Barber - The War of the Running Dogs: Malaya 1948-1960

The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people

John Adams, USA, 1818

The answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people

General Templer, Malaya, 1952

CASSELL

FOR SIMONETTA WITH LOVE

The Government

SIR EDWARD GENT High Commissioner

SIR HENRY GURNEY High Commissioner

GEN. SIR HAROLD BRIGGS First Director of Operations

GEN. SIR GERALD TEMPLER First Supremo

SIR ROBERT THOMPSON Malayan Civil Service, later Secretary for Defence

MALCOLM MACDONALD Commissioner-General for South-East Asia

The Police

NICOL GRAY Commissioner, 194852

COL. ARTHUR YOUNG his successor

IRENE LEE

DAVID STORRIER Special Branch

EVAN DAVIES

TWO - GUN BILL STAFFORD Officer in charge of Detectives, Kuala Lumpur

The Malayans

TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN Malayas first Prime Minister

YEOP MAHIDIN leader of 26,000 kampong guards

C. C. TOO Psychological Warfare Expert

Planters and Miners

PETER LUCY rubber planter

ROBERT PUCKERIDGE rubber planter

IRA PHELPS tin miner

NORMAN CLEAVELAND tin miner

The Communists

CHIN PENG leader of the Malayan Communist Party

LAU YEW head of the armed forces

LAM SWEE Political Commissar

LEE MENG leading girl courier

SHORTY KUK leader of Johore Communists

OSMAN CHINA key propaganda expert

GOH PENG TUN

HOR LUNG

ABDULLAH CD leading Malay Communist

CTs

Throughout this book Communist guerrilla fighters are referred to as CTs, short for Communist Terrorists. At first they were officially labelled bandits until the British discovered that this word had unfortunate connotations. Bandits had been the identical term used by the Japanese and Chiang Kai-shek to describe Communists; since neither of these powers had been successful, the use of bandits by the British put them on a similar level in the eyes of Malayan Chinese. The British therefore changed bandit to Communist Terrorist or CT. In order to make for easier reading, I have used the term throughout.

A War or an Emergency?

It was a war but there was a curious reason why it was never called one. As the author John Gullick, an authority on Malaya and one-time member of the Malayan Civil Service, points out, It was a war though out of regard for the London insurance market, on which the Malayan economy relied for cover, no one ever used the word. This misnomer continued for twelve years, for the simple reason that insurance rates covered losses of stocks and equipment through riot and civil commotion in an emergency, but not in a civil war.

Straits Dollars

During the war there were eight Straits dollars to the sterling, and all computations have been made at this rate.

So many people have helped me with the research for this book, that it would be invidious to single out a few names, ranging as they do from high-ranking generals and politicians to Malay policemen and ex-Communists. There is also another more intriguing reason why it would be unfair to name only these people: a great deal of my information came from Special Branch leaders who could not in any case by identified. This is, after all, the story of a war planned and won largely by civilian and police effort with the military in a supporting role, and many of the anonymous Special Branch chiefs responsible for victory are still on active service. To them and all the others who so generously gave me their time, advice and documents, I offer my most sincere thanks.

I would also like to thank Donald Dinsley, my research collaborator in many books, for his valuable help in many parts of the world while I was working and writing in Malaysia.

My grateful thanks are also due to those authors and publishers who kindly gave me permission to publish extracts from their books.

N.B. Kuala Lumpur, 196970

Above all else, and from the earliest moments of history, one primordial force has dominated the life of every man, woman and child in Malaya the gentle Malays themselves, the industrious Chinese, the listless Indians, the perspiring British alike. It is the jungle; the jungle which none can escape, the jungle which reaches to the back of every compound, to the back of every mind; the jungle which blots out the sun over four-fifths of Malayas 50,850 square miles. Harsh and elemental, implacable to all who dare to trifle with its suffocating heat or hissing rains, the jungle alone has remained untamed and unchanged.

Here the tall trees with their barks of a dozen hues, ranging from marble white to scaly greens and reds, thrust their way up to a hundred feet or even double that height, straight as symmetrical cathedral pillars, until they find the sun and burst into a green carpet far, far above; trees covered with tortuous vines and creepers, some hanging like the crazy rigging of a wrecked schooner, some born in the fork of a tree, branching out in great tufts of fat green leaves or flowers; others twisting and curling round the massive trunks, throwing out arms like clothes-lines from tree to tree. In places the jungle stretches for miles at sea level and then it often degenerates into marsh, into thick mangrove swamp that can suck a man out of sight in a matter of minutes. In the heart of the country the giant trees cover the great north-south mountain range that rises to 7,000 feet, virtually bisecting Malaya from north to south.

In an evergreen world of its own that will never know the stripped black branches of winter, elephants, tigers, bears and deer roam the thick undergrowth; flying foxes, monkeys and parrots chatter and screech in its high places; crocodiles lie motionless in the swamp; a hundred and thirty varieties of snake slither across the dead leaves on wet ground; the air is alive with the hum of mosquitoes ferocious enough to bite through most clothing; and on the saplings and ferns struggling to burst out of the undergrowth thousands of fat, black, bloodsucking leeches wait patiently for human beings to brush against them. Only on the jungle fringe is there colour and light and a beauty unmarred by fear. Here, when the sun comes out after a tropical shower, thousands of butterflies hang across the heat-hazed paths in iridescent curtains. Brightly coloured tropical birds dart like jewels between clumps of bamboo, giant ferns, ground orchids, flame of the forest trees, bougainvillaea, wild hibiscus, in a countryside heavy with the scent of waxen-like frangipani blossoms, where the occasional monkey watches suspiciously from the heights of a tulip tree with its clusters of poppy-red flowers.

This is the jungle and this was, for twelve years, to be the battlefield for a strange and terrible war, as relentless and as cruel as the jungle itself; one in which Communism for the first time in history launched an all-out guerrilla war with the avowed aim of conquering Malaya for the disciples of Mao Tse-tung.

Malaya is one of the most beautiful countries on earth. Pear-shaped, hanging like a five-hundred-mile-long pendant below the narrow Kra isthmus which links it to Thailand its only land frontier it is a little larger than England without Wales, a little smaller than the State of Florida. To the south lies Singapore and, below the equator, the scattered spice islands of Indonesia; to the west the still, hot waters of the Indian Ocean stretch to Africa; to the east the China Sea swirls westwards to the Philippines and the Pacific, northwards until its breakers dash against the shores of countries whose very names are evocative of blood spilled in racial wars Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea.