MALAY GUERILLAS

Grey River Argus, 21 September 1945, Page 5

MALAY GUERILLAS

SECRET ORGANISATION

BY N Z. AND OTHER OFFICERS.

SINGAPORE, Sept. 20. During the whole of the occupation of Malaya, .there were men at large in the country secretly organising guerrillas, reporting by radio on enemy strengths . and movements, dynamiting bridges, cutting railways and ambushing Japanese. One ol these was a New Zealander, Captain F T Quayle, of Oaklight Avenue, Avondale. Auckland .He even. recruited a blowpipe brigade of Sakai.s, shy jungle tribesmen, who used then deadly pipes, their parangs or scrub knives, and even bows and arrows m stealthy raids on Japanese. During the Malavan campaign Quayle was cut off from the forces. He saw the battle of Slim River from the Japanese side of the stream. Realising escape was impossible, he remained in tiding, made contact with Sakau, took refuge with them, and for lo months was out of touch vith ms fellow men. A submarine had, in the meantime, landed wirelss secs, which were buried on a . beach on the Malayan coast. News of these came through eventually to Quayle, who dug the sets up. He found only one was workable. He stole a battery from a Japanese officer's car, and was able finally to get a weak signal through. Operators working in Colombo had listened every hour of the day for two years, waiting for a message which was to give directions for the dropping of supplies. Things became hotter and hotter for Quayle. Japanese got on his tracks and used aeroplanes to search for him. He suffered every imaginable tropical disease, and nearly died from pneumonia, caught when he hid neck-high in water for five hours. Quayle was only one of the “left behind men.” Bands, of brave, desperate officers were aided by young trained Chinese who, in the last three weeks of the Malayan campaign, had blown up seven trains, cut railways in a hundred places, and killed five hundred to one thousand Japanese. The first leader was Lieut.-Colbnel Fred Chapman, the famous Himalayan mountaineer and an authority on Tibet, who laid foundations for what became one of the most effective clandestine forces which have operated in any theatre of war. In the course of time, few of the original party, beyond Chapman and Captain J. L. H. Davis, of the Malayan police remained alive. Davis and Captain R. N. Broom, of the Malayan civil service, escaped from Sumatra in a sailing boat after having been stranded there in 1942 while organising support foi’ guerrillas already operating, and made their way to Ceylon and India. They later were again landed on the Malayan coast where they organised a strong band of guerrillas to harass Japanese.