Saturday, 19 July 1952
Ah Fat and his escort’s journey south was exhausting, difficult and dangerous. Late on their third day out from the Cameron Highlands, in flatter country, they came across signs of an army patrol: cigarette smell clinging to a stream and the tobacco not the type guerillas smoked. Ah Fat’s squad of eight, looked around, sniffing. ‘One hour ago, Comrade,’ one said. ‘It’s not old.’ Ah Fat agreed with him. ‘We must make a detour. The gwai lo will be making camp not far away, probably near its banks.’
They moved away into a hillier area, found a reentrant and settled down for the night. The escort commander was worried, both about the enemy and the safety of his charge, a senior and respected comrade. Normal guerilla practice, when Security Forces were in the same area, was for moves in the first and last two hours of daylight. He therefore planned following the axis of the stream but on higher ground the better to escape contact with their enemy. During the next day he sent out a recce patrol. ‘Comrade, there are about forty of them,’ the patrol leader said on his return. ‘About two platoons of British troops had indeed camped on the bank of the stream.’
Contact with their enemy was the one thing they could not afford, nor did they want to delay their return journey any longer than necessary. However, on their sixth day, it seemed better to try and get well ahead of the troops who were the more heavily laden. They moved more quickly than the senior guerilla liked but he felt that, provided all necessary precautions were taken, his group could reach the next ‘hand-over’ place safely. Unfortunately Ah Fat twisted his ankle, so drastically slowed them up. To counter any possible contact a small guerilla patrol made its stealthy way ahead of the others.
‘If you come across a foh t’ung tree, strip some of the bark off and, as you know, the soft inside makes an excellent bandage,’ Ah Fat told the senior man. He managed to find a bonfire tree and, on meeting up with the rest of them later, soaked the thin inner layers and bound Ah Fat’s ankle. By next morning he was better and the swelling reduced. They made haste slowly: T’ung chau kung chi, Ah Fat remembered a proverb, ‘Together in the boat, mutually assist.’
Later on that day when they were walking along the side of a narrow river, one that had thin bamboo, ningalo, and rushes on both banks, their lead man who had gone ahead, came hurrying back to say that a platoon of British troops was about ten to fifteen minutes away, moving towards them. They moved as quickly and quietly as possible to a flank. Ah Fat, filling his canteen at the time, turned round suddenly and jolted his bad ankle severely. He tried to follow them but it was too painful. He called softly to one of his gunmen, ‘I’ve messed up my ankle. Take my pack with you and my pistol ammunition. I’ll have to hide here, in the water. Come back and help me after the gwai lo have gone.’ Thank goodness I’ve my secret weapon with me.
The gunman took the pack and the ammunition and disappeared into the jungle, automatically erasing traces where he and the others had moved.
Ah Fat had a good knowledge of how to live, move and fight in the jungle. He always kept what he termed his ‘secret weapon’ with him, a 2-foot long tube of water vine. The texture of its bark was almost like a grenade and when cut, the watery sap ran out. One could have a drink of half a pint of water from two feet of it: the sap ran forward so it was necessary to make two cuts, quickly, and drain out the section into your mouth before it ran off. The only danger of cutting two feet from a vine was that it left an obviously cut piece hanging and another piece if not hidden. However, most British soldiers were not geared up to noticing such details. Breathing through the vine was of vital use if ever he was caught by a stream and had to hide with his head under water. He had used it once successfully during the war and it had saved his life. It was also of talismanic value to him.
Ah Fat felt for his tube from where he always carried it, on a string round his neck, but it was not there. Where can I have dropped it? he thought miserably. I must have something else or I’m done for. Looking round he spied an aloe plant at the water’s edge: he limped over to it, hastily took a knife out of his pocket and cut a long thorn from the tall, fleshy, spiny-toothed leaves that stood higher than a man. Aloe leaves are tough and a person making his way through a thicket of them was slowed down and apt to be scratched by the thorns: the long leaves make a noise as they grate against each other. With this thorn he scratched out the pith in the piece of ningalo, making it hollow. He worked fast, with deft movements, hoping against hope that he could hide before the enemy soldiers appeared.
In front of him was an outsize spider’s web, with the enormous black owner in the centre. He ducked under it so as not to break it, slowly turned round and, facing the way the enemy troops were coming towards him, stepped on a large stone and deliberately walked backwards into the water. He rubbed his footprints off the stone and splashed some water on it. Still walking backwards and making his way towards another aloe plant, he saw that there was one footprint he could not properly erase. He bent down, splayed his fingers and made a tiger’s paw mark. Then, putting the piece of ningalo into his mouth as a breathing tube, silently lay down under the water, holding his nose.
He was only just in time.
‘Sarge, look at this,’ he heard faintly a few seconds later, ‘a tiger’s pug mark coming from the other side of the river.’
The guerillas, hiding in a glade, could see what was happening. The senior man had not realised that Comrade Ah Fat was not with them. ‘Did anyone see what happened to him?’ he asked with dismay. The escort quietly told him what had happened. ‘Be ready to fire onto the enemy and draw them away from Comrade P’ing Yee, up the hill towards us. If we have to kill them don’t do it by the river.’
The watching men saw an Asian with heavily tattooed arms pointing to the ground. The guerillas did not know that he was an Iban tracker from Sarawak in Borneo. British troops themselves, mainly ‘townies’, were not skilled in tracking. The comrade has been seen, the senior guerilla thought. They then saw the tattooed man bend down as though investigating, stand up and point to the large spider’s web.
Ah Fat heard a voice not spoken with an English accent saying ‘Not so safe here. Better move on.’ The tracker had been so intent on looking near the water he had not noticed the faint scuff marks of the other guerillas. But something nagged at him.
‘Better not ’alt here,’ an authoritative voice called out loud enough for Ah Fat to hear. ‘We’ll ’alt a little way on.’ The troops moved off.
After judging five minutes, Ah Fat slowly, slowly lifted his head out of the water, looked around and seeing nobody, stood up, taking deep breaths of air with joy. Up on the slope the other guerillas breathed a communal sigh of relief when they saw which way the British troops had gone and hurried back down. ‘Comrade, why did you stay behind? What happened?’ the senior man asked.
‘When I turned round quickly to go with you I hurt my ankle again so I did the only thing possible and hid.’ He passed his hand over his brow and said, ‘I’ve got to sit down somewhere for a bit. I’m whacked. Let’s move into the jungle where I can change out of my wet clothes.’ They hid in a secluded spot while he put on dry ones. They had enough bonfire tree bark to put a new bandage on his ankle. ‘On our way now,’ said Ah Fat, getting up. They moved on as fast as the damaged ankle allowed.
The Iban tracker’s mind nagged at him. What was it I might have missed? He thought back and played the scene over in his mind and minutely visualised the pug mark once more. Got it! Two points: there was no tiger smell and, he inwardly cursed, the tiger’s pug mark was as though the animal was moving backwards. Tigers don’t move backwards … Ibans are mercurial people. He inwardly shrank at admitting his error and losing face. He decided not to say anything about it and anyway, his English was not really up to it. Good luck to the clever man who made that mark: deserved to get away with it!
Ah Fat’s party was held up twice more: by planes bombing areas not far from them on one day and, on another, by artillery strafing the area they were walking through. By then the guerillas had learnt to distinguish between 25-pounder and 5.5 mm medium artillery. The former they did not fear – in fact, knowing that the Security Forces would not be moving into areas under fire, some guerillas had managed to walk unscathed through them to surrender – but the latter was a real danger.
‘You’re overdue,” grumbled the Political Commissar as Ah Fat and his escort wearily stumbled into the camp late towards dusk, tense and tired. ‘Why? And what have you to report?’ Lau Beng, by nature a bully, was not only resentful at having a comrade as senior as Ah Fat on his patch, but a nagging something about him he just could not place irked him. It was too nebulous to be substantiated. But in any case he had taken a marked dislike to him, which was reciprocated but not shown. He had completely forgotten the time when a lad, with his friend Kwek Leng Joo, both having been kicked out of school for open anti-British behaviour, they had been on Kuala Lumpur station platform and had been near enough to hear an English boy in a departing train shout out ‘Good bye, P’ing Yee’ and a young Chinese boy on the platform shout out, ‘Shandung P’aau, we’ll meet again … I know’, as the train gave a jolt and moved away, ‘but we’ll be much older. You’ve learnt Chinese so well. It will save your life as you saved mine when you killed that krait I hadn’t seen.’ That incident had stuck in his mind but, of course, the idea that the Chinese lad was now with him in camp was too ludicrous and far-fetched ever to contemplate.
Ah Fat muffled his indignation. ‘Comrade, we have made as much haste as security allowed,’ came his cold answer. ‘The Central Committee had to be fully briefed so as to make a decision about such an unusual and important development. That took time. On our way back we were slowed up by my twisting my ankle and we had to hide once when the gwai lo military was using artillery over a wide area so making movement more slow and hazardous than usual and again when a 4-engined aeroplane bombed an adjacent area. We’re tired, dirty and hungry. Once I’ve bathed and changed I’ll give you the Central Committee directive.’
‘Good comrades don’t complain about their bodily discomforts,’ came the surly reply. Only a Political Commissar could ‘get away with’ such an uncouth remark to a senior comrade. ‘Have you the go-ahead?’
‘All in good time, Comrade. I’ll let you have it once I’ve bathed and changed. We’ve been on the go without a proper break for a long time. The urgency is not so great it can’t wait for an hour. I need to talk to Comrade Wang Ming also about military aspects.’
‘Comrade, I’m the one who will decide whom you’ll talk to,’ came the niggling retort. ‘I’m in charge here even though you’ve come from the Central Committee. Get settled in and come back just as soon as you can.’ Black eyes flashed angrily.
Bloody man. So puffed up he thinks he’s Lenin in high heels, thought Ah Fat, not liking or understanding such veiled hostility, but he gave a conciliatory and perfunctory, clenched-fist salute and went to where one of his bodyguards was beckoning him. Whatever else, if I don’t appear dedicated I’m finished.
‘We’ve got a brew of tea for you.’ Ah Fat took it behind one of the huts and, leisurely sipping it with the greatest pleasure. Nectar he breathed silently, in English.
Washed, changed and carrying one of his bodyguard’s rifle, he went over to Lau Beng who was sitting at the ‘conference table’ as he grandly called it, with Wang Ming. ‘Comrade, be seated. Where are the Central Committee’s orders? And why bring a rifle when I asked for a document?’
Ah Fat, inwardly chuckling at the Political Commissar’s confusion, lifted up the rifle, a .303 taken from the body of a dead Malay soldier, turned it over and, after prising open the small recess in the butt where the pull-through was normally kept, pulled out a tightly rolled piece of waterproof cloth. ‘Here you are, Comrade,’ he said, handing it over.
The Political Commissar, shooting him a vicious glance, took his time in unwrapping the cloth and carefully unfolding the paper inside, straightening the sheets out on a flat piece of cardboard before studying them carefully. He must have read the whole report two or three times, so long did it take him. Saying nothing he passed it over to the Military Commander, who dutifully took his time to study it. Ah Fat knew the contents off by heart but, as was his wont, said nothing.
At last Wang Ming put the paper on the table, looked at Lau Beng and said, ‘It will be tricky to bring off but it could work out properly if all involved are well briefed and careful,’ was his neutral comment. ‘Also nothing at all must leak to the British running dogs.’
‘I was thinking of the implications as you were reading the orders,’ was the snooty comment. ‘Let me rehearse the sequence of events as laid down in this directive.’ He looked at Ah Fat. ‘It says that you are to stay in the camp here – too valuable to risk outside – until we move out with the new comrade.’
Ah Fat nodded his agreement. He had no option but to obey Politburo orders and keeping quiet might not antagonize Lau Beng as much as answering back would.
‘Now we have Politburo approval we must first organise someone who can approach Goh Ah Hok surreptitiously who, in turn, will alert his sister Siu Tse who then will brief the Lustful Wolf. He must plan his own escape but I believe it best, after he has collected the data, for him to leave Seremban on a Saturday morning, if he can get away unseen, otherwise in the evening, being driven by Goh Ah Hok out to the point on the road nearest us, that old quarry. He’ll have to tell Goh when he’s ready. We must tell him not to wear army jungle boots but ordinary canvas shoes like we wear, he will have some to play games in, and will be the harder to follow should any Goo K’a ever stumble on our tracks. That should give us a 24-hour head start before the running dogs start yapping and looking for him. But they will never find him. He need not have any equipment except basic essentials and his weapon, pistol or rifle. Initially he will join us here for as brief a time as possible, then, once we are sure that he really is willing to go with us and has the details asked for, we go on to Titi, to be met by a party from Central Committee. If nobody is there to meet us, we go on to Durian Tipus and wait there. We’ll be able to move much quicker than any follow-up party.’ His face lit up as he realised his mistake. ‘What have I just said? There can be no follow up because no one will know in which direction he’ll have gone nor, as far as I am aware, none of the Security Forces knows that we have our camp here. We’ll have to write all this out for Siu Tse to pass on to the Lustful Wolf.’
Wang Ming, not the quickest of brains, asked for most of that again. By then it was dark and the meeting broke off for their evening meal. After that they would normally go to bed but as time was against them, they reconvened.
‘I will now write out what I want Siu Tse to do,’ said Lau Beng. ‘Comrade Wang Ming will stay here with me for any military points I have to include. Comrade Ah Fat, you can dismiss and go to bed,’ in a different tone of voice, ‘You must be worn out.’
‘Indeed I am,’ he replied and went over to his hammock. Waiting for sleep to overtake him he wondered just how this venture would work out. I’ve a feeling that I’ll have more than I bargained for … His mind went back to when the Japanese invaded Malaya in 1942 and had started killing Chinese civilians without any particular reason other than that they were Chinese. ‘Son, don’t stay around. It’s much better try and join the Communist guerillas already in the jungle rather than stay here and be killed,’ had been his Father’s advice. ‘I’m too old for that.’
‘Yes, Father, I agree but I can never be a Communist.’
So his father had persuaded his son to wait a week before taking the plunge while he taught him what he termed ‘tradecraft’. ‘I learnt so much from Mr Rance, your friend Jason’s father, when we worked together. Best I pass it on to you, especially in these troubled times.’
And a couple of years after being been fully accepted by the guerillas as one of them, honing up on the tradecraft his father had taught him as he went along, he and his group had established contact with some Englishmen in the jungle, lived and worked with them, watching them trying to work a wireless that had a battery only charged by some sort of treadle, not unlike a stationary bicycle. Then one day, in the Sungei Siput area, a long-range aircraft he later learnt had flown from Colombo in far-off Ceylon, had dropped some British officers, known as Force 136, along with arms and ammunition to help them fight the Japanese. One of the men to drop was a fresh-faced subaltern, Lieutenant Ian Clark. They had become friends. Qualities that had attracted the Englishman to Ah Fat were his composure, friendliness and the ease with which he spoke, as well as his excellent English. ‘Where did you learn such good English?’ Clark asked him one night after their evening meal, always quietly, never so obviously that other guerillas might draw any wrong conclusion. And out the story came: Ah Fat told him about his childhood friend, Jason Rance, and how they had played together for three or four years in pre-war Kuala Lumpur, each helping the other with a new language till both became almost bi-lingual. ‘And where is Jason Rance now?’ Ah Fat played back the conversation in his mind as though it had happened last week. ‘I don’t know, sir, I haven’t heard of him again.’ Where are you, Shandung P’aau? And you, Mr Clark?
Lieutenant Ian Clark had told him that after the war he hoped to come back to Malaya and join the police – ‘such a beautiful country, if I stay on in the British Army I may never get the chance to come back again’ – and that he could see a need for someone like Ah Fat to ‘help out’, as he put it. ‘If ever you need me I’ll respond. We need two code words that no one else will know about, just in case. If I do become a policeman I’ll most carefully and secretly register them, presumably in Central HQ, but, if we decide on them now, so much the better – but only if you agree.’ And I had agreed.
‘What’ll they be?’ Ah Fat thought back to his first English friend and their nicknames: ‘I’ll say “Shandung P`aau” and you’ll answer with “Flat Ears” in English or “P`ing Yee” in Chinese. If you make the first move, the names will be the other way round …’ and he bound his face with a large sweat rag to stop him talking in his sleep. Normal footwork even if it is my face … and he was still smiling when he fell asleep.
Sunday, 20 July 1952
At around midday the sentry at the bottom of the camp entrance saw three unarmed civilians approaching and tugged on the vine to let the sentry at the top notify the two leaders. Soon two armed men came down and met the group where they had been stopped by the sentry. Once it was clear that two of them were Min Yuen, they were welcomed and asked what they wanted. The third man produced a letter from inside his shirt and said, ‘Comrade, I’ve been tasked by the manager of the Yam Yam nightclub, Comrade Yap Cheng Wu, to give this to you. He said it was most important and if possible, be given the answer by return. I’m off now. Let it be given to these two.’ He gave it to the oldest-looking man there and made off with a cheery goodbye and a Communist salute.
‘You two stay here with the sentry while we take this up to the boss. I’m sorry but you’re not allowed any farther than this,’ said the oldest-looking man as went back up to the camp. Once there he sought out the Political Commissar and gave him the letter, explaining as he did that the men who had brought it were waiting for an answer to take back, there and then, and that Comrade Goh Ah Hok, the man who had brought it, had already returned.
Inwardly grumbling Lau Beng opened the envelope, then a rare smile curved his thin lips just a fraction as he started to read the details of the Lustful Wolf being officially allowed into the Special Branch office. This is most exciting but can we really trust this unusual gwai lo? At least, let him do what the army has told him to do: we have had Lee Kheng as a sleeper there since our struggle started. Who can activate him … and how best? He called out for a brew of cold tea: he always thought better with that. I’ll write a letter to Comrade Lee Kheng here and now, explaining the situation and why and how I want him to help this Lustful Wolf, give it to the senior of the Min Yuen men to take to Seremban and somehow or other get it to Lee. One of the points I will stress is to try and get any names of police agents in our ranks and he started putting pen to paper, gritting his teeth at the thought of any traitors. This way we might find the traitor Comrade Yong Kwoh told us about.
It did not take him long. He put it in an envelope, addressed it to Lee Kheng and put that into a second envelope, on the outside of which he wrote Goh Ah Hok’s name. He gave it to the waiting sentry. ‘Take that down to the Min Yuen at the bottom of the cliff and tell the senior man to get it delivered, just as soon as he can.’
The sentry took the letter, saluted and hurried away with it: a thin smile appeared on the thinner lips of the Political Commissar. If this is a success it will redound strongly in my favour. The alternative was too dreadful to think about. He put the letter away in the safe place he kept such documents and turned his mind to details of escaping once the Seremban mission had been completed.