End of the Line

Tawau was only a small town tucked away on the south east side of Sabah. If the state of emergency had not been proclaimed, it would have remained one of the most remote townships in Malaysia. But, because it had a harbour, an airfield and was in close proximity to Indonesia, it became a convenient place to establish a garrison. The influx of many hundreds of soldiers and airmen was a heaven sent gift for tradesmen, but this presented difficulties, one of which concerned the water supply. The townsfolk had no problems, but when the taps were turned on in some of the military camps, which were at the end of the pipeline, they produced a miserable drip or nothing at all.
There was a large water tank at the top end of our camp and one day I climbed up the ladder to find out just how much water there was in it. Except for a few dead birds, it was empty. The following day, I went to see the person in charge of the water supply at the public works department. When I told him we didn't have any water, he nodded and said it would stay that way. "If I fill that tank it will drain the already strained system. Unfortunately, you are at the end of the line and you will just have to make the best of it - there's nothing I can do."
That evening we had the usual downpour and I saw some of our soldiers standing outside their barrack rooms rubbing soap over themselves and bathing in natural conditions. That gave me an idea.
Officers' accommodation in 2/RANGER's camp was built around a sunken badminton court which looked like a swimming pool without water. When it rained, the water ran into gutters below a corrugated iron roof and was carried away into the sewage system.
I went to see the Troop Commander of the Royal Engineer unit and outlined my plan for catching rain water and re-routing it into a number of forty four gallon steel drums so situated that the top one, when full, overflowed into the one beneath it and so on down the line. Within a few hours, a truck arrived with the drums, some extra guttering and the sappers set to work. By evening all was ready and we waited for the rain to come. When it did, the steel drums were soon filled to the brim and we had more water than we wanted. We were then able to wash in the Malaysian way by standing alongside a tank of water with a saucepan-like utensil to fill and pour over oneself. There is nothing more exhilarating than doing this and the cold water from the sky added additional zest to our ablutions. It was all so simple and I can't think why previous occupants of the camp had not thought of it.
Rats were a problem when we took over from the outgoing unit. On our first morning in Kukusan Camp, Tawau, every bar of soap had been eaten. A few pieces on the floor of my room bore traces of teeth marks which clearly spelt the message that rats had been at work.
By the time darkness fell, every officer was in possession of a rat trap and before we went to bed, most had been sprung. The rats looked upon the officers' mess as their habitat and we could see them as they scampered from room to room on top of the partitions. They were about fifteen to sixteen inches long from nose to tail and were extremely vicious. Some of them tried to run off with traps attached to their bodies and we had to kill them with parangs (long knives). It took us about three days to get rid of them.
Cockroaches are found everywhere in Malaysia. Even in the best regulated households these disease-carrying beetles can usually be found in the kitchen. The best safeguard is to keep a cat which will make short work of them. We would have needed an army of cats in the cookhouse of Kukusan Camp to have made an impression on the ones we found there after we had taken over from the previous unit.
The Quartermaster took immediate action when he found traces of these insects in the main kitchen. He ordered some large cupboards to be drawn back from the wall and hundreds of thousands of these creatures, sheltering from the light, were revealed. The cooks hurled buckets of boiling water over them and when the stoves were dismantled, thousands more were discovered. The floor became ankle deep in cockroaches and finally they were shovelled into sacks and taken outside to a pit where they were covered in paraffin and burnt.
If this sort of thing was a problem on the mainland, it was nothing compared to the situation on Pulau Sebatik. Living in sangars was bad enough, but rats brought snakes, particularly cobras, and they were the most dangerous of all. When the cry "Ular' (snake) went up. there was no peace until the reptile was killed.
Company bases on Pulau Sebatik could be reached in two ways - by helicopter or boat. Helicopters were useful for carrying senior officers on visits and to evacuate sick personnel. Their cargo capacity was limited though and only on special occasions were they used for that purpose. Our 'work horse' was the infantry assault boat designed to carry ten men equipped with paddles across small rivers. When a 40 horse power outboard motor was mounted on the stern, its performance was transformed and speeds up to thirty mph were possible. We had so much faith in them that we would happily set off on a 20 mile round trip journey from Tawau to our most distant company base at Simpang Tiga.
Our soldiers were used to handling boats, but they needed to be trained in the use of outboard motors. On our first exercise in some gravel pits in Malaya, one of the engines had not been attached to the mounting board on the stern securely enough. When the rope was pulled and the engine roared into life, it shot off the stern and was never seen again.
Some of the company positions were well concealed, but our boatmen, after a three mile trip across the sea from Tawau, knew just where to enter the dense marine jungle of mangrove which ringed the island. These bases could only be reached at high tide and even then, the last few hundred yards had to be paddled. Mangrove has its use though. The impregnable tangle of roots was as good as barbed wire for keeping out the enemy.
When travelling by boat to Simpang Tiga on the western end of Pulau Sebatik, we came under observation from the Indonesian Army base at Nunukan on an adjoining island about five miles away. Before we arrived, the Indonesians had ambushed some boats travelling up the river and we therefore always travelled in a convoy of three boats for the last three miles.
At the mouth of the river, a large motor boat was permanently anchored on the Sabahan side of the border (marked by a tethered buoy). It had a permanent crew of three plus a few policemen and half a dozen Rangers. Their task was to observe, with an extremely powerful telescope, and report movement in the Indonesian garrison. It was never a popular duty to spend three days on this boat which was for ever straining at its anchor; even the best sailors become sea-sick. On one occasion, an Indonesian gun-boat made an aggressive charge but turned off before it reached the marker buoy.
The day I left Tawau to return to Penang in Malaya, where my wife and children had been living during my seven months' absence, President Sukarno, the Indonesian dictator, was deposed and the campaign came to an end. Tawau soon reverted to the sleepy little backwater it had been before 'confrontation' started. I doubt if the Indonesian sailors in their 'cumpits' in the harbour realised that anything had changed.