Guerrillas in the Jungle. Shaun Clarke
dangerously realistic conditions. Nevertheless, if not as bad as described, the first recruits were certainly rowdy and undisciplined.
Some of the wilder men had eventually been knocked into shape, but others had proved to be totally unsuitable for the special forces and were gradually weeded out. Seeking a better class of soldier, ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert had travelled 22,000 miles in twenty-one days, including a trip to Rhodesia which led to the creation of C Squadron from volunteers in that country. From Hong Kong he brought Chinese interpreters and counter-guerrillas, who had served with him in Burma, to join his Intelligence staff. Another source was a squadron of SAS Reservists and Territorials (many of whom had served under David Stirling), which had formed up in 1947 as 21 SAS Regiment. Most of those men had been of much better calibre and proved a worthy catch when, in 1952, the Malayan Scouts were renamed as the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment (22 SAS).
The original three squadrons, A, B, and C, that had formed 22 SAS, had been augmented by a fourth, D Squadron, before Calvert left for the UK. By 1956 a further squadron, the Parachute Regiment Squadron, was raised from volunteers drawn from the Paras. That same year, C Squadron returned to Rhodesia to become the Rhodesian SAS and was replaced by a New Zealand squadron. This Kiwi connection meant that a number of Fijians joined the Regiment.
‘Do you still have problems controlling them?’ Callaghan asked. ‘If you do, they’ll be no good in the jungle. The CT will just eat them up.’
‘There’s still a lot of hard drinking and the occasional fragging of officers,’ Pryce-Jones replied, ‘but the lack of discipline has been corrected and replaced with excellent soldiering. Unfortunately, it’ll be a long time yet before we live down the reputation we acquired during those early years. Not that it bothers me. We’re supposed to be different from the greens, so let’s keep it that way.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Callaghan said, mockingly clapping his hands together. ‘The question is, can we actually use them or are they still being used for policing duties?’
‘Things have greatly improved on that front,’ Pryce-Jones told him. ‘Due to the recent expansion of the Federation of Malaya Police and the creation of Home Guard units and a Special Constabulary, the Army is increasingly being released from its policing obligations and given more time and means to fight the CT. The men are all yours now.’
‘They’ll need to be separated from the greens,’ Callaghan said, referring to the green-uniformed regular Army, ‘and preferably trained in isolation.’
‘I’ve anticipated that. A new Intelligence section has been opened in Johore. It’s filled with men experienced in jungle operations from the time they worked with me in Burma. I’ve included Hong Kong Chinese to act as interpreters. The head of the section is Major John M. Woodhouse, Dorset Regiment. As so much of the SAS work involves a hearts-and-minds campaign, which requires Intelligence gathering of all kinds, and since we’ll need Chinese speakers, the Regiment will be flown to Johore, where a special training camp is already in the process of completion. The men can complete their preliminary training here, then move on to Johore a week from now.’
‘Excellent,’ Callaghan said. Restless already, even though exhausted, he stood up and went to the window behind the major’s desk. Looking out, he saw a Sikh foreman supervising some Malay coolies in the building of a sangar at the edge of the runway containing rows of Beverley transports and F-28 jets. The sun was rising quickly in the sky, flooding the distant landscape of green hills and forest with brilliant light.
‘I want to get that bastard Ah Hoi,’ he said.
‘You will in due course,’ Pryce-Jones replied. ‘Right now, you need a good meal, a hot shower and a decent sleep. And I need to work. So get out of here, Paddy.’
‘Yes, boss,’ Captain Callaghan said. He picked up his soaked, heavy bergen and camouflaged sub-machine-gun, then, with a blinking of weary eyes, walked out of the office.
‘You can smell him from here,’ Mary said, when Callaghan had left.
‘A rich aroma,’ Pryce-Jones replied.
As Captain ‘Paddy’ Callaghan was having a good sleep after showering three months of jungle filth off his emaciated body, the latest influx of recently badged troopers to 22 SAS were settling in for a week of initial training in Minden Barracks, before being flown on to Johore. Though just off the Hercules C-130 transport aircraft which had flown them all the way from Bradbury Lines, Merebrook Camp, Worcestershire, via RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire, the men were in a good mood as they adjusted to the brilliant morning sunshine and rising heat of the mainland, just across the Malacca Straits, facing the lively town of Penang.
‘I’ve heard all about that place from an RAF buddy stationed at Butterworth,’ Trooper Dennis ‘the Menace’ Dudbridge said, as the Bedford truck transported them away from the airstrip to the barracks at the far side of a broad, flat field. Formerly of the Gloucestershire Regiment, he was short, broad-shouldered, and as feisty as a bantam cock, with a permanently split lip and broken nose from one too many pub fights. ‘He said the whores all look as sexy as Marilyn Monroe.’
‘If a different colour and a bit on the slit-eyed side,’ Corporal ‘Boney Maronie’ Malone reminded him.
‘I get a hard-on just thinking about Marilyn Monroe,’ Trooper Pete Welsh informed them in his deadly serious manner.
‘Put splints on it, do you?’ Boney Maronie asked him.
‘We can’t all walk around all day with three legs,’ Pete replied, brushing his blond hair from his opaque, slightly deranged blue eyes. ‘Not like you, Boney.’
‘He doesn’t need splints,’ Trooper Alf Laughton observed. ‘He needs a sling to keep it off the fucking ground when it sticks out too far. Isn’t that true, Boney?’
‘Some of us just happen to be well endowed. Not that I’m one to boast, lads, but you just don’t compare.’
‘I trust you’ll put it to good use in Penang,’ Dennis the Menace said.
‘If we get there,’ Boney replied. ‘I’ve heard they’re not giving us any time off before they send us into that fucking jungle to get bled dry by leeches.’
‘They wouldn’t dare!’ Alf Laughton exclaimed. With flaming red hair and a face pitted by acne, Laughton looked like a wild man. He had been here three years ago, with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and still had fond memories of George Town when the sun had gone down. ‘We’re entitled to a little fun and games before they work us to death.’
‘We’re entitled to Sweet FA,’ Pete Welsh said, ‘and that’s what we’ll get.’
Though they had all been badged recently, most of these men were experienced and had come to the SAS from units active in other theatres of operation. Some had come from the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and the wartime SAS, others had been recruited by ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert from British forces stationed in the Far East; and many, including a number of National Servicemen, were skilled soldiers who had volunteered to avoid the discipline of the more conventional regular Army. At least one of them, Sergeant Ralph Lorrimer, now sitting up front beside the driver of the Bedford, had experience in guerrilla warfare gleaned from wartime operations in North Africa, and as a member of Force 136, the clandestine resistance force set up by the SOE in Malaya during the Japanese occupation. Most of them, then, were experienced men.
Indeed, one of the few with no previous experience in warfare was the recently badged Trooper Richard Parker, already nicknamed ‘Dead-eye Dick’ because of his outstanding marksmanship, as displayed not only during his three years with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, but also on the firing range of the SAS base at Merebrook Camp, Malvern. Brown-haired, grey-eyed and almost virginally handsome, Dead-eye was as quiet as a mouse, every bit as watchful, and very keen to prove himself with the SAS. Perhaps