Shaun Clarke - Guerrillas in the Jungle

‘Jesus!’ Peterson whispered softly, then turned to the other soldier in the guardhouse located to one side of the camp’s main gate. ‘Do you see what I see?’

The second soldier, Corporal Derek Walters, glanced through the viewing hole of the guardhouse.

‘What…? Who the hell’s that ?’

After glancing left and right to check that nothing was coming, the ghostly soldier crossed the road. As he approached the guardhouse, it became clear that he was shockingly wasted, his fatigues practically hanging off his body, which was no more than skin and bone. Though he was heavily bearded and had blue shadows under his bloodshot eyes, both guards recognized him.

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Private Peterson said. ‘He actually made it!’

‘Looks like it,’ Corporal Peterson murmured. He opened the door of the guardhouse and stepped outside where the skeletal figure had just reached the barrier and was waiting patiently in the morning’s brightening sunlight. ‘Captain…Callaghan?’ the guard asked tentatively.

‘Yes, Trooper,’ the captain said. ‘How are you this morning?’

‘Fine, boss.’ Corporal Peterson shook his head in disbelief. ‘Blimey, boss! You’ve been gone…’

‘Three months. Raise the barrier, thanks.’ When Corporal Peterson raised the barrier, Captain Patrick Callaghan grinned at him, patted him on the shoulder, then entered the sprawling combined Army and Air Force base of Minden Barracks, Penang, where the recently reformed 22 SAS was temporarily housed.

Not that you’d know it , Callaghan thought as he walked lazily, wearily, towards headquarters where, he knew, Major Pryce-Jones would already be at his desk. While in Malaya, the SAS concealed their identity by discarding their badged beige berets and instead going out on duty in the blue berets and cap badges of the Manchester Regiment. Now, as Callaghan strolled along the criss-crossing tarmacked roads, past bunker-like concrete barracks, administration buildings raised off the ground on stilts, and flat, grassy fields, with the hangars and planes on the airstrip visible in the distance, at the base of the rolling green hills, Captain Callaghan saw men wearing every kind of beret and badge except those of the SAS.

In fact, the camp contained an exotic mix of regiments and police forces: six battalions of the Gurkha Rifles, one battalion each of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, the Seaforth Highlanders and the Devon Regiment, two battalions of the Malay Regiment, and the 26th Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery.

And that’s only this camp , Callaghan thought. Indeed, just before he had left for his lone, three-month jungle patrol, a battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers had arrived from Hong Kong and the 2nd Guards Brigade had been sent from the United Kingdom. Subsequently, elements of other British regiments, as well as colonial troops in the form of contingents from the King’s African Rifles and the Fijian Regiment, had joined in the struggle. There were now nearly 40,000 troops committed to the war in Malaya – 25,000 from Britain, including Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel, 10,500 Gurkhas and five battalions of the Malay Regiment.

In addition, there were the regular and armed auxiliary policemen, now totalling about 100,000 men. Most of these were Malays who had joined the Special Constabulary or served as Kampong Guards and Home Guards. The additional trained personnel for the regular police consisted mainly of men who had worked at Scotland Yard, as well as former members of the Palestine police, experienced in terrorism, men from the Hong Kong police, and even the pre-war Shanghai International Settlement, who spoke Chinese.

It’s not a little war any more , Callaghan thought as he approached the headquarters building, and it’s getting bigger every day. This is a good time to be here .

Not used to the bright sunlight, having been in the jungle so long, he rubbed his stinging eyes, forced himself to keep them open, and climbed the steps to the front of the administration block. There were wire-mesh screens across the doors and windows, with the night’s grisly collection of trapped, now dead insects stuck between the wires, including mosquitoes, gnats, flies, flying beetles and spiders. An F-28 jet fighter roared overhead as Captain Callaghan, ignoring the insects’ graveyard, pushed the doors open and entered the office.

With the heat already rising outside, it was a pleasure to step indoors where rotating fans created a cooling breeze over the administrative personnel – male and female; British, Malay, and some Eurasian Tamils – who were already seated at desks piled high with paper. They glanced up automatically when Callaghan entered, their eyes widening in disbelief when they saw the state of him.

‘Is Major Pryce-Jones’s office still here?’ Callaghan asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ a Gurkha corporal replied. ‘To your left. Down the corridor.’

‘Thanks,’ Callaghan replied, turning left and walking along the corridor until he came to the squadron commander’s office. When he stopped in the doorway, the major raised his eyes from his desk, looked Callaghan up and down, then said in his sardonic, upper-class manner: ‘It’s about time you came back. You look a bloody mess, Paddy.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Callaghan replied, grinning broadly. He lowered his bergen and sub-machine-gun to the floor, then pulled up a chair in front of Pryce-Jones’s desk. ‘You know how it is.’

‘If I don’t, I’m sure you’ll tell me in good time. Would you like a mug of hot tea?’

‘That sounds wonderful, boss.’

‘MARY!’ Pryce-Jones’s drawl had suddenly become an ear-shattering bellow directed at the pretty WRAC corporal seated behind a desk in the adjoining, smaller room.

‘Yes, boss!’ she replied, undisturbed.

‘A tramp masquerading as an SAS officer has just entered the building, looking unwashed, exhausted and very thirsty. Tea with sugar and milk, thanks. Two of.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Mary said, pushing her chair back and disappearing behind the wall separating the offices.

‘A sight for sore eyes,’ Callaghan said.

‘Bloodshot eyes,’ Major Pryce-Jones corrected him. ‘Christ, you look awful! Your wife would kill me for this.’

Callaghan grinned, thinking of Jennifer back in their home near Hereford and realizing that he hadn’t actually thought about her for a very long time. ‘Oh, I don’t know, boss. She thinks I’m just a Boy Scout at heart. She got used to it long ago.’

‘Not to seeing you in this state,’ Pryce-Jones replied. ‘Pretty rough, was it?’

Callaghan shrugged. ‘Three months is a long time to travel alone through the jungle. On the other hand, I saw a lot during my travels, so the time wasn’t wasted.’

‘I should hope not,’ Pryce-Jones said.

After spending three months virtually alone in the jungle, living like an animal and trying to avoid the murderous guerrillas, most men would have expected slightly more consideration from their superior officers than Callaghan was getting. But he wasn’t bothered, for this was the SAS way and he certainly had only admiration for his feisty Squadron Commander. For all his urbane ways, Pryce-Jones was a hard-drinking, hard-fighting idealist, a tough character who had won a double blue at Cambridge and given up a commission early in World War Two in order to join a Scots Guards ski battalion destined for Finland. His wartime service included three years in Burma, much of it behind Japanese lines. He had then commanded an SAS squadron in north-west Europe from late 1944 until the regiment was disbanded in 1945.

Pryce-Jones was a stranger to neither the jungle nor danger. In fact, in 1950, General Sir John Harding, Commander-in-Chief of Far East Land Forces, had called him for a briefing on the explosion of terrorism in Malaya, asking him to produce a detailed analysis of the problem. In order to do this, Pryce-Jones had gone into the jungle for six months, where he had hiked some 1,500 miles, unescorted, in guerrilla-infested territory, and talked to most of those conducting the campaign. Though ambushed twice, he had come out alive.