in their movements that was not at all like those who move through the jungle wary of what they might find. He reached the main track and turned left. So did they. He would dearly have liked to run, but it was too dark and the enemy might have cottoned on. Elgenia walked the 200 yards to the tributary; not as to a sanctuary, however, but an even greater hazard, for he fearfully remembered his concern for his name of which he was as proud as the next man but wished now was any other. Firing broke out behind him and he wrote himself off the strength of the Regiment; but it was not directed at him.

  ‘Apa nama?’

  The urgently shouted words meant nothing to Elgenia, though the voice was British. The man who shouted them used Malay because there might still be a Border Scout on the wrong side of the gully and everyone in the Squadron would, he thought, understand such a common phrase; but Elgenia was too newly joined even for that. Had the question been in English – ‘What’s your name?’ – he might have answered straight, ‘Eljeeny’; but confused as to what was wanted of him, he said, ‘John? John White?’ not to gain admittance by false pretences but to make contact with his friend who would recognize his voice.

  In close quarters fighting enemies often talk to each other to demand or accept surrender and particularly to mislead, learning simple phrases from the other’s language for the purpose. Calling a typical enemy name was an old dodge to get through his outer defences and the SAS were not to be fooled that way. Elgenia, halting, heard a muttered conversation between several men, though not the words or he would have joined in.

  ‘Says he’s John White; OK?’

  ‘Hold it; John White’s been through, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, saw him myself.’

  ‘Fire!’

  Seconds only were available for decision as several shadowy figures appeared behind Elgenia, who was certainly not John White and now seemed to be one of the group. He stood at the very epicentre of a claymore mine whose blast was shattering. After it, nobody remained in view. John White himself, by now well to the rear, could not do for Ken Elgenia what the latter had done for him.

  Deterred no doubt by the claymore and the gunfire, which Lieutenant Norris the gunner brought down on the camp on Hardy’s orders, the enemy did not press forward immediately. The tally of men was checked and four were missing. Three of them, Lumby, Ferguson and an Australian had been seen by other members of 6 Troop to rush down into the river ablaze with phosphorus. It seemed quite possible that by the time they regained the track the enemy sallying from the camp had cut them off. The recent burst of firing lent weight to that theory and, if so, their plight, though grim, was not necessarily hopeless; the river could be crossed in many places and their training and experience fitted them to extract themselves and survive.

  But nobody could offer an explanation for Elgenia’s absence.
Unless? Unless … The possibility that was the unthinkable truth began to seethe in Hardy’s mind and in that of the man who had fired the claymore, and it was dreadful. If it was so, there could be no doubt that Elgenia was dead, killed by his friends.

  Now, however, the river must be recrossed before it rose too far with the rain and the enemy could be reinforced from the adjacent camp upstream. As the Squadron moved back westwards, Norris brought the barrage along behind it at a brisk pace, so that those behind cried ‘Forward!’ most earnestly as they raced just ahead of the bursts. The crossing was difficult to the point of danger, but all came safely over. This position was the emergency rendezvous, so Hardy stayed there until ten o’clock the next morning, oppressed with a sense of failure and hopelessness for the missing men that weighed ever more heavily with the dragging hours. Then the rope was cut and the force marched quickly back in the same day.

  As Hardy had surmised, by the time Lumby and his two companions had washed off their phosphorus in the river and started back towards the check-point the enemy had reached the track, seen them and engaged. That was unexpected and literally a close shave, a bullet passing through Lumby’s shirt; but then they reacted aggressively in SAS fashion, silenced the enemy momentarily and vanished. Moving east past Sentas itself, they confirmed that it was decayed and apparently deserted. A boat lay at the landing stage as though awaiting them, and into it they loaded their belts and weapons, guiding it slowly across the stream by swimming alongside. It was fortunate that they drifted with the current and away from the big machine-gun, which was still firing from its knoll.

  Landing safely on the north bank they started to make their way westwards to the rendezvous; but coming across a newly-built longhouse, which could have belonged to an ordinary civilian community but in that position might equally well have been a base for a border screen of local scouts, they turned sharply right before anybody saw them, headed straight for the border and reached it even before the Squadron. It was a good escape and evasion exercise, which proved once again that all those qualities and skills the SAS are at such pains to acquire are essential if their sort of adventurous operations are to be attempted.

  Hardy was nevertheless still thoroughly depressed when he reported to Brigadier Cheyne, who had to use all his ebullience and experience to reassure him. The operation had not achieved all its aims, but it was by no means a failure. The enemy had certainly taken casualties in the fire-fight and his camp had been thoroughly wrecked by the guns. Whether he would persist with his incursion, only events would show, but the attack should indicate to him that the British knew of his plan and he might very well not. The 2/7th Gurkhas naturally thought they could have done much better, for it had been essentially an infantry rather than a specialized SAS type of operation, but the claim was a bold one in the face of such a complete reversal of expectations in utter darkness. Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted, says the adage, and lack of information was certainly critical at Sentas; but what if no time is available? Do nothing?

  Even as regards Elgenia, Cheyne refused to despair. ‘I know the SAS’, he said, and truly because Blackburn’s solo walk was a recent and vivid memory. ‘They don’t die easily and if he’s alive he’ll turn up’; and the infantry having withdrawn from the border after passing ‘B’ Squadron through, he ordered them straight up again. It was a nice, even charming, gesture which Hardy wanly appreciated, but no more than a gesture because a man cannot stand in front of a claymore and survive.

  Yet claymores were no nearer perfect than anything else. It had been known in practice for the charge of shot to emerge unevenly or in a mass, and even for antiwar protestors in America to sabotage weapons during manufacture, but whatever the reason Elgenia was not touched by a single pellet.

  ‘When this flash went off I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I hadn’t been shot… there was hotness all round my body and I was lifted up in slow motion. Next thing I remember I was in the river; no weapon. The bank had been worn away by floods so I got under it. I heard shouting above me, John White’s name. It might have been another head-call, but I couldn’t answer. Then a lot of mortar fire came down, enemy I think; but it was our own artillery that came screaming in like express trains and one of the buggers landed in the water near me. That really set me up.’

  Keeping under the overhang, Elgenia let himself be carried downstream until he came to a natural ford of rocks with white water rushing over and between them. He could have leapt across had he dared, but there was no question of that because the machine-gun was firing along its length. He remembered his recent training.

  ‘First get away from the scene of action as soon as possible – done – and then evaluate the situation. Aim? To get back to base. What have I got? No weapon, right; belt with bloody heavy and useless ammunition, sodden field dressings, water-bottles and emergency rations I can do without, and I’m not going to get across that torrent with it on so get rid of it. Ah! Make sure map and compass in shirt pocket.’

  Battered by sluicing rapids against rocks to which he had nevertheless to cling for dear life, fearful for dear life of raising his head for the gunner to see, he went under many times as he wrenched himself from boulder to boulder and took in what seemed like choking lung-fulls of water. But he reached the far bank before his strength ran out, as he had coolly calculated he would. Pulling himself out under a leafy branch that swept the surface, Elgenia crawled into thick jungle and obscurity.

  Exhausted, bleeding and bruised in a hundred places, seared with livid phosphorus burns, an arm and a leg torn from his shredded clothes, his map and compass gone, Elgenia counted his assets again. None. So what?

  In the morning he took an approximate course from the sun which, on the equator, would bear east until noon. Having been somewhat punch-drunk the night before, he was clear-headed now and moved with the alertness and caution of an SAS soldier, slowly and with painstaking care to leave no tracks. The primary jungle was admirable for his needs, but offered no glimpse of the distant scene so he climbed a tree to spot the border ridge, which was high and stood out well. He covered about one of the three and a half miles and the night passed quietly.

  On the second day the primary forest changed to ‘belukar’, which made walking more difficult and hotter for lack of shade, but there were often old fruit-trees in such places and he considered whether to spend time looking for them. Imbued with the SAS doctrine that no man is given up until hope had finally gone, he expected the border to be manned for him when he reached it, he being the only man in the Squadron unaware that it was a claymore which had hit him and that he had, very nearly, been given up. But nourishment would be prudent just in case he had to walk to the nearest friendly village and, luckier than Blackburn, he found a bunch of delicious small bananas. Then the ‘belukar’ reverted to primary forest with low spurs between small streams up which he headed, sure of his direction.

  Suddenly he saw a vision, and as suddenly he crouched down and no longer saw it. The image was retained only just long enough to fix it in his mind as a figure in green squatting on its haunches, like a woodland character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream except that it was smarming its hair with oily cream and a rifle lay on the ground beside it. Then it faded and Elgenia began to doubt whether he had seen anything at all; peering for hour after hour into the jungle, keyed up to see things, he quite often imagined that he had. He must be sure whether this was a ghost or a man, for if the latter there would be others, constituting an emergency.

  Elgenia raised his head sufficiently to see the figure’s outline through the leaves, but it was just a shapeless green mass as motionless as the trees beside it and equally part of the landscape. How to be certain? Inspired, he made a low whooping noise that might have come from bird or beast, and ever so slightly the head turned, then froze again. Elgenia chuckled inwardly as he read the other’s deepest thoughts, which asked in their turn, with mortal fear, ‘How now, spirit, whither wander you?’; though lest the n
oise came not from a spirit but a mortal foe the man dared not make the least move towards his weapon.

  Feeling a warm glow of power and command of the situation, Elgenia regretted only his lack of a knife with which to resolve it unobtrusively. Instead, he crawled noiselessly away until it was safe to rise, then walked deliberately in the wrong direction taking care to make distinct footprints and bruise the occasional leaf. Finally, he retraced his steps for half the distance, this time undetectably, and resumed his journey to his own country another way.

  He was, however, far from powerful as well he knew, with his presence revealed to the enemy and the border still too far to reach that day. He was climbing the foothills, though, and the country became typical ‘ulu’ with rushing streams and densely canopied jungle giving sparse cover on the ground. Of overriding importance now was to pass the night unobserved. He debated whether to lie up under one of the few bushes whence he could move away from danger in any direction; but that might mean exchanging one prying enemy for another, so he searched for a hiding place where nobody would think of looking for him and lighted upon that classic resort of jungle fugitives, a pig-hole. Whether his was muddier, smellier or infested with more leeches, biting insects and bluebottles than Lillico’s or Thomson’s must be disputed between them, but it was all of those to an extreme degree. The resolution needed to lie there for eleven hours must surely have included an element of something more than just his own desire to survive. It did; his duty to the Regiment.

  With no temptation to lie abed in the morning, he struck out for the border ridge with the usual care but also confidence. He was not a little pleased with his unaided navigation when he recognized features he had noted on the way in, which led him to the track then made by the Squadron and across the border-ridge itself. Approaching the landing-point rendezvous, he was so sure that friendly troops would be there that he decided to march boldly rather than present a furtive mien which might trigger a nervous finger. Even so, he saw the two Argylls a moment before they saw him, and all three leapt for cover to avoid any misunderstanding and conduct their mutual introductions with due form and deliberation.