The Regiment

by Michael Asher

  Movement in the rain-forest was a far cry from Jock Lewes’s treks in the open desert. The men carried Bergens weighing between thirty and forty kilos, packed with up to twenty-eight days’ rations on top of ammunition, grenades, poncho, hammock, field-dressings, lightweight sleeping-bag, parachute-cord for lashings, spare clothes and plimsolls, and specialized equipment such as radio batteries and explosives. In addition there was belt-kit, including a parang – a sixteen-inch jungle knife – water-bottles, mess-tins and Hexamine cookers.

  They had to lug these weights across a jungle floor that was a maze of deadfall, clambering over tree-trunks, skidding along slimy surfaces or crawling underneath. They marched through endless mud-swaths, where roots and vines tripped them and ‘wait-a-bit’ thorn clutched at them, where leeches wiggled on leaves ready to attach themselves, where ants marched in long files, where centipedes, spiders and beetles swarmed. All these obstacles and more had to be covered in dead silence – commands were given by hand-signal. Progress was grindingly slow, and the senses were engaged all the time. The ears and nose worked as hard as the eyes. The enemy could be lurking unseen only metres away. The CTs were hot on ambushes, and left home-made booby-traps of spike-filled pits covered in foliage. The sound of voices, the odours of fire or cooking, carried long distance, and could give life-or-death warning of the enemy’s proximity. Every ten minutes or hundred metres, the patrol would freeze and listen, absorbing the ocean of sensations around them.

  The rate of movement depended on the terrain, which was anything but uniform. On level ground, following a track, the patrol might make two kilometres an hour. Crossing undulating ground, one kilometre was good going. In dense undergrowth, they would be lucky to cover five hundred metres. In bamboo thickets, where they had to hack a path, it might take all morning to cover the same distance.

  Some regions of Malaya were mountainous, involving arduous climbs, mostly up slopes slippery with mud. Coming down was worse than going up because the patrol had to steady themselves by grabbing hold of vines and creepers that lacerated the hands. Where possible, Cooper learned, it was more tactical for the patrol to contour around slopes than tramp over the top.

  In the valleys there were streams and rivers to be crossed. The men breasted them in turn, while the others took up all-round defence. Sometimes the streams were shallow enough to be forded. If not, they could be traversed by swimming with the aid of a pair of trousers knotted and filled with air, or by a fixed line of rotan – a jungle creeper. If the river was in full spate, this experience could be sobering. ‘When my turn came to put my faith in that rotan,’ wrote Lofty Large, describing his first river-crossing, ‘… I was bloody terrified. The river was a raging torrent … the water did its best to tear me loose, but it didn’t break.’4

  The ability to navigate came through trial and error. Tracks existed, but the SAS avoided them if possible because of the risk of ambush. Animal trails were teeming with leeches. The patrol followed contours, using hilltops and river junctions as fixed points. With the sun almost continuously out of sight, navigation wasn’t a precise process but a rough and ready estimate that could be honed to an instinct.

  Iban trackers had been brought in from Sarawak to assist a short-lived patrol unit – Ferret Force – made up of ex-Chindits, Force 136-men and Malayan police. The unit had enjoyed some minor successes, but was part-time, and unable to remain in the rain-forest for long periods. On the disbandment of Ferret Force the Ibans had joined the SAS, and it was from these tattooed headhunters that they had begun to learn the art of tracking. The Ibans would eventually form their own unit, the Sarawak Rangers. Some SAS-men became so skilled that they outstripped their teachers, and several, like Bob Turnbull and ‘Whispering Leaf’ Hague, would become legendary.

  The Ibans taught them that any human encounter with the jungle resulted in ‘sign’ – it was virtually impossible to move there without leaving traces. Spoor could be divided into ‘top sign’ and ‘ground sign’ – the dividing line being ankle-height. On the ground, the tracker looked out for footprints, minute mud-splashes on stones and vegetation, bruised grass-stalks, broken twigs, upended leaves, weeping roots, disturbed insects, disturbed water, urine traces and faeces. Above ankle-level, he watched for marks of cutting, bruising and scratching on trees, imprints on the moss of tree-roots, the absence of spider-webs, the changes in the colour of vegetation. A good tracker could not only follow a trail but discern how many people had passed, how long before, how fast they were travelling, what food they had eaten, and, often, who they were. Aborigine footprints, for instance, were splay-toed, whereas the CTs when walking barefoot left the bunch-toed prints of those brought up wearing shoes.

  Unlike the desert, where most marching had been done at night, nocturnal movement in the jungle was near-impossible except in swamp, or under bright moonlight. The darkness fell with startling rapidity, and the forest became a bedlam of surreal noises – firealarms, bicycle bells, clashing cymbals, dentists’ drills, bugles, grinding brakes, fishing-reels, echoing snarls. The place was so electric with sound and movement that newcomers could rarely sleep. One of the worst hazards was deadfall – massive branches that snapped off trees during the night, crushing anyone camping beneath them. An entire tree fell within earshot at least every thirty-six hours. There was no way of predicting it, nor of avoiding it. Men could only lie awake, tense and fearful, straining for the sound of ripping deadwood and hoping it wouldn’t happen to them.

  Calvert’s object had been to create a force that would be, as he put it, ‘the antibody injected into the system, that would seek out and destroy the malarial germ’. His method of ‘injection’ was to deploy a squadron by road, boat or helicopter to the insertion-point. From there, the squadron would infiltrate the tactical area on foot, carrying supplies, and set up a base maintained by one troop under the OC, with a signaller. Comms would be established by voice-radio, a fifteen-kilo transmitter requiring a dozen five-kilo batteries to keep it going for a month. The transmitter broadcast using ground-wave and the signal was often blocked by mountains and atmospheric conditions. The Regiment was working on Morse-transmitting, with the help of some Australian signallers. ‘Telegraph’ sets were smaller, lighter, and used sky-wave frequencies that bounced signals off the ionosphere. Antennae were wire coils, and signallers had to learn formulas for setting up various lengths and configurations. Some SAS-men even used bows and arrows to get the antennae up into the highest trees.

  Signals had always been the SAS’s Achilles heel. In the early days the Regiment had used LRDG operators, and had later relied on Phantom. In coming years, signals would become so revered in the SAS that radio-sets would be regarded as sacred objects, and radio-operators as the ‘shamans’ of the SAS tribe. In the early days, patrols were out of contact until they returned to base, but as technology and technique improved, radios would filter down first to troop, and later to patrol level.

  There were still no trained patrol medics. Some SAS-men had acquired medical skills from an enthusiastic RAMC orderly attached to HQ Squadron, inevitably nicknamed ‘Doc’. The importance of patrol-level medics soon became apparent from the difficulties of casevacing wounded or injured men from the jungle. Anyone who went down would have to be carried a long distance – a tough job in these conditions. A helicopter landing-zone had to be carved out of the forest, with great effort and long delay, and the helicopter’s descent would almost certainly compromise the patrol’s position. The more injuries or wounds that could be treated on the ground, the less risk to the patrol.

  Slowly, from these beginnings, the four-man patrol concept would emerge, with each man a specialist – medic, demolitions-man, signaller or linguist. Later, to qualify for skills pay, every SAS-man in a combat or ‘sabre’ squadron would be required to pass an annual skills test, with one skill at ‘advanced’ and the others at ‘basic’ level. This meant that each man in the patrol was ‘cross-trained’ to take over another’s job if necessary.

&nb
sp; From the squadron-base, three troops, notionally of sixteen, but generally, in practice, of no more than a dozen men, would move out to the furthest limit of the tactical area, and establish satellite-bases. The troop would fragment into three- or four-man patrols who would go out for several days at a time. Although every troop was supposed to be led by an officer, many were commanded by sergeants, corporals and even troopers. Every NCO now joining the SAS dropped rank to trooper, which meant that many SAS troopers were ex-sergeants and corporals with leadership experience. It was during these days in Malaya that the SAS tradition of putting skill before formal rank was established. ‘There were two corporals in [my] troop,’ Lofty Large recalled, ‘and one of them was troop commander, I was never sure which … No one worried about rank, the only thing of importance was the ability to get the job done.’5

  A basic jungle skill was the building of a basha – a shelter consisting of a pile of deadwood or a hammock for a bed, covered with a waterproof poncho, slung between trees. In the patrol base, the bashas would be strung tactically around a hillock or high ground, each with its own own stand-to area for all-round defence, constructed of bulletproof timber. There would be one sentry by night. The patrol was stood-to before last light and remained rock still for an hour. The patrol was stood-down by a hand-clap. They slept wearing plimsolls, with their weapons in their parachute-silk ‘zoot suits’ or sleeping-bags, and were stood-to again by a double hand-clap before first light.

  Patrol discipline was already improving when Cooper arrived. Litter was burned, buried or carried. Weapons were hefted without slings, which could snag on vegetation, and always carried in the ‘ready’ position. Every man knew his immediate action on contact, his field of fire, procedure on the halt, emergency RVs, sentry-drills, the necessity to maintain silence. Ambushes were becoming more efficient. Mike Calvert had taught that in a jungle ambush only the first two or three of the enemy got bumped. He had shown the men how to make ‘daisy-chains’ of grenades strung together with instantaneous fuse, that could be laid along the track. When the enemy scout was sighted, the string of pineapples would be detonated, taking out guerrillas further down the line. This system only required two men on stag at a time. One ambush, run by Sgt. Bill ‘Gloom’ Ross, ex-Green Howards, remained in place for thirty-two days, and finally bagged two CT couriers bearing letters from which valuable intelligence was gleaned. Other ambushes stayed in place for up to sixty days.

  Woodhouse, who believed that booby-traps were the best weapon against terrorists, had his patrols rig up trip-wires attached to grenade daisy-chains on every main track they found. His men would seek out abandoned CT camps and wire them up, knowing that the guerrillas almost always returned. The patrol would bury three-inch mortar bombs in the area, attaching them to pressure-switches that would close a circuit when trodden on. The traps would be inspected from a distance every ten to twenty days. Booby-traps could backfire on the patrols, though, and after several blue-on-blues, Sloane outlawed them.

  Calvert had trained the men in snap-shooting using air-rifles and fencing-masks – one man lying in wait while two others stalked him. The air-pellets didn’t penetrate the skin but they stung painfully, adding extra incentive to the exercise. These drills proved highly useful in a milieu where a split-second decision meant life or death.

  The Regiment’s first MM was earned by Sgt. Bob Turnbull of D Squadron, an ex-Gunner from Middlesbrough, legendary for his tracking skills, and the beau idéal of the jungle soldier. Turnbull’s patrol, with an Iban tracker named Anak Kayan, once trailed a group of Communists for five days through the forest, alternately losing sign and picking it up again. Finally, after a continuous slog of twelve kilometres, they spotted a sentry in a bamboo thicket. Though he couldn’t see it, Turnbull deduced that there was an enemy camp nearby.

  Turnbull and Anak Kayan reckoned the group they’d been dogging consisted of five men, but there could have been many more in the camp. They knew they could take out the sentry easily, but this would only give the others a chance to escape. There were no easy approaches to the camp, except along the track, so Turnbull decided to lay up. He was expecting a rainstorm, and thought it would cover his patrol’s advance.

  The rain started at about 1615 hours, slashing into the vegetation. The enemy sentry moved, but Turnbull didn’t know if he’d retired or had gone to relieve himself. Taking a chance, he crept into the sentry’s post, with his patrol spaced at five-metre intervals behind him. Crouching in the undergrowth, Turnbull heard voices muttering in Chinese, from beyond a low bank. He motioned the patrol into line abreast. When they were in position, he signalled the attack.

  The patrol topped the bank, and clocked seven men – four CTs and three aborigines. Two of the terrorists had their weapons stripped, and were cleaning them. Turnbull’s pump-gun snarled four times. Three of the terrorists jerked like puppets and flew backwards, landing in bloody, mutilated heaps. A fourth lurched towards the bamboo thickets, streaming blood and rainwater. The other three SAS-men clattered rounds, snapping him down, while the aborigines stared, open-mouthed. The patrol cleared the camp – a dicey job where enemy could be skulking only a metre away – but found no more CTs. They uncovered documents, radio components, a pistol and a Sten-gun. Before he died, the wounded terrorist told them that a patrol of five CTs had moved out only two days before.

  In the initial contact, only Turnbull had fired. He had taken out all four terrorists with .12-bore 9-ball rounds boosted off with incredible speed and accuracy. It was not the last time his snapshooting skills would be called on. He later tracked down a guerrilla chief called Ah Tuck, notorious for carrying a cocked Sten-gun. Running across him in the forest, Turnbull beat Ah Tuck to the draw, and shot him dead. Another time, posted tail-end-charlie on a patrol led by an officer, Turnbull whacked out a terrorist over the patrol-leader’s shoulder, before the officer had even released his safety-catch.

  On another occasion, Johnny Cooper’s troop sergeant, Olly Levet, demonstrated the superiority of the pump-gun over the M1 carbine in jungle conditions. Levet was with his signaller near their troop-base on a steep hillside when they heard movement in the bamboo thickets further up the slope. They slid into ambush positions. Levet told his oppo to drop the enemy lead-scout as soon as he appeared. He would kayo the rest with 9-ball. Moments later, a guerrilla nosed through the bamboo. The signaller’s carbine snapped out. A slim .30 bullet whipped into him but didn’t put him down. Levet lamped 9-ball, whaling the guerrilla off his feet, then welted off eight pumps into the bush behind him. When the smoke cleared, the two SAS-men wove forward to inspect the damage. In the bamboo they found three terrorists ripped to bloody rags by pump-gun rounds.

  The only aspect of jungle movement Johnny Cooper found unpleasant was through mangrove swamps. Here, beyond the jungle canopy, the patrol had to move in blazing sunlight, either wading up to the waist in slimy ooze, or hopping from root to root along the mangroves, an exhausting exercise that skinned the arches of the feet. There was nowhere to sleep at night but in a hammock slung from fragile roots that might easily snap, pitching the sleeper into the water. The swamps were full of giant bull-leeches that not only sucked huge amounts of blood but whose bites stung painfully. Swamp-water was infected with ‘lepto’ and leech-bites gave the virus an easy access point. Sloshing through the dark water was dangerously noisy and incredibly slow, even by jungle standards. ‘Before my initiation there,’ Cooper wrote, ‘I found it hard to believe that it could take one hour to cover five hundred yards.’6

  In spite of this, Cooper found his first experience in the rainforest satisfying – he never felt claustrophobic or nervous of creepy-crawlies. Like others, he’d started out with a sense of detachment that gave away imperceptibly to a feeling of absorption. The true lesson of the ulu was to acquire what the SAS called ‘ground feel’ – the ability to blend into the forest, to become one with the environment instead of separate from it. Far from being hostile, Cooper found the jungle cool and tranq
uil – a place where a man could make himself at home.

  67. The worst going he ever experienced in Malaya

  Within a year, four hundred thousand squatters on the jungle fringes had been resettled by British troops. Though moved forcibly, most found their new circumstances more favourable than the old. They were given new houses and land of their own, and eventually provided with schools and medical facilities. At the same time, stiff measures were adopted to prevent any contact with the terrorists.

  Denied access to Chinese squatters, the Communists started growing their own crops and forcing local Malays to provide them with food. While the Regiment was in Singapore, intel had come in from ex-CTs that a hundred guerrillas of the MRLA’s 12 Regiment had installed themselves at Kampong Sepor in the Belum valley, on the Thailand–Malaya frontier. They had blistered on to the Malay villagers, and were cultivating paddy-fields on the banks of the Sungei Belum.

  B, C and D Squadrons, 22 SAS, were tasked to take out the terrorist base. While C and D would tab in across the mountainous spine of Malaya, B Squadron would be inserted by parachute on the paddy-fields. It would be the first operational jump since the war. The SAS would be part of a battle-group that included Royal Marines, Gurkhas and Malayan Police.

  The ex-21 SAS-men of ‘Big Time Bravo’ were the only trained parachutists in the Regiment, but most hadn’t jumped since Overlord. Rough training facilities were cobbled together at Changi airport in Singapore, which would shortly blossom into a new parachute school.

  The op – designated ‘Helsby’ – kicked off almost as soon as the Regiment returned to the field after its sojourn in Singapore. B was scheduled to drop from RAF Dakotas on 8 February 1952. The other two squadrons, under John Woodhouse, set out in three-tonners from Kota Bahru at the beginning of the month. They were hoping to reach Batu Melintang in the central mountains before saddling up their Bergens. Heavy rains had barred the roads, though, and the men had to debus two days short of the drop-off point. This meant beetling on at a tremendous tack to reach the tactical area before B Squadron was inserted.