MALAYAN AMBUSH

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27591, 23 February 1955, Page 13

MALAYAN AMBUSH

N.Z. Officer Killed

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) SINGAPORE, Feb. 22. Thirty terrorists, firing from a well-prepared ambush position, yesterday killed a highranking army officer in Johore, it was announced today.

Johore authorities said the officer killed was Major R. Genge, a New Zealander, who was officer commanding a company of the Fiji Infantry Regiment.

Another officer was wounded in the ambush.

The terrorists mounted the ambush on the Yong Peng-Batu Pahat road. They straddled the road with a wire and wood road block.

The jeep in which the officers were travelling tried to pass the road block on the grass verge of the road, but it was fired on from behind. Major Genge was killed instantly and the second officer was wounded in the leg, but not seriously. Two soldiers in the jeep, one of whom was armed with a Bren gun, escaped unharmed.

The terrorists burned the jeep, and a police armed carrier which' arrived shortly afterwards was fired on by the terrorists, who were ranged on either side of the road.

The terrorists then fled, taking with them one carbine and some ammunition.

Family in Hospital Major Genge’s wife is in hospital after giving birth to a daughter. The other member of the family, another daughter aged eight, is also ill in hospital.

Major Genge was officer commanding a company of the Fijian Rifles. With him in the jeep was a Fijian lieutenant, Julian Konganivalu. The terrorists are believed by security officers to have been led by Goh Peng Tuan Chee Ho, who organised an ambush last November in which six Fijians were killed and five wounded. He is political commissar of a company of the Communist “liberation army.” A curfew has been imposed in the area, and an intense search is being made for the terrorist gang, who fled when police arrived on the scene. The two Fijians who escaped saved their Bren gun after firing all their ammunition at the terrorists.

The gang also held up a bus shortly after the incident, robbing the conductor.

Major Genge, who was born in Fiji, served with the New Zealand forces in the Middle East during the last war. For a period in 1942 he served as an instructor of the officer cadet training unit there, and trained many New Zealand officers. He served with the Indian Army in 1944.

Major Genge joined the Fijian battalion about nine months after it was formed, and went to Malaya at the end of 1951. —(P.A.)