Jungle ambush: ‘We got into this cutting and all hell broke loose’

Fred’s 4th Queen’s Own Hussars had been tasked there in September 1948 after the outbreak of hostilities between communist and commonwealth forces in what soon became dubbed the ‘Malayan emergency.’

Their role was to help secure the colony and shore up its tin mines and rubber plantations.

On December 14, 1948, Fred was in the rearguard of a convoy that included civilians from the local mining company.

The eighteen-year-old had a perfect view of the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) attack, which occurred as the trucks entered a defile in light jungle in Pahang province.

“All I can remember is that we were in the last GMC (General Motors manufactured army transporter) in the back of the convoy and we could see everything that was happening in front of us. We got into this cutting and all hell broke loose,” he says.

Fred and his colleagues were strafed with heavy automatic fire as the rebels used the natural bottleneck to pin the commonwealth forces down.

“I was in the GMC as a radio operator,” said Fred. “Fudge was the driver of the GMC. There was a planter - a civilian from the Sungei Lembing tin mine and there were three Sergeants who were all going up for a hoochie poochie [signals drinking motion].

“Suddenly, there was this bang, with the machine gun and the lorry load of explosives went up. And all I could see was this boy coming from an open 1500 weight Dodge police vehicle.

British Police Sergeant, Sgt. Jones, had been travelling in a police vehicle with the convoy and had taken the full force of the blast.

What happened next earned Fred the British Empire Medal (BEM), which he received in 1949.

Fred takes up the story: “They (Sgt. Jones and colleagues) were behind the lorry that blew up and he must’ve got caught in the blast of that, you know. He made his way as best he could out of the vehicle. All the Malay police and all bucked off as quick as they could get away.

“So I looked at Fudge and he looked at me and we thought: Right, off we go, We’ll go and get this boy.’

According to the official recommendation Fred and Fudge left the cover of their armoured vehicle and made their way 70 yards to Sgt. Jones, all the time under heavy and accurate fire from enemy forces. They showed no regard for their own safety.

Modestly, Fred recounts: “But they say we ran seventy yards and they say they were firing on us but I’ve no appreciation of that at all.

“All I remember is dashing up the side of the road in a gully, getting to the man, pulling him in to what safety we could, having a look at his wounds, his chest was just open.”

Unfortunately, despite Fred and Fudge’s uncommon courage Sgt. Jones lost too much blood and died soon after being taken to a nearby hospital.

“We got him back on the GMC and got him back to Kuantan Hospital,” Fred says. “We organised all the troops, there were two troops, to go down to give blood. We put something like 40 pints of blood into him but he’d lost too much.

“Everything that could’ve been done for him was done for him and the Malay doctors, a doctor flew in from Kuala Lumpur but that took two-and-a-half hours for him to get out.”

Despite the best efforts of the Malay doctors Sgt Jones died of his wounds soon afterwards.

Last Monday Fred and another old comrade Jim Thompson - who served with the RAF in Sarawak and Singapore from 1964 to 1967 - were both officially presented with newly-minted medals in the Services Club on Spencer Road.

Fred received the Pingat Jasa Malaysia (PJM), an honour inaugurated by the Malaysian Government in 2005 for those servicemen who had helped secure the country in the run up to its independence in 1957.

The night was crowned with a surprise 96th birthday celebration for another comrade and Services Club member, Sam Waterstone.

Although, permission is not normally granted for foreign medals to be accepted if royal recognition for a campaign has already been presented - Fred and Fudge were both awarded the British Empire Medal for their heroics in 1948 - the Ministry of Defence (MoD) Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals sensibly waived this in November 2011.

As the official citation explains: “Malaya’s independence on August 31, 1957, came amidst a formidable threat to its sovereignty mounted by the Malayan Community Party (MCP).

“MCP’s ferocious and extensive guerrilla campaign required assistance, which was provided by Britain under the auspices of the Anglo Malayan Defence Agreement (AMDA).

“British troops and soldiers from the Commonwealth countries of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji maintained bases, security personnel, civilian staff as well as other facilities in Malaya to safeguard its sovereignty.”

Just 17 when he enlisted in 1947 Fred had been too young for the Second World War but in Malaya he would have found himself engaged in what must have been an exotic and tense theatre of operations with a communist revolution underway at full tilt to the North and the Cold War developing gradually in the backdrop.

A few years after the 1948 ambush near Kuantan the US Vice President Richard Nixon would describe a visit to Malaya as having a “tremendously important effect on my thinking and on my career” and establishing “my foreign policy experience and expertise in what was to become the most critical and controversial part of the world.”

Fred says he never had time to consider the wider geopolitical circumstances and was firmly focused on the task in hand whilst criss-crossing the humid jungles of the colony with his tank regiment.

“It wasn’t classified as a war,” Fred explains. “It was just a confrontation...The purpose of us being there was to secure the country against bandits.”

He adds: “I think I saw four bandits in the three-and-a-half years I was there. Four bandits.

“On deep jungle penetration patrols we came across one camp that they had and all we did was torch it, you know. But it was dead easy for them to build it up again. There was plenty of bamboo around.”

The principal role of the Hussars as part of the Royal Armoured Corps was to keep the main arterial routes on the Malayan road network open.

But on occasion Fred and the cavalry had to get down off their mechanised horses and accompany those Gurkha regiments who joined the British Army after Indian independence on their first missions deep in the Malayan jungle.

“We were in the jungle but we had a job of road patrols being in the mechanised regiment. When the Gurkhas or the ‘coolies’ or the other guard regiments wanted assistance in the jungle we became the foot soldiers,” he says.

As Fred explains, the jungle itself could be as lethal an enemy as the Malayan rebels.

“We had quite a few (casualties) at that time. Unfortunately, we had a casualty, which I thought shouldn’t have happened. My mate Ginger.

“We had a lanyard they used to give us with the uniform with Paludrine (proguanil) tablets for anti-malaria. They happened to be yellow, these Paludrine tablets.

“When your lanyard got a wee bit dirty you washed it, the dye used to come out so you dipped a couple of Paludrine tablets, and soaked it in and let it drip dry.

“Ginger went sick and said: ‘I’m not feeling well.’ I’m not sure who, whether it was the actual officer or one of the medics, but they says: ‘No. It’s alright, you’ve just got a bit of a flu or something.’ But Ginger says ‘No, my eyes are going yellow.’

“And they said: ‘That’s the Paludrine. It destroys your sight to put a colour in.’

“Three days later, Ginger’s lying in his bed dead. Yellow jaundice.”

Fred recalls another incident that occurred whilst the Hussars were again on foot a patrol supporting the jungle soldiers.

“We had the new jungle weapon, the short breach-load rifle, not quite the American M-1, but pretty similar. They were accurate up to 600 yards, which is a good range.

“The old Bren gun as standby. Sten guns. Two inch mortar.”

One of the soldiers was operating a Bren gun with a 100 round magazine drum when his finger got stuck in the trigger mechanism.

As Fred explains the soldier “virtually cut a boy in half.”

Incidents like that coupled with losses to either the jungle or the enemy could have a damaging psychological toll.

“It’s not nice,” says Fred. “I loved shooting but I don’t like shooting at people.”

Thankfully during his three years of service during the emergency Fred didn’t have to endure too long in the jungle.

He says: “I reckon in the three years I didn’t spend any more than three or four months actually in the jungle, Most of the time was spent on road patrols.”

And though the jungle was unpleasant: “You got blisters, you got leeches,” it also helped build morale amongst the men: “It bonded you together.”

Fred says there was a good camaraderie amongst the troops at that time, particularly amongst the Irish soldiers fighting in South East Asia.

“I was fortunate. I had quite a few Northern Ireland boys. Paddy Munteith from Omagh. People like that, you know. Paddy Doogan from Belfast, the heart of the Falls. We were all soldiers together,” he says.

Fred survived Malaya and ended up serving a quarter of a century in the army.

He has multiple decorations for his heroics in Malaya as well as for long service.

Showing the Sentinel his medals, he explains: “That was the service medal (BEM) that I wore out in Malaya, that was the medal for service in Malaya from 1948 to 1951, that was the - excuse my French - the ‘fly f**kers’ medal - twenty years without deduction (for long service and good conduct).

“That was the cap badge with the Hussars and that’s from the old regiment there, the Queen’s Royal Irish.”

Fred toured extensively in South East Asia returning to Malaya and Borneo and also serving for a period in Hong Kong.

He also served in the Yemen for a time but was tasked to Malaya in 1962 before things really began to get hot in Aden in 1967.

Looking back on that ‘emergency’ he sees similarities with the ‘Malayan’ equivalent two decades before.

Fred believes ‘Mad Mitch’ - Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell - had been correct in suppressing the Yemeni rebels but had gone about it the wrong way.

“Well, we were very fortunate. We shipped out to Malaya in 1962. But ‘Mad Mike’ was wrong but he was right if you know what I mean. He did the right thing but went the wrong way about it.

“He had to suppress the troublemakers but just marching the troops in and firing - they were killing innocent people as well as the terrorists. And that was the same in Malaya in 1948.”

Aside from his regular service, Fred also acted as an instructor and recruiting sergeant for the army - at one stage in the 1950s he helped recruit around 40 men from Londonderry.

He was discharged from the army in the early 1970s and returned home via Germany - where he had met his wife whilst stationed near Bergen-Belsen - to look for his first job on civvie street.

Within months of his discharge he was employed in the ambulance dispatch centre at Altnagelvin and would work this - his second ever job - until his retirement.

Malaya wasn’t his last skirmish with armed bandits though.

Fred says that shortly after his return to Londonderry in the early 1970s he had gone to buy his first car and was stopped at an IRA road block near Creggan Hill.

Petrol was demanded but after brief negotiations, Fred was allowed on his way.

Ironically, the man who stopped him - now deceased - had been one of those Fred helped recruit to the armed services down the Strand Road in the 1950s.

Fred continued to provide instruction to the local Cadets whilst working for the health service. He lives at home around the corner from the Top of the Hill where he was born and reared.

“I wouldn’t change it for any place else,” he says. “That’s why when I finished in 1971 in Hong Kong, I came home.”