6

The Malayan Emergency

Thomas Richardson

The Australian commitment to the Malayan Emergency lasted from June 1950 to June 1962. The product of Australia’s fear of a gradual communist takeover of Southeast Asia, this commitment never matched in size those made to the wars in Korea or Vietnam, and the intensity of the fighting was below that of Confrontation. Nevertheless, alongside the commitment to the Far East Strategic Reserve (FESR), the contribution to the Malayan Emergency was one of Australia’s longest overseas deployments. The war itself was low-intensity. The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and its armed wing, the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA), were always deeply reluctant to engage British Commonwealth security forces – particularly by the time the major Australian commitment, an infantry battalion group, was deployed in 1955. The result was a war of intense frustration, as Australian soldiers and airmen searched for a comparatively small number of enemy who did not want to be found and had the advantage of hiding in the vast jungle wilderness of northern Malaya.

Yet the experience in Malaya exerted a strong influence on how the Australian Army thought about how it would, and ultimately did, fight across Southeast Asia. The Army entered Malaya with a large practical knowledge of jungle warfare gained in the Second World War, but unsure of how that knowledge would translate to a counterinsurgency. The Army was right to be sceptical; while this prior understanding of how to operate in a jungle environment proved valuable, the nature of the Emergency demanded a substantially different operational framework and tactics. Over the course of nearly seven years, Australian units had the opportunity to master these, benefitting in the process from a British system that had itself gone through a learning curve. The resulting understanding of tropical counterinsurgency would significantly influence Australian operations in Vietnam and beyond.

The Emergency

One of the most important factors in how the Malayan Emergency developed was the fact that the insurgents were almost as unprepared for the conflict as the government.¹ The MCP formed in the 1920s and had been banned by British authorities prior to the Second World War. Yet the Japanese invasion and occupation of Malaya in 1941–42 created a mutual enemy that saw the MCP and the British become allies of convenience. By the time of the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the MCP-controlled Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) numbered around 3,500 men, armed with British weapons provided by the clandestine Force 136.² While never formally legalised, the credit accrued during the struggle against the Japanese helped allow the MCP to function as a quasi-legitimate political organisation in the immediate postwar period. The MPAJA disbanded and either surrendered its weapons or cached them, while considerable effort was poured into front organisations and the trade union movement.³ This policy of moderation was championed by Lai Tek, Secretary General of the party, who had achieved an exalted status amongst his subordinates during the struggle against the Japanese.⁴

The prospects for political struggle initially seemed promising. Like much of Southeast Asia after the surrender of the Japanese, Malaya faced intense economic hardship and political uncertainty – conditions exacerbated by a botched series of British administrative decisions.⁵ Largest of these was the proposal put forward in January 1946 for the reorganisation and consolidation of the various British-controlled polities in Malaya into a single Malayan Union. The proposal included generous provisions for citizenship for Malaya’s Chinese and Indian populations. This provoked an immediate backlash from Malayan leaders, one so strong that the British withdrew the union proposal. In its place came a proposal for a Federation of Malaya that, through its omission of the generous citizenship provisions, angered sections of the Chinese and Indian communities and seemingly provided the MCP with a significant political opportunity.⁶

Several factors conspired in early 1948 to shift the course of the MCP to armed struggle, however. The disappearance of Lai Tek in March 1947 and subsequent revelation he had been an agent of the British and Japanese left the MCP reeling and helped discredit the moderate policies he had championed.⁷ Equally important, however, was the apparent failure of these policies by the start of the following year. Despite the success of the MCP in dominating the trade union movement and initiating repeated and widespread industrial action, no political concessions had been forthcoming from the British; Lai Tek’s successor, Chin Peng, first discussed the possibility of a change in strategy over the sound of artillery salutes inaugurating the Federation of Malaya.⁸ On top of this, new legislation promised to effectively gut MCP control of the trade union movement. ‘The prominent factor that influenced us, when we decided to take up arms, was the British policy at the time,’ Chin Peng later recalled. ‘We felt we were being cornered, gradually, back to the corner. We had nowhere to move.’⁹ As a result, at a meeting of the Central Committee between 17 and 21 March 1948, the party resolved to adopt a new strategy.

From March onwards, the MCP prepared for an open confrontation with the government – a confrontation its leadership expected to happen around September. Yet events outran it. Violence associated with ongoing strikes increased, and it was in this context that three European planters were murdered at Sungei Siput in the state of Perak by members of the MCP on 16 June.¹⁰ A state of emergency was declared by the British Administration in parts of Perak, and extended across the entirety of Malaya a few days later. A belated mass police operation on 18 June succeeded in arresting 1,100 party members or supporters, but the leadership and hardcore cadres of the old MPAJA had already escaped into the jungle.¹¹ Just over a year later in July 1949, in an attempt to expand the appeal of the struggle beyond the Chinese community, the military units of the party were renamed the National Liberation Army; the original Chinese phrase was poorly translated as the Malayan Races Liberation Army, and the acronym MRLA was commonly used afterwards. The British Commonwealth forces, for their part, described the enemy as ‘Communist Terrorists’ and the acronym ‘CT’ became commonplace.¹²

The initial MCP strategy reflected the influence of Mao and called for a three-phase struggle in which an initial wave of terrorism and guerrilla activity would then allow the creation of rural base areas to support larger guerrilla units; in the third and final phase, the base areas would begin to link up, and a general revolt would be initiated in urban areas.¹³ It proved a failure, for several reasons. Rural base areas were simultaneously too remote from the civilian population and too vulnerable to attack by security forces thanks to Malaya’s well-developed road and rail network. Only the base area in the Betong on the Thai border was established and lasted, and that was thanks largely to the ability of the CTs to hide within Thailand.¹⁴ The party’s disorganisation and decentralisation also meant that little damage was actually done to the government, security forces or economic infrastructure in the early days of the Emergency. Indeed, for the first two years of the Emergency rubber and tin production actually increased, despite the violence.¹⁵

Despite – or perhaps because of – the MCP being caught unprepared by the declaration of the Emergency, and the failure of its initial Maoist strategy, the British Government’s response to the new insurgency was remarkably haphazard. The bombastic overconfidence evident in the July 1948 declaration by the General Officer Commanding (GOC) Malaya, Major General Boucher, that ‘I can tell you this is by far the easiest problem I have ever tackled’ appears to have been common but by no means universal within the British Administration in 1948–49.¹⁶ Yet even those who appreciated the scale of the threat faced the problem of an emaciated police force, a non-existent intelligence system, an army untrained in jungle warfare or counterinsurgency and a government bureaucracy divided over what to do, how to do it and who it should be done by.¹⁷

The relative failure of the government response allowed the MCP to regroup and reformulate its thinking. While the MCP/MRLA never gave up its desire to create base or liberated areas, and indeed saw them as fundamental to victory, it did recognise from 1949 onwards that a change of tactics was required.¹⁸ This was driven not only by the vulnerability of larger units to the Commonwealth security forces, but also the difficulty in supplying them. Instead, smaller units began operating in the fringe area of jungle next to cleared or cultivated land. From here they could mount attacks on isolated or vulnerable targets, and receive supplies from the MCP Masses Organisation (Min Yuen) that operated covertly within settlements. The MCP intended that a sustained period of such attacks would attrit security force strength and build up rural support for the party to such a degree that the establishment of base areas would become possible.¹⁹

While the MCP/MRLA shift in tactics still failed to bring about conditions favourable to the establishment of rural base or liberated areas, much less victory, they did dramatically increase the scope of the security crisis faced by the government. A total of 2,716 ‘incidents’ were recorded across 1948–49; in 1950 the number jumped to 4,739 and continued to increase in 1951 to 6,082. As if to underline the seriousness of the situation, on 6 October 1951, High Commissioner Gurney and several members of his escort were killed when Gurney’s car was ambushed by an MRLA platoon 60 miles outside of Kuala Lumpur. Sixteen days later, on 22 October, a British platoon was also ambushed, leaving 16 dead and 16 wounded.²⁰

It should be noted at this point that despite the dramatic increase in MCP/MRLA activity and success in 1950–51, in retrospect there were significant structural barriers to any sort of communist victory in Malaya. The MCP lacked active support outside the Chinese community within Malaya, and even within it many had little interest in the party’s political program. This lack of support helped explain the MRLA’s military weakness; even at its largest it numbered no more than 8,000 men and women. Exacerbating this was the lack of external support available to the party. With the Thai Government hostile, and the sea and air approaches to Malaya dominated by the British, the MCP/MRLA was cut off from any kind of external help. This made it entirely reliant on supplies it could gain from the Min Yuen organisation in the villages, or later the Orang Asli tribes in the interior; and it also meant the MRLA was limited to the small arms it had cached after the Second World War and any weapons it could capture off the security forces. This further restricted the combat power of units, who only deployed small arms for the entire Emergency.²¹

These structural issues notwithstanding, the surge in communist violence in early 1950 finally pushed the British Administration into a stronger response. In March 1950 Gurney asked the British Government for a Director of Operations; that is, an official who could coordinate security forces operations against the MCP. The man eventually appointed was Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, an officer with a long career in Asia that included command of a division in Burma and subsequent time as GOC Burma Command between 1946 and 1947.²² Briggs produced an appreciation of the situation almost immediately, followed by a more detailed plan on 24 May 1950. As John Coates has argued, both documents make clear that Briggs understood that ‘the Emergency was not a war in the classic sense, but a competition in government’.²³ The MRLA was able to exist and commit acts of violence because of the supplies, recruits and information that came from the Chinese population close to the jungle fringe. Those supplies did not magically appear in the jungle; instead they were extracted by the Min Yuen, whose very presence indicated to the population that the government could not protect them and that a political alternative to the Malay Administration existed.²⁴

Briggs thus argued that in order to restore security, the government had to not simply defeat the MRLA but ‘eliminate the Communist cells among the Chinese population to whom we must give security and whom we must win over’.²⁵ The second part of this formulation was key; the physical security of the population would not be sufficient, and indeed would not be possible, without winning their active support. This in turn would require both effective propaganda and certain political concessions. ‘It must be realised that the Chinese are here for good’, Briggs wrote, ‘and such land as they occupy must carry promise of a permanent title subject to good behaviour’.²⁶ Moreover, active government administration had to be extended to all communities both as a measure of control and as a way of winning support through the provision of services. A combination of active support from the community, strong administrative control measures and a revitalised and rebuilt intelligence system and police force would allow the Min Yuen to be destroyed.²⁷ This in turn would force the MRLA, deprived of its supplies and already under intense pressure from army-led security operations, to ‘attack us on our own ground’ and thus be defeated.²⁸

Briggs’s ideas did not represent an instantaneous solution, and his own timelines proved wildly optimistic. Command arrangements continued to prove less than optimal and were subject to a major reshuffle in early 1951. Briggs had resigned in November 1951 due to poor health, and Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton ended up combining the positions of Director of Operations and High Commissioner into one following Gurney’s death.²⁹ The man appointed to this new post, General Sir Gerald Templer, benefited from Lyttelton’s determination to centralise and streamline authority. Nor was the implementation of the Briggs Plan smooth. The basic issues that had dogged the authorities since the start of the Emergency, such as the lack of trained and capable manpower, money and coordination, were all still factors. The plan to resettle or relocate communities on the jungle fringe, primarily Chinese, was executed in haste and suffered accordingly.³⁰

Yet Briggs’s basic plan, and his conception of the conflict as a struggle of governance, proved sound. During Templer’s time in command between January 1952 and May 1954, the British hacked away at the MCP’s political appeal by expanding citizenship throughout the community, empowering local leaders and ultimately granting Malaya independence. This independence settlement entrenched Malayan political power but still succeeded in undermining the central plank of the MCP’s platform.³¹ Resettlement continued and conditions inside the ‘New Villages’ improved, thanks in part to the provision of amenities such as electricity, running water, medical clinics and schools. The size and quality of the police force was upgraded, while the system for the collection and dissemination of intelligence through Special Branch was streamlined and improved. Templer also drove the creation of the Anti-Terrorist Operations Malaya pamphlet, which guided security force operations for the remainder of the Emergency. Increasingly eschewing the large-scale sweeps of the Emergency’s first few years, security forces instead built a sophisticated concept of operations based around food denial that fulfilled Briggs’s basic idea of disrupting the lines of communication between the Min Yuen and MRLA units in the jungle.³²

By the time Templer left Malaya in May 1954, this raft of measures had broken the back of the insurgency. While the Emergency was far from over, both the number of incidents and estimated MCP/MRLA strength entered a steady decline that would not be reversed. The MCP, wracked by internal disagreements, began shifting to a policy of conservation as it looked to bring a negotiated end to the Emergency.³³ From a peak of around 8,000 armed guerrillas, by mid-1955 the MRLA was down to an estimated strength of between 3,100 and 3,800.³⁴ As its armed strength declined, the party also began to be overtaken by political events. The first federal elections were held in Malaya in July 1955, and full independence granted on 31 August 1957. Outflanked politically, the MCP concentrated on conserving its remaining strength in remote regions on the Thai/Malaya border in what it termed a policy of ‘lowering the banners and muffling the drums’. While the party and what was left of its military forces did not finally cease armed struggle until 1989, the threat they posed to Malaya had effectively been extinguished, and the Emergency was declared over on 12 July 1960.³⁵

The Australian commitments, 1950 and 1955

It was in this context that the Australian Government made two distinct commitments of military forces to fight in Malaya. The first was the dispatch of a squadron of Lincoln heavy bombers of No. 1 (B) Squadron, and Dakota transports of No. 38 Squadron, in June 1950 after a request from the British Government in April.³⁶ While the Dakotas were withdrawn in 1952 due to demands imposed by the Korean War, the Lincolns remained until 1958. The second commitment was the deployment, announced by Prime Minister Menzies on 1 April 1955, of substantial military assets including ships of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), additional Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadrons, an infantry battalion, a field artillery battery and an engineering troop as part of Australia’s larger commitment to the FESR.³⁷ While the destroyers and frigates of the RAN, and the Canberra and Sabre aircraft of No. 2, No. 3 and No. 77 Squadrons RAAF, largely focused on the ‘primary role’ of FESR, the Army units spent their time operating against CTs. Serving roughly two-year tours, in total four battalions would participate in operations against the MRLA – initially during the Emergency and then, in the case of 1RAR (1 Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment) and 2RAR during its second tour, after its formal cessation in 1960.³⁸

The broader strategic logic of the Australian commitments is discussed elsewhere in this book, and so will only be briefly covered here. The Menzies Government deployed forces to Malaya because, as Peter Edwards put it, ‘like the United Kingdom Government, it saw the conflict not as merely a local struggle but as part of the global conflict between communism and democracy’.³⁹ In addition, Australian deployments to Malaya achieved the wider objective of signalling its commitment to the defence of the region from communist threats and its willingness to pull its weight from a funding perspective. The utility of military force in Malaya in achieving Australian objectives was thus twofold: the Australian commitment contributed directly to the defeat of the MCP’s insurgency, despite being a small part of the overall British Commonwealth force (which by 1954 numbered 24 British infantry battalions alone), while the commitment itself – regardless of operational results – helped achieve the goals of Australian alliance politics.⁴⁰

This logic justified both the initial commitment of RAAF squadrons in 1950 and the subsequent FESR commitment in 1955, and meant that in both cases units became small cogs in the much larger British machine. There is, however, one notable wrinkle in the willingness of the Menzies Government to cede operational control of Australian units to the British command in Malaya. When the issue of deploying Australian troops first arose for the Menzies Government in 1950, at least one Cabinet minister expressed his disquiet at British tactics and wondered if they could not learn something from an Australian Army well versed in jungle warfare and open to adaptation.⁴¹ These concerns led to Menzies proposing on 26 May 1950 to the British Government that a small mission of Australian officers be sent to Malaya in order to provide their expertise in jungle warfare to the British commanders and return information on British operations and tactics to the Australian Government.⁴² The British quickly accepted and the Australian officers departed Sydney on 19 July.

Known as the Bridgeford mission after its commander, Quartermaster-General Major General W Bridgeford, the mission also included Lieutenant Commander AM Synnot (Director Staff and Training Requirements, Navy Office), Colonel JGN Wilton, Lieutenant Colonel FG Hassett (General Service Officer Level I, 2 Australian Division), Lieutenant Colonel GR Wharfe (Commanding Officer, 5 Infantry Battalion), Lieutenant Colonel GS Cox (Commanding Officer, 45 Infantry Battalion), Major SP Weir (General Service Officer Level II, Directorate of Military Intelligence) and Wing Commander G Steege (attached to RAAF headquarters).⁴³ The presence of officers from the RAN and RAAF was not initially anticipated by Menzies and stemmed from the Army’s discomfort with the idea that Australian experiences in New Guinea had any particular relevance to the Emergency, in contrast to views of government ministers. In the event, Bridgeford’s final report largely endorsed both the Briggs Plan and the tactical methods in use by the British Army, laying to rest the concerns of Cabinet and confirming the Army’s initial impression of the situation.⁴⁴

Moreover, in the four years between Bridgeford’s report and the deployment of 2RAR in late 1955, there had been much improvement in British conduct of the Emergency. In 1949 the British Army had created the Far Eastern Land Forces Training Centre (FTC), located from 1950 in Kota Tinggi in Johore. Experience gradually drove a shift in tactics between 1950 and late 1951, from large-scale operations to smaller ones that emphasised patrolling, while the adoption of the Briggs Plan provided a new concept of operations. Briggs made clear that the role of the Army was to provide security for populated areas while government administration was restored and the Min Yuen attacked (‘framework operations’), and that it was to interpose itself between the units of the MRLA and the populated areas they relied upon for support. These ideas, and the tactical lessons taught at FTC, were codified at Templer’s insistence in late 1952 in a pamphlet entitled The conduct of anti-terrorist operations in Malaya (commonly abbreviated as ATOM).⁴⁵

By 1953, therefore, the British had established and put into practice an effective system of counterinsurgency. This system relied fundamentally on separating the insurgents from the population in order to starve the MRLA of intelligence, recruits, supplies and, above all, food. This separation was achieved by the resettlement of population on the jungle fringes, an intensive program of physical control run primarily by police and auxiliary forces, and the use of Army units to dominate the area around settled areas. Templer left little doubt as to his view on the role of the Army, famously declaring in the introduction of ATOM that ‘the job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist terrorists in Malaya’.⁴⁶ Yet where at the start of the conflict the British had emphasised large-scale sweep operations that had attempted to drive MCP/MRLA personnel within a certain area into pre-established blocking positions, ATOM counselled the used of many patrols and ambushes conducted from company or platoon ‘bases’ in the jungle to dominate an area.⁴⁷

The British system also emphasised not only the need to ground operations in accurate intelligence but also to shape them to maximise the quantity and quality of intelligence generated by the operation itself. Thus a typical priority operation was divided into three phases. The first was a preparatory phase in which Special Branch built a detailed picture of the insurgent network in the chosen area. The second was the start of the operation itself, with food control measures put in place and military operations shaped to exacerbate those measures – in particular through the ambush or patrolling of areas that likely saw the transfer of supplies between villagers, the Min Yuen and the MRLA. The third was the use of a growing body of intelligence – generated by surrendered or captured enemy personnel (at times through torture), information discovered in CT camps and general military operations – to further target operations, further increasing the pressure on the MCP/MRLA in the area and leading to further contacts, captures and surrenders.⁴⁸

Taken together, this meant that by the time 2RAR deployed in 1955, the dynamic anticipated by the Menzies Cabinet in 1950 had largely been reversed. It was the Australians who stood to learn, and would ultimately be absorbed into the British system.

Operations: 1955–63

The main body of 2RAR arrived in Malaya on 19 October 1955, and spent the remainder of the year training on Penang Island and in the state of Kedah. It began combat operations on 1 January 1956 with Operation Deuce in southern Kedah, and continued in that role into mid-April. At the end of April it shifted to Operation Shark North in the Kuala Kangsar – Sungei Siput area of Perak. With only a brief pause for training in its ‘main role’ in December 1956, the battalion would continue Shark North until the end of July 1957, before spending another month training in the ‘main role’ and then returning to Australia. The service of 3RAR, which arrived in Malaya in October 1957, followed a similar course. Its first combat operation was the still-continuing Shark North in Perak, which the battalion entered on 1 December and continued until mid-January 1958. Shark North was then replaced by Operation Ginger, which commenced on 15 January 1958 and aimed ‘to eliminate some 220 CTs in the area including 31 Independent Platoon and 13/15 Independent Platoon, the State Committee Secretariat and Press’ through intensive food denial. 3RAR would continue Ginger through until its conclusion on 21 April 1959, and remain on operations in Perak until its eventual withdrawal on 12 September 1959.⁴⁹

Both battalions thus spent the majority of their two-year tours conducting food- and contact-denial operations in central Perak, in particular the area in and around Sungei Siput. Although by the time 2RAR arrived in Malaya in late 1955 the Security Forces were in the ascendency, Perak remained a bastion of MCP strength. In May 1955, the Combined Intelligence Staff estimated that between 1,170 and 1,210 CTs were active in Perak or the adjoining Thai border areas; this was approximately a third of total estimated remaining CT strength within the Malayan Federation.⁵⁰ Moreover, the MCP was believed to enjoy widespread support within the state. Roughly half the non-indigenous population of the district were Chinese, and ‘an alarmingly high proportion’ were ‘communist supporters or sympathisers, either by tradition, sympathy or fear’. The remaining half of the populace were believed to be split evenly between Indians and Malays; the former were ‘dominated by Communism to a large extent’ while the latter were considered ‘on the whole unreliable’, with ‘a rather indifferent attitude towards the prosecution of the Emergency and its associated restrictive regulations’.⁵¹ Even after nearly 18 months of intensive operations, Far Eastern Land Forces (FARELF) noted in February 1957 that the Perak ‘CT organisation is wealthy and has no difficult in acquiring … additional funds when required. It is supported by the Chinese population and the Masses Organisation is strong’.⁵²

Yet if Perak remained ‘the blackest of the black’ by the standards of the Emergency, it was also true that the number of CTs remained small compared to the overall operational area.⁵³ Shark North aimed to destroy two Armed Work Forces, with a combined strength of around 20, and embraced an area of operations that covered 370 square miles – 80 per cent of which was primary jungle.⁵⁴ 2RAR had already learned during Operation Deuce just how difficult it could be to come to grips with the enemy. Four months of intensive patrolling produced just 18 contacts with the enemy and the discovery of 27 CT camps or food dumps – a rate of return reflecting the fact the 40 or so CTs targeted by the operation were spread out over an area of approximately 300 square miles.⁵⁵ As one Australian report from March 1956 noted:

There is undoubtedly a feeling of frustration in 2RAR at the lack of positive results … Discussion with individual troops usually leads to a reference to ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’ and often to the disconcerting fact that the ‘needle’ moves about.⁵⁶

Compounding such frustration was the inconclusive nature of many of the few encounters with CTs in the jungle that Australians did have. While this was broadly typical of combat in the Emergency, with the 28 Commonwealth Infantry Brigade Standing Orders noting that ‘contacts with terrorists are comparatively rare and often fleeting’, a feeling existed within 2RAR that they were not making the most of their opportunities.⁵⁷ Of the 18 contacts the battalion experienced during Operation Deuce, only four were believed to have resulted in enemy casualties, leaving one CT dead, an estimated five wounded, and one captured. In return one Australian was killed by enemy fire, and one killed and one wounded in separate friendly fire incidents.⁵⁸

Battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel JG Ochiltree attributed the failure to convert contacts into enemy casualties in part to the nature of the small arms training given to the battalion at the Jungle Training Centre (JTC) at Canungra. Based on the Australian experience in the Second World War, the battalion had been instructed to shoot from the hip during any contact.⁵⁹ This was in direct contradiction to the training given to British units in Malaya, which emphasised the value of taking the split second necessary to bring the weapon up to the shoulder and ‘ensure an aimed shot, thereby increasing the certainty of elimination of the all too elusive communist terrorist (CT)’.⁶⁰

This seemingly minor point reflected Ochiltree’s broader concern that his battalion had not been adequately prepared for the situation it faced in Malaya.⁶¹ The rush to get 2RAR ready for deployment meant the sophisticated training apparatus built by the British for the Emergency, and the lessons it was designed to impart, was bypassed by the Australians. Ochiltree did not see a copy of Conduct of anti-terrorist operations in Malaya before he landed in Malaya, and did not have time to do a pre-deployment reconnaissance. Nor did the battalion initially train at the British JTC at Kota Tinggi. Instead, it undertook a program at the Australian JTC at Canungra, based on Australian doctrine derived from the war in the Pacific between 1942 and 1945. ‘In terms of preparing troops physically and mentally for the rigours of the jungle, Canungra excelled,’ Peter Dennis later mused, ‘but whether it fitted 2 RAR for the anti-CT role that it was subsequently called upon to perform is much more problematic.’⁶²

2RAR also learned that while the enemy was elusive, they could also pose great danger. On 22 June 1956 a six-man patrol was ambushed along the water pipeline that led from the Sungei Bemban reservoir to Sungei Siput by a force of between 23 and 25 guerrillas from 13/15 Platoon. The initial ambush killed one Australian and mortally wounded another, and it was only the chance presence nearby of two other patrols that prevented the first being overrun. When the engagement concluded, two CTs had been killed, one wounded and one probably wounded, while 2RAR had three killed and three wounded.⁶³ The Australian patrol had committed the cardinal sin of returning to its patrol base via the same route it had used to go out, and blundered into a sophisticated ambush that was 100 yards long and studded with five improvised explosive devices.

3RAR was in some ways better prepared than its sister battalion; its time at Canungra emphasised fitness, constant action drills and acclimatising to the jungle, while a month-long stint at Kota Tinggi between 12 October and 18 November 1957 further refined its skills in anti-terrorist operations.⁶⁴ Nonetheless, it encountered many of the same frustrations as 2RAR. For both battalions, operations in Perak consisted of a relentless program of ambushing and patrolling. Platoons operated on a 14-day roster that was broken down to two days of leave, two days of preparation and 10 days of patrolling. Ambushing could require watching a track, CT food dump or camp for over a week at a time, with the only break coming when individual soldiers retired to a rear area to prepare food. In the meantime, soldiers had to lie still, exposed to all of the elements of the jungle. Platoon commander Claude Ducker recalled:

You might sit on a track for a week or two at a time and it was very tedious of course, lying in mud, lots of leeches, and never knowing when the enemy was going to come along … It was a very difficult honed skill to be silent in an ambush for that long.⁶⁵

In an effort to generate additional contacts, Commonwealth security forces and the Australians constantly innovated. ‘Comds must always be searching for new ways by which to outwit the terrorists’ noted the 28 Commonwealth Brigade Standing Orders. ‘Ops must NOT be allowed to become stereotyped. Try anything that appears a good idea.’⁶⁶ Operation Rubber Legs (23 February – 7 March 1957) and Operation Captain Zip (21–30 July 1957) eschewed the usual method of trying to push CTs into established blocking positions and ambushes in favour of flooding the assigned operational area with patrols in the hope that CTs fleeing from one would bump into another. Both operations involved multiple battalions from 28 Commonwealth Brigade and both ultimately failed to deliver results commensurate with the effort expended.⁶⁷

The other significant area of innovation was the intersection between the desire to make better use of Commonwealth firepower, particularly airpower, and the problems posed by MCP/MRLA operations in deep jungle areas. While, as already noted, bases in the deep jungle posed serious political and logistical challenges for the communists, the increasing success of the Briggs Plan and food denial operations in the early 1950s made them more attractive for the MCP. Moreover, the MCP had put significant work into building relationships with Malaya’s indigenous peoples – the Orang Asli. These indigenous tribes functioned as an effective intelligence screen, alerting the communists to the approach of security force elements well in advance of their actual arrival.⁶⁸ As a No. 1 (B) Squadron’s report later argued:

What was required was a swift and accurate attack against the heart of the area to catch the C.T’s off balance and to shatter their security screen and food supply organisation; then, as soon as possible after the attack, the aboriginals should be won over to the side of the Government.⁶⁹

The use of airstrikes against communist camps thus offered the possibility of negating the MCP’s intelligence advantage, while also justifying the deployment of valuable Royal Air Force (RAF) and RAAF aircraft in theatre at a time when questions were being asked in London and Canberra as to their suitability for use in the Emergency.⁷⁰

No. 1 (B) Squadron RAAF was heavily involved in the first major operation to use these techniques, Operation TERMITE, in July 1954. The plan called for two flights of five Lincoln bombers each to execute simultaneous attacks on two suspected CT camps; three squadrons of 22 Special Air Service Regiment would then parachute into the area to clear the camps and establish blocking positions. Once this had been done, the main force, drawn from five infantry battalions and the police, would move in while airstrikes by Lincolns and de Haviland Hornet fighters continued. While the operation went largely to plan, it resulted in the confirmed death of just 15 CTs, a seemingly low return for the level of investment.⁷¹ Between May and July 1956, Support Company 2RAR conducted Operation Eagle Swoop, which aimed to use MCP defector Tow Sen to guide a patrol to the camp of District Committee Secretary Wai Shan on the Thai–Malaya border and then to destroy it with airstrikes.⁷² While Wai Shan’s camp was never located, on 24 June a 4-man patrol contacted a large CT camp. Two of the Australians were killed in the initial contact, while a nearby patrol killed one of the CT and wounded another as they attempted to break contact. Elements of B and C Company were deployed in pursuit, and both airstrikes and artillery were also used liberally in the hope of hurting the fleeing enemy. Such hopes, however, appear to have been in vain.⁷³

One other operation illustrated both the possibilities but also the severe limitations of airpower in the context of the Malayan Emergency. In March 1958 the pilot of an Auster spotter aircraft observed five CTs walking through the jungle. The pilot was able to divert five Lincolns from No. 1 (B) Squadron who had had to abort on their primary target to attack this moving target, and then a subsequent strike by RAF Venoms. While this displayed an impressive degree of flexibility, the fact that the CTs escaped the initial deluge of 70 500-pound bombs from the Lincolns – necessitating the subsequent strike by Venoms – and that a follow-up police patrol found no evidence that any CTs had been killed did seem to suggest that if CTs were the proverbial needle, airstrikes were the equivalent of throwing darts into the haystack and hoping for a hit.⁷⁴

Although the Emergency officially ended in July 1960, Australian units would continue intermittent operations against the remaining CTs until August 1962: 1RAR from 1959 to 1961, and 2RAR from 1961 to 1963. Of the 609 CTs that Special Branch estimated in April 1960 to still be active, just 107 were believed to be within Malaya.⁷⁵ The remainder lived on the Thai side of the Thai–Malaya border, although incursions back into Malaya were frequent. Ensconced in the deep jungle, the surviving MCP and MRLA communicated via courier routes and relied on the Orang Asli for intelligence, supplies and even recruits. Despite the complications introduced by the border, the security force concept of operations against the MCP/MRLA remained basically the same. The first operation undertaken by 1RAR, Operation Bamboo (24 November 1959 – mid-April 1960), aimed to disrupt the flow of food and supplies to the MCP/MRLA by destroying the 12 Regiment Asal Organisation, which served as a conduit between the Orang Asli and the communists.⁷⁶ Subsequent operations by the battalion (Operation Bamboo Bar, August 1960 – June 1961) and its successor 2RAR (Operation Magnus, 1 August 1962 – 6 October 1962, 1 May 1963 – late June 1963) had a similar focus.⁷⁷

Operations during this period posed unique challenges for the Australian battalions. Even more so than in previous years, MCP/MRLA personnel were determined to avoid contact with the security forces. The standing orders of 1RAR noted that:

at this stage of the Emergency it appears that CTs are loath to risk contact with S[ecurity] F[orces], and will normally retreat with speed on contact, or suspicion of the presence of SF.⁷⁸

In the event, the battalion did not have a single contact with a CT during its time in Malaya, although it found clear evidence of the presence of the enemy during operations. Despite conducting operations for a much shorter period of time 2RAR had two contacts – a successful ambush on 4 August 1962 that left one CT wounded, and a contact on 3 May 1963 in which the enemy escaped unharmed. So rare were contacts by mid-1962 that the battalion executed an entire operation, Hot Trail, in an effort to locate the man wounded on 4 August. The man was never found, emphasising just how elusive the enemy had become.⁷⁹ In the absence of CTs, the jungle remained the major threat to the Australians. Standing orders emphasised the need for patrols to carry sufficient supplies in case they became lost, kits to deal with snakebite, and the dangers posed by scrub typhus and leptospirosis.⁸⁰

Legacy

Just over a month after 2RAR began withdrawing from operations on the Thai–Malaya border in June 1962, members of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) touched down in Saigon, Republic of Vietnam (RVN).⁸¹ The arrival of the AATTV marked the start of just over a decade of active Australian involvement in the defence of the RVN, a commitment that ultimately dwarfed that made to Malaya during the Emergency. Thirteen Australian soldiers and two airmen were killed on operations in Malaya between 1950 and 1963, with a further 36 dying from non-operational causes.⁸² Over 400 Australians would be killed in action in Vietnam, with thousands more becoming casualties.⁸³ This disparity in numbers reflected not only differences in the size of the Australian commitment, but also the nature of combat. In Malaya, Australian battalions faced an enemy who was never encountered in groups larger than a reinforced platoon, whose heaviest weapons were small arms, and who invariably wanted to avoid contact. In Vietnam, Australian units faced enemies who were known to operate in battalion- or regimental-sized groups, possessed larger numbers of modern automatic and infantry support weapons, and were often prepared to offer sustained resistance. Unsurprisingly in light of this, combat in Vietnam was not only more frequent than in Malaya but could also be considerably more intense.

Yet despite these differences, the experience of the Malayan Emergency exerted a strong influence on the Australian Army during its years in Vietnam. Australian doctrine, codified in 1965 in The division in battle series, was heavily informed by what had occurred in Malaya and by ATOM.⁸⁴ The ideas encapsulated in The division in battle and ATOM in turn influenced the vision of Australian commanders in Vietnam as to how they should fight. In a postwar interview, Major General SC Graham, the second commander of 1 Australian Task Force, explained his concept of operations (itself an extension of that of his predecessor) as a focus on ‘the breaking of the links between the main and local forces’. Graham went on to argue that ‘if we could be successful in this we would deprive the main forces of their supplies; their information; their recruits; their contact with the people and their prestige’.⁸⁵ The parallels with the British system in Malaya are unmistakable, as is the contrast with an American approach that emphasised targeting not the linkages but the main forces themselves.⁸⁶ Equally, the Australian concept of close ambushing – in which access to the villages of Phuoc Tuy province was denied to the enemy through an intensive program of ambushing at night – was explicitly based on experiences in Malaya. Highly successful, it formed the basis of Australian operations from early 1970 through until mid-1971.⁸⁷