National Service 1948-1949

My six months deferment of National Service, which I was allowed in order to take a scholarship, expired in mid-February 1948.  I had already passed my medical.  I have a Grade Card dated 8th September 1947 saying I was medically examined and placed in Grade 1.  I had the medical in High Wycombe and the nice old doctor who examined me casually said to me that he had brought me into the world!  He was Doctor Bailey, who had been our family doctor in Bourne End.  I was instructed to report to Huyton[1] in Liverpool, Harold Wilson’s constituency.

Dated 2^nd February 1948 I got my ‘National Service Acts Enlistment Notice’:

 Dear Sir,

In accordance with the National Service Acts, you are called on for service in the Territorial Army and are required to present yourself on Wednesday 18^th February 1948 between 9 a.m. and 12 noon to:- General Service Corps, No. 77 County Primary Training Centre, No.3 Site, Bluebell Lane, Huyton, Liverpool.  A travelling warrant for your journey is enclosed.  A Postal Order for 4s, in respect of advance of service pay, is also enclosed.

I spent the night in London with the Thompsons, friends of my fathers.  My letters tell how I got the train from Euston, an early one, to Liverpool, arriving five minutes early, to my amazement.  By bus to the camp, arriving there at 1.30.  I was informed I was going to Hollywood[2], an infantry basic training camp just outside Belfast.  I was put into 17 Platoon, C Company, the 28^th Training Battalion.  I then had nothing to do till 6 pm.  ‘I’ve never been so bored in all my life!’.  There were about 200 new recruits of whom about ¾ were destined for Hollywood.  We were sorted out and after about 1 ½ hours we were put onto buses for the docks.  It was a perishingly cold night and I was not prepared for the cold and nearly froze.  We had to wait on deck for another two hours before the boat sailed.  It’s not in the letter but I remember a large proportion of the recruits were drunk and being sick all over the deck.  ‘I’ve never known two hours go so slowly.  What was worse was that I (was mentally) prepared to spend the whole night on deck’.  Using my initiative I got a bunk, while most of the other recruits did have to spend the night on deck.  I had quite a good night, sleeping fitfully, and got up at 6.30.  We got into Belfast about 8 am.  We disembarked, were lined up on the quay, put into lorries and driven to an RASC depot for breakfast.  Then again into lorries, into a train for ten minutes, and then Hollywood Barracks.  There we had to fill in forms and were issued with knives, forks and spoons, blankets, a mattress, two complete sets of underclothing, battledress, boots (they had run out of black boots and I was given a brown pair and told to make them black), belt and webbing, groundsheet, gas mask and a kit bag to put everything in.  The worst thing was the T.A.B. injections.  We were all very sick for a couple of days after these.

I was told I was likely to be there for 12-14 weeks basic training, with a War Office Selection Board (WOSB) interview after about 6-8 weeks, to see if I was suitable officer material.  Typically pessimistic I comment in my letter home: ‘it seems that commissions are very hard to get.  Nevertheless there is no harm in trying’.  We were not allowed out of barracks for the first four weeks until we were passed as sufficiently disciplined and tidy to go into Belfast.  I got my Army Number 22007972.  I weighed 12 stone and ½ lb.

Further comments are amusing to look back on.  ‘I went to the barbers this afternoon looking like an Italian waiter and came back looking like a scarecrow.  I’ve never had my hair cut so short before & I never want it so short again.  They have quite a good NAAFI here and I have just had a very good fried eggs & chips and very cheap too.  Could you send me some of my socks as there seems to be rather a shortage of them here.’

We got paid 4/- per day and for some puritanical reason I decided that I should save some of this.  I opened some sort of army savings account into which I put 1/- per day and thus only had 3/- per day to spend.

The next letter describes the daily routine, after a grumble about the cold weather.  ‘Outside we are exposed to the full blast of a biting east wind.  Still I manage to keep warm somehow, by some magical process known only to myself……We get up every week-day morning at 6.30 prompt & if you aren’t out by then you are pulled out.  Breakfast is at 7.  Before then you have to wash & shave (in hot water, not cold, thank goodness), make your own bed & fold the blankets up in a special way.  1^st Parade is at 8.  There is a break for half an hour at 10 when you can go to the NAAFI & have some tea and something to eat.  Then more parade till 1 pm when there is lunch and again from 2 till 5 when there is a sort of tea.  The rest of the day is free but so far there has been more than enough to do then, in the way of cleaning and sorting out stuff.  If however you do get bored in the evening there is plenty going on.  There are films every night (changed every two nights and a different one on Sundays), there is a very excellent library and a wood-work shop, two canteens where you can buy very good food very cheaply (as many fried eggs as you like at 5d each and potato chips to match).

‘I have spent the whole of the day cleaning, since about eight o’clock (written on a Sunday).  We have to get up at 7 on Sundays, as a special treat!  To counteract that we get up at 6am on Saturday.  It is really too terrible for me getting up at such an unearthly hour.  Anytime before 8.30 is awful but 6 o’clock is really too much of a good thing!!  As I was saying I have spent the whole day cleaning and also much of the previous two days trying to make a pair of brown boots black.  By devious ways I have managed.  Cleaning isn’t really all that bad as we have a wireless to listen to.  Of course today, when we were allowed it on all day there would be two long fuel cuts’.

‘The training here is split into two halves.  For the first 8 weeks we do primary training which consists of large quantities of drill and learning all the elementary things about the rifle etc.  Most of which I think I know.  The next six or seven (I think we stay here thirteen weeks altogether) weeks consist of more advanced training; which is much more fun though harder work.

‘Actually taken all in all I am quite enjoying myself as the place isn’t too bad, nor the food nor the people.  There are a few public school chaps & one other person from Radley in my actual intake & two others about.  We all live in huts, at twenty people per hut.  The people in my hut are not too bad.  There is one crazy Welshman who has a most marvellous singing voice. There is another chap who is about the size of an elephant and looks rather like Hardy’.

‘I had a very pleasant shower this afternoon; the first proper wash I have had since Monday.  There are not many facilities for cleaning oneself thoroughly, except for Sunday when one is allowed a shower.’

A letter, three weeks later, complains that I have hardly a moment to spare except that this morning I had been put on fatigues and had been driven into Belfast, done some work there, and been driven back, had been excused all parades, and had thus an hour to spare to write a letter.  I say I am quite enjoying life there.  ‘It is not bad at all as long as you keep on the right side of the officers and N.C.O.s, but you have to work hard to do that.  There is a tremendous amount of spit and polish, far more than is necessary.  You would hardly recognise me now as I have to be tidy and clean.  I am very well fed.  I went to the pictures on Tuesday and saw two mediocre pictures, but enjoyed them very much.  It is such a pleasure to see something other than khaki and brass and boot polish.  (I have used three tins of the stuff since I have been here).  Today was the first time I have been allowed out into the outside world since I arrived here.  It was a very pleasant change.  I expect I shall be able to get out a bit more now as we are beginning to settle down at last.  We still do not seem to have done very much at all in the way of training.  In fact we do not seem to have done very much at all yet.’

Almost immediately after this is a letter written from C Squadron, 8^th Royal Tank Regiment, Catterick[3].  I had rung my parents on Sunday March 14^th and told them I would probably going to Catterick in three weeks time.  Suddenly the next day after tea someone came up and said they had seen I was being posted on Tuesday, March 15^th i.e. the next day.  My letter continues: ’I nearly fainted in amazement and went to have a look.  I saw that I was being posted on the next day leaving at 2.30 pm.  Where I was going I did not know, nor into what.  There followed some hours of frantic packing, handing in kit, filling up forms, questioning, and (inevitably in the army) waiting.  I discovered at length that I was going to Catterick (as I expected) though why I was going so early I did not know, and to this day I do not know.

‘Then at 2.00 began an absolutely nightmare journey.  First we went by lorry to Hollywood Station, & waited half an hour for a train.  In Belfast we had to change stations and wait 1 ½ hours for a train to take us to Larne, where we got on a boat going to Stranraer.  We had to wait an hour before that sailed at about 7.15.  On the journey over I managed to get something to eat at an exorbitant price.  The trip took about two hours and it rained pretty well all the way.

‘The next stage of the journey was by train to Carlisle where we arrived at about a quarter past one.  We had to wait then for quite a time for another train to Newcastle.  We got to Newcastle at about 4.30 in the morning.  We had to wait then in the waiting room for two hours for a train to Darlington.  We got to Darlington at about 7.30.  It was light by then and things had at last come to life.  After a short wait there (a mere twenty minutes) we caught a train to Richmond, from where we were taken by lorry to the camp here.  It was not till I got here that I learned that I was going to the 8^th Royal Tank Regiment (8^th RTR).  Through the whole of the night I suppose I only had about an hour’s sleep and a pretty awful journey it was, all the time carting a great kit bag and rows of haversacks etc.  In my Army Book  ‘Soldier’s Service and Pay Book’ it says my training at Catterick began on April 8^th and ended on 14 June.  I never went near a tank!

Life at Catterick was much less intense than at Hollywood Barracks.  I know I had to endure all the ghastly things that feature in the classic stories of army life, like peeling potatoes for 100 people and sweeping out the NAAFI, but my memories are much more pleasant.  I was training to be a wireless operator and how long can you spend doing that?  I had already learned the basics of operating the 38 wireless set, the type that was then use in tanks, at the STC camp at Radley, when I passed my Cert B exam.  So when my instructor discovered this I was removed from the group doing the training and joined him as an instructor!  The fun part was the practical work, which involved going out on the Yorkshire moors in a truck and trying to contact each other over long distances; not in the least arduous and on a fine day a real pleasure.  There was plenty of free time in the evenings, not so much spit and polish, and I went frequently to the pictures, seeing such classics as ‘Random Harvest’ and ‘They made me a Fugitive’ with Trevor Howard.  I went to the theatre in Richmond.  And for the one and only time in my life I went to the speedway in Middlesborough and found it most exciting!

On my short leaves, 48 and 72 hours, I took to going to a small inn, the Punch Bowl at Feetham, about 20 miles west of Richmond up the River Swale.  There I could totally relax, have some privacy, have proper baths, spend as much time in bed as I wanted, read long Victorian novels and walk the dales.  There was a big tarn up on the top with a colony of black-headed gulls which I enjoyed visiting.  The first time I went I collected a number of eggs and took them back for tea.  On another visit I was dive bombed by the nesting birds and was scared stiff as they attacked me, flying six feet above the water straight at me screaming in indignation.  The food was good and the waiter, who was called Charles, was very friendly, and if I remember aright, very plump.

Easter was at the end of March and I got four days leave.  I made another nightmare journey to Abergavenny and back. I remember trying to sleep on a bench in Newport station waiting for a train.   My parents must have been spending Easter at the Coach and Horses[4] in Llangynidr.  Going back to Catterick I had to go from Abergavenny via Birmingham, change for Sheffield, change for York and change for Darlington, and finally change for Richmond.  I had to walk from Richmond to Catterick, over an hour in the dark.  Most of the time the trains were packed although I spent the journey from Sheffield to York in a very dilapidated but empty first class compartment.  At York I had two hours to wait and went to the Royal Station Hotel which I found to be awfully grand sort of place, despite which I went in and had a proper meal.

Very soon after that I got 10 days leave and went back to Little Mount to spend the time there enjoying clean sheets, good food and no army parades.  It was the travel to and fro that was so bad because all the trains were packed full, often including the corridors.  And I went home again for Whitsun.

After Whitsun, towards the end of May, I went for the War Office Selection Board interview to assess my potential as a commissioned officer.  This was held in Catterick.  It consisted of various intelligence tests (like putting a dismantled bicycle pump together!) and interviews.  It was all very civilised, beds with sheets, eating in the officer’s mess.  I passed and was promoted to acting unpaid Lance Corporal, an automatic upgrade if you passed.  Passing WOSB meant that my next move would be to Officer Cadet Training Unit at Mons Barracks[5], Aldershot.  I went there on 18^th June.  I have the movement order for six potential officers to be posted to Mons Barracks dated 9^th June.  We were to proceed on June 18^th for our basic course ‘departing Richmond by the 0720 train.  RTA will detail transport to the station.  Lance appointments will be relinquished on posting.  Instructions contained in the Pamphlet ‘Selection and trg of Potential Offrs’ issued to Sqns 30 July 45 will be strictly adhered to.  Haversack rations will be collected from the cookhouse at breakfast which will be at 0600 hrs.’  Among the potential officers was one ULC[6] Walder, A, who was to become a great friend.

Going to OCTU [7]was a bit like going back to Hollywood Barracks only the spit and polish was worse.  I cannot remember much about the time there.  I was group E8, so this particular system cannot have been going on for long.  Each batch was there for four months and I think there were two batches going at a time.  The newspapers had recently been full of two officer cadets from Mons, in the previous batch to us, dying on a route march as a result of having to do a forced march on a full stomach.  So the route march programme was curtailed for us.  I had got very fat at Catterick and was too heavy to take part in the boxing as there was no one my weight!  Certainly for the first couple of months our training was all about drill.  Only after that were we segregated into smaller groups (I think there must have been 25-30 of us in E8) according to our future destinations in the army; infantry, cavalry, artillery etc.  In spite of my earlier training having been in a tank regiment I was assigned to anti aircraft artillery.  And so I started to learn about AA guns and radar.  There was a certain amount of indoctrination about how to behave as an officer.  We were shown a David Niven film to demonstrate how an officer conducted himself.  All I remember is that one should never wear one’s collar outside one’s blazer if one was not wearing a tie.

We got weekends off twice a month and I usually went home as it was not far.  I had my motor bike at Aldershot, having turned down an offer to sell it for £85.  Petrol was the problem and I clearly remember going in to a shop as I crossed the railway bridge at Didcot to buy some lighter fuel and got home on that.  I have one letter dated 6th September to my parents, who were obviously away, all about one weekend.  ‘Dennis and I spent a lovely weekend at the Warrens and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves all round.  I got back just in time for Friday night’s supper there, when we had a lovely chicken.  We lazed in bed till about 9 am on Saturday morning and cooked ourselves a lovely breakfast of bacon and eggs etc.  We got down to Marlow just in time to go and have coffee at the Swan!  Back for lunch to the Warren’s where we ate our weekly joint, a most gorgeous bit of veal.  We played tennis in the afternoon till it came on to rain.  We just got in in time before a tremendous cloud burst.  We played ping-pong most of the evening.  In fact we played ping-pong most of the time when we weren’t either eating or listening to the wireless.

‘Another leisurely morning on Sunday and another good breakfast.  We went down to lunch and had the Warren’s weekly joint, a lovely bit of lamb.  We did ourselves proud in the way of food I think.  I gave them a 72 hour ration card I had.  I hope you didn’t want it’.  The following weekend, with my parents still away, I went to the Farnborough Air Show.

On 22 September I went with the other AA cadets to firing camp at Tonfanau[8] in Merionethshire to see if we had learned anything.  I do remember that we actually did hit one drone, using the radar.  My first comment home was that the food was absolutely wonderful and an incredible amount of it, and plenty to drink really cheap!  The weather was bad and we did not get much firing practice.  At the weekend we climbed Cader Idris[9]. We went in an army truck to Tal-y-llyn lake and walked from there.  The clouds were so thick we could see nothing from the top. We stopped for dinner on the way back at a hotel with a name like Tynycornel[10].  That about finished OCTU.  The last event was the passing out parade which our Regimental Sergeant Major was determined had to be the same standard as Sandhurst, so we drilled and drilled and drilled until we were perfect.  The Regimental Sergeant Major was called Brittain, who became famous for his voice!  We had our farewell dinner at the Bramley Grange Hotel[11] near Guildford.  I still have a signed wine list, saying on the back ‘This belongs to the O/C Pl. Sgt.  Do not steal.’  I was the Platoon Sergeant.  There is no date but it must have been early October.

Towards the end of OCTU our postings were decided.  I opted to go for an overseas posting and was allocated to Malaya.  I have an ‘Urgent Memorandum’ dated 12 Oct 1948 from the War Office to the Officer i/c Officers’ Section, Depot, R.A. Woolwich stating that ‘the undermentioned RA officers are placed under orders for service overseas (FARELF-SINGAPORE) and will be warned to hold themselves in readiness for embarkation not before 8th November 1948.’  There are four of us, again including 2/LT A.D. Walder, with whom I had become great friends at OCTU.  He was even fatter than I was but considerably cleverer.  So we shared a cabin on the troopship with the other two, 2L/T Fletcher and 2L/T Windass.  A.D. Walder (David) wrote a book about our time at OCTU called I think ‘Stand by Your Beds’[12].  I had a copy (a Penguin) but cannot find it.  I could not identify myself in it, Windass was obvious.  But it gives a wonderful tongue-in-the-cheek picture of what life was like at OCTU.

So we had to pass the time till we sailed at Woolwich Barracks.  This was no hardship as we had the run of the Officers’ Mess and nothing to do.  The Officers Mess was like nothing I had ever seen, silver cups all over the place, elegant tables with silver cutlery, great food.  Just the thing for a young 2 L/T to relish.  And of course we had to go to Horseguards Parade just to get saluted by the guardsman on duty.  I think there was plenty of home leave as well.  I have a photo of me at someone’s wedding in my full officer’s regalia, dress uniform, Sam Browne belt, with a large paunch!  Somewhere about November 18th we set off for Liverpool to board the Troopship Empire Halladane and sail off to Malaya.  I had been in the army exactly nine months and achieved, for the army, precisely nothing.

I have reproduced separately the letters I wrote home from the time we sailed from Liverpool until I returned home, cutting out those parts that which have little relevance to my life in Malaya.  The voyage on the troopship is described in detail over the course of four letters and I will not repeat it here.  The voyage was a mixture of boredom and periods of fascination at the strange new world I was seeing.  I only went ashore once, at Port Said, at the north end of the Suez Canal.  I had hoped to go ashore at Aden but there was a strike on and so we could not refuel and only stopped briefly.  I did not go ashore either at Colombo, in what is now Sri Lanka; in my letter I give the reason as the bad weather, but in fact the younger officers had had a wild party the night before and were throwing glasses overboard and our shore leave privileges were cancelled!  The few nights we had on Belakang Mati island in Singapore before going up-country were most uncomfortable and made much worse by the stories of the other officers there about the dangers of sleeping in tents, of black widow spiders and scorpions, which we were certain were not true but which still struck fear into our naïve and innocent youth, particularly with the wild jungle all around.

What is astonishing to me now about the letters is the almost complete lack of insight they provide into the real life we were leading, almost as if I was giving a white-washed account of another world, where everything was fun and enjoyable.  It was anything but that.  In the first letter after arrival I comment that there is a tremendous terrorist scare going on but that I would be lucky if I ever saw one before I left.  It was as far from the truth as could be.  Earlier in the year the Federation of Malaya had been formed, uniting the various Sultanates on the Peninsula, and including Singapore, Sarawak and Borneo.  This heavily favoured the ethnic Malaya population, effectively making the much poorer and radical ethnic Chinese into second class citizens.  The Chinese Communist Party, formed in 1930, had been the backbone of the anti-Japanese resistance, and in 1948 it went back into the jungle to fight the new Federation.  It was relatively well-armed because the arms supplied by the British to fight the Japanese were hidden in dumps in the jungle, and there was still plenty of guerrilla expertise left over from the war.  In June 1948 the so-called bandits started attacking rubber planters’ bungalows and other soft targets. The British did not take the uprising very seriously at first, so that when I arrived we were very much a bunch of amateurs at guerrilla warfare.  It took 12 years in the end before the so-called Emergency was brought to a successful end.  Nevertheless, even at that time, certain precautions were taken.  I was assigned to 26 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery[13], within that to 16 (Sandemans) Battery, which was the Commander-in-Chief’s mobile reserve.  The Battery consisted of three Troops and had been sent off to various parts of south Malaya, initially to defend the planters’ bungalows from ambushes and later, as we got more organised, to seek out the bandit camps in the jungle.  The bandits waged a vicious war against the ethnic Chinese rubber tappers and attempted to disrupt the rubber industry, the backbone of the economy, by trying to force the plantation managers off their plantations and by slashing rubber trees.  Luckily for us, though we did not know it at the time, bandit activity was much less intense in Johore than further north, up beyond Kuala Lumpur and further east.  So my first assignment, once Christmas was over and we had had a modicum of jungle training, was to join a platoon of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on Mount Austin Estate, about 30 miles north of Johore Bahru.  As far as I recollect my total group was me, an old armoured car and its crew, driver, gunner and wireless operator; just a small part of the troop.

But before I went there many things had happened.  The Regimental headquarters was at Tampin in Negri Sembilan, a well-established army base with all the trimmings, like the regimental silver on the table at meal times.  As soon as we arrived David Walder and I managed to be given a room to share and we were each assigned an armoured car.  Our Battery was equipped with a number of old General Motors armoured cars, rescued from the Western Desert, where they had no doubt seen noble service and were still painted in their desert camouflage.  They were armed with a 303 machine gun and a 20mm cannon.  The cannon could slice through a rubber tree very easily.  David, who had really wanted to be in a cavalry regiment, was more delighted than me.  We were issued with revolvers to be carried at all times.  This was my downfall.  We were fooling around with the revolvers in our room, when I pointed mine at him and pulled the trigger, thinking it was empty.  But it had a round up the barrel and I shot him in the stomach.  My mind is a blank after this.  David was whisked off to hospital and operated on and survived.  I do not know what would have happened to me if he had died.  Fortunately he pulled through but for the rest of his time in Malaya he was given an office job and I did not see him again until we were boarding the troopship to go home.  We kept up a correspondence for a while.  He went to Christchurch, Oxford and I remember him writing to say it was all just like ‘Brideshead Revisited’, which I had not read at that time.  David went into law, became a QC, then Member of Parliament for and a junior whip under Mrs Thatcher.  He died about 1990.[14]

I suspect I was dispatched to the Skins to get me out of the way.  Our main function was to patrol the roads at night, more I suspect to show a presence than for any useful purpose.  It was quite scary at times, driving along the narrow estate roads, that were not built to stand the weight of an armoured car, wondering if the flimsy bridges would collapse.  On at least one occasion the roadside verge did collapse and we had to signal for a recovery Scammel to come and pull us out.  We would have been a sitting target.  Driving around  was a nice and cool way to spend the time, especially after the intense heat of the day and not at all arduous.  I had my head out of the turret, with a big spotlight to scan the surrounding country.  I never saw anything.  Once or twice we were called out to a planter’s bungalow which had come under fire, but by the time we got to the scene there was nothing about.

Sometime during this period I was summoned back to Tampin to be given an official reprimand.  I remember nothing about the official reprimand.  But I still have a vivid recollection of the drive back to Tampin.  My Battery Commander had come to collect me.  He was a wild Irishman, Major Dennis Graham, thin and wiry with a small moustache with a reputation for fast driving and iron nerves.  He told me that if he had had his way I would have been given a sound flogging and sent back to my troop.  He went on to say that he was sure I would leave the army and become a city gent, catching the early train to London and coming back at night to my family and living an utterly dull and boring life.  At that point I vowed to myself that I would never get into that kind of life style.  I have come close to it at times but I think his disparaging remarks have been a major influence on the decisions I have made through my life about how I wanted to live.

I remained on Mount Austen Estate until nearly the end of February.  My next assignment was to defend (!) a Dunlop Estate at Sagil, near Muar, a small town on the west coast just south of Malacca.  It was more comfortable, with electric light and running water but deep in the middle of a huge rubber plantation.  The way of life was much the same, patrolling fruitlessly in my armoured car, and basically getting pretty bored for days on end.  By now, though, the whole of the troop had come together and we were beginning to act in an infantry role as well as still using the armoured cars.  The infantry role included responding to bandit attacks, mostly against rubber planters, and going into the jungle and searching for bandits and bandit camps.  We were required to keep log books at about this time to record our patrols and write down what lessons we learned from them. I still have mine.  It shows that between the end of March and the end of June I went on twenty such patrols, varying from a few hours to ten days.

My letter home of March 30^th describes the ten day patrol in some detail, although it sounds more like a glorified picnic than a serious military operation.  My log book describes the object as ‘jungle experience’ and ‘to cover area and find any bandits there may be’.  We were a big group; 27 of us from all the three troops of the Battery and Battery HQ.  The description in the log book captures a bit more what it was like;

1^st day  Very slow going along forest reserve track, into an isolated rubber clearing.  Across a swamp into further clearing.  No tracks visible but found it after casting around.  Perseverance and Perspiration (mostly perspiration).  Complete fade out at River Lenga of any well defined track.  After finding an unmarked woodcutters track I got lost returning to report.  Careless following of blazed trees.

2^nd day Bashed straight through jungle on a bearing over a range of mountains and through swamps.  It always seems to pay in the long run to go on a bearing rather than follow tracks.  We were only 800 yards out at the end and found the clearing the next day.

3^rd day Established base in clearing and received food drop.  Very good rations

4^th day Rested.

5^th day Patrol upstream for some miles but NTR (nothing to report).  Rivers quite a good route to follow.

6^th and 7^th days            Waited for further airdrops and for sick to recover.

8^th day Return journey, by partially recc’d route.  Route not properly recc’d and we were delayed.  Once again following a bearing got us on route.  Quite easy to map spot using contours and watercourses and guessing possible swampy positions.

9^th day Found clearing for next airdrop but owing to impossible weather and excess of food we cancelled it and came straight back following forest reserve boundary which proved to be a good track.  Good to be back in civilisation.

In spite of all the rain we seemed to be perpetually short of water and always thirsty.  One night all we had was water scooped from a large muddy puddle (an elephant wallow) that had to be purified (we always carried water purification tablets with us), and tasted revolting even when the mud had settled down.  Bamboos were a good source of fresh water when split open.  Whenever I have smelled wet burning grass ever since I have been reminded of the fire we made to burn down the long grass in the clearing so we could receive the airdrop.  I also remember having to carry one of the batteries we used to power the wireless set we carried.  It must have weighed 30-40 lbs and in the damp heat it was very tiring.  By the 8^th or 9^th day we were all absolutely soaked, with no dry clothes, and smelling.  Never before or since have I been so disgusted with having to get dressed in wet and stinking clothes when we got up on the last morning.

Soon after that I moved again, not to a comfortable rubber planter’s bungalow, but to a small encampment on the edge of the jungle.  I was promoted to troop commander.  Thank goodness I had a wonderful sergeant major who was really in charge and I was left to learn the ropes.  He taught me how to curry bully beef in a mess tin over an open fire!  The main road we were on from Muar to Bakri had a notorious ambush spot close to our camp where the road went through a narrow gorge with jungle close to the edge and we always travelled in convoy with everybody fully armed and ready to dismount instantaneously.  Most of our time, however, was spent patrolling the jungle in small sections of 8 to 10 men.  The patrols were usually pretty fruitless and we never came under fire.  On my fifth patrol searching for a bandit camp, on April 17^th Easter Day, I had my first success:

Followed stream bed up to where the camp should be and searched the jungle along the stream with no success.  So we went over the hill and into the valley the other side.  Found the camp with very little trouble about a quarter of a mile in from the rubber.  First camp I have seen.  Well laid out, but very scattered.  Hard to control in an emergency.  Wonderful sentry post – looking through a hollow tree trunk lying on the ground covering the track in.  All huts made of split bamboo, before they were burnt they must have been quite substantial.  The water came from an underground stream coming out of the hillside, making it harder than ever to locate.

On April 26^th we had another big operation.  A bandit camp of 300 men with field guns had been reported and we went in to what I suppose would now be called ‘search and destroy’. There were 5 sections from 16 Battery and 2 sections of police, about 70 of us I guess.

Took informer with us.  Left here at 0100hrs debussed at 0500 hrs.  Horrible road.  The informer led the way along hardly visible tracks through black jungle.  Very little noise considering the number of men.  The police were terrible.  I thought our chaps were bad at keeping distance but the police did not bother to try.  After about three hours going we opened up on the wireless which delayed us unnecessarily, or so it seemed, when we were so near the camp.  Moved on eventually and stopped in the end of the squatter area just short of the camp.  The informer started stalling and so one section had to go on ahead.  Meanwhile I took the informer and he said he knew another place where he knew there were bandits.  After about three miles we came to a house which we had passed on the way out.  I went in with him and he stalled again and said that only documents were there.  Couldn’t find any.  Took him back with another chinaman whom he said he did not know but would not look at him and hid behind a tree when he saw him coming.  The other section had found a camp capable of holding about ten men recently deserted and containing documents and a hat with a red star.  Another recce all around the jungle but no other camp.   Felt like strangling the informer.

Soon after this we started going out on night ambushes.  I would go with about four men.  My log book for April29^th records we were going out ‘anti rubber slashing’ (slashing the rubber trees would reduce their yield).

My first night ambush.  Walked to Colinsburgh Division factory and skirted round the edge.  No one saw us and no dogs barked – surprising because of the noise we seemed to be making.  Laid ambush for about four hours at the spot Mr Harper-Ball and Mr Scott were shot, then moved into Bakri just short of the Lee Rubber Factory.  Very dark under thick rubber – only light from lightening flashes.  Nothing seen – dogs a nuisance especially when they bark at you.  Useful to tell when anyone is coming.  Returned to Colinsburgh Factory and watched it till dawn but nothing.  The chaps need training in moving by night and I need it in night compass marching.

The worst thing about these ambushes was the mosquitoes.  The rule of silence meant we could not be slapping ourselves when we felt a mosquito biting us and I don’t think we put on anti-bite lotion in case we could be smelt.

At the beginning of May the real troop commander, Captain Stenning, returned and I could go back to comparative peace.  I think we were now four officers in our camp, Captain Stenning, Lieut ’Tiny’ Rissik, 2 l/t Bill Greenstreet and myself, and so there was some company after the comparative loneliness of the previous weeks.  In my letters I relate that I had been down to Singapore for the day ‘on business’.  It was actually to collect a truckload of howitzer shells.  The Battery was actually going to use guns again, even if they were only howitzers, to shell a suspected bandit camp.  I arrived in Singapore, after crossing the Causeway from Johore Bahru, in my Dodge, in full anti-ambush mode, with my section fully armed with loaded sten guns, and the windscreen down.  We were promptly stopped by the Military Police and told we were not in a war zone any more and to put our toys away.  It was very down putting.  But I was very proud to be entrusted with such an important mission!  Another one of my quite frequent trips to Singapore was to attend the funeral of one of the men from another troop who had just died in an ambush.

On May 21^st we made a raid on a squatter area which was supposed to be harbouring bandits, three sections of us but no police.

Time out 0300 hrs.  Moved in too late.  It was already light – almost not enough troops for such a large squatter area.  As we approached the squatter area 1 man strolled down a hill to a hut, grabbed something and dashed off.  We fired but it was too late.  3 more men were arrested (and proved to be bandit supporters).  A wire led from their hut to a path on the edge of the jungle.  This was definitely a bandit path – but we found no camp – a pity.  Not enough perseverance.  Time in 1245 hrs.

It amuses me that my next letter home, dated May 22^nd, merely comments that ‘life continues quite steadily’.  The one of June 5^th is equally misleading.  ‘I haven’t done much travelling around this week.  I have just sat here doing very little’.  In fact the Battery had just mounted a major operation, ‘Operation Shinty’.  I had a very relaxed time lying in ambush for four days on a hill top.  We had been out the week before to recce the best place and found this wonderful location with a view point, hidden in rocks with high grass all round, from where we could cover the main tracks in and out of the area which was being covered, without being visible.  We saw nothing the whole time but it was a lovely spot.  The worst thing was not being able to cook as our smoke would have been seen.  The next worse was one of my little group (there were only five of us) being stung by a scorpion.

A few days later the manager of a nearby rubber estate at Serom was murdered by bandits.  We were called out and, after searching the area near where the manager had been ambushed, received an urgent call from a police patrol who had bumped into some bandits about a mile to our north.  We joined them and found a large bandit camp capable of holding 50-60 men, hidden in an area of overgrown rubber.  The camp was full of documents and with food still cooking on a fire.  There was also a large pack containing medical supplies.  So we burnt the camp and went home.  I wonder why we never went in pursuit?  Only three days later did we have another major operation involving the whole battery to arrest all the people we could find in the area of the ambush.  But we were three days too late.  Half the males had moved out of the area and there were a large number of empty houses.  We detained 550 people but only 10 of these were taken to the police station for further ‘questioning’.  It was the first and only proper police screening operation I had been on.  Five days later we were again called out after another ambush in which a naval officer had been killed.  My log book comments that just as we were moving in the police called the operation off.

In between all this I was sent to be the defending officer at a court martial.  The defendant had deserted and been picked up in Singapore two weeks later.  He never stood a chance with me defending him or even with anyone else.  He was sentenced to six months.  I enjoyed two days holiday away from the Battery and was lodged in the mess of a Royal Artillery Aircraft Spotters unit.  I was most disappointed that I was unable to get a flight back to base!

We became very friendly with a couple of the younger rubber planters and some of us (officers!) would visit them on Sundays for Tiger beer and curry.  My letter of July 10^th admits I am feeling a bit the worse for wear due to an excess of beer, explaining this was the usual practice before Sunday tiffin. The planters had a Chinese cook and we only had an army cook!  So it was a pleasant change to have some decent food as well as the beer.  I think this became a regular event.

My letters home contain snippets of information about my release from the army and about dates of departure.  At first I was worried that I would not make it home in time to go to Cambridge in October.  Then, when it was clear I would get the early release I needed, there were doubts about the date the boat would sail.  Early to mid-August seemed most likely.  I was counting the days like any schoolboy!  And then the army saw fit to let me have ten days leave.  I went to stay with the parents of Peter Sturges, with whom I had once shared a study at Radley.  They lived in Ipoh.  He was a rubber planter and also very involved with horses.  Their house was on the edge of the racecourse.  They rented a flat for me next door and looked after me with great kindness.  They still had Peter’s ‘amah’ who looked after me; I had never met a personal servant like her before.  Peter was in fact in a Guards Regiment stationed a few miles away and his sister Jane was also there.  I seem to have spent much of the time swimming and generally relaxing.  They took me round sightseeing.  There does not seem to have been any concern about bandits or ambushes.  I still have vivid memories of driving Peter back to his regiment one night in their Oldsmobile, and driving at 80 mph on the way home.  It was the fastest I had ever been on land!

I was moved to Battery HQ in Muar at the end of July, for the last three weeks of my stay in Malaya, as Intelligence Officer.  It was a more luxurious life but I remember nothing of what I was supposed to do.  I went down to Singapore on August 15^th and sailed on August 17^th, my 20^th birthday, on His Majesty’s Troopship ‘Orduna’.  We arrived in Liverpool a month later.  It was a very boring voyage and a very hot one.  My Officer’s Release Book is date stamped September 17^th, so we must have arrived a day or two before that.  I was granted Release Leave until October 6^th.  I was then free of the army for good.  I had thus served nineteen months altogether.  I was given Premature Release to go to University, so I suppose I should have served 24 months.  I am not sure now.  I think the conscription period was raised from 18 to 24 months during the time I was in the army.  It certainly was by the time the Korean War came in 1950.  I have always been glad that I escaped that war.  So now I was free to restart my education at University.  I went up to Pembroke at the beginning of October 1949 to start my new life.

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