Malayan Spymaster Read online

  MALAYAN

  SPYMASTER

  MEMOIRS OF A RUBBER PLANTER,

  BANDIT FIGHTER AND SPY

  BORIS HEMBRY

  Contents

  Preface

  Foreword

  Landfall in Malaya (March 1930)

  Creeping in Johore (April 1930 – December 1930)

  Sojourn in Sumatra (January – December 1931)

  Kedah Days (January 1933 – April 1934)

  Johore Again (August 1934 – February 1935)

  Marriage & Managership (July 1935 – May 1936)

  Kamuning Estate (May 1936 – December 1941)

  Retreat (December 1941)

  Stay Behind Party (January 1942 – February 1942)

  Escape (Mid-February 1942 – Mid-March 1942)

  Marking Time (April 1942 – July 1942)

  V Force (August 1942 – February 1943)

  ISLD (MARCH 1943 – APRIL 1944)

  Home (April 1944 – July 1944)

  Command (August 1944 – December 1945)

  Kamuning Again (December 1945 – September 1947)

  Bandits (September 1947 – January 1951)

  Palm Oil (January 1951 – September 1951)

  Disaster (September 1951 – September 1952)

  Home (September 1952 – December 1955)

  Postscript

  Appendix A: Non-appearance of Spencer Chapman at Tanjong Malim rendezvous

  Appendix B: Fate of Frank Vanrenen and Ronald Graham

  Appendix C: Winning Hearts and Minds

  Glossary

  Biblography

  Illustrations

  Preface

  Malayan Spymaster has been abridged from In Lands Beyond the Sea, memoirs written by Boris Hembry, my father, solely for his family and not for publication. However, we find his reminiscences of life as a planter in Malaya in the late heyday of the British Empire, his activities in clandestine forces in South East Asia during the Second World War, and subsequently his part in the fight against the terrorists during the Communist insurrection in the post-war Malayan Emergency, not only fascinating but a source of great pride.

  His account of the events of June 16th, 1948, at Sungei Siput, Perak State, must be the definitive record of the very beginning of the Emergency. Twice mentioned in despatches, awarded the Netherlands Resistance Memorial Cross and the Colonial Police Medal, the recommendation for the DSO for his work with ISLD (SIS/MI6), during which he not only landed from a submarine on Japanese-occupied Sumatra and Malaya, but also, whilst Head of Malayan Country Section, ISLD, conceived, planned and activated what has been acknowledged as the most successful intelligence-gathering operation in the Malayan theatre of war, was rejected on the grounds that such awards were not made to field officers of the Secret Intelligence Service.

  This book is published at the instigation of Boris Hembry’s family who consider his story deserves a wider readership than first intended. We dedicate it to those expatriates of many generations whose devotion to that beautiful country and its peoples helped to lay the foundations of present-day peaceful and prosperous Malaysia.

  My father died in September 1990.

  John Hembry

  Brillac, France

  Foreword

  During the past 25 years members of my family and several friends have suggested that I should write the story of my life. I have always opposed this suggestion on the grounds both that the events of the years of greatest interest, 1930–1955, have already been fully recorded by historians and professional writers and there was little I could add, and out of laziness.

  Eventually I was persuaded by the argument that my family, and particularly my grandchildren Robin, Timothy and Annabel, in years to come, when they have children of their own, may like to have a first-hand record of the life of their Hembry grandparents.

  It is now over 50 years since I travelled half way across the world to seek my fortune. I failed in that ambition, but found love, lasting friendships, happiness, adventure in times of peace and war, and, naturally, disappointments.

  For over a quarter of a century Jean and I enjoyed a way of life that can never again be experienced. We were privileged to live in Malaya during the last three decades of the British Empire, finally leaving that beautiful country just before it achieved its rightful independence.

  My story is that of an expatriate rubber planter, an ordinary man who was required on occasions, and like so many of my contemporaries, to do some less than ordinary things in extraordinary times.

  I have made no attempt to romanticise or exaggerate. I have relied on memory, promptings from Jean and friends, documents I have retained and, for the period spent in the jungle behind the Japanese lines and my escape from Singapore in early 1942, the notes written during my enforced inactivity at Barrackpore, Calcutta, shortly after the events described. Where I am mistaken, no matter. These memoirs are not for publication.

  After a somewhat reluctant start I found that the memories came flooding back, sometimes after having committed to paper other events of the same period. I have usually been disinclined to retrace my steps.

  I can make no claim to having left any mark on the world. The only memorial to show that I have passed by will be my descendants. On reflection, however, and like countless thousands of my fellow countrymen, I think that I am entitled to feel some pride in having made a contribution, however small, to the victories over the Japanese in the Second World War, and the communist terrorists and their political masters during the equally real war known as the Malayan Emergency.

  What little I have achieved has been with the unfailing love, friendship and encouragement of Jean. I dedicate this story to her, with all my love.

  Boris Hembry

  Canterbury, 1983

  Note

  Although the spellings of many names and places have been changed since Malaysia gained independence, those that were customary during the period described have been used throughout this book. A Glossary of the current spellings of Malay and other words, acronyms, initials, etc can be found at the end of the book in the Glossary.

  Landfall in Malaya (March 1930)

  I stood on the deck of the old cargo ship Achilles one morning in March 1930, a callow, thoughtful youth of 19, watching the dim wet coastline of Cheshire and north Wales disappear. I would see the shores of Britain again only twice in the next 17 years.

  My parents had accompanied me to Liverpool, where we were joined by my brother Bill, and, after dinner at the Adelphi, had found our way to the Blue Funnel Line ship lying in the docks. We arrived on board to be met by a steward who showed me to the twin-berthed cabin that was to be mine for the next 31 days. I was privileged – it was on the port side. Young planters on their way out East for the first time were not usually permitted to travel POSH.

  I was the first passenger on board and was joined shortly by a mining engineer who turned out to be my cabin companion. The steward served us coffee, and soon afterwards I said my goodbyes, but not before my father had tipped the steward three pounds, bidding him to look after me well on the voyage. This the ‘steward’ promised to do. But I never saw him again; he was shore crew and had disembarked before we sailed.

  How was it that I, Boris Hembry, not yet 20, should find myself on a cold March night on board this old tramp steamer bound for Singapore and a rubber estate in Johore state, southern Malaya?

  At Brentwood School I had a friend called Mick Kitchener. By then I had also met the girl I was to marry, Jean Cuthbertson, who went to the nearby Ursuline Convent school. Jean coincidentally also happened to know the whole Kitchener family very well, including Mick’s older brothers, Jack and Dick, who were rubber planting in the Straits Settlements – as Malaya was known then.

&nbs
p; After I had matriculated and left school I had been articled to a firm of surveyors in London. My father had paid 100 guineas for my articles, against which I received a salary of 15 shillings a week – in effect my father’s money very slowly coming back to me. As luck would have it my father had chosen a firm that was on its last legs, so my future was uncertain. However, I did pass the preliminary examination of the Surveyors Institution (now the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) which was to be of great benefit in the years to come. But after 18 months of travelling up to London each day on this miserly wage, I began to doubt the wisdom of my chosen career and to listen with increasing interest to the news of the Kitchener boys in Malaya.

  My father, who had gone out with the Imperial Yeomanry to fight in the Boer War and had stayed on afterwards to seek his fortune, had an old friend from his South African days named Ernest Ridsdell whom we visited from time to time. Ernest had become a very successful accountant in the City and was by then chairman of several Malayan rubber companies. During our conversations I had learned that the salary of a junior assistant on a rubber estate in Malaya was at least 30 pounds a month, with an additional allowance for servants, and free accommodation. Compared to 15 shillings a week that seemed a fortune.

  So early in 1930 I took the plunge. With my father’s encouragement, I approached Ernest and, after several interviews in the City with company secretaries and directors, I was appointed junior assistant on Sungei Plentong Rubber Estate, near Johore Bahru, managed by Ridsdell & Co.

  Including myself there were six passengers on the Achilles: the mining engineer; a Doctor Reed, who was returning to his practice near Tapah; a young Scot, who, like me, was going out for the first time as a junior assistant on an estate; a young man on a round trip to Japan for health reasons; and a manager from the Blue Funnel Line’s City office being transferred to Port Said.

  I remember feeling desperately homesick for the first few days, and this lasted until we turned into the Mediterranean. Except for short visits to aunts in Wales, and a year at boarding school when I was eight, I had never been away from home.

  The Bay of Biscay crossing was smooth. I have crossed the Bay 12 times and only once, in 1947, has that most turbulent of waters lived up to its reputation. My very first sight of Gibraltar to port, with the high sierra behind, and the snow-capped Atlas Mountains in Morocco to starboard, has always remained with me. It was the point in each subsequent voyage out to Malaya when I considered that I had finally left England behind.

  Early one morning, about 10 days out of Liverpool, we arrived at Port Said, and I had my first experience of ‘The East’ – its sights, its sounds and, above all, its smells. The ship was besieged by bumboats, gully-gully men, souvenir sellers and vendors of all descriptions, shouting their wares and services from their boats which lay alongside the ship, whilst we stopped to pick up the pilot to take us to the coaling station.

  Most interesting of all was the coaling of the ship. This was carried out by Tamil coolies, carrying baskets of coal on their head, jogging up the gangways and dumping their loads into the ship’s bunkers. I had been told in London that Tamils were to be the main source of labour on a rubber estate so I watched them at work with great interest. I wondered how such apparently emaciated bodies could possibly lift the very heavy baskets of coal, carry them 50 yards or so, up a gangway and along the deck, with such dexterity, seeming ease, and above all else, such cheerfulness, for hours on end. I was, of course, later to realise that what I took for emaciation was in fact wiriness, and the cheerfulness was only appreciation for being employed at all, and thus being able to eat and to feed their families. After a quarter of a century of employing many nationalities I unhesitatingly place the Tamils, who originate from the Madras area of India, near the top of the list for reliability and loyalty.

  We spent some time in Port Said so were able to stretch our legs on dry land, and to visit that great emporium Simon Artz, known to many generations of travellers going out East. It was Harrods set at one of the world’s great crossroads. One could kit oneself out with anything and everything needed for the deserts of the Middle East, for Africa, India and the Far East and, for those returning from ‘lands beyond the sea’, for Europe. Many old Eastern hands would leave their winter-weight clothes in storage at Simon Artz for collection on their return journey.

  We journeyed through the Suez Canal in convoy. It seemed very strange to be, quite literally, sailing along in the desert, passing palm trees, camels, Egyptians riding donkeys, villages, all only within a few yards of the ship. In Lake Timsah, about halfway down the canal, we stopped to allow a northbound convoy to pass. Looking over the rail and up at a great P&O liner, homeward bound, certainly made me realise the difference in our status. But, in retrospect, I would not have changed places for my first trip out to the Orient.

  On leaving the canal we sailed into a sandstorm. Only those who have actually experienced this phenomenon can appreciate quite what this means. Sand penetrates everywhere and everything. There is no movement of air. It becomes unbearably hot, for there was no air conditioning in those days. The Chinese stokers were collapsing in the engine room and being brought up on deck to recover. The Captain did the only possible thing in the circumstances and reversed course, to sail into what little wind there was. After nearly two days the sandstorm abated and we resumed our southerly course and eventually, much to the relief of passengers and crew alike, turned into the Indian Ocean.

  There was very little to do on board except to read and to play cards and deck games. These included the odd game of cricket, usually the passengers versus the crew. The balls were of rope, made by the bosun. My brother Bill had been presented with a cricket bat, bought from Jack Hobbs’ shop in Fleet Street, and autographed by the Master. Bill had given up cricket in favour of golf (he was to play in the Amateur Championship on numerous occasions, and played off scratch when nearly 70 years of age!) and had passed on the bat to me. It was the only one on board. One day one of the officers took a mighty swipe at the ball and the bat slipped out of his sweaty hands and flew overboard. I hoped that it would eventually be washed up on Indian shores, where it would be appreciated for what it was, rather than on African or Arabian, where it would most probably be used as firewood.

  Before leaving England I had been given a book of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, which I enjoyed very much as an introduction to the Far East, at least as seen through what I soon learned to be the author’s somewhat jaundiced eyes. Probably his most famous story, ‘The Letter’, was based on fact, but concerned the wife of a schoolmaster in Kuala Lumpur and a mining engineer, not a planter. I read a lot as the ship had a very good library. I read Joseph Conrad’s Far East stories with particular fascination and much enjoyment, although realising that they were set at the end of the previous century and that times had changed, at least on the Malay Peninsula.

  The voyage across the Indian Ocean was uneventful, except for the loss of my precious cricket bat, and my first sightings of the ever-present flying fish, sharks and whales. I particularly remember the starry tropical nights, little realising that I was to experience the same sense of wonderment and awe, in these same waters, some 13 years later, from the conning tower of a submarine.

  To arrive at Penang by sea in the early morning must be one of travel’s most magical experiences. The coastline is rocky and the jungle comes down to the shore, until one rounds the point at Batu Feringgi and the beautiful beaches come into view. One catches sight of Penang Peak, shrouded in mist, rising to 2,000 feet, in the middle of the island. The mainland is on the port side, with Kedah Peak, over 4,000 feet high, silhouetted against the rising sun and the gathering rain clouds. As the ship makes its way slowly through the roads towards the anchorage opposite Georgetown, larger buildings appear – the E&O Hotel, the Penang Club, the Municipal Buildings, the station clock tower, and the Francis Light Memorial. Even today Penang is considered the ‘Pearl of the Orient’. Just imagine what it must ha
ve been like 60 years ago.

  The roads were full of shipping: liners belonging to P&O, Blue Funnel, BI (British India) and Orient Lines, large cargo vessels, the smaller Straits Steamship coasters and, of course, scores of junks and sampans; even dhows from Oman. Except for a Dutch liner bound for the Dutch East Indies and the monthly Portuguese ship to Macao, nearly all would be flying the Red Ensign.

  The Achilles dropped anchor and we were taken ashore by launch. The mining engineer departed for Ipoh and Dr Reed took charge of us remaining passengers, all first-timers to the East. My first call ashore was to Ridsdell’s agents, McAuliffe, Davis & Hope – I was to learn later that they were known, with good reason, as McAwful, Davis & No Bloody Hope. Here I met Jock Reid, who ran the estates side of McAuliffes. McAuliffes were accountants. The firm was actually owned by the three Grummitt brothers, nicknamed, again with some justification, Grummitt, Grabbitt and Keepitt.

  I should explain that the majority of European-owned rubber estates in Malaya at that time were individual companies, both private and public, and they employed agents – other companies such as Guthrie’s, Sime Darby and Ridsdells – to manage them. They all had their own boards of directors and company secretaries in the City to whom the managing agents were responsible. Of course, the major tyre companies, for example Dunlop and Firestone, also owned estates, as did several Continental European companies, such as SOCFIN (Société Financière des Caoutchoucs).

  In those days the Straits Settlements were divided into three kinds of territories. Singapore, Malacca, Penang and Province Wellesley were Crown Colonies. Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang were Federated Malay States, whilst Johore, Kedah, Trengganu, Kelantan and Perlis were Unfederated Malay States. All the Malay States had sultans as titular rulers, each with a British-appointed mentri besar or adviser to the Sultan – in effect the prime minister.