A Fortunate Life (16 page)

I told her to stay exactly where she was, dashed round with a small squad of Marines and shot it. What she had in her bedroom was not a gecko, but a large iguana which had wandered in from the nearby jungle and was quite capable of breaking a person’s leg with a single swish of its tail. I was a bit more careful with such phone calls after that.

Life may have been physically quite tough for us. But it was no picnic for our wives either. Not knowing what your husband was doing and always having a wary eye out for the dreaded unit Land Rover turning up with some bad news generated an emotional strain that told on many wives and marriages. Apart from getting a bad dose of dysentery (as a result of which she has suffered recurrent bouts of the disease ever since), Jane coped magnificently. Together with other wives she visited the wounded in the British Military Hospital and got involved when she could in the provision of welfare and support services for newly arrived wives from the UK, while holding down a regular job (much-needed because of our financial situation). At one stage our bank balance fell to a mere 27 cents of a Malay Dollar (at the time a Malay Dollar was worth about two shillings and sixpence – or 13p in decimal money). Money has always been one of the most contentious issues in our marriage and the cause of most of our rows. I am paranoid about running out, the consequence, I think, of seeing what happened to my father when his business failed. As a result, apart from a mortgage, we have never in our whole married life had an overdraft or been in debt, though we came perilously close to it on this occasion.

With four months to go before the end of my tour, I received my next posting instructions. To my delight, I was told that, when my tour was completed I was to take some leave and then join the next SBS training course in Poole. But I still had one more operational tour to do in Sarawak.

Jane and I were finding partings increasingly painful at this time, and somehow they were made worse because I was on active service and she was in a strange country. Someone, somewhere has said that war is ninety percent mind-numbing boredom and ten percent terrifying activity. It is a good description. Soldiers, like everyone else, have a habit of filling their empty spaces with daydreams, and I was no exception. My recurring image during the long silent patrols and the even longer sleepless nights, was of her, dressed in a black dress and ready to go out in the evening, bending over our child, with the light of a bedside lamp softly shining on her face from below. We were trying hard, but vainly, to start our family at the time.

We decided that, if we had to be parted so close to the end of my tour it would be better for her to go back to the UK to be with her parents, while I did my final three months in the jungle. She managed to hitch a lift back home with the RAF just before I left.

It was on this tour in Sarawak that the Government’s policy on what we could and could not do in Borneo was secretly changed. Hitherto, regular units had not been allowed to cross the Indonesian border, even in hot pursuit of the enemy, although there had been some special forces operations which had taken place ‘on the other side’. It was now decided that certain units, chiefly the Ghurkhas and the commandos, could, in future, carry the fight to the enemy on their territory. This new policy was code named ‘Operation Initiative’. My Troop was at Padawan, high on a very mountainous part of the Indonesian border at the time. We were suddenly replaced by another Troop from the Commando and flown back to Headquarters, where I was called in by our Commanding Officer and told that I was to lead the first regular troop incursion into Indonesian territory, a ten-day-long ambush mounted on a track, some eight miles into Indonesian territory, which was known to be used by our enemy. This operation, which he said had been cleared at Cabinet level, was to be conducted in the greatest secrecy. I was to take my full Troop, but I was not allowed to tell them what we were doing until the operation had begun. We would be launched through one of the other Troop locations
close to the border and were to return through the same location after the operation was over. I was ordered, in the firmest terms, to return immediately if the element of surprise was lost, because there was little or nothing that could be done to help us if we got ourselves into trouble. Our cover story, if discovered was to say we had made a map-reading error (easy enough to do in this largely uncharted jungle) and had strayed over the border inadvertently.

We were flown at last light into the forward position which was to be our jumping off point for the operation. The following morning, I checked everyone’s kit very carefully, and then we formed up in patrol order and left, heading away from the border. As soon as we were well clear of prying eyes, I stopped the patrol, gathered them round me and informed them of our real destination and task. We then swung the patrol round and headed for the border, crossing into Indonesia a little after midday and arriving just short of our ambush position as dusk began to fall. It was too late to man the ambush, so we camped up for the night about two hundred yards from our objective. Then, in the morning, I went forward with my Troop Sergeant to carry out a reconnaissance of our ambush location.

Under normal circumstances, an ambush is a fairly simple military procedure. The first task is to choose a target, or ‘killing’, zone. It is in this zone that you aim to engage the enemy, and it is on this area that the main weight of firepower of the ambush is concentrated. Ideally, the target zone should be centred round some kind of obstacle; a log across a jungle path, or a stream the enemy has to negotiate, or (in the case of a vehicle ambush) a sharp bend in the road. The aim is to use this obstacle to divide the enemy forces, and so diminish their capacity to regroup for a counter-attack. The ambush is then split into two groups: lookouts – posted at both ends of the ambush, some distance from the main body, to provide as much notice of the enemy’s approach as possible – and the main body, whose job is to engage the enemy in the target zone. The commander will normally be positioned next to the most powerful weapon (usually a machine-gun) in the centre of the ambush. It is he, and he alone, who has responsibility for triggering the ambush at the right moment.

Where possible, an ambush should be positioned as far from the target zone as possible within the maximum effective range of the weapons involved – about seventy yards away is usually right where small arms are used. This, too, is to make counter-attack more difficult,
as well as helping with concealment and reducing the chance of discovery by casual passers by. But this is where jungle ambushes pose a problem. Lack of visibility means they must be positioned very close, sometimes as little as five yards from the target zone, making it necessary for the ambushers to be exceptionally quiet and laying them open to chance discovery by passers by (and especially their dogs).

I looked in vain for a suitable obstacle around which to base our ambush. Nor could I find any small rise from which we might be able to command the target zone from a little distance. The area we were given was flat, featureless and covered in tall grass and light scrub. I therefore chose a portion of the track which ran straight for a hundred yards or so, giving us the best available field of fire.

I divided my thirty men into three groups of ten, of which two would be active in the ambush at all times while the third was rotated out to the rest area, some hundred and fifty yards to the rear for rest, feeding and relaxation. I then posted the two lookouts on either wing of the ambush and moved the main body into position, after which the ten ‘resting’ men were used to silently remove all twigs and obstacles from a path which ran from the centre of the ambush to our rest area, so that we could move along this as silently as possible. We then ran a length of parachute cord from each lookout position to where I lay, attaching the ends to both of my wrists. We had previously arranged a series of signals which the lookouts were to use. One tug for passers by and a series of tugs for an approaching enemy, etc. I lay in the centre of the ambush alongside the Bren gunner, with whom I had also agreed (and rehearsed) the signals for triggering the ambush. If we received a warning from the lookout that the enemy were approaching I would lay my hand lightly on his left arm signalling that he should come to the ready position. One light tap meant that he should take the first pressure on the trigger and three sharp ones were his signal to fire, unleashing the ambush and triggering the rest to open fire as well. Every day we lifted the ambush just after dusk and replaced it just before dawn the following morning. It was not easy to lie perfectly still for long hours at a time, especially in the grassland, which the sun baked to an oven and which was infested with armies of insects. The track we were ambushing was quite well used by locals, but, unhappily, of the enemy there was neither sight nor sound. We had a very limited supply of water, which we restricted to drinking, rather than using any for washing. So by the fifth day we
were all smelling pretty ripe – as I could attest, lying close to the person manning the Bren gun (and no doubt he could attest, lying close to me). On the sixth day, around midday, a party of locals came down the track. Suddenly one of their dogs, which had clearly scented us, raised its hackles up and charged into the area where we were lying, followed by his master, who quickly stumbled on our hiding positions and then turned round and ran for his life. I had to presume that he would quickly report our presence and therefore had no alternative but to order that we lift the ambush immediately and move out and back to our side of the border, as quickly and as silently as we could.

Shortly after this, our tour in Sarawak came to and end, as did my two-and-a-half years in 42 Commando. Before I returned to UK in May 1964, I managed to scrounge a lift on some RAF aircraft and flew down to see my parents and my brothers and sisters in Australia. We returned to all the old pursuits of fishing, shooting and strong argument. I discovered that, in my absence, my parents had built me up in my siblings’ eyes as an absent paragon of virtue and ability, probably in order to encourage them to higher things. Though perhaps natural, this was most unfair on both my siblings and me. I had to ask my parents to stop, as it did not help in rebuilding my old relations with my beloved brothers and sisters.

We had a wonderful three weeks together – but the parting was, as always, very painful.

As a result of the new Freedom of Information laws, I have been sent my service records, which include the confidential reports written about me by my commanding officers over my service career. In these, the old faults of impetuosity and lack of attention to my appearance crop up now and again. One of my superiors even complained that, having got married young and being impecunious, I did not play much part in the activities of the Officers’ Mess. This was accurate, though marriage and lack of money were not the primary reasons. I always preferred to draw my friends from a wider circle than you can meet in an Officers’ Mess, a club, or, later, the House of Commons.

Such reports could be highly subjective and idiosyncratic. It is said that one commanding officer of an old cavalry regiment, who owned horses, bred horses and raced horses, wrote a one-line report on a
subordinate of whom he disapproved which read simply, ‘I would hesitate to breed from this officer.’

My immediate commander during my time in Borneo, in contrast, was a man whose unfailing decency and generosity of spirit were often reflected in his over-flattering view of others, a fact which, to me, often said more about his qualities than the qualities of those on whom he was reporting. His final report on me at the end of this tour was characteristically generous. But the most important bit for my future was the final sentence: ‘Strongly recommended for SBS training.’

And that was exactly where I went next.