Hunting and the enemy in Modern Counterinsurgency: Malayan developments

Introduction

As the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) was ongoing, a number of military memoirs were published which gave some insight into its prosecution on the ground. These included Anthony Crockett, Green Beret, Red Star (1954); M.C.A. Henniker, Red Shadow Over Malaya (1955); Oliver Crawford, The Door Marked Malaya (1958); Richard Miers, Shoot to Kill (1959) and J.W.G. Moran, Spearhead in Malaya (1959). In his paper ‘The Military Memoir in British Imperial Culture: The Case of Malaya’ (1994), John Newsinger wrote: ‘Inevitably, a number of these accounts explicitly portray the conflict as a hunt for a particularly dangerous kind of game.’¹ He argues that: ‘These hunting analogies obviously derive from the importance of blood sports within British upper-class culture both at home and throughout the Empire.’² And that: ‘They also reflect the disparity between the two sides in the conflict, the inability of the guerillas to hit back effectively against British troops except under the most favorable conditions.’³

In Terrorism, InsurDarwinism, dian-English Literature, 1830-1947, (2013), Alex Tickell noted that the blood sports narrative had long been associated with the practice of counterinsurgency, being evidenced in India a century earlier as the British suppressed rebellion there.⁴ Robert H. MacDonald, in The Language of Empire: Myths and Metaphors of Popular Imperialism, 1880-1918 (1994), linked the hunting metaphor to imperial narratives of warfare through training, suggesting it was the natural way for British officers to conceptualize the small wars of Empire: ‘To officers encouraged to believe that the best training for war was the field, the story of the hunt was a natural analogue.’⁵ John M. Mackenzie (1989) has argued that Scouting for Boys, by Robert Baden-Powell, employed hunting terminology to socialize Britain’s youth for its imperial enterprise.⁶ He goes on to argue that the hunt itself played into ideas about Social Darwinism, ‘the fittest were created through the rugged individualism of the Hunt.’⁷

Joanna Bourke (1999) has suggested that the hunting metaphor was not specific to the jungle or to counterinsurgency but instead a recurring description of warfare. The metaphor, Bourke has suggested, allowed a certain degree of emotional distancing.’⁸ Simon Harrison has given an anthropological reading of the hunting metaphor in his book Dark Trophies: Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War (2014). Harrison writes that in nineteenth and twentieth-century colonialism, the white hunter was a ‘liminal figure’ who inhabited a ‘borderland between civilization and savagery, and between humanity and the animal realm’. He writes that hunting was at once a ‘civilizing’ and ‘natural’ activity, requiring strategy and intellect whilst also being a behavior shared with animals.⁹ The relationship between hunter and hunted was ‘a reduced and attenuated form of sociality.’ The hunting metaphor represented the dehumanization of the hunted and the desocialization of the hunter.¹⁰

Utilizing a series of reports produced by the Far East Land Forces Training Centre in the opening years of the Malayan Emergency, this paper will argue that the hunting analogy was employed to fashion the self-identity of service personnel in line with the prescribed behavior being taught there.

This paper will also contribute to a further body of literature that has emerged in relation to the Malayan Emergency, namely, the literature on the use of force. According to the practitioner-scholar of counterinsurgency in Malaya, Sir Robert Thompson, in Defeating Communist Insurgency (1966), the military was to be used to hold ground and allow time for a political solution to take place in Malaya. Under this ethos, the use of violence had to be limited to avoid alienating the civilian population and increasing support for the insurgency.¹¹ In British Counterinsurgency 1919-1960 (1990), Thomas Mockaitis contended that where the principle of minimum force was contravened in Malaya, brutality was confined to the chaotic opening months of insurgency and was ‘never a matter of policy.’¹²  

Conversely, in his revisionist paper ‘“A Very Salutary Effect”: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949’ (2009), Huw Bennett puts forward the thesis that British acts of brutality, notably in the form of civilian casualties and the destruction of property, were not isolated accidents born of disorganization but rather came to be exploited by the security forces for operational gain. Huw Bennett’s thesis rests in part on what he terms the ‘highly permissive Emergency Regulations,’ a set of orders the leniency of which gave tacit approval to the use of violence in the opening years of the Emergency.¹³

In The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948–1960 (1975), Anthony Short wrote that many of the incident reports at the beginning of the Emergency recorded that men were shot while running away. He also noted that incriminating evidence was rarely found.¹⁴ Short’s own experiences on National Service in Malaya in 1948-9 enabled him to articulate the soldiers’ perpetual dilemma in the counterinsurgency role:

With incidents or information pointing unmistakably to the presence of guerrillas in a particular area, how, in the few seconds of confusion when figures are running from huts into jungle does one decide to open fire or not? If one does not, the best that can happen is that a possible enemy might escape. With a small patrol, what is equally likely is that it will itself be attacked if it has, in fact, succeeded in surprising a guerrilla group. But, unless they are uniformed or obviously armed, there is no guarantee that the people who are running are guerrillas or wanted criminals rather than very frightened men and women who may or may not be willing or unwilling guerrilla supporters.¹⁵

Thomas Mockaitis has also examined the soldier’s dilemma from an academic viewpoint. Soldiers were expected to act in accordance with the common law principle of minimum force when acting in aid of the civil power. This meant they were subject to legal action should they exceed what was the necessary amount of force. Conversely, a soldier could be questioned if not subjected to disciplinary procedures should they fail to apply sufficient force to suppress the given situation.¹⁶

For a more empirical realization of the soldier’s dilemma, we can turn back to Huw Bennett’s article. Between July 1948 and April 1949, 77 persons were killed trying to escape, versus the seven wounded, and an additional 30 captured in the same endeavor. He also emphasized the probability that more incidents went unrecorded.¹⁷ Thomas Mockaitis recognized Bennett’s suggestion that the figures were incomplete, meaning further incidents may have gone unrecorded, but also made the point that not all of those killed were innocent civilians.¹⁸ Again utilizing the reports produced by the Far East Land Forces Training Centre in the opening years of the Malayan Emergency, along with a range of published and unpublished letters, diaries, and memoirs held at the Imperial War Museum, this article will show that the training primed soldiers to use force.

 Training during the Second World War

 A technical memorandum from the Directorate of Army Psychiatry stated that experienced soldiers ‘are not prey to the anxiety which results from uncertainty and unreal exaggeration of what war is like.’ Advanced training, as stated in the memorandum, must be ‘designed, not to frighten men, but to give them an opportunity to realize the emptiness of much of their fear. Each man’s mental picture of war should become one of attack with a reasonable chance of success.’¹⁹ In short, the memorandum called for ‘Offensive spirit,’ which it defined as having ‘an active determination to be better trained and to have more speed, initiative, ingenuity and persistence than the enemy.’²⁰ It was language that drew on a long history of use within the British Army. Simon Innes-Robbins, for example, has identified the importance that British Generals placed on the concept during the First World War, suggesting that the generalship expected ‘offensive spirit’, even over technique, to be the decisive factor on the Western Front.²¹ By 1918, this had changed, as the generals had realized that the will to fight had to be allied with the skill to fight, and fresh impetus was placed on training the British infantryman.²²

During the Second World War, the jungle necessitated changes to the tactics and doctrine used in Europe and North Africa.²³ The military training pamphlets were an evolving set of instructions compiled from the growing experience of jungle warfare. The aim was the widespread dissemination of these lessons. The Jungle Book, a prominent example, was mass-produced, with forty-five thousand copies being distributed to both Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers. The lessons were made comprehensible by employing an accessible format and illustrations.²⁴ In Burma, R. F. Tredgold, Adviser in Psychiatry to Southern Army, India Command, noted that psychiatrists were involved in debunking fears about the superiority of Japanese forces in the jungle. As Tredgold explained: ‘Two extravagant attitudes were noted in 1943-that the Jap was a superman, and that he was undersized. Both were “debunked” – by intelligent instruction in which the divisional psychiatrists played their part.’²⁵ The training pamphlets produced in the Far East both reflected and sought to overcome this fear. While recognizing a certain resilience in their adversary, the pamphlets emphasized that they could be defeated. Perhaps the most virulent example of this can be found in Preparation For Warfare in the Far East (1945), in which then Lieutenant-General Sir William Slim describes the Japanese as tough but stupid insects. To defeat this adversary, Slim emphasized individual and small group training over more complicated larger exercises: ‘We have to produce a tough, self-reliant hunter, who is out to get up to his enemy and kill him.’²⁶ Slim elaborated on this in his postwar memoir Defeat into Victory (1956). ‘We had to first get the feel through the army that it was we who were hunting the Jap, not he us.’ This meant patrols, not large-scale engagements. These patrols fed a sense of competition when successful and whetted the ‘hunter’s appetite’ when unsuccessful.²⁷ The pamphlet, and specifically Slim’s contribution, would later become recommended reading at the FTC. His language would also find its way into a dedicated training manual. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya advanced the concept of the ideal junior leader as ‘a mentally tough, self reliant hunter’.²⁸

Walter Walker and Jungle Warfare Training during the Malayan Emergency

As a State of Emergency was declared in Malaya the task of preparing forces to conduct jungle operations was taken up by Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Walker. Walker, a veteran of the Burmese jungles, was first tasked with the training of Ferret Force.²⁹ The Ferret groups were led by a collection of volunteers who were veterans of Force 136 and the Chindits. These were highly motivated individuals who intended to beat the bandits at their own game and on their own ground.³⁰ Walker’s methods were criticized from within this group for being over-planned and rehearsed. In response, Walker later wrote that the Ferret commanders were ‘amateur soldiers [who] did not take favorably to the professional jungle warfare tactics.’³¹ In training then, Walker attempted to professionalize, or standardize, their tactics. To achieve this, he had to reign in their over-confidence, in one instance devising an ambush to underline their vulnerability in the jungle and the inferiority of their own tactics.³²

Ferret Force was a short-lived experiment. With the insurgents mostly around the jungle’s edge, the deep jungle operations of Ferret Force were premature.³³ By September 1948, Major General Boucher had written to one of its leaders, John Davis, explaining his intention to disband the Ferret groups and instead to replace them with a Ferret Company incorporated into every battalion. Boucher stated his intention to retain ex-members where possible and to employ others as advisors. He also mentioned that the new Jungle Warfare School would be in charge of training incoming instructors as well as the proposed Ferret companies.³⁴ Davis’s terse response was that this new role would not attract new recruits, they would be subsumed by the army, be unable to source supplies, and unable to perform what is essentially a police job.³⁵ To this, Richard Broome, another Ferret group leader, added that the organizational and rank structure of the Army would not lend itself to being broken down into small groups and that the best application of local knowledge is a self-contained force.³⁶

Broome authored a later report, which again focused on the use of intelligence-led operations but this time in conjunction with regular forces. He also emphasized that Ferret Force was not superior to Regular Forces when it came to fighting what he called ‘bandits.’³⁷ Reinforcements with no jungle warfare experience were arriving.³⁸ This message was more suitable for incoming service personnel. On receiving a copy Major General Boucher informed Broome that he would be circulating copies to commanders across FARELF and to the OC of the Jungle Warfare School and perhaps even to the press.³⁹ On the face of it, Boucher was keen to retain their accumulated knowledge, but the movement of personnel from Ferret Force to the Jungle Warfare School also signaled a shift toward regular forces and his intent to retain greater control of the forces under his command. The correspondence highlighted the challenge of training personnel for counterinsurgency. An accumulated body of experience had suggested that irregular forces, led by typically independent, self-motivated individuals, were effective. The challenge, then, would be to train regular forces to think and behave like irregulars.

In 1948, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Walker was ordered to set up a school to train soldiers in jungle warfare. This was significant as, prior to its foundation, soldiers received no dedicated preparatory training for this deployment. Under the more formal name of the Far East Land Forces Training Centre (FTC), the Jungle Warfare School was established in an abandoned ‘lunatic asylum’ in Johore at the southern end of the Malay peninsula.⁴⁰ Walker, who had been in charge of training Gurkhas in Burma, thought that training was directed toward conventional war in Europe as a result of the Soviet threat, and that the jungle warfare lessons of the Second World War had been forgotten and would have to be relearned.⁴¹ To this end, he revivified a body of thought that had been codified within the literature that had emerged from the Far East. Much of the knowledge was transferred directly over from that gained during the war through Walker’s use of Military Training Pamphlets.⁴² As one of the early reports emanating from the FTC noted: ‘The principles advocated in the above pamphlets have been embodied in the precis which are issued by this Trg Centre to all students attending Jungle Warfare Courses.’⁴³

In the quarterly reports of the school, Walker emphasized that most Officers and NCOs had little tactical knowledge of jungle warfare and those with some experience had developed bad practice. Training for Walker then was more important than experience.⁴⁴ While at the FTC, officers and NCOs became schooled on the combat drills needed to conduct and lead operations. The training was designed to remove ‘indecision’ and ‘shyness’ in using weapons. Interactive ranges were used, which also lent realism to the training and primed soldiers to the use of force.⁴⁵ The wider objective of the course was the transmission of knowledge. The training would filter through the ranks as students returned to their units.⁴⁶ Commanding Officer Conferences were set up, and visits arranged to further ‘spread the gospel’.⁴⁷ Walker was conscious of both the importance of language and his use of it. In Burma, he had published ‘golden rules’ in his orders and posted them on notice boards, so that these rules ‘stuck in the minds of the men’. In a later interview, he commented that ‘The words I used, the phrases I used, were designed to try and instill in my men a fighting spirit that they must kill every single Jap that they encountered. … It was a code of conduct.’⁴⁸

For Walker, back at the FTC, there was a lack of ‘offensive spirit’.⁴⁹ What he needed then was a narrative that instilled behavior that was conducive to success and reinforced the lessons of the Jungle Warfare School in its students. Instead of ‘jungle bashing’ what was needed was ‘to move as if hunting’.⁵⁰ The general impression Walker got was that ‘the average NCO has little imagination or powers of concentration.’⁵¹He was frustrated by the language of the British Other Ranks and sought to instill in them a terminology which reflected his attempt to professionalize training and their behavior: ‘An unfortunate term called “jungle bashing” has crept in. The qualities required of the real jungle fighter are not those of the elephant but rather of the poacher, gangster and cat-burglar.’⁵² It was a narrative that Walker felt accurately described the practice of counterinsurgency as he redeployed it in his later writing, both in a forward to a regimental history, and in his autobiography in reference to British involvement in the Borneo confrontation.⁵³

Guiding Force: Booklets, Manuals and Instructions in Malaya, 1948-1952

In June 1949, a revised Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of The Civil Power booklet made clear that ‘no more force shall be applied than the situation demands.’⁵⁴ The booklet was primarily aimed at guiding troops who were confronted with violent protests as opposed to armed insurrection but also reflected the exigencies of the postwar counterinsurgencies. General Sir Neil Ritchie stated in his September 1949 report that lessons had been drawn from the Malayan Emergency, submitted to the War Office, and included in the revised Imperial Policing and Duties In Aid of The Civil Power booklet (June 1949).⁵⁵ Good discipline was thought to be derived from a clear and ‘un-biased explanation’ of the conditions and objectives: ‘The more troops understand what they are doing and why, the better will be their discipline and morale.’⁵⁶  By June 1949 then, there was some recognition that operations in aid of the civil power and the use of force required proper guidance.

Further guidance on acting in aid of the civil power, within the bounds of the Emergency Regulations, did intermittently appear. In August 1948, for example, guidance came from Headquarters Malaya Command as formal instructions which stated that no more force than is necessary should be used to effect an arrest. If, however, the person appeared to be or was accused of carrying firearms, then service personnel were entitled to shoot, and, the instructions stated, it was their duty to do so. The assurance was given that if caution was exercised and the instructions followed, service personnel would not be prosecuted in the event of accidental civilian casualties. The instructions came with a covering letter that recounted an incident in which soldiers withheld fire because of ‘doubt’ and were later fired upon by those who had been allowed to escape.⁵⁷ As Karl Hack has observed, ‘the instructions attempted to encourage aggressive action and a willingness to make snap judgements about who was consorting with bandits, while straining to remain technically within ER limitations. Given the document’s internal tensions, the message that may have stood out most for soldiers was that, provided they could claim they were following these orders, they would not be prosecuted.’⁵⁸

Later Emergency Regulations arguably sought to clarify and delimit the use of force. Emergency Regulation 27A of January 1949, for example, allowed weapons to be used when affecting an arrest or preventing an escape but insisted that weapons could be used only after calling ‘in a loud voice’ and giving ‘reasonable’ opportunity to stop and submit to arrest.⁵⁹ Nevertheless, in January 1949 the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney gave the following, much-quoted, statement: ‘[I]t is most important that police and soldiers, who are not saints, should not get the impression that every small mistake is going to be the subject of a public enquiry or that it is better to do nothing at all than to do the wrong thing quickly.’⁶⁰ While the Emergency Regulations, along with instructions, did limit the use of force, the instructions and the covering letter also suggested that action was preferable to inaction. It was a message that appeared to do little to moderate the lessons being instilled in service personnel at FTC.

The counterinsurgency in Malaya demanded its own training pamphlet then. Walter Walker duly mapped out the teachings of the FTC, and lessons of the early years, in The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM). This, however, did not become available until 1952. The manual re-emphasized the primacy of training over experience and stated that courses should not stop, even in the face of increased operations.⁶¹ This point may have been in reference to the suspension of the FTC in the final quarter of 1949 when no courses were held there due to a building intensity in counterinsurgency operations.⁶² It was primarily a technical manual laying out in a schematic fashion the mechanics of conducting patrols and ambushes in the jungle, but it also included an introduction that gave some idea of the country, people, and reasons behind the conflict. Importantly, the manual included a section on the Brigg’s Plan, which in 1950 had changed the course of the Emergency, and emphasized that the Army was being used in support of the police.⁶³ In this way, the manual emphasized the dual role which service personnel would be expected to perform: ‘The primary role of the Army is to seek out and destroy CT in the jungle and on its fringes.’ noted ATOM. ‘The secondary role of the Army is that of supporting the Federal Police in the populated areas by helping to enforce food denial measures, curfews, etc.’⁶⁴ These measures were more fully set out within a section on the Emergency Regulations, supplemented by instructions on how to conduct searches.⁶⁵

Codifying the lessons of the FTC and the Emergency into a manual meant ATOM became a preparatory text for regiments being deployed to Malaya. One senior officer who later attempted to bring the lessons of Malaya to his troops stationed in Germany also saw the utility of acquiring the manual as early as possible. Brigadier J.L. Brind, commanding officer of the 1^st Battalion Somerset Regiment in Malaya from 1952 to 1954, wanted copies before departure: ‘At that time the excellent pamphlet of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya had not reached us. Copies had been promised, but we only received them just before we sailed.’⁶⁶ Copies of the manual were also requested by the King’s African Rifles, who were preparing to leave Kenya for Malaya. 14 copies, along with some maps, were sent in August 1953.⁶⁷ The small number of copies available, along with its schematic format, however, meant the manual needed officers to interpret and articulate its lessons to the service personnel under their command. Nevertheless, the production of ATOM was a milestone in British counterinsurgency as its lessons could be spread without the cost of being relearned on the ground.⁶⁸ This proved timely as in October 1952 a State of Emergency was declared in Kenya. ‘Notes For British Units Coming to Kenya’ pressed ATOM into use while a dedicated manual was being produced for the theatre.⁶⁹ Then, in 1954 A Handbook on Anti-Mau Mau Operations, a more concise version of ATOM adapted for use in Kenya, was produced.⁷⁰

Training and the Hunting Analogy in Action

Ian Gibb, a platoon commander who served in the opening years of the Emergency, stated that framing counterinsurgency as a hunt and having an uncomplicated view of its prosecution lent resiliency to service personnel. ‘I don’t think we were insensitive to the brutality of a jungle war,’ wrote Gibb. ‘Nevertheless we were resilient and also being young we tended to see the issues in black and white. We were on the side of right, they were in the wrong.’⁷¹ Gibb also gave insight into the racial epithets that were used to denote the insurgents. ‘This name calling, plus the fact that the operations were somewhat regarded as a hunt, and even hunting terminology came into it, wasn’t so much of an insensitivity as a sort of cover up for the possibility of being killed.’⁷² For Gibb, there was dehumanization of the insurgents, and it was a defense which minimized the insurgents military efficacy and by extension the possibility of being killed.

In A Door Marked Malaya (1958), British infantry officer Oliver Crawford, illustrates how the training and its overarching narrative framed the soldiers’ experience of jungle operations, directed their behavior and primed them for action.

Like big-game hunters in Africa, we no longer looked at what we could see. Instead we kept visual stereotypes in our mind-the picture of a head with a jungle-hat on it, the thatched roof of a hut, the pattern of tracks in mud. If the vague unfocused mass of jungle happened to contain a head with a jungle-hat on it, then the stereotype clicked, the nerve jumped, the shock brought the rifle snap into the shoulder, and the legs slowing to a halt-even before one realised one had seen something.⁷³

A further example of the efficacy of the training for operations out in the jungle comes from the unpublished memoir of Kevin O’Sullivan, a 2nd Lieutenant with the Loyal Regiment. He went through the FTC in Johore towards the end of the Emergency in 1957. The jungle he described as central to their lives: ‘It was a No Mans Land. The only people to be found in it were security forces (us), and CT (them). … It was all-enveloping.’⁷⁴ His memoir highlights the nature of the training. By repeatedly taking attendees through realistic scenarios the aim was to install the appropriate response in soldiers. The training, however, had to overcome competing affective responses that arose while under the stress of a contact.

We learned these routines till we knew them by heart, and almost by instinct. That was important, as I realised later. So shocking is the experience of being shot at close quarters that you need some standard behaviour patterns to fall back on, otherwise, like a rabbit in the headlights, you’d be paralysed.⁷⁵

Then later, acting on intelligence, he led a patrol out ‘hunting’ after their ‘quarry’. The engagement when it came was characteristic of those experienced by servicemen during the Malayan Emergency; brief, confused and at close quarters.

Then something moved. A shadowy silhouette behind the rocks. I looked over the gunsight. The shape of a head in a cap, and shoulders, dodging from side to side, looking my way. CT, not British. Everything was happening in high-definition slow motion. I fired. Smoke obscured everything for a second, and then there was another shot from somewhere and a bullet blasted past my cheek. … Instinct made me clutch the ground, but the training said attack them and the training had become another instinct.⁷⁶

The training and the conceptualization of jungle operations as a hunt which had been inculcated at the FTC was effective, having informed O’Sullivan’s decision to fire. What is less clear is whether the same training was in full force when operating on the jungle’s edge where civilians were much more likely to be encountered. We can say with more certainty however, that the training, along with the permissive Emergency Regulations, primed soldiers to the use of force.

Conclusion

During the Second World War offensive spirit was encapsulated in the hunter in the Military Training Pamphlets. Then, during the Malayan Emergency these MTPs formed the basis for the teaching at the Jungle Warfare School, which carried the hunting analogy over into the training taking place there. The hunting analogy and training primed soldiers for a jungle war. Operations, however, were not limited to the deep jungle and the shooting war being fought there. As well as in the jungle, operations took place around the jungle’s edge where it was much more likely to encounter civilians. It was in these contested spaces that the principle of minimum force was most important. The training and hunting analogy, along with the Emergency Regulations in the opening years of the Emergency, however, did little to inhibit the use of force and instead primed service personnel to use their weapons. In this way, the training informed the ‘soldier’s dilemma’.

¹ John Newsinger, ‘The Military Memoir in British Imperial Culture: The Case of Malaya’, Race and Class, 35:3, (1994), p.58.

² Ibid, p.58-59.

³ Ibid, p.59.

⁴ Alex Tickell, Terrorism, Insurgency and Indian-English Literature, 1830-1947, (Oxon:  Routledge, 2013), pp.110-111.

⁵ Robert H. MacDonald, The Language of Empire: Myths and Metaphors of Popular Imperialism, 1880-1918, (Manchester: MUP, 1994), p.29.

⁶ John M. Mackenzie, ‘Chivalry, Social Darwinism and Ritualised Killing: The Hunting Ethos in Central Africa up to 1914’. In David Anderson and Richard H. Grove (Eds), Conservation in Africa: Peoples, Policies and Practice, (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), p.51.

⁷  Ibid, pp.53-54.

⁸ Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare, (London: Basic Books, 1999), p.222.

⁹ Simon Harrison, Dark Trophies: Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War, (Oxford: Berghahn, 2014), p.155.

¹⁰ Ibid, p.194.

¹¹ Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966), p.106.

¹² Thomas Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency 1919-1960, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), p.54.

¹³ Huw Bennett, ‘ “A Very Salutary Effect”: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32:3, (2009), p.418.

¹⁴ Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948–1960, (London: Frederick Muller, 1975), p.161.

¹⁵ Ibid, pp.160-161.

¹⁶ Thomas R. Mockaitis, ‘The Minimum Force Debate: Contemporary Sensibilities meet Imperial Practice’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 23:4-5, (2012), p.763-764.

¹⁷ Bennett, ‘ “A Very Salutary Effect” ’, pp.435-6.

¹⁸ Mockaitis, ‘The minimum force debate’, p.768.

¹⁹ Directorate of Army Psychiatry. Technical Memorandum No.2., ‘“Suppose You Were a Nazi Agent-” Or “Fifth Column Work for Amateurs”’, pp.7-9, (1942), The National Archives, UK (Hereafter TNA) CAB 21/914.

²⁰ Ibid, p.7.

²¹ Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front 1914-18: Defeat into Victory, (London: Routledge, 2005), p.73.

²² Ibid, p.93.

²³ T.R. Moreman, The Jungle, The Japanese and The British Commonwealth Armies at War 1941-45, (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2005), p.5.

²⁴ Ibid, p.104.

²⁵ R.F. Tredgold, ‘The West in the East’, Lancet, 246:6362, (1945), p.154.

²⁶ Lieutenant General Sir William Slim, ‘Jungle Fighting in Burma’. In The War Office, Military Training Pamphlet No 51 Preparation for Warfare in the Far East, (1945), p.28. TNA WO 231/128.

²⁷ Field-Marshal Sir William Slim, Defeat into Victory, (London: Cassell and Company Ltd, 1956), p.188-189.

²⁸ Malaya. Director of Operations, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), (Malaya Command, 1954), Chapter XV, Section IV.

²⁹ Tom Pocock, Fighting General: The Public and Private Campaigns of General Sir Walter Walker, (London: Collins, 1973), p.86.

³⁰ ‘Ferrets Organisation: Special Jungle Force for Suppression of Terrorism’, Imperial War Museum (Hereafter IWM), 09/5/5, pp.1-3.

³¹ General Sir Walter Walker, Fighting On, (London: New Millennium, 1997), p.112.

³² Pocock, Fighting General, pp.86-87.

³³ Karl Hack, The Malayan Emergency: Revolution and Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp.106-106.

³⁴ Major-General C.H.Boucher, Letter to Davis, ‘Ferrets Organisation’, IWM 09/5/5.

³⁵ ‘A Note by Mr J.L.N. Davis on the Continuing Need for Ferrets’, IWM 09/5/5.

³⁶ ‘A Note by Mr. R.N. Broome on the Continuing Need for Ferrets’, IWM 09/5/5.

³⁷  Lieutenant Colonel R N Broome, ‘Ferret Force’, p.7, Broome Papers, IWM 85/40/01.

³⁸ Pocock, Fighting General, p.88.

³⁹ Major General Boucher, Letter, Lieutenant Colonel R N Broome, ‘Ferret Force’, IWM 85/40/01.

⁴⁰ Raffi Gregorian, ‘ “Jungle Bashing” in Malaya: Towards a formal Tactical Doctrine’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 5:3, (1994), pp.346-348.

⁴¹ Pocock, Fighting General, p.89.

⁴² Daniel Marston, ‘Lost and Found in the Jungle’. In Hew Strachan (Ed), Big Wars and Small Wars, (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p.98.

⁴³ ‘Half Yearly Training Report for The Period 1 Apr to 30 Sep 49 – FARELF Trg Centre’, p.2, TNA WO 268/116.

⁴⁴ Appendix ‘B’ To FTC Quarterly Historical Report Quarter Ending March 1949, p.1, TNA WO 268/116.

⁴⁵ Ibid, ‘Part II – Standard of Weapon Trg.’

⁴⁶ Ibid, p.4.

⁴⁷ Quarterly Historical Report. FARELF Training Centre. Quarter Ending June 1949, p.1, TNA WO 268/116.

⁴⁸ Walter Walker, IWMSA, Catalogue Number 11120, Reel 1.

⁴⁹ Appendix ‘B’ To FTC Quarterly Historical Report Quarter Ending March 1949, ‘Part II – Standard Of Weapon Trg.’ TNA WO 268/116.

⁵⁰ Appendix ‘C’ To FTC Quarterly Historical Report Quarter Ending March 1949, p.4, TNA WO 268/116.

⁵¹ Ibid, p.3.

⁵² Appendix ‘B’ To FTC Quarterly Historical Report Quarter Ending March 1949, p.1, TNA WO 268/116.

⁵³ General Sir Walter Walker, Foreword, E.D. Smith, East of Katmandu: The Story of The 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles Volume II 1948-1973, (Leo Cooper: London, 1976), p.xv. See also, General Sir Walter Walker, Fighting On, (London: New Millennium, 1997).

⁵⁴ The War Office, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of The Civil Power, (June 1949), p.5. Liddell Hart 15/8/221.

⁵⁵ General Sir Neil M. Ritchie, ‘Report on Operations in Malaya – June 1948 to July 1949’, (1949), p.1, TNA WO 106/5884.

⁵⁶ The War Office, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of The Civil Power, p.13.

⁵⁷ ‘Notes for the Guidance of Commanding Officers’, with covering note from Brigadier i/c Administration, Malaya District, 14 August 1948.’ IWM 09/5/5.

⁵⁸ Karl Hack, ‘“Devils that suck the blood of the Malayan People”: The Case for Post-Revisionist Analysis of Counter-insurgency Violence’, War in History, 25:2, (2018), p.215-216.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ FCO 537/4753: Statement by the High Commissioner for Malaya, Annexure ‘A’ to minutes of the 16th meeting of the BDCC (FE), 28 Jan. 1949. Cited in Huw Bennett ‘A very salutary effect’: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32:3, (2009), p.432.

⁶¹ ATOM, Chapter XV. Sections I-II.

⁶² ‘Quarterly Historical Reports FARELF Training Centre Quarter Ending 31 Dec 49’, p.1.

⁶³ ATOM, Chapter III, Section I.

⁶⁴ ATOM, Chapter III, Section VIII.

⁶⁵ ATOM, Chapter IV, Sections II-III.

⁶⁶ Brigadier J.L. Brind, ‘The Somersets in Malaya’, p.5, IWM 67/142/1.

⁶⁷ ‘Training of Units for Operations in Malaya’, (August 1953), TNA WO 276/159.

⁶⁸ Karl Hack, ‘The Malayan Emergency as Counter-insurgency Paradigm’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 32:3, (2009), p.403.

⁶⁹ ‘Notes For British Units Coming to Kenya’, p.12, IWM 75/134/4.

⁷⁰ George Erskine, forward. In General Headquarters East Africa, A Handbook on Anti-Mau Mau Operations, (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1954).

⁷¹ Major I.S. Gibb, ‘A Walk in the Forest’, p.77, IWM 86/3/1.

⁷² Ibid, p.77.

⁷³ Oliver Crawford, The Door Marked Malaya, (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1958), p.40.

⁷⁴ Lieutenant K.P. O’Sullivan, ‘Loyal Regiment 1956-1958’, p.16, IWM 09/46/1.

⁷⁵ Ibid, p.11.

⁷⁶ Ibid, pp.24-25.