Page 89 - History of War - Issue 01-14

They wrapped their tommy guns in tape so
that they would not gleam in the moonlight. They
brushed their battledress with mud to break Mary Evans
up its outline, and ran past one another to
make sure nothing caught the light or rattled.
They went through cramp-inducing practice to
walk heel-fi rst on hard ground, and toe-fi rst
on soft, to minimise the sound of each step.
Faces blackened, bodies camoufl aged, they
found they could pass within ten yards or so
of villagers without being spotted. When a
Tamil or Malay looked directly at them and
spotted their ghostly fi gures, he sometimes took
them for spirits and rushed off with a scream.
The mission begins
By 3 February, they were ready. The ambush sites
were at least fi ve miles from the kongsihouse.
The fi rst target was a bridge on the railway line
half a mile south of Tanjong Malim station. The
station itself was on the main road half a mile
or so from the town. It would take the Japanese
about 20 minutes to react with troops from the
town garrison, although there was always the
danger that Freddy and his team might run into
a patrol that was already out and active.
The bridge was a three-hour walk from the
camp. They crossed the Bernam river into the
Escot Estate as soon as it was dark, then
followed the edge of the estate road towards
the railway, detouring into the rubber when they
passed the coolie lines, the long wood-and-brick
hutments where the tappers were housed.
The dynamiters’ dream, Freddy said, was
“to cause the head-on collision of two trains,
both full of troops, in a tunnel”. There were no
tunnels here. The bridge he’d chosen carried the
line over a river. It was one of the heavier types
of Malay Railways’ suspended girder bridges,
set in stone abutments. Freddy and his team
could carry no more than 100lb of plastic high
explosives between the three of them, and that
would not be enough to bring the bridge down.
The best Freddy could do was to put 30lb of
explosives in the middle of the track on the north
side of the bridge, while Sartin connected the
charge to a pressure switch under the rail. The
weight of a train would set it off. Freddy hoped
that the engine would crash into the side of the
bridge and topple the structure into the river.
THE DYNAMITERS’ DREAM

WAS “TO CAUSE THE HEAD-ON Malayan jungle, preparing
British troops train in the
COLLISION OF TWO TRAINS, to defend the territory from
invading Japanese forces.
FULL OF TROOPS, IN A TUNNEL” Eventually, they were forced

to flee to Singapore
They walked on to a second bridge of solid “Our excitement was so great that we could done much damage to the bridge. The Japanese
masonry that carried the line over the main scarcely breathe,” Freddy recalled. Yard by yard, had sent patrols out through the kampongs south
road. They set a series of 5lb charges along with agonising slowness, its “clanking and of the town to look for them, arresting Chinese
the line, to be detonated by time pencils. chugging and wheezing” drew closer. He had as they went. Freddy and the stay-behind parties
When they squeezed the copper pencil, a phial convinced himself that the pressure switch was were not the only resistance to the Japanese
of acid inside it would break open and begin to a dud when a sudden blinding light and crash in Malaya. The Chinese trained at 101 STS [a
eat through a fi ne wire. When the wire snapped, split the night and echoed off the hills. Bits of warfare school in Singapore], and their guerrilla
it would free a spring that would strike a metal hissed into the air and fell with thuds bands – both Kuomintang (nationalist) and
percussion cap, setting off the fuse. The delay hundreds of yards from the explosion. Shouting communist – were still at large. Most Chinese
varied from 30 minutes to 24 hours, dictated mingled with the hiss of escaping steam. The were sympathetic to the guerrillas, and many
by the thickness of the wire. After laying the three men resisted the urge to slip back and risked torture and hanging by the Kempeitai
fi rst night’s ration of explosives, Freddy climbed look at their handiwork, instead speeding back (Japanese military police) to help them.
a telegraph pole along the track, and cut the through the dark plantation to their camp. Freddy had asked Leu Kim to put them in
lines with a pair of pliers. They heard two more explosions as they went. touch with the guerrillas. Two young communists
As they left the track and regained the rubber, Leu Kim told them next day that the train had – smartly dressed, on bicycles – duly came to
they heard a train leave Tanjong Malim station. run off the line and was wrecked, but had not the kongsihouse. They agreed that they all had
HISTORY WAR 89
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