A Fortunate Life (13 page)

The next four months were spent on relentless patrolling.

Since I was the only person in the unit who could speak Malay, I was first tasked with leading a patrol deep into the upper reaches of the Limbang River. The patrol lasted, if I recall, a little over two weeks over the Christmas and New Year period and extended into areas of primeval jungle which had seen very few Europeans since SOE (Special Operations Executive) had dropped agents into the area to raise the local tribes against the Japanese during World War Two. The tribes in the area we passed through were very welcoming and the rebels completely absent, so we spent most nights in local ‘longhouses’. These were single, very long, one-storey wooden buildings, raised on stilts and with a palm-frond roof (or
atap
). Many of them were adorned with shrunken human heads, some of considerable antiquity: the revered trophies of the tribe’s past battles. Typically, a long-house would accommodate an entire extended family, numbering at times up to a hundred adults. About ten days into our patrol, I heard from the headman of the long-house in which we were staying that an aircraft had ‘recently’ crashed nearby. I asked him how long ago, and he waved his hands and said, ‘Not long ago’, but refused to be more precise (precise time is not a concept much valued amongst the jungle tribes of Sarawak). My immediate reaction was that this
must be one of our aircraft which had crashed since we had left our base, and I asked him how far away the crash site was. About five cigarettes away. Three hours later we came to a clearing at the bottom of a steep-sided valley and there, amongst the undergrowth, creepers and saplings, found a more-or-less intact Japanese Zero, complete with roundels, machine-guns in the wings and the skeletal remains of the pilot still sitting in the cockpit where he had died twenty years before.

This patrol was to be the first of many which took us into the Sarawak jungles. These are home to a host of different tribes, the three main ones in our area being the Iban,
*
the Bedayuh and the Kelabit. But in the deeper jungle there are also many smaller tribes. On this first patrol we came across several of them, including the elusive and shy Penan people,
†
who tend to be of much smaller stature than the other tribes of Sarawak and often have lighter, yellowish-tinted skin. Their language was unintelligible to me, but our guide told me that Penan makes very wide use of prepositions indicating ‘up-river’ or ‘down-river’ to show direction. These prepositions are used, even when there is no river in the area, in which case the preposition is applied to indicate which way water
would
flow, if there was any.

Almost all our trackers came from the Ibans and the Bedayuh (I had, at this time, started to teach myself Bedayuh, another relatively easy language). They were exceptional for their skill and bravery and could tell from a broken leaf or a snapped twig how many people had passed and how long ago (always in cigarettes, the standard measurement of time amongst the tribes of Sarawak), their approximate ages, who was carrying heavy loads and who light, whether any were wounded, and even, on one occasion, the fact that there was a woman in the band.

But we relied on them for much more than tracking. They also taught us how to read the jungle and see it as a friend. We learned to recognise the edible palm at whose heart is a soft white core (about the consistency of the base of a celery plant) which made a wonderful addition to our diet, and where to find the grubs the Ibans called
ulat
tinduh
. These – like a giant version of the white grubs with brown heads that you find, especially under dock plants, in Europe – we used
to fry in our mess tins until they popped and then eat the resulting slurry as a kind of thick and very nutritious white soup. Our trackers taught us, too, how to identify the jungle vine which, if you cut it at a shallow angle, gives a stream of pure and delicious water in sufficient quantity to fill a two-pint army water bottle in a couple of minutes; how to choose, cook and eat bamboo shoots; how to extract the poison from the
ipoh
tree that the natives used to use to tip their blowpipe darts; and much, much more.

We also relied on them to supplement our map-reading with local knowledge. The maps we used had been hurriedly made from aerial photographs. Frequently, large tracts of jungle and mountain were represented on them by nothing more than a blank white space containing the unhelpful legend, ‘Area hidden by cloud cover’. These blank spaces we would try to navigate by dead-reckoning, much as one might at sea, estimating the speed of the patrol and its direction and trying to guess the direction of flow of the rivers and the underlying slope of the land, in order to establish our position and, crucially, when and where we would ‘reappear’ on the map. In these circumstances, the tracker’s local knowledge was invaluable, especially when it came to the main rivers, which formed one of our key aids to direction-finding. I began to understand why the Penans made the direction of water flow such an important part of their language.

One of the consequences of all this was that map-reading, which I had learned on Dartmoor as a precise science, became instead a matter of estimation and guesswork. I know of few things more nerve-wracking than approaching the end of a two-week patrol, with a final rendezvous point on a river somewhere ahead and twenty Marines behind who are perfectly well aware of the fact that you don’t actually know precisely where you are. Inevitably, the night before we were due at the rendezvous my Troop Sergeant would whisper to me, ‘The lads would like to know when we will get there, Boss’. To which my answer, given with as much confidence as I could muster, would be something like, ‘Some time tomorrow afternoon, I think.’ I used to dread the following afternoon ticking by without sign of a river and my Marines’ eyeballs boring into the back of my neck, until, in a dreadful admission of defeat, I had to announce that we would spending another night in the jungle and offer weak and unbelieved reassurances that ‘we will probably get there early tomorrow morning’. On the other hand, few things I
have experienced create a greater sense of relief than feeling the ground level out into a river valley just when you thought it should, noting the tell-tale signs of a river nearby appearing just when you hoped they might, and finally bursting out of the jungle onto the banks of a river just where and when you said you would, to see the boats patiently waiting to take you home.

The structure of our jungle patrols was very precise. At the front were the ‘lead scouts’. Depending on the size of the patrol, there could be one or two of these. They would see the enemy first, usually at very close range and sometimes as little as five yards away. So they needed to be armed with something quicker, lighter and less precise than a rifle. The favourite weapon for our lead scouts in Borneo was the Browning pump-action shotgun loaded with eight cartridges, each charged with Special Grade shot, consisting of three large balls of lead. They were deadly at close range. Behind the lead scout came the body of the patrol, usually with a Bren gunner
*
near the front and back, so that they could be easily deployed if the patrol made contact with the enemy either to the front or from the rear. The patrol commander normally travelled close to the front Bren gunner, but if the enemy were believed to be nearby he needed to be as far forward as possible, just behind the lead scouts, so as to make a quick assessment of the battle if contact was made. And finally, at the back, were the rear scouts. Their job was to cover up tracks as best they could and to be constantly alert to what was happening behind the patrol in case of an enemy attack from the rear. The patrol was as spread out as the density of the jungle allowed, with each man ideally only having one other person in sight. This was to ensure that, if you were ambushed, the minimum number of people were caught in the ambush ‘killing zone’ and the maximum number were outside it and able to mount a counter-attack. There was no talking, often for days on end, unless it was absolutely necessary, and then everything was done in whispers. Otherwise all communication was by a comprehensive system of hand signals, which had to be learned.

Essential equipment carried by each member of the patrol included spare ammunition, cooking utensils, a mess-tin or billy, a small solid-fuel
stove, rations, identity discs, a filtration bag and sterilising tablets for water (nearly all jungle diseases are water-borne, so clean water was essential), a stock of paludrine anti-malarial tablets, a poncho or groundsheet, a hammock (usually made from the silk panels cut from a parachute), a light sleeping bag (also usually of parachute silk), a machete or heavy hunting knife, ten yards of stout string (usually parachute cord), insect repellent, a dry set of clothes in a waterproof bag, a field dressing for wounds, a small one-shot syringe of morphine and a personal first-aid and survival kit for use in case of separation from the patrol. This last, which was always carried on your body and not in your pack, contained, among other things, antiseptic cream, pain-killers, emergency K rations, a button compass and (if you could get one) a silk map of the area scrounged from the survival packs the RAF issued to their pilots. In addition, each person carried ten
panjis
strapped to the outside of their pack for ready use.

We quickly found that our service-issue rations were so heavy and bulky that it was impossible to carry enough, even for a fourteen-day patrol. They were also clumsy and difficult to cook. So most of us adopted the local practice of carrying a small sack of uncooked rice and some fish paste or dried meat for flavouring, supplemented where possible by the lighter and more nutritious items from our service field ration packs (such as chocolate).

Leeches were ever-present and unwelcome companions in everything we did. They would parade, ranged in little waving bands, on the edges of leaves, hoping to fasten onto you as you passed. If you put your foot in a pool of water, they were there waiting for you. If you crossed a stream they appeared in squadrons from the banks and rocks, arching their way towards you with single-minded intent. It was not unusual to find fifteen or so blood-filled leeches on each leg after a day’s patrolling and my record, after a day spent wading waist deep in jungle streams, was fifty-three dispersed in every corner of my body. It is important not to try to pull leeches out, as they have tiny barbs which keep their heads in your flesh and do not retract unless the leech wants to withdraw. Any attempt to pull them out by force separates the body from the head, which is left embedded in your flesh and very quickly turns septic in jungle conditions. The technique for removing leeches safely is to apply either a lighted cigarette-end or a dab of mosquito repellent to their tails, causing them to withdraw their heads and drop off. The common jungle leech is small, painless and harmless, once you have
got used to the unpleasant sight of festoons of little bags of blood hanging all over your body. But not so the tiger leech, which lives in grassland and has jaws strong enough to puncture the hide of a buffalo and a body big enough to carry the best part of half a pint of blood. Mostly, leeches were treated as just part of the everyday routine of patrolling. There was, however, one leech story which had wide circulation and caused much concern amongst my younger Marines. It was said that one of our Commando had got a leech attached deep inside the urethra in the centre of his penis. The leech had swollen and blocked the passage, causing great discomfort and preventing him from peeing. A cigarette end in this area of the body being clearly out of the question, the only alternative was to remove the invader with liberal doses of insect repellent, causing much excruciating pain. At the time we were issued with condoms to put over the muzzles of our rifles in order to keep their barrels dry. But most of my guys preferred to use them on the organ for which they were originally intended, in order to protect their manhood against leech attack.

Jungle patrol routine was always the same. At the end of the day the patrol stopped to bivouac for the night about an hour-and-a-half before dusk. The first task was to put sentries out some hundred yards from the camp at all four points of the compass. Next the defence of the camp was organised. Each man’s ten
panjis
were stuck in the ground to create an integrated field of them around the camp perimeter, and individual fire positions were allocated and strengthened as far as possible, without making noise. Interlocking arcs of fire were established for each position, and spare ammunition was stacked close by. (These fire positions would be each man’s allotted place if we were attacked and also at the routine dawn or dusk ‘stand to’.) After this, each individual could start preparing for the night. The first task was to make a sleeping position. This was done by choosing two stout trees within the curtilage of the camp from which your parachute hammock was suspended about three feet above the ground, with a ‘stretcher’ positioned a little way back from the point of attachment in order to hold the hammock open. A line was then strung between the two trees about three feet above the hammock, forming a ridge over which your waterproof poncho or groundsheet was stretched to create a light shelter capable of keeping off the rain. The corners of this were then staked out by guys attached to branches or leading to pegs stuck in the ground. Next, you took your dry clothes out of their waterproof bag
and put them on (always a delicious moment), removing the days’ collection of leeches in the process, and hanging out your wet ones (clothes were always wet at the end of the day in the jungle) in the vain hope that they might dry a little overnight. It would now be time to turn to the evening meal, which needed to be cooked and eaten before dark. At dusk there was a ‘stand to’ at which everyone manned their allocated fire positions (dusk and dawn are the favourite times for attack) until it was fully dark. Night sentries were then put out, with lines of string or wire leading back to the camp to enable the relief sentries to find their way out and relieved sentries to find their way back at the end of their stint of duty (usually two hours long) without stumbling into the
panji
fields. It gets very dark in the jungle at night, and, since no torches were allowed, all movement had to be by feel.