NZ Captain Led Guerrillas In WWII Malaya

[Dave Homewood]

GUERRILLAS IN MALAYA

N.Z. CAPTAIN AS LEADER

SINGAPORE, September 20. During the whole of the occupation of Malaya there were men at large in the country secretly organising guerrillas, reporting by radio on the enemy strength and movements, dynamiting bridges, cutting railways, and ambushing Japanese.
One of these was a New Zealander, Captain F. T. Quayle, of Auckland, who even recruited a blowpipe brigade of Sakais. These are shy jungle tribesmen, who used their deadly pipes, their parangs or scrub knives, and even bows and arrows in stealthy raids on the Japanese.

During the Malayan campaign Captain Quayle was cut off from the forces and saw the battle of the Slim River from the Japanese side of the stream. Realising that escape was impossible, he remained in hiding and made contact with the Sakais. He took refuge with them and for 18 months was out of touch with the world.

In the meantime, a submarine had landed wireless sets, which were buried on a beach on the Malayan coast. The news came through eventually to Captain Quayle, who dug the sets up but found only one workable. He stole a battery from a Japanese officer's car and at last was able to get a weak signal through. Operators working in Colombo had listened every hour of the day for two years waiting for the message, which was to give directions for the dropping of supplies.

Things became hotter and hotter for Captain Quayle. The Japanese got on his tracks and used aeroplanes to search for him. He suffered every imaginable tropical disease and nearly died from pneumonia, contracted when he hid neck-high in water for five hours.

AID BY CHINESE.
Captain Quayle was only one of the "left behind men"—bands of brave, desperate officers who were aided by young trained Chinese who in the last three weeks of the Malayan campaign had blown up seven trains, cut railways in 100 places, and killed 500 to 1000 Japanese.
The first leader was Lieutenant-Colonel Fred Chapman, a famous Himalayan mountaineer, authority on Tibet, and Arctic explorer, who laid the 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 Colonel Chapman and Captain J. L. H. Davis, of the Malayan Police, remained alive. Captain Davis and Captain R. N. Broom, of the Malayan Civil Service, were landed on the Malayan coast, where they organised a strong band of guerrillas to harass the Japanese. Last December Liberators began dropping men, arms, and equipment in Malaya, and by the end of last June they were arriving daily.

EVENING POST, 21 SEPTEMBER 1945

[30sqnatc]

A interesting book on the support flights for those stay behind personnel in Malaya is The Longest Flight: Operation Oatmeal by Christine M. Berry. Records Catalina missions that were typically 30 hours in duration. I read it as an Ebook.

[Dave Homewood]

GUERRILLA TRAINER

N.Z. CAPTAIN'S EXPERIENCES IN MALAYA

(Special P.A. Correspondent)

LONDON, September 24.

When 4000 Japanese of the 29th Army formally laid down their arms at Tapah on September 18, Brigadier N. P. H. Tapp, of the 25th Indian Division, who took the surrender, presented two souvenirs to Captain F. T. Quayle, of New Zealand, says "The Times" special correspondent at Kuala Lumpur.

One was a sword belonging to Colonel Onishi, head of the Kempei Tai, the Japanese secret police, in Malaya. The other was the walking stick of the Japanese Governor of Perak, a civilian official named Kawamura. Captain Quayle had previously exchanged words through an interpreter with both of these Japanese. Colonel Onishi said: "So we meet at last." Kawamura said: "I must congratulate you on having escaped our Japanese bullets so long." '

Captain Quayle is one of a small band of Europeans who evaded capture by the Japanese in 1942 and retained their freedom till Malaya was reoccupied. All owed their survival to assistance given by Chinese guerrilla fighters, but Captain Quayle also speaks in the highest terms of the Sakais, the aboriginal negrito tribesmen of the Malayan mountain ranges, little men who still use blowpipes. They looked after him and fed and sheltered him, at one time for more than a year.

Captain Quayle, who was a tin miner in Siam before the war, was sent early in 1942 to the Pahang jungle with four others to disrupt the Japanese communications behind the front line. Singapore fell before they received their code orders over Singapore radio to start action. They hid in the jungle for several months and then decided to try to escape to Ceylon by boat. The attempt was unsuccessful, and one of the party was captured.

One of the decisive engagements of the Malayan campaign was fought at the Slim River. After this battle the Chinese recovered hundreds of rifles, Bren guns, and mortars from the jungle, and some time later, when the resistance movement got going, a guerrilla school was started in the mountains north-east of the Slim. There a permanent band of about 70 men, all of whom were in small parties, would come for courses from all over Malaya.

Captain Quayle became an instructor in this school and wrote all the textbooks on arms, weapon training, and demolition used by the guerrilla forces throughout Malaya. The camp was located in front of a cave in which guerrilla fighters once had to take refuge when an elephant which was wounded by one of them came with four companions and flattened the bivouacs.

A Malay finally guided Japanese to the camp. There was a brisk action, but all the Chinese escaped. While on his way from the camp to Pahang to train guerrilla fighters in Perak, Captain Quayle went down with fever for a second time. When he was getting better Captain Quayle heard that two British officers had come into Malaya, but it was four months before he was fit enough, to make the journey south. He eventually found them, and with them was Lieutenant-Colonel F. C. Chapman, who had also evaded capture all this time. A few months after the officers joined forces they established regular wireless communication with India. Once it had been established, parachutists and arms began to drop in increasing numbers.

EVENING POST,  26 SEPTEMBER 1945

[Dave Homewood]

And a similar story...

PYGMY FRIENDS

AUCKLANDER'S STORY

ADVENTURE IN SUMATRA

PA: AUCKLAND, This Day

A thrilling account of how he lived in the mountains of Sumatra for nine months with a tribe of primitive pygmies was related today by a former master at the Mount Albert Grammar School, Mr. G. G. L. McLeod, who is in hospital in Singapore, recovering from the effects of ghastly treatment while a prisoner of the Japanese (writes Mr. C. W. McMillan, "Auckland Star" reporter in Singapore, on September 21). While McLeod and an Irishman who later died were at sea in their small boat Japanese planes were constantly flying over them, but apparently the crews were completely taken in by the men's effective camouflage. Other craft close at hand were machine-gunned.

With the assistance of the Dutch McLeod was transferred to Padang just too late to connect with an Australian cruiser which was evacuating refugees from Singapore. One month after the fall of Singapore Padang was occupied by the Japanese, and McLeod was taken prisoner. Two days later, with two Australians and the Irishman, he escaped and tramped down the coast. Discovering an old dhow, the party decided to set off for Australia, but the dhow was wrecked on a reef before it had sailed very far.

MOUNTAIN DWELLERS.
The four men then made off into the depths of the Sumatra jungle and climbed 14,000 feet up Mount Korinchi, where they came upon a pygmy tribe. These little people were very frighted and timid, and the party, anxious to get their assistance, had to stalk them. In the presence of the white men the pygmies were too frightened to move, but with his knowledge of Malayan and other dialects McLeod managed to make them understand. Later the pygmies became very, friendly and gave them every assistance.

As the escapees lived entirely on deer meat and rice, with no vegetables of any kind, for nine months, their health suffered. One of the Australians developed beriberi, and so that his life might be saved two of the others carried him out of the mountains, hoping to find a place where he could be properly fed.

BETRAYED TO THE ENEMY.
McLeod was left alone with the pygmies, but not for long, because the other three fell into the hands of the Malayans, who betrayed them to the Japanese. The prisoners were forced to tell, where they had been hiding, and McLeod was again thrown into a prisoner-of-war camp, at first at Padang, and later at Medan.

On June 6, 1944, when McLeod and a number of other Britishers were being taken to Singapore the ship was torpedoed by an Allied submarine, 239 prisoners being lost. The survivors were in the water for several hours before they were picked up by another Japanese vessel. The treatment on the ship was appalling. No attention was given to the injured men, many, of whom died before reaching Singapore from exposure or loss of blood.

For the last fifteen months of the war McLeod was forced to work for the Japanese in a jungle swamp on the east coast of Sumatra, where 40 per cent of the prisoners died from starvation, dysentery, or malaria.

McLeod, whose health is picking up in hospital, was educated at the Sacred Heart College and Auckland University. In 1929 he was nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship, and in the following year went to Singapore as an inspector of schools.

GRIM EXPERIENCES.
I spoke to other New Zealanders in the same hospital. All have grim stories to tell. Sergeant Pilot C. G. Thompson, of Opotiki, has had malaria between 60 and 70 times since he was captured. For six months he was in hospital with dysentery.

Two New Zealand lads who were in H.M.S.. Grasshopper are also recovering in this hospital — Lawrence Hurndell, of Park Road, Carterton, and Noel Betley, of Denbeigh Street, Feilding. Sergeant Ronald Reid, of Wadestown, is another in hospital. All these men from Sumatra appear to have experienced worse conditions than prisoners of war in the Singapore camp. The camps there were wretched. In Batavia, too, the Japanese treated the prisoners and civilian internees disgracefully. At one camp 140 women were living in a room 9ft by 12, without sanitary arrangements. One form of punishment was to make the women walk naked. They suffered from dysentery and beriberi

People are still dying in Singapore from the effects of Japanese treatment, and a lot have tuberculosis. The New Zealanders, however, are improving wonderfully, and are remarkably cheerful in spite of their years of suffering and deprivation.

EVENING POST, 28 SEPTEMBER 1945

[davidd]

Some gripping tales from long ago here Dave H, but sadly there are still many people in this World who can and do inflict appalling treatment on their helpless victims without hesitation for various (usually spurious, or ridiculous) reasons.