Anniversary Talks
Malayan Emergency, 16 June 1948
Presented
by Dr Chris Clark on Monday, 16 June 2003 beside the Roll of Honour at
the Memorial.
Transcript
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Chris Clark from the Military History Section here at the Memorial, and it is my privilege to be joining you today in this brief commemoration of the part played by Australians in the Malayan Emergency. Although little heard or known about these days, this was a campaign fought in the period immediately after the Second World War. It was a low-level but nasty conflict, which lasted for twelve years. It began fifty-five years ago today, on 16 June 1948, when three English managers of rubber estates at Sungei Siput, in northern Perak State, were seized by a squad of terrorists and machine-gunned to death. Two days later a state of emergency was declared in Perak and parts of Johore. This was extended over the whole of Malaya the next day, and the Government of Singapore followed suit on 24 June. The Emergency was not formally lifted until 31 July 1960.
Australia’s involvement was always only comparatively minor, which befitted the fact that it was never really our war to begin with. The enemy in this case were about 4,500 guerrillas of the Malayan Communist Party, an organisation with its roots mainly in Malaya’s two-million-strong Chinese community despite renaming itself the “Malayan Races Liberation Army” in 1949. The communists’ aimed to overthrow the British colonial government, which had been reinstalled after the surrender of Japan in 1945, and to replace it with a government allied to the communist regime which was then on the verge of winning power in China. Although primarily an anti-colonial struggle – of a type which Australia had actually supported in Indonesia when the Dutch attempted to reclaim their East Indies empire – it was the communist allegiance of the guerrillas, as much as our own strong ties to Britain in that period, which drew us in. For Australia had unreservedly set its feet in the anti-communist camp during the Cold War confrontation, between the Western Alliance led by the United States and the grouping of communist countries led by the Soviet Union, which was taking shape at that time.
Britain began pressing Australia for a direct contribution of military assistance to Malaya, leading to a request on 21 April 1950 for a Royal Australian Air Force transport unit and a flight or squadron of bomber aircraft. The government led by R. G. Menzies had recently taken office, and regarded the preservation of British authority in Malaya as “vital to Australia’s security”. On 19 May Cabinet agreed to send eight C-47 Dakotas of No.38 Squadron, and on 27 June that same year – just two days after the start of the Korean War – decided to also send six four-engined Lincoln heavy bombers of No.1 Squadron.
For the next eight years, until July 1958, the Lincolns operated from Tengah airfield on the western side of Singapore Island. From there, the RAAF crews carried out night and day bombing missions aimed at destroying jungle hideouts and base camps used by the communist terrorists, or “CTs” as they were dubbed. Nearly 4,000 sorties were flown by the Australians, who dropped 85 per cent of the 35,000 tonnes of bombs used during the whole period of the Emergency. The usefulness of this effort would later be strongly questioned, since it appears that no more than 23 terrorists were killed in these raids – at least fourteen of these in a single strike on 21 February 1956. Nonetheless there are good grounds for believing that the bombing did serve a useful purpose by harassing the CTs and keeping them on the move, steadily causing them to become demoralised, and also increasing the chances of them stumbling into prepared ambushes and road blocks set up by the security forces.
In the same period, the RAAF’s Dakota transports had an equally important – though less offensive – role to perform, one which had to be achieved with only four aircraft after half the squadron was withdrawn in November 1950 to meet the needs of Australian forces in Korea. Flying from Changi airfield on the eastern side of Singapore, then from Kuala Lumpur between April 1951 and July 1952, No.38 Squadron moved cargo, troops and other passengers on scheduled and special missions, and also carried out supply drops. Transport planes were an essential part of the strategy adopted to defeat the communist insurrection, which required that police and army patrols occupied jungle and village areas throughout the Malay Peninsula on a semi-permanent basis. It was aircraft which positioned these patrols, with their equipment, and then kept them resupplied. RAAF airlift crews also flew leaflet-dropping missions urging the CTs to surrender, a tactic which was reportedly very successful. By the time the remaining Dakotas and crews were withdrawn in November 1952, the squadron had flown more than two million kilometres, carried more than 17,000 passengers along with some 2,000 tonnes of freight, dropped about 800 tonnes of stores, and evacuated 326 wounded men.
Because the campaign in Malaya involved the gradual wearing down of a relatively small and dispersed force of guerrillas, the Emergency was a sideshow for much of its first five years to the more ferocious war occurring in Korea. When the conflict in that theatre ended in mid-1953, however, plans were made for moving the forces thus released for use against the communist uprising in Malaya. Australia was asked to join in providing forces for a British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve, designed to deter or counter further communist aggression in defence of the recently-created South-East Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO) and to preserve British interests in the region. In April 1955 Australia announced its willingness to commit forces to the reserve, including an infantry battalion of about 800 men plus elements of supporting arms, naval units and an air contingent of increased size. At the same time, the Australian government agreed to those forces being used in offensive operations associated with the Malayan Emergency.
These arrangements eventually saw the RAAF force in Malaya comprise three combat squadrons, with the Lincolns replaced by a squadron of Canberra jet bombers in July 1958 and complemented by two squadrons of Sabre jet fighters by early 1959. By then, of course, the Emergency was in its final stages and activity was at a very low level. Before this, several Royal Australian Navy ships which were assigned to the Far East Strategic Reserve had also joined the fight against the communists. In September 1956 HMAS Anzac shelled suspected CT positions while off the east coast of Johore, an effort repeated on 22 January 1957 by HMAS Queenborough and HMAS Quickmatch.
The more immediate impact of Australia’s decision to commit to the Reserve involved the addition of ground forces to the effort to defeat communist terrorism. The first Australian battalion was 2 RAR, which arrived in Malaya in October 1955. When it finished its two-year tour of duty in October 1957, it was replaced by 3 RAR, which in its turn was succeeded by 1 RAR in October 1959. These units experienced reducing levels of communist activity, though the business of mounting patrols and ambushes continued to the last. In fact, anti-CT operations were continued by the battalions assigned to the Reserve until as late as 1963 – well after the Emergency was said to be over.
Because it arrived when there was still as active war to fight, 2 RAR saw more of the enemy than any other Australian unit, and had seven men killed although not all were in combat. Most notable among its clashes with the CTs was an action on 25 June 1956, when one of its patrols was ambushed alongside the Sungei Siput water pipeline and suffered three men killed, for the lives of two terrorists. During its tour, 3 RAR lost four soldiers, none as a result of enemy action, but at least it still had some brushes with the enemy even though the campaign was entering its final clearing-up phase. This battalion’s most significant success came on 20 November 1958, when a jungle camp was discovered and attacked, with three of the camp’s occupants being killed. One of the terrorist dead was identified as a member of the group which carried out the roadside ambush in which the British high commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, was assassinated seven years earlier. By comparison, 1 RAR had no contacts with the enemy and hence suffered no battlefield casualties. In addition to the infantry, however, the Australian Army provided artillery, engineering and signals units, which also had losses. All told, 51 Australian servicemen died in Malaya, although many of these deaths were due to illness, accidents and other causes. Only 15 deaths were as a direct result of enemy action.
It is recorded that the Emergency caused some 12,000 deaths, so that Australia’s losses were but a small fraction of the overall cost. These figures do nothing to express what the operations of the Emergency meant for the several thousand Australians who were involved, among the 50,000 British and other overseas troops who helped fight the campaign. Because operations were conducted mainly at platoon level, this was a conflict which placed great demands on ordinary soldiers. As one participant later wrote: “The task in Malaya was always arduous and often unexciting; our platoons spent long hours on patrol or ambushing in trying climatic conditions without a sign of the enemy to reward them. It was a great test of professionalism…” The lessons learnt in Malaya, regarding the importance of training, field discipline, bushcraft and individual skills, and of good leadership, were to become especially important to our Army when, within a short space of years, Australian forces became committed to a new struggle in Vietnam.
Today, we pay a special tribute to the 27 Army members and nine RAAF men whose names are here recorded on the Roll of Honour, in the alcove at the top of the stairs, for having paid the supreme sacrifice while on active service during the Malayan Emergency.
Please remain standing for the playing of the Last Post.
