My medical condition was slowly improving but the specialist who was managing my case decided that I needed to escape the tropical conditions of the coast to hasten recovery. He arranged for me to be transferred to another military hospital in the Cameron Highlands, a hill station in Pahang state that was several thousand feet above sea level. Transfer was to be made by train and so, having recovered my uniform, I joined a small party of other convalescents at the Singapore railway station.
We had been allocated a special hospital coach, complete with bunks, a kitchen (with a cook), a small recreational area and a medical orderly, for the four-day journey. The regular express took under 12 hours to cover the distance but we were to be attached to a slow goods train for our more leisurely trip. We didn’t particularly care how long it took, in fact the slower the better, as it gave us more opportunity to examine the ‘real’ Malaya for the first time.
There were very few large towns along our route, except Kuala Lumpur, which was the state capital of Selangor in those days. For much of its length, the line was carved through rubber plantations, where the tappers were busy collecting the latex, and their small ‘kampongs’ lined the track. Otherwise it passed mostly through thick jungle where there was no habitation and the only signs of life were troupes of monkeys and flocks of raucous birds. We spent long periods marooned in ‘loops’ at wayside stations, waiting for faster traffic to pass, giving us ample time to observe the way ‘ the other half’ lived. All of it was new to us, therefore it was quite interesting and exciting.
Being at the very end of the train, we had no contact with the crew (or the military escort, which I assumed was guarding us) and we never knew where or for how long we would stop, so it was not safe for us to leave the haven of the coach for fear it would suddenly depart without us. Our nearest neighbours were a truck-load of merino sheep, in full fleece, which were suffering in the unaccustomed heat and attracting swarms of unwelcome flies. Whence they were bound, or for what purpose, I never discovered.
The only indication that we had reached our destination was the fact of our coach being uncoupled and left behind at a small wayside station. This was Tapah Road, the nearest point on rail to Cameron Highlands, fifty miles away.
This was ‘bandit’ country. We transferred to a truck and joined a convoy of military and civilian vehicles shepherded by armoured cars at either end of the column and, although attacks on heavily armed groups were relatively rare, an anxious eye was kept on the flanking greenery. The road consisted of a series of hairpin bends winding through thick jungle and clinging precariously to the steep hillside while literally disappearing into the clouds ahead.
Tension eased the higher we climbed, as the terrorist groups generally favoured the lowlands, where they could ambush the road and rail traffic and harass plantation managers and local storekeepers with hit-and-run raids before disappearing swiftly into the jungle fringes to elude capture. There it was also easier for them to prey on hapless villagers, who were bullied into supplying their everyday needs. Their base camps, where the political commissars lived and weapons and ammunition were stored, were much deeper into the rain forest and it was these, rather than will-o’-the-wisp attackers that were the objectives of the infantry patrols who combed the almost impenetrable terrain.
We reached the small town of Tannah Rata in the late afternoon. It was little more than a cluster of the usual Indian and Chinese stores, except for the hotels and guest houses which, in better days, would have swarmed with the wives and children of the colonial administrators. The main street was lined with lounging soldiery, all armed to the teeth, together with ‘wanted’ notices posted on every window and post, giving the place the air of Dodge City. Only the swinging doors of the corner saloons were missing!
It was noticeably cooler and as the day drew to its close, the temperature went down faster than the setting sun, leaving us shivering in our tropical clothing. We were glad to reach the shelter of the hospital, where, in common with most of the local establishments, a log fire blazed.
Some of our companions, we soon discovered, were ‘real’ soldiers who had suffered gunshot wounds in combat with the elusive enemy. Amongst them was a group of Gurkhas, who are usually in the thick of any fray.
The average British soldier, in my time at least, did not have a very high opinion of ‘native’ troops and had even less time for the local inhabitants dismissing them all as ‘wogs’, regardless of colour, creed or status. India had for centuries been the repository of Imperial might and a breeding ground of racial prejudice. There were few soldiers in the regular pre-war British army who had not spent some part of their service in the land where, as one writer put it, “to be a white man was to be a sahib”, so the role of overlord came quite naturally. The one exception in this rule was ‘Johnny Gurkha’, who was always accepted as a good fellow and generally treated by white troops as an equal. His formidable fighting reputation, a prodigious capacity for alcohol and a cheery and impudent disposition, did much to earn him this respect.
I became friendly with one, a fellow patient, who had suffered gunshot wounds in a jungle skirmish and who, unlike most, had a modicum of English. His name was Biridibir and he was about my age and height - but there the resemblance ended! He was as tough as nails and had the endurance of a marathon runner. The Gurkhas, being part of the Rifle Brigades, marched at a pace that was half as fast again as our leisurely perambulation and his boyhood exercise, running up and down the Himalayas in his native Nepal, had further developed his physique.
As patients, we were largely left to our own devices once the morning medical rounds had been completed and there was little to do other than play table tennis or wander around the small town. On one occasion, a few of us, including Biridibir, took a stroll along a jungle path to view a picturesque waterfall a mile or so from the town. Once clear of the golf course, the ‘ulu’* closed in on us and the trail contracted to a narrow passageway between walls of dense foliage. It seemed virtually impossible to get lost in such an environment, as one would literally have to hack through the barrier of greenery in order to escape from the trodden way.
How anyone can survive in these conditions, let alone fight a war, is a complete mystery to me. The Army ran a jungle warfare school in northern Johore State and used a piece of ‘tame’ jungle as a training ground. It was an isolated tract measuring about five miles by ten, atop a ridge and surrounded by rubber estates. The ground was criss-crossed with old trails and had probably been trampled nearly flat by a succession of student intakes, yet one platoon – and led by experienced instructors, too - managed to lose itself for five days in this mini-wilderness, some indication of the difficulty of navigating this kind of terrain!
Surprisingly, the deep Malayan jungle was home to several aboriginal tribes, notably the Sakai, who were native to this particular area. We never saw any of these people, who still clung to their primitive lifestyle, but they were known to be pro-British (or more possibly anti-Chinese) and served the Army as expert trackers in the endless campaign against the terrorists.
Our innocent little excursion could easily have turned into a disaster. The ground beneath our feet was a carpet of wet, decaying leaves almost ankle deep, concealing all manner of minor wildlife. Biridibir, who was bringing up the rear of our single-file procession, suddenly let out a yell and began to stomp on the ground beneath his feet. He had trodden on a particularly nasty fellow, a prettily marked yellow and black snake known as a krait. It was a small but particularly venomous reptile, much feared for it’s usually fatal bite. The rest of us in our flimsy sandals had all managed to step over it without disturbing its peaceful slumber. Biridibir had trodden squarely on it, arousing its formidable ire. Fortunately – and fortuitously - he was the only one of us wearing army boots and so was able to dispatch the deadly creature without difficulty. After that, we made our Nepalese friend walk in front!
One morning, the doctor decided that my condition had improved to the extent that I could return to my unit. It didn’t take me very long to pack my meagre belongings and within an hour or so I had joined the daily convoy, bound for Tapah Road and points south. By way of a parting gift, the convoy commander advised us that the civil police had received an intelligence report indicating an ambush might be mounted along our route, at Mile 37. I don’t know what the lads in the armoured cars were doing but we in the trucks were scanning the roadside with an intensity that hurt our eyeballs!
Mile 37 turned out to be the perfect ambush site. A horseshoe-shaped curve in a narrow, steep-sided gully caused the road to bend back almost upon itself. Explosive charges at either end of the loop would have bottled-up the entire convoy, preventing any vehicles from going forward or back, and leaving the attackers free to rake the column at their leisure. Nothing happened at Mile 37, we were relieved to discover. A random Army patrol had chanced upon the attackers while they were still digging in and routed them before we appeared on the scene. It was an anti-climax we were happy to suffer!
This time, our small party was to travel under its own steam (forgive the pun) by regular scheduled trains, first overnight to Kuala Lumpur, where we had the whole day to while away before catching the Singapore Night Mail in the evening. Despite being a state capital, Kuala Lumpur was then a nondescript provincial town with very little to commend it. Never in my wildest dreams would I (or anyone else, I imagine) have suspected that one day it would, as Malaysia’s Federal capital, boast the world’s tallest building - two of them, in fact! The most imposing edifice then was the railway station, an ornate building that could easily have been mistaken for a mosque.
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It was here that we eventually boarded our sleeping car (second class, of course) for the final leg. The bunks were comfortable enough but the sight of crudely patched bullet holes in the carriage walls and the knowledge that terrorists often took pot-shots at trains for want of better targets was not conducive to carefree slumber.
I got down at Johore Bahru station the following morning - a Saturday as I recall - weary and bleary-eyed and managed to hitch a ride on a passing Army truck back to Majeedi Barracks. I had been away for exactly three months and in all that time I had been unable to get a haircut. Our CSM, Mr Kipling, would surely have suffered apoplexy at the sight of me in that hirsute state so I slunk into camp and groped my way to the barbershop for shearing before daring to report my return, not for the sake of vanity but simply in the interest of self preservation!
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2002 James Paul & Martin Spirit. All rights reserved.
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