Jungle of Snakes (17 page)
Authors: James R. Arnold
ARTHUR WALKER MANAGED an isolated rubber plantation in the state of Perak. His small office lay at the end of one of Malaya’s
loneliest roads but this did not alarm Walker. He had spent twenty of his fifty years in Malaya and was comfortable with the
country’s daily rhythms. He had just returned from his morning inspection of the estate when three young Chinese rode up to
his office on bicycles. They entered Walker’s office. His dog started barking and Walker tried to quiet him. The young men
greeted Walker in Malay: “Salutations, sir!” The affable Walker cheerfully returned their greetings. Two shots rang out and
Walker fell dead.
Thirty minutes later, ten miles away, twelve armed Chinese surrounded the office of the Sungei Siput estate. Inside, manager
John Allison and his twenty-one-year-old assistant, Ian Christian, were discussing business with their Chinese clerks. Revolver-wielding
Chinese entered the office and compelled the white men to march to a nearby bungalow. They wanted Allison’s gun. Having secured
the manager’s revolver, they marched their victims back to the office. A gunman reassured a frightened Malay clerk, “Don’t
be afraid. We’re only out for Europeans and the running dogs”
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They bound Allison and Christian to chairs and executed them.
Eighteen miles away, a phone rang in the upper floor of a two-story building. The building housed the headquarters of the
Perak State Police. On the ground floor, thirty-two-year-old Robert Thompson worked as a Chinese-affairs officer. Fluent in
Cantonese, he was listening to an elderly Chinese woman detail her grievance when a police officer descended the stairs and
came running toward Thompson’s desk. For Thompson, the moment forever remained indelibly imprinted in his brain: the slowly
rotating blades of the ceiling fans barely stirring the ovenlike air; native clerks dressed in white duck suits diligently
laboring at their desks; the alternating bands of light and dark on the wood floor caused by sunlight filtering through the
rattan curtains; a white man running when no one ever ran in Malaya’s enervating climate. Flushed with excitement and exertion,
the officer stopped at Thompson’s desk: “Bob—it’s started!”
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Indeed, the murder of three Europe an planters on June 16, 1948, marked the beginning of war in Malaya.
FOR THE FIRST six months of the insurgency, the Communists registered an average of more than two hundred incidents per month.
Special assassination teams composed of professional revolutionaries targeted government officials in order to disrupt government
operation. Their ability to strike throughout the country surprised and shocked both the Europeans living in Malaya and British
authorities. However, like many strategic plans, the Communist strategy to liberate Malaya collapsed when their enemies refused
to follow the Communist script. Instead, the government appealed to the targets of terror, its officials and the European
elite, to remain steadfast in the face of danger.
In turn, planters and mine managers armed themselves, fortified their bungalows, and carried on with business. Peter Lucy
and his wife, Tommy, lived on a rubber plantation eight miles from Kuala Lumpur. In spite of its proximity to a major city,
the plantation was the target of frequent attacks. The couple built a sandbagged stronghold (and later put sandbag walls around
the nursery where Tommy delivered twin infants), ordered the construction of watchtowers and laying of barbed wire to protect
the workers, installed armor plating on their Ford truck, and resolved to carry on. Tommy wrote, “We have to make up our minds
that guns, ammunition, and guards are the order of the day.” She put her words into practice by manning a light machine gun
whenever the Communists attacked. Many British expats agreed with Tommy when she asserted, “Our biggest value is from the
point of view of morale. I’m quite sure it makes a great difference to the labourers and the other people in the district
so see that we’re carrying on normal lives.”
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The government helped the rural plantation and mine managers by quickly creating a force of Special Constables, nearly all
of whom were Malays. At first they were woefully armed and indifferently trained. But even so, they helped provide a modicum
of protection both for government officials who continued to work in rural areas and for the rural Europe an population. Because
of the government’s initial responses and the resolve of the expat community, and contrary to Communist expectations, there
was no mass, panic-stricken flight out of the remote interior.
The terrorists found it easier to kill civilians who were reluctant to provide support for the revolution than to kill government
officials or armed and wary planters. In a typical incident, guerrillas appeared one night at the homes of three squatters
who had refused to pay their requisitions. The guerillas assembled the three families, selected one child from each, and hacked
the children to death before their parents’ eyes. They departed with the warning “Pay or we will kill another of your children.”
During the first outbreak of the insurgency, guerrillas killed 223 civilians, only 17 of whom were Europeans; almost all the
rest were Chinese.
Terror came easy to the guerrillas. However, Communist leaders quickly realized that when guerrillas sabotaged mine equipment,
slashed rubber trees, and murdered the managers who operated the mines and plantations, they destroyed the means of production
and thus ruined the ability of Chinese peasants to support themselves. Moreover, their failure to direct their forces to carve
out a “liberated zone” that could serve as a base area to nurture the insurgency ultimately proved disastrous. In sum, phase
one operations neither produced popular uprisings, fatally disrupted the economy, nor built a secure sanctuary. The faltering
campaign of sabotage and terrorism persuaded the Communist leadership to follow Mao’s Chinese example and gird for a long
guerrilla war designed to break British will.
The British Army
ON JUNE 18, 1948, JUST TWO DAYS after the killing began, British authorities made a federationwide declaration of emergency.
The first set of emergency regulations gave the police—a force almost exclusively composed of Malays officered by Britons—sweeping
extra powers to search, detain, and enforce curfews. On July 23, the government declared the Malayan Communist Party an unlawful
society. To impose its will, the government initially had a regular military force of ten understrength infantry battalions
(two British, six Gurkha, and two Malay), a 10,000-man Federation Police force (supplemented over the next three months by
24,000 Malay Special Constables), and a Royal Air Force contingent of some 100 planes.
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The squadron of aging but still versatile Spitfires could attack ground targets. The squadron of Sunderland flying boats
had no direct value against the guerrillas. It fell to the army to play the leading role in the initial counterinsurgency
campaign.
Throughout its history the British army had taken a supporting role behind the Royal Navy as the lead actor in national defense.
By the middle of the 1800s about 80 percent of the regular British army was stationed abroad, where it policed imperial territory.
The army evolved as a disparate collection of individual battalions accustomed to long service in isolated locations. British
leaders used the small decentralized army to achieve limited goals at limited cost. This background shaped the army’s philosophy
toward counterinsurgency operations in Malaya. Three principles prevailed: minimum force, civil-military cooperation, and
flexible small-unit tactics. In many ways, the British Army was institutionally well-suited to wage an effective counterinsurgency.
But the strategic capabilities of the senior leadership also influences outcomes. The commander of British forces in Malaya,
Major General Charles Boucher, began his military service in a Gurkha unit and ascended to command of the Tenth Indian Brigade
in World War II. Captured by Rommel’s troops in the western desert in June 1942, Boucher was held as a prisoner of war in
Italy until 1943, when the armistice with Italy allowed him to escape his Italian guards and make his way to Allied lines
in southern Italy. Thereafter, he again led Indian troops in combat, this time in bitter mountain fighting at Cassino and
against the Gothic Line. Boucher described his strategy on July 27, 1948: “My object is to break the insurgent concentrations,
to bring them to battle . . . to drive them underground or into the jungle, and then to follow them there . . . I intend to
keep them constantly moving and deprive them of food and recruits, because if they are constantly moving they cannot terrorize
an area properly so that they can get their commodities from it; and then ferret them out of their holes, wherever these holes
may be.”
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Boucher’s conventional formulation received favorable local press coverage—“Boucher Promises More Toughness” was a typical
headline—but it was not a practical solution to the insurgency. It worked only as long as the guerrillas stood and fought,
which was not long at all. Thereafter, security forces conducted large-scale, multibattalion sweeps through the jungle that
proved futile. The guerrillas’ bases were invisible from the air and almost impossible to find by ground search. A British
patrol entering the overgrown jungle fringe could easily consume four hours to trek one mile. Soldiers passed within five
yards of a concealed guerrilla without seeing him. Likewise, searchers could be within fifty yards of a 100-man guerrilla
camp and never know that they were so close to their elusive objective. As early as the fall of 1948 an operational analysis
suggested that elaborate sweeps were of dubious value. Later analysis would show that it took about 1,000 man-hours of patrolling
to eliminate one guerrilla.
Undeterred, conventionally minded officers persisted. In spite of their code names evoking historic heroism, Operations Ramillies,
Blenheim, Spitfire, and the like failed. It was more the pity because at the war’s start the British held a priceless opportunity
to defeat rapidly an insurgency unexpectedly deprived of its most able military commander.
Paths Not Taken
When Lau Yew perceived that acts of terror had failed so far to drive off the British or to create Liberated Areas where the
guerrilla force could expand and gain strength, he ordered increased attacks. Isolated police stations were a special target.
Lau Yew thought that a massed force of several hundred guerrillas could easily overrun a station defended by a sergeant and
his ten constables. Most of these attacks were humiliating repulses. With hindsight it could be seen that Lau Yew was guilty
of strategic impatience. He had thought that the insurrection would achieve decisive results by the end of August 1948, but
in fact the Communists had come nowhere close.
In mid-July 1948 an informer told a British police superintendent, the legendary Bill “Two-Gun” Stafford—a veteran of fifteen
parachute jumps behind Japanese lines in Burma who earned his moniker by always carrying a revolver under each armpit—when
and where some important Communist officials were to attend a jungle meeting. Stafford and some of his loyal Chinese detectives
surrounded the meeting place. During the ensuing firefight Stafford shot and killed an armed insurgent who turned out to be
Lau Yew. Lau Yew’s death threw the insurgency into disarray and left its military operations in the hands of inexperienced
and not particularly able leaders. Here was opportunity for the British if they had the wit to perceive it.
One officer who possessed the combination of experience and insight was Lieutenant Colonel Walter Walker. Like Two-Gun Stafford,
Walker had fought in the Burmese jungle against the Japanese. The unique skill set required to survive in jungle combat informed
his decision to create a “Ferret Force” in July 1948. It consisted of small teams each composed of twelve British Empire volunteers,
soldiers from the Malay Regiment, a signals detachment, highly skilled Dyak trackers recruited in Borneo, and a Chinese liaison
officer. A British volunteer with local knowledge led each Ferret Force group. The Ferret Forces were thus perfectly tailored
for the task of hunting insurgents in their jungle bases. Unfortunately they disbanded within five months, a casualty of bureaucratic
infighting over policy, administration, and methods. Still, the abortive experiment demonstrated the value of its innovative
core concept, namely, small patrols guided by native trackers and accompanied by interpreters and local troops.
Walker was also convinced that many hard-learned lessons in World War II–era jungle warfare had been forgotten because of
the army’s focus on conventional warfare. This amnesia was particularly apparent when regular army units conducted large-scale
sweeps. They called it “jungle bashing” and in Walker’s mind this connoted exactly what was wrong. An officer described a
jungle-bashing operation: “We had now been in the jungle for five continuous weeks, taking part in one of those big operations
. . . During the whole period we had neither seen nor heard any sign of the enemy.”
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To help rectify this problem Walker established a training center dedicated to “studying, teaching and perfecting methods
of jungle fighting.”
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This Jungle Warfare Training Centre contributed useful tactical innovations but in the absence of a coherent strategic plan
to defeat the insurgents such innovations were not enough.
Instead Boucher continued with his map-perfect search-and-destroy missions that were heavy on the searching but did little
useful destroying. Typical was the experience of a newly arrived regular British infantry regiment, the Green Howards. The
Green Howards arrived in Malaya early in the conflict at a time when the guerrillas still operated in large units of 100 men
or more. The battalion zealously searched the jungle over a four-month period, saw guerrillas just five times, and killed
one of them. The regiment’s altogether typical experience amply revealed Boucher’s strategy to be a virtual guarantee that
the fight against the insurgents would be a long, drawn-out affair.
THE SENIOR BRITISH official on the ground when the Emergency began was Sir Edward Gent. His brief time in command suggests
that Gent would have been unequal to the challenge. Before such a judgment could be conclusively made, Gent died in an airplane
accident. In September 1948 Whitehall appointed his successor, Sir Henry Gurney. If central casting had selected a man to
play a British proconsul, Gurney would have received first call. An Oxford graduate, avid sportsman, and immaculate dresser—he
insisted on wearing a tie, jacket, and felt hat in spite of Malaya’s heat and humidity—Gurney’s celebrated panache achieved
legendary status during his tenure as chief secretary in Palestine. There he had insisted on his daily round of golf regardless
of the disruptions around him, finishing his last round the day before he ended British administration and theatrically departed
Palestine on the last plane out of the country.
However, beneath this image was a man of unusual perception who made two key contributions to the fight against the Malayan
Communists. Gurney asserted that the conflict was a competition between political ideologies. If the military was left to
follow its instincts, the result would be an escalation that would inevitably use all available military might. Civilian casualties
would ensue, which would turn more people to the Communist side. Instead, Gurney insisted that in this war of ideas, the army
should provide military support for a political war rather than the civil administration providing political cover for a purely
military effort. Over the objections of the military—it was ridiculous that “a bunch of coppers should start telling the generals
what to do,” complained General Boucher—Gurney insisted on civilian control of the counterinsurgency.
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Robert Thompson, now installed in the government secretariat in Kuala Lumpur, where he coordinated intelligence reports, enthusiastically
endorsed Gurney’s philosophy. A single misguided bomb created countless enemies. Even if accurately delivered, all the bombs
and shells in the world would not touch a Communist cell operating in a high school where it produced new recruits for the
insurgency.
Gurney’s second insight was to understand the insurgents’ dependency on the Chinese squatters. His solution was breathtaking:
to relocate them into villages where they would be isolated from the guerrillas and protected from insurgent terror. No one
expected the squatters to uproot their lives willingly. The incentive was land grants. Gurney reasoned that by becoming legal
stakeholders, the squatters would possess a strong motive to support the government. Relocating one tenth of the country’s
population was an expensive and challenging logistical feat. Moreover, the Malay sultans who owned the land had to be persuaded
to cede it to the squatters. Gurney reckoned it would take eighteen months to get the program well and truly launched. Meanwhile,
the Malayan Communist Party strengthened its hold on the squatter population.
The irreducible minimum of logistical support the guerrillas required was rice, weapons, and ammunition. The jungle provided
none of these. Consequently, the guerrillas operated from jungle bases no more than a few hours away from populated areas
and relied on the Chinese squatters who lived along the jungle edge for money, food, medicine, clothes, intelligence, and
recruits. Most jungle bases had only one access trail. This path typically extended up from a jungle valley past a small lean-to.
This shed served as a supply point to where carrying parties deposited their forty-pound rice sacks and the guerrillas picked
them up. The guerrillas hauled the rice up a rugged, nearly perpendicular ascent overlooked by the first of at least two well-concealed
guard posts. The camp itself lay on cleared ground but the upper story of primary-growth jungle was always left undisturbed
to conceal the camp from aerial observation. Likewise, the camp’s approach was always screened from the trail so that “no
part of it could be seen from more than five yards away.”
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Every camp had a secure escape route in case security forces found it.
Because of this meticulous attention to camouflage and concealment, military patrols seldom found a guerrilla camp unless
they had a defector willing to guide them to it. When the security forces did approach a camp, the guards usually delayed
them long enough for the camp inhabitants to flee. A British officer described accompanying his patrol toward a camp and encountering
a single rifle shot. What to do? He could not accurately judge from where the shot came. Should he move his men to the left
or right or simply charge blindly straight forward? Meanwhile, the guard had accomplished his task. His warning shot alerted
his comrades. The fleeing insurgents always outpaced their pursuers since the latter did not know the terrain and had to fear
ambush and booby trap.
So it was that the contest against the insurgents featured all the usual frustrations of guerrilla warfare: the absence of
fixed lines, the lack of decisive geographical objectives, the illusion that there might be a decisive battle, and the inability
to separate enemy fighters from the civilian population.
The Rise of General Briggs
In Great Britain, war in Malaya began at a time when a new Labor government headed by Clement Attlee was in control. Attlee
believed that eventually Malaya should achieve independence, but he and his party also thought that the British government
should never negotiate while terrorists had guns pointed at British heads. Attlee’s government signaled its determination
to defeat the insurgency by sending reinforcements to Malaya in the summer of 1948, including the Second Guards Brigade. This
marked the first time in British history that any soldiers serving in the Household Brigade had ever been deployed outside
of the British Isles during what was notionally a time of peace. In spite of the fact that the British people had not yet
recovered from the tremendous effort spent in World War II, a vast majority supported the fight in Malaya. Over time, the
confidence of the British government and the British people in victory rose and fell according to progress and setbacks. However,
their basic determination ultimately to win would prove to be a hallmark of the Malayan Emergency.