BEING A PLATOON COMMANDER IN BORNEO

Despite two years at Sandhurst I suppose it does cross the mind of many a second lieutenant  that simple question " will soldiers be prepared to follow me ?" It might sound arrogant but I never really felt I had a problem . Several factors were in my favour . By the time my platoon arrived in Borneo I had been a platoon commander for a year. I had the Jungle Warfare Course behind me and having been out six weeks ahead of the battalion my background knowledge was considerable . Also if you exclude the platoon sergeant and the section commanders I was , despite being only twenty one , two to three years older than the average soldier . In Ba Kelalan I do not think the soldiers were scared but perhaps apprehensive about what lay ahead . There was certainly that feeling of isolation but providing you gave positive direction and applied common sense they were more than happy to follow you : sometimes leadership can be easy .

I , however, was to get a shock when my platoon arrived . In Somerset and Hong Konk I had got on well with the CSM , David Groves , who had been in Korea . As he seemed to control new  recruits when they arrived I tended to get the best ones . Also over the space of a year I had managed to get my best corporal promoted to sergeant and wangled into the platoon good section commanders . In my absence the new company commander, John Heggs, had reorganised the whole company . The 5 platoon that  arrived at Ba Kelalan I hardly recognised . The new platoon sergeant had been in Korea and was frankly passed his sell buy date . Dear old Cpl Crutchley, who had been in Korea, was one of those NCOs who would never make sergeant and had been made the permanent orderly corporal assisting the CSM was now in the front line rather than relaxing back in Company HQ . Harry Rankin the platoon sergeant could drive the soldiers nuts . After an airdrop the soldiers would go to him to get new socks : he would give them one each ! He was however very good at field defences (Korean experience ) much more knowledgeable than me so over time we came to an arrangement on who did what. I never let him go on patrol and excluded him from any dealings with the locals . One had to keep ones anxieties to oneself and start from almost scratch building a new team . Most of the soldiers came from Leicestershire but I had some from Southern Ireland and even Glasgow . These were guys who had gone to Leicester to seek employment and ended up in the Army .

Presented with this situation one has just to get on with it and start building up a new team . It did mean assessing the strengths and weakness of those I had. One new addition was a 3" mortar team commanded by a fiery Southern Irish corporal . I also got two good signallers from the signal platoon .What I should also have been given was an Army Catering cook but that never happened .

When my platoon arrived by light aircraft they appeared in a state of shock . Probably about forty eight hours previously they had their last fling downtown in Kowloon with the Chinese Bar Girls and here they were in the middle of nowhere . Some had not been careful and got some STD on their last fling . I kept my initial brief fairly simple like : this is Ba Kelalan ; this is your home ; that is the airstrip ; the people are Muruts ; we get an airdrop each week ; the borer is that way and we have an SAS troop with us .My aim was to pass on as much as I knew in digestible chunks. Some SAS troopers were hovering around I suppose curious to have a look at these virgin soldiers .

The immediate priority was to allocate the soldiers accommodation inside our bamboo hut and then allocate them to trenches so they knew where to go if we got attacked . That done we could have a meal.

 We developed set routines standing to in our trenches

 at dawn and dusk . After stand down in the morning it would be tea with a paludrine tablet , clean weapons and then breakfast . In the evening I would brief everyone on the priorities for the next day . Early on I started some basic language training . I got our interpreter , Musa , to start with the basics : good morning , good evening , please and thank you and counting to ten. The soldiers would then repeat these phrases five times . They quickly picked up berapa kati which means how much .

In that first month our priority was to improve the field defences . I had more soldiers than the Gurkhas so we needed to expand . As the Gurkhas were much shorter than us their trenches were too shallow so we had to dig  deeper but hit a water table so had to build up with sandbags . We had problems with dogs coming through the wire and setting off our trip flares so we built a second fence and laced the gap between with a belt of panji bamboo stakes made by the Border Scouts . Then we linked the trenches with communication trenches . Later when I was reinforced with other sections we built another fort on the other side of the airfield . I suppose after two months we were pretty pleased with our efforts that is till the torrential monsoon rains arrived and played havoc with all our good work .

Being at 3,000ft was much healthier than operating a lower levels especially mangrove swamp . We , however, were not immune from malaria , scrub typhus and leptospirosis . Malaria is passed on by the mosquito and it was essential to take paludrine ; scrub typhus was transmitted by mites and the best thing was to spray the seams of your clothes with mite repellent and leptospirosis is linked to rats so avoid crossing rivers near kampongs . Early on I had one case of scrub typhus and the commanding officer threatened to sack me if I had another . Well in the last five airdrop demands I had asked for mite repellent and never got any. Egged on by CSM Smith (SAS) I sent a snaughty signal back ending " appreciate cooperation ." Bit risky for a second lieutenant but mite repellent came in the next airdrop . I did end up in hospital for a week with a fever but ended up discharging myself and hitching a helicopter ride back to Ba Kelalan .I was at  one stage reinforced by a section from the Drums but when I checked them out the whites of their eyes were yellow . They had jaundice and had to be evacuated .

We of course were a curiosity for the locals . They had got used to the Gurkhas many of whom had picked up Malay but they had not encountered a Brit Bn and had never seen a black soldier . I had just one whose nickname was "Sunny."

The large white parachutes which we accumulated had to be returned if and when a helicopter came in but mail would frequently be dropped with small parachutes  every colour of the rainbow. These were a prize commodity as we made hammocks and sleeping bags out of them . They were also used for barter with the locals . Then an edict came out that these small parachutes must be returned . Shortly after I had a rare visit from the Brigadier . As he landed he was surrounded by children and by far the prettiest girl was wearing a dress which consisted of three different colours of parachute . He just smiled and besides I would have blamed the Gurkhas .

I have mentioned that airdrop day was the highlight of the week but it was not just the fresh rations . Mail from home was a key factor and seeing a copy of the Leicester There were no mobile telephones in those days . I think one of the most difficult things I had to do was tell  corporal his mother had died .

Soldiers adopted pets and we had a pet monkey and a cub clouded leopard . Think the soldiers were convinced the platoon sergeant had trained the monkey to steal cigarettes . The monkey used to tease the leopard till one day he was not fast enough and the leopard got him by the throat.

Not all my schemes worked. Early on we kept hens so we could have fresh eggs but they lived in the rafters and crapped all over the place . I ordered a feast but one , Henrieta , was reprieved execution as she deposited like clockwork an egg on Cpl Collins bed every day.

When the SAS moved out things changed as we had to take on more patrols and I was responsible for gaining intelligence . But more of that later .