Southern Rhodesian military involvement in the Malayan Emergency
Several veterans of the conflict, Peter Walls and John Hickman among them, subsequently held key positions in the Rhodesian Security Forces during the Bush War of the 1970s.
[4] Soon after Japan was defeated, the communist fighters renamed themselves the Malayan National Liberation Army, and began to agitate against British rule.
Using the arms that Britain had given them—which they had cached, and then subsequently retrieved—they formed themselves into eight regiments, and began a campaign of Maoist-style rural subversion, their intent being to politicise the villagers and gain popular support, which they could then use to take control of Malayan cities.
[3] In addition to British and Malayan units and personnel, the Commonwealth forces in Malaya included Australians, New Zealanders, Gurkhas, Fijians, Nyasalanders, and Northern and Southern Rhodesians.
[6] The Special Air Service (SAS) commando unit was formed by the British Army in 1941, during the North African campaign of the Second World War.
[18] The Royal Australian Regiment was also present in Malaya, so to prevent confusion the Rhodesian African Rifles' acronym was temporarily changed to "RhAR".
[9] By this stage of the insurgency, the MNLA had largely split into small groups of guerrillas, which existed by basing themselves in a chosen rural area, subverting local villagers and accumulating from them manpower and supplies.
The lot of any security forces posted nearby was to play a constant game of hide-and-seek with the communists, whereby the army would indefinitely search for and destroy any base camps and food caches the MNLA set up.
The Commonwealth leaders surmised that the MNLA could not possibly resist such a campaign forever, and would, in time, simply give up attempting to regroup.
These consisted of the section leader (generally armed with a shotgun), a scout, a Bren gunner, a Patchett-Sterling machine-gunner, and up to seven FN FAL riflemen.
According to Second Lieutenant John Essex-Clark, an Australian-born officer who led an RhAR platoon in Malaya, these Southern Rhodesian units moved much faster in jungle conditions than those made up of British men.
The black Southern Rhodesian soldiers were reportedly naturals when it came to tracking;[21] many of them came from rural backgrounds, and had acquired relevant instincts and skills while growing up.
"We can but hope that the chaps will get a chance of seeing a CT [communist terrorist] for a change," reported an RhAR officer in August; "they are all as keen as mustard to come to blows with them.
[25] Around this time the British Royal Lincolnshire Regiment, operating in the Bahau area, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) north-west of Bekok, reported to the RhAR that they had encountered the communist 32 Independent Platoon, led by Hor Lung, which was then heading south-east towards the Palong River.
On 26 November, the RhAR and the King's Own Scottish Borderers assisted the local police at Kelapa Sawit in an action called Tartan Rock: the security forces moved into the village and arrested 34 communist sympathisers, most of whom were ethnic Chinese students from the University of Malaya in Singapore.
[27] Over the next few months, RhAR patrols in the Chaah, Labis, Bekok and Sungai Karas areas were stepped up to last between 10 and 18 days each, but contacts with the communist forces remained rare.
Starting in October 1957, the RhAR were tasked to work alongside former MNLA personnel to wipe out any remaining communist forces in the region.
[28] As it approached the end of its two-year commitment in Malaya, the RhAR continued its patrolling in Johore province without major incident until February 1958, when it returned to Rhodesia.
[31] Walls reformed the all-white Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) into a commando battalion similar to the SAS during the mid-1960s, with Reid-Daly serving under him as regimental sergeant major.
To resolve this the Rhodesians created a supreme body called Combined Operations in 1977, influenced by similar posts in Malaya, with Walls at its head.
