The Making Of The British Army (66 page)
Read The Making Of The British Army Online
Authors: Allan Mallinson
By the end of 1964, with penetration increasing and growing Communist subversion of the Chinese population, Walker’s command was increased to 14,000 men – three Malay battalions, eight Gurkha, ten British and two Royal Marine commandos, supported by five batteries of light (helicopter-portable) artillery, two squadrons of armoured cars, sixty RAF and Royal Navy (mainly troop-lift) helicopters, and forty observation and liaison helicopters from the Army Air Corps, formed seven years earlier. The numbers would rise to 17,000 the following year with Australian and New Zealand troops sent from the Commonwealth Brigade in Singapore. Crossing the
Indonesian border had initially been permitted only in hot pursuit, though an exception was made for the SAS whose incursions, based in large measure on ‘sigint’ (signals intelligence, i.e. radio intercept), were highly secret, and for a few ‘trusted’ regiments. For the rest of the ‘green army’, as the SAS called them, the campaign was largely one of patrolling and ambushing – and occasionally being ambushed, when the intensity of the fighting could be as great for the patrol involved as any of the larger-scale actions in Korea had been. The VC citation for Lance-Corporal Rambahadur Limbu of the 10th Princess Mary’s Gurkha Rifles is apt testimony:
On 21st November 1965 in the Bau District of Sarawak Lance Corporal Rambahadur Limbu was with his Company when they discovered and attacked a strong enemy force located in the Border area. The enemy were strongly entrenched in Platoon strength, on top of a sheer sided hill the only approach to which was along a knife edge ridge allowing only three men to move abreast. Leading his support group in the van of the attack he could see the nearest trench and in it a sentry manning a machine gun.
Determined to gain first blood he inched himself forward until, still ten yards from his enemy, he was seen and the sentry opened fire, immediately wounding a man to his right. Rushing forward he reached the enemy trench in seconds and killed the sentry, thereby gaining for the attacking force a first but firm foothold on the objective. The enemy were now fully alerted and, from their positions in depth, brought down heavy automatic fire on the attacking force, concentrating this onto the area of the trench held alone by Lance Corporal Rambahadur. Appreciating that he could not carry out his task of supporting his platoon from this position he courageously left the comparative safety of his trench and, with a complete disregard for the hail of fire being directed at him, he got together and led his fire group to a better fire position some yards ahead.
He now attempted to indicate his intentions to his Platoon Commander by shouting and hand signals but failing to do so in the deafening noise of exploding grenades and continuous automatic fire he again moved out into the open and reported personally, despite the extreme dangers of being hit by the fire not only from the enemy but by his own comrades. It was at the moment of reporting that he saw both men of his own group seriously wounded.
Knowing that their only hope of survival was immediate first aid and that evacuation from their very exposed position so close to the enemy was vital he immediately commenced the first of his three supremely gallant attempts to
rescue his comrades. Using what little ground cover he could find he crawled forward, in full view of at least two enemy machine gun posts who concentrated their fire on him and which, at this stage of the battle, could not be effectively subdued by the rest of his platoon.For three full minutes he continued to move forward but when almost able to touch the nearest casualty he was driven back by the accurate and intense weight of fire covering his line of approach. After a pause he again started to crawl forward but he soon realised that only speed would give him the cover which the ground could not. Rushing forward he hurled himself on the ground beside one of the wounded and calling for support from two light machine guns which had now come up to his right in support he picked up the man and carried him to safety out of the line of fire.
Without hesitation he immediately returned to the top of the hill determined to complete his self imposed task of saving those for whom he felt personally responsible. It was now clear from the increased weight of fire being concentrated on the approaches to and in the immediate vicinity of the remaining casualty the enemy were doing all they could to prevent any further attempts at rescue. However, despite this Lance Corporal Rambahadur again moved out into the open for his final effort.
In a series of short forward rushes and once being pinned down for some minutes by the intense and accurate automatic fire which could be seen striking the ground all round him he eventually reached the wounded man. Picking him up and unable now to seek cover he carried him back as fast as he could through the hail of enemy bullets.
It had taken twenty minutes to complete this gallant action and the events leading up to it. For all but a few seconds this young Non-Commissioned Officer had been moving alone in full view of the enemy and under the continuous aimed fire of their automatic weapons. That he was able to achieve what he did against such overwhelming odds without being hit is miraculous. His outstanding personal bravery, selfless conduct, complete contempt of the enemy and determination to save the lives of the men of his fire group set an incomparable example and inspired all who saw him.
Finally rejoining his section on the left flank of the attack Lance-Corporal Rambahadur was able to recover the light machine gun abandoned by the wounded and with it won his revenge, initially giving support during the later stages of the prolonged assault and finally being responsible for killing four more enemy as they attempted to escape across the border. This hour long battle which had throughout been fought at point blank range and with the utmost ferocity by both sides was finally won.
At least twenty-four enemy are known to have died at a cost to the attacking force of three killed and two wounded. In scale and in achievement this engagement stands out as one of the first importance and there is no doubt that, but for the inspired conduct and example set by Lance-Corporal Rambahadur at the most vital stage of the battle, much less would have been achieved and greater casualties caused. He displayed heroism, self sacrifice and a devotion to duty and to his men of the very highest order. His actions on this day reached a zenith of determined, premeditated valour which must count amongst the most notable on record and is deserving of the greatest admiration and the highest praise.
By the time Walker’s tenure of command was over in 1965 the Indonesian army’s spirit had been severely weakened. In October a power struggle began, eventually bringing the anti-Communist General Suharto to power, and cross-border ‘Confrontation’ fizzled out. In all, the campaign had lasted four years, and, given the size of the operational area, Indonesian resources and the fragility of the new Malaysian Federation, victory had been gained with remarkable economy of effort. It proved to be a formative experience not only for Walker but for a number of other officers who would go on to high rank, significantly in Northern Ireland but also in the Falklands and the First Gulf War.
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Indeed, some of the appreciation and planning for the recapture of the Falklands – on raiding and other techniques – was done by a general staff colonel who as a 23-year-old company commander in Borneo had won an MC with the 2nd Goorkhas (as the regiment always spelled it): Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Peter Duffell. The 2nd were one of the regiments trusted to operate on the Indonesian side of the border, and Duffell’s company, acting on intelligence gained by one of the long-serving Intelligence Corps officers who liaised with the local tribes, had destroyed a fifty-strong company of marines in a stealthy ten-day operation.
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Duffell was at that time a National Service officer, his service somewhat delayed. Going on to become a regular officer, after Staff College he was posted as a brigade major in Northern Ireland in the early days of the Troubles, and later commanded the Gurkha Brigade. As
Major-General of the Gurkhas in the early 1990s he would take the decision finally to abandon the old Indian Army organization and method and align the Gurkhas instead with British practice, so that they could properly integrate with British brigades on operations.
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The Gurkhas in fact bore much of the burden of Confrontation, with a high proportion of the 114 killed and 181 wounded (an exceptionally high ratio of killed to wounded, which from the Second World War onwards had been roughly ten wounded to every one man killed). But the British soldier’s apt remark – ‘Them’s Gurkhas, Miss. Them’s us!’ – has applied increasingly since their incorporation in the British army’s order of battle rather than the Indian Army’s. And Rambahadur Limbu’s VC has been a further benchmark for its courage.
Throughout the period of post-war emergencies, rebellions and confrontations the army continued to be reduced. In 1956 the political defeat of the Suez intervention
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brought the ex-Guardsman Harold Macmillan to No. 10 in place of the ex-Rifleman Anthony Eden (who had won the MC in the First World War).
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Macmillan had been both minister of defence (at that time still a coordinating post, the three separate service ministers sitting in cabinet), and chancellor of the exchequer, and he was determined – in the way of all political flesh – to reduce defence expenditure. Not only that, he was also determined to abolish National Service, for the recall of 23,000 largely ex-NS reservists for Suez had not been popular. Call-up of conscripts was therefore finally ended in 1960. To achieve savings and meet commitments with a smaller army, large overseas bases were to be closed and reliance placed instead on a home-based strategic reserve and long-range air transport. Tactical nuclear weapons – small-yield bombs and artillery rounds – designed for use on the battlefield in support of conventional operations would also make it possible to reduce numbers in BAOR; and more locally raised troops would be the mainstay of colonial defence. Barring the obvious technological differences, it was
an approach not dissimilar to that envisaged in the military retrenchments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Arguments now began to rage in the War Office over the size of the new all-professional army. Templer, the CIGS, believed the minimum needed was 200,000; the war minister, Duncan Sandys (who had been wounded in Norway in 1940 serving with the TA), believed that only 165,000 could be recruited. In the end, because overseas garrisons could not be reduced as much as hoped, for the operational demands were just too great and the impracticalities of relying on strategic airlift too many,
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by 1960 the figure had crept up to a heady 196,000.
There had been amalgamations and disbandments in the meantime. The second battalions of infantry regiments had gone in the immediate post-war cuts (except for those of the Guards), but the number of battalions had stood at eighty-five even in 1951. Under the new arrangements they would be reduced from seventy-seven to sixty. The Royal Armoured Corps would lose almost a quarter of its strength too, cut from thirty regiments to twenty-three; and the Royal Artillery would shrink to twenty regiments, though their motto
Ubique
(‘Everywhere’) for the most part still held good. The regimental depots, the great feature of the Cardwell reforms, disappeared, the regiments instead brigading their training on a regional or ‘functional’ basis, so that, for example, the regiments of the north-west formed the Lancastrian Brigade depot at Preston – except for the Lancashire Fusiliers, whose recruits trained with the other English fusilier regiments at their new depot in Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire. There were always just such historic flies in the ointment of infantry reform, as there continue to be. The mistake has frequently been to try to remove them.
This brigading to save money on the manning and infrastructure of recruit training and administration then began to develop another momentum. The regiments of each brigade wore a common cap badge – more or less – and some of the groupings began operating in effect as a single multi-battalion regiment. The battalions of the Green Jackets Brigade, which trained at the Rifle Depot in Winchester, now began referring to themselves not just as the Oxfordshire and
Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (who, although light infantry and therefore historically red-jacketed, wore ‘virtual green’ because of their early association with Sir John Moore), the King’s Royal Rifle Corps or the Rifle Brigade, but as 1st, 2nd and 3rd Green Jackets. Some of the ‘heavy infantry’, the regiments of the East Anglian Brigade, followed suit. In 1964, therefore, the Army Council expressed its ‘wish and intention’ (it felt it could not compel) that the infantry reorganize itself formally along these lines to permit flexibility when increasing or decreasing its strength without the upheaval of further amalgamations. Cynics might have seen this as merely a way of cutting the infantry by stealth, as indeed seemed to be the case when the newly formed Light Infantry had its fourth battalion cut less than a year after the regiment was formed, along with the fourth battalions of other four-battalion regiments. There was, alas, no safety in numbers. Indeed, the large regiments would be cut to two battalions in 1993. The Army Dress Committee, which authorizes all changes in distinctions of dress, emblems and ‘accoutrements’, almost certainly has the greatest number of files of any committee of the MoD.
