By

Rhona

Churchill

 

A menu of monkey, Mouse deer and Wild pig for

Britons on patrol.

For this is Confrontation in Sarawak, where

The Navy boys are-

 

PIRATES

OF

NANGA

GAAT

 

 

Rhona Churchill, with officers and petty officers of 845 squadron R.N., adds a coin to the ”Gaat Candle” –dozens of candles balanced on a bottle of brandy. Each time a new C.O. takes over the “Pirates” the candle is melted down and the coins go to Kapit orphanage, 50 miles away. £60 was collected in nine months

 

“WE’RE going to play a joke on the lads on the next landing pad, Rhona. Jimmy will drop you on to it then clear off, and I'll come in later and pick you up. Okay?"

The voice on the short-wave intercom was that of Lieut. Tim Donkin, 25-year-old Royal Marine commander of the Royal Navy's helicopter detachment at Nanga Gaat, which ferries the Paras to their lonely outposts along 400 miles of Sarawak's remotest and most primitive jungle border with Indonesia.

I was sitting strapped in the deck of Lieut. Jimmy James's helicopter. The two pilots were ferrying Para patrols to an area sparsely populated by the nomadic Punans, who still hunt with blowpipes and poisoned arrows.

Down below, in a tiny clearing amid the dense tall trees, I could see an orange parachute laid out as a signal. I saw a man in jungle green shoot a smoke signal into the sky. I saw another run forward to gather up the para­chute. We were hovering, sinking on to the pad. I unhitched my harness. Darby Allen, the young ginger-haired aircrewman from Leeds, gave me a thumbs-up sign.

And, there I was, standing 500 yards from the border, facing four of the most disconcerted young Paras you ever saw.

When one found his voice he said; " Are you the lot? Aren't we getting any blokes and grub today? "

I said I sincerely hoped so. I had a vested interest in the arrival of the second helicopter.

 

It came within minutes. Quickly they off-loaded their four blokes, their grub for a fortnight, their bulging rucksacks and self-loading rifles and ammo, watched me climb back in and waved me a cheery farewell.

The newcomers would stay on border patrol here for six weeks. The other four, with four weeks of patrol completed, would be picked. up in two weeks. As I looked down on those eight young faces I thought of what one of them, a lad from Fife, had said the night before at Nanga Gaat: “Do you know what's the loneliest sound on earth? He had asked me. " It’s the sound of a chopper moving away from you after a drop."

Glimmer

I now had a glimmering of. how he felt. For six weeks his job would be to search the Sarawak jungle borders for signs of the enemy, to track, him, assess his strength, hide from him and live to report his whereabouts. And this in a terrain where an enemy can hide a yard from you and you never know. .

He would sleep for 42 nights in a hammock slung between two jungle trees, live on field rations of rice, tea and tinned meat, cook with smokeless fuel, sprinkle his clothes and hammock with Insect repellent. yet get scarred all over with bites. He would eat monkeys, mouse deer and wild pig, slaughtered for him silently by Punan blowpipe and poison dart. He would tread where no white man had ever trod before.

And all the time he would five with the sure knowledge that, if captured, he would be killed, slowly and cruelly The Indonesians disembowel and decapitate their prisoners.

 

These men, all volunteers, all in their late teens and: early twenties drop in with instructions to identify themselves as closely as possible with any local natives they meet, share their way of life and enlist their aid as  trackers. Some have interpreted this so literally they have horrified their C0.s by emerging from the jungle with their hair shaven and fringed native fashion, tribal tattoo marks. on their throats, wearing Punan loincloths instead of Jungle greens and carrying blowpipes and poison darts, instead of rifles and ammo belts. That they are doing a superb job in public relations was demonstrated on the next pad we visited. To this pad had come 40 Punans—the shyest and most primitive people in Sarawak. They had come to bid farewell and bring gifts to the four British lads who had lived among them for six weeks—­the first white men they had ever seen. To Tim Ashton (23) from Stockton-on-Tees, they gave a parang, a blowpipe and darts and some tobacco wrapped to palm leaf.

He told me they had shot much game for him with their blowpipes. " Stewed monkey tastes just like mutton," he said. " It's a smashing change from baked beans.”

 

Shelter

He said the Punan hunters became very distressed when they missed a pot shot with a blowpipe. " They blame their ghosts. They're very superstitious. My tracker had his own personal ghost and used to hold long whispered conversations with him at night to allay his fears. His personal ghost was represented by a stick and some leaves and he carried them about with him,"

After completing our Para dropping and collecting mis­sion, we came to the very roof of Sarawak, to a 5,000ft. mountain on the pinnacle of which was perched a little plastic-roofed bamboo shelter,

It contained two young surveyors of the Royal Engineers, who had been winched down on to it from a helicopter to take readings for the first accurate map of Sarawak.

We dropped them their rations for the next two weeks and mail from England

The mountain was Bukit Dema 5212 ft. The young surveyors were Michael Pooley & Brian Houldershaw

All this happened on the last day of a memorable weekend I spent with the most unlikely detachment of the Queen's Navy—the so-called “Pirates of Nanga Gaat."

Their correct title is 845 Naval Air Squadron; their ship is the commando carrier H.M.S. Bulwark. Their base is 150 miles up river, at a junction where the Gaat joins the Rajang. The junction is of the Batang Baleh & Sungai Gaat

 When the emergency began they offered to take. sole responsibility for running a chopper service from Nanga Gaat to move troops and supplies over an area of impenetrable Jungle the size of Wales, They expected to be relieved by the R.A.F. after a few weeks and return. to fleet duties.

 

Popular

They have done such a splendid job they are still there. Theirs is easily the most popular posting, in the Navy. One flying sailor described it to me thus: "I get twice as much flying here in five days The as I get In five months afloat.  The social life's better. Blokes and officers mix and drink together and there's more living space than in a ship."

 Sometimes their relaxed way of life makes the visiting top brass shudder. But it works. :

They have built their own pub. The Anchor Inn, out of bamboo and attap leaves, using a draped orange para­chute as ceiling decor. They wear sarongs off-duty, and necklaces of Iban beads. They swim, fish and water-ski in the broad river flowing close by, and run a small fleet of native longboats which now proudly bear the White Ensign.

 Their main job is still to move troops, Their secondary job is to provide helicopters and fast motor boat transport for any sick Ibans who need hospitalization.

This is an invaluable social service in such terrain. Last year they saved the lives of at least 100 Ibans when cholera epidemic struck 50 miles up river.

 But the service has political as well as social implications. It is cementing faith and friendship for Britain along the whole length of this important river, right up to the watershed which is the Indonesian border.

Just how sincerely and spontaneously friendly the local people are was demonstrated to me the night we lost half the outboard engine of our longboat two-thirds of the way down river at Kapit to pick up stores. Monsoon rain was deluging us. We drew into the bank on sighting the first longhouse. A host of excited children greeted us. These people had never before entertained white people and most of them had never before seen a white woman.

We could not converse, but they needed no words to con very the warmth of their welcome. Small boys were soon squatting at my feet teaching me to inhale their tobacco wrapped in palm leaves.

Everybody seemed genuinely. sorry when. our relief boat arrived.

It is people like these. illiterate, primitive and living in scattered, isolated longhouses, on whom we rely for a large part of our news of Indonesian patrol movements So far few have let us down.