A Fortunate Life (12 page)

The Commanding Officer called me in and gave me instructions that I was to lead a night patrol clandestinely up on to the Mutlah Ridge, seek out a suitable helicopter landing site and mark it out with fluorescent panels, so that the Commando could mount a dawn helicopter-borne assault the following morning.

I assembled a small hand-picked group of my Marines and briefed them. We then blackened ourselves up for night operations and set off bravely. We carried out what I thought was a skilful and silent infiltration onto the ridge, found our site and laid out our panels, expecting at any time to bump into a much larger Iraqi force. And, so far as I could tell, we completed our task without detection.

But what would happen when dawn broke and the Iraqis saw us? There was very little cover and we stood out extremely prominently, gathered as we were around our brightly coloured fluorescent panels,
which I was sure would make just as good aiming points for enemy tanks as they would landing-site markers for friendly helicopters. I started to dread profoundly the coming of the dawn and what it would bring. So I am not sure whether it was relief at not being a tank target or embarrassment at our failure of fieldcraft which predominated the following morning, when, as dawn broke, we discovered we were surrounded, not by Iraqi tanks but by curious Bedou and their goats, who had watched and tracked our every clandestine move!

The following four weeks were spent under the scorching July sun peering from flimsy holes dug in the desert sand into the swirling dust, out of which, at any moment, we expected the mighty weight of several Iraqi tank divisions to emerge. In the end however, the ‘thin red line’ held, and the Iraqis stayed away long enough for the lumbering British machine to deliver enough forces to Kuwait to provide an effective defence, leaving our puny, lightly equipped 600-strong Commando to go home to Singapore.

The rest of our training tour was quieter, but by no means boring. We went up to the jungles of northern Malaya, to learn the silent arts of jungle warfare; how to live off the jungle; how to see it as a friend and, above all, how to navigate its trackless wastes. It was on one of these jungle map-reading lessons that one of us asked our instructor, QMSI McKay, a giant of an Australian from 1 Royal Australian Regiment, if he had ever been lost in the jungle? ‘Naw,’ he drawled, ‘never lorst, but I was once temporarily misplaced for about fourteen days!’

We did not, however, overlook the opportunity to have a good time, when we could. On one occasion, after I had been with some friends to see
Ben Hur
, I was standing up in the bucket seat of a friend’s MG imitating the great chariot driver, as he raced a colleague in a Riley far too fast down a local jungle road. My friend misjudged a bend, ran out of road and into a very deep drainage ditch (they were known as monsoon ditches), which sheered his front axle off and catapulted me over the bonnet and clean through the flimsy walls of a nearby shed, cutting my nose rather severely (I was extremely fortunate not to suffer worse). After the accident had been cleared up we returned to camp, where someone said that I ought to see the unit Doctor, a naval Lieutenant Commander eponymously surnamed Mends, and known by all as ‘Doc Mends’. Though much loved by the Marines, Doc Mends operated on
the basis that Marines were indestructible and therefore didn’t need mending. So, he reasoned, if they claimed to be ill or damaged in some way they were obviously malingering. On one occasion I had sent one of my Marines to see Doc Mends because he complained he couldn’t sleep. Somewhat to the Marine’s surprise, given Mends’ well-known aversion to offering treatment to the sick, the Doctor agreed that not being able to sleep was indeed serious, and something had to be done. He then pulled out a prescription pad on which he scribbled something and, putting it in an envelope, instructed the Marine to take it to the Quartermaster immediately. This struck my Marine as a little odd but, being an obedient fellow, he did as he was ordered. The envelope was duly handed over to the Quartermaster, who opened it and read the Doctor’s prescription, which instructed ‘This Marine is to return his bedding at once.’

Despite Doc Mends’ reputation, on this occasion my friends decided that he should be called. He was woken and given the brief details of what had happened and who it had happened to. His reply was, ‘Silly young fool – tell him to come and see me in the morning,’ after which he turned over and went back to sleep. My colleagues concluded that the best medicine now was to take me and my bleeding nose to the Sergeant’s Mess bar, where we stayed until five in the morning. When I went to see the Doctor the following day he decided on stitches, but did not feel it necessary to give me a local anaesthetic while they were inserted. The combination of the natural sensitivity of the nose area and the fact that by then the skin round the wound had hardened, compounded by an imperial hangover, made this an extremely painful procedure. The scar on my nose marking Doc Mends’ handiwork has stayed with me all my life, as has the suspicion that this was a clear breach of his Hippocratic oath and intended less to heal me than to pay me back for being the cause of his rudely interrupted slumbers.

Our tour finally over, we returned to UK and the last phase of our training. This involved spending time with each of the Royal Marines’ specialist wings: heavy weapons, cliff assault, mountain warfare, assault engineers, landing craft, the SBS, etc.

It was during this period that, together with one of my fellow officers, I bought my first car, called ‘Baby May’, for the princely sum of
£
10 off
a colleague who was going abroad. At the time I could not even drive. But I still thought it a worthwhile investment, since my co-owner agreed to drive for me whenever I wanted. This was not only convenient, it was also necessary. For driving Baby May was strictly speaking a two-person affair. These, of course, were the days before the Road Test, and so there was effectively no restriction on what kind of vehicle could be put on the public highway. Even so, Baby May attracted some attention. Her chassis and engine were those of an old Austin Seven, upon which a makeshift body had been assembled from plywood panels by someone with only the most rudimentary grasp of carpentry. She had her original glass windscreen, but the rest of her windows were made of Perspex of a rather flimsy sort, the whole being tastefully set off in lively colour scheme of luminescent yellow and a particularly bright pillar-box red. She had two other unique features (as if all the above was not unique enough).

The first was that her radiator block was cracked and leaked water at the rate of about two cupfuls an hour. This deficiency was easily remedied, though, because – as her previous owner pointed out to us at the point of sale – when removed, the external radiator filler cap revealed a circular aperture just large enough to snugly take the mouth of a Gordon’s Gin bottle. We could thus drive the car with a full gin bottle of water stuck into the radiator aperture and fully visible to the driver. When the gin bottle was empty, it required only a brief halt for the co-driver to leap out, exchange the empty bottle for one of the full ones from the stack we always carried in the boot, and then we could resume our journey. We reckoned that Baby May could do some twenty miles on a gallon of petrol and some thirty on a gin bottle full of water.

Her second distinguishing feature was that her electrics had been reconstructed from wiring and crocodile clips bought at Woolworths. And this, in the end, was her undoing. Before the end of our training we sold Baby May on to a fellow officer under training. One summer’s day, while he was driving her on Exmouth sea front, weaving his way between the holidaymakers – most of whom clearly believed this was some kind of comic turn the local Council had put on for their amusement – Baby May’s dashboard suddenly burst into flames. To the holidaymakers, this was all part of the entertainment. But my colleague knew it was not funny at all, because Baby May’s petrol tank operated on gravity feed and was situated between the now burning dashboard and the engine. He retreated to a safe distance, from which he bravely
tried to encourage the amused spectators not to get too close – but this only seemed to confirm to them that this was indeed all a joke. Fortunately, we could never afford to fill Baby May’s tank and always ran her near empty, so, even though her Perspex and hardwood body burnt with a merry blaze, no harm was done – apart from a black smudge on the kerbstone which was all that was eventually left of poor Baby May. The black mark at the site of her demise was still just visible more than thirty years later, when in 1998 I visited Exmouth on an election campaign tour as Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

At the end of our course we had to decide which specialisation we wanted to pursue when training was over. I had by now already firmly decided that I wanted to go into the SBS. But they only took applicants after they had done a full tour in an operational Commando. So I applied instead to specialise in heavy weapons (mortars, machine-guns and anti-tank weapons), since I knew there was a shortage of specialists in this branch and a qualification here would therefore give me the best chance of being sent to an operational Commando and as far away from the dreaded parade ground and ceremonial duties as possible.

On Friday 1 September 1961, two-and-a-half years after we had all first met on the platform of Exton Station, we finally passed out as fully qualified Acting Lieutenants, Royal Marines. I was awarded the Sword of Honour for the two Royal Marines officer batches who had joined in 1959. It was decided that the 1959 Sword of Honour would be the sword which originally belonged to a young officer, Neville Spurling, who had been killed in an ambush in Cyprus. It was awarded to me at our passing out parade in Lympstone by his father, who could not hold the tears back in his eyes as he handed it to me.

I was, of course, very proud to receive it, though the citation engraved on the blade seemed a trifle understated, given what we had been through in the last two-and-a-half years. It reads:

O
N 10
F
EBRUARY 1962,
five months after my training finished, Jane and I got married in her home town of Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset. I was twenty, and she was twenty-one, and we had precisely fifteen pounds between us. We couldn’t afford a honeymoon, so straight after our wedding we caught the train down to Exmouth and moved into a one-bedroom summer holiday flat, empty for the winter, which we had rented as our first home while I was on temporary posting to Lympstone awaiting my next orders. That night we blew our last pounds on a slap-up dinner at a local entertainment centre.

Our new home was ill-equipped and cold and very basic. But we didn’t mind, being newly married. And, for the first time amongst many to come, Jane turned some very unpromising accommodation into a home where we were both extremely happy.

In due course my next assignment came through. I was to go to the Army’s Heavy Weapons Training School in Netheravon, Wiltshire, where I would be taught how to use the Vickers Medium Machine-gun, the new 81mm mortar, which had just come into service, and the
Wombat
recoilless anti-tank gun. Afterwards I was to rejoin my old unit, 42 Commando, Royal Marines, in Singapore on 22 June 1962, to take command of a Commando Troop.

Since we were married under age, Jane did not qualify for any assistance in getting out to Singapore, and we were entitled neither to marriage allowance nor accommodation for her while she was there. So we had to say another miserable goodbye on the rain-swept streets of London, this time, potentially, for two-and-a-half years. Jane’s last words when we parted were a promise that, one way or another, she would get out to join me.

I missed her terribly during my first months in Singapore and this was made worse by the fact that I found myself underoccupied and bored. So I decided I should do something useful and learn Malay,
encouraged by the fact that, according to a friend, there was one word in Malay which meant ‘Let’s take off our clothes and tell dirty stories’. If such a word really exists I never found it, but in the process I managed to learn my first foreign language and loved the thrill of being able to communicate using my new-found skill. To be honest, Malay is not difficult.
*
The tenses hardly decline, and plural nouns are achieved by the simple expedient of saying the word twice (thus, ‘orang’ is ‘man’, ‘orang orang’ is ‘men’, etc.). So, despite the comments about inadequate linguistic ability which had been such a recurrent theme in my school reports, it didn’t take me long to become quite proficient.

True to her promise, Jane managed to borrow some money from her grandmother and got a cheap passage to Singapore on the SS
Chusan
, one of the last P&O liners carrying regular passengers to the Far East. She left Britain in September 1962 and crossed the Indian Ocean in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, blissfully unaware of the fact that the world was standing on the very brink of nuclear catastrophe.

Our first few nights together were spent in a local guest house, but eventually she managed to find a tiny flat on the edge of the Malay quarter in the centre of Singapore. From our bedroom window we could look straight down the throat of the muezzin on top of the minaret of the local mosque as he called the faithful to prayer (and frequently us from our sleep), morning, noon and night. Jane also got herself a job to help make ends meet, and we got a small puppy from the animal refuge and called her Tigger.

At the time neither of us could drive, and anyway we could not have afforded a car, so we bought a rather underpowered, secondhand, red-and-white Vespa scooter on which we travelled everywhere, except to those events where the poshness of Jane’s frock made it necessary to stretch our finances to the limit and take a taxi.

And so it was that, comfortably, if impecuniously, settled, we were looking forward to our first Christmas together.

But fate had other ideas.

On 8 December 1962 we joined a host of our friends at a beach party under the forbidding shadow of Singapore’s notorious Changi prison, the scene of so much brutality during the Japanese occupation of the island during the Second World War. But our minds were not on the horrors of the past. We were celebrating a christening. The air was soft, the sea was warm, the moon was full, the drink was plentiful, the music was loud, the sand was comforting between my toes, and we were having a great time.

So I hardly noticed the Land Rover clattering to a halt, lights blazing, at the edge of the party – though I should have done, for the officer who jumped out was a friend who I knew was Duty Officer and therefore should have been back in camp, not here. I did take notice, however, when he shouted for silence, for there was a tone of urgency, and something else I didn’t quite recognise, in his voice.

‘We have just had word from London that rebels have mounted a coup and taken over Brunei, overturning the Sultan and taking a number of British hostages. You are to return to camp immediately, report to your Company Headquarters, draw kit, weapons, grenades and live ammunition. We fly at dawn.’

As a party-stopper it was difficult to beat.

As soon as we arrived back in camp, we changed into jungle-green uniform, drew our equipment, weapons and ammunition, and then checked that the Marines were all present and properly kitted. Finally we went up to the Officer’s Mess, a colonnaded building of the colonial era on a hill, and said goodbye to our wives and girlfriends just as the eastern sky reddened and dawn broke, piled high with angry cumulus clouds.

It was barely more than full daylight when the
Hastings
aircraft into which we were all bundled took off, and we began a very bumpy flight across the South China Sea heading for the Island of Labuan in the Bay of Brunei, the staging post for our assault to retake Brunei city. The
Hastings
, an ageing, piston-engined transport, was noisy and bumpy and not at all to be recommended for anyone with a queasy stomach and a most decided hangover. I found myself sitting next to a cadaverous gentleman in a dark grey suit who looked, to put it mildly, out of place amongst sweating Marines with their rifles between their knees, nursing hangovers and a strong sense of apprehension about the battle ahead. My companion resolutely refused to tell me who he
was or what he was doing here amidst the first wave of assault troops, dressed, as I commented to him, for a funeral rather than a battle.

I was closer to the truth than I realised, for when we arrived in Labuan we were met by the coffins of four Ghurkhas, killed the night before, whose bodies were returning to Singapore on the aircraft we had flown out in. My lugubrious, dark-suited companion immediately sprang to life, taking charge of the coffins and finally revealing himself as a member of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who had come out especially to ensure that the dead – and, one could not help reflecting, those of us who were now quick but would soon be dead – were properly looked after! Some quite level-headed soldiers become highly superstitious before battle, and this ghoulish presence amongst us was taken by many as a bad omen. Even for the completely unsuperstitious, like me, it was not exactly a morale-booster!

That night we moved into Brunei city. The Ghurkhas had already taken the city back from the rebels, but there were one or two remaining pockets of resistance that we had to deal with before consolidating our hold on the city and preparing to move forward to take the other two rebel strongholds the following morning.

Two assaults were planned. One was an amphibious assault on the main rebel-held positions in the river port of Limbang, using two flat ‘Z’ lighters requisitioned from the local port for the purpose. The second attack, to which I was assigned, was to be a dawn airborne assault on the administrative centre of Lawas, where there were reported to be a number of British hostages, including the local District Officer and his family. This was to be conducted in some army
Twin Pioneer
aircraft which had just arrived on Brunei airfield ready for the operation.

Our companions designated for the Limbang assault left that night for the long, slow sea and river journey to their target, which they, too, were to attack at dawn. As for us, shortly before sunrise we filed down in silence to board our little aircraft for the thirty-minute journey to Lawas. Intelligence reported that they believed the town, airfield and surrounding area to be in rebel hands, so our best hope lay in surprise, if we were not to suffer high casualties bringing thin-skinned aircraft in to land and disembark troops on a defended airfield. The pilots brought their aircraft in very low over the palm trees which fringed the rudimentary airstrip, threw them onto the ground with a bump and we leapt out, fingers curled around triggers, ready to open up at any movement.

But, blessedly, there was none. All was silence and calm. The place was deserted.

My task was to secure the nearby town, while others made their way to the District Officer’s House where the hostages were reported to be held. Running in battle formation up a low knoll on which the house stood they were surprised to be met, not with the expected storm of fire, but apparently by a florid-faced District Officer nursing a gin and tonic (it was no later than 6.30 a.m.). He hailed them heartily and bade them welcome, immediately followed by a motley collection of other people of European origin who emerged from the house, gabbling away in high spirits at our arrival.

This, according to the story we were subsequently told, is what had happened. The rebels had indeed taken over the town, and a group of some hundred or so had marched, fully armed, up to the District Officer’s house in very threatening mood. He emerged alone with a service-issue Webley pistol in one hand (the story does not relate whether he had a gin and tonic in the other, but I like to imagine he did), declared himself to be Her Majesty’s representative in the area and, in her name, demanded that they all lay down their arms and surrender. This they duly did, despite their overwhelming numbers, and were all locked up in the local jail.

The concern then was that other local rebel bands in the area would gather, and they might not prove so amenable as their colleagues had been. So the entire white population of the area had been called in to the District Officer’s house, where the women and children were given shelter and the men set about turning the house and the knoll into a little fortress. Fire positions had been built, the frame strengthened, water points established in case of fire, and ammunition gathered and distributed – as far as this was possible, given the motley collection of weapons they were able to assemble. Most impressive of all these preparations, however, was the establishment of a dense field of
panjis
(sharpened bamboo stakes) on the flanks of the hill approaching the bungalow, each lovingly tipped with strychnine by a local American doctor from the United States Peace Corps!

That evening the news started to filter through that our colleagues carrying out the assault on Limbang had had a much more difficult time. When, at dawn, their flat lighters broke out of the mangrove swamps for a direct frontal assault on the quayside of the town, they were met with murderous fire from well-prepared positions. The day
had been won by the Vickers machine-gun troop, mounted in fully exposed positions, who had continued firing through a hail of enemy bullets and eventually suppressed the defenders’ fire for long enough for the assault to go in and win the day. Five of our comrades had been killed and five wounded in this attack, led by Captain Jeremy Moore, who as a result was awarded a bar to the Military Cross he had already won in Malaya in 1952. He would go on to be my much-loved company commander, and, in later years, to command the land forces in the successful Falklands invasion, for which he received a KCB. Later still he acted as one of my close advisers during the first Gulf War, when I was leading the Liberal Democrats.
*

Thus began what came later to be known as ‘Confrontation’, or
Konfrontasi
in Malay, the little (but at times quite vicious) four-year conflict between Britain and Indonesia in the jungles of Sarawak.