THE COVENANTER
fiercely when we heard the truck. The Two weeks after I left hospital a Communist
hum of the high-pitched engine sent hope terrorist courier was killed in the Yong Peng-
surging through me. It was coming from Chaah area. He was carrying documents
Chaah. I clenched my fingers round the giving details of our identity, and the
wounded leg and shambled away from the manner of our deaths, at the hands of 7
cutting and the car to halt the truck before Independent Platoon. Two months later a
it hit Charles. I had gone forty yards when patrol of the 1st Battalion Fijian Infantry
I realised I was moving the wrong way. The Regiment killed two terrorists in the same
truck was coming from Yon Peng, as we had area and recovered a carbine and shotgun. I
come. I tried to reach the log but was yards telephoned their headquarters and asked for
short as the armoured truck with mounted the number of the carbine. It was mine.
machine guns and a “tiger squad” of Malay
police aboard came over the rise. Suddenly In May, 1953 I left Malaya, travelling home
silhouetted in the cutting, its lights dazzled to the United Kingdom on a troopship with
me. the battalion. On board a fellow passenger
asked me if I was J.G.Tedford of The
They saw the burning car and the log across Cameronians. I said I was. He gave an uneasy
the road and opened fire with everything. I smirk and opened a book he was carrying. It
was in the middle of their beaten zone. Bullets was an almanac of events in every country,
spat-zinged off the tarmac and ricochetted on every day of the year. It had been printed
in a blinding-whining-hail around me. I in London. On the page where he jabbed
dived for the half-shelter of the lallang, and his finger I read that with assistant planter
prayed. The fire lasted for two minutes. The Charles Morgan I had died on the night of
truck halted at the log and they sprayed the the seventh of July, 1952...’’murdered by
road and the grass and the jungle. Live lead bandits”. Evidently I was living on borrowed
hosed over my head, spurted earth from the time.
bank behind me. When they ceased it was
like the hush of Heaven. I screamed out in Footnote: In 1956, as the result of a successful
English and lurched on to the road beside Security Force operation, the Royal Air Force
the truck. Charles was safe. The log that had carried out an air strike in the Yang Peng area
trapped us in the ambush protected him from of Malaya. A1,000 lb bomb scored a direct
the murderous storm of police fire. Tenderly hit on the camp of 7 Independent Platoon,
the Malays lifted him on to a stretcher, and killing sixteen Communist terrorists. The
into the front of the truck. With a bandage leader of the platoon, Goh Peng Tuan, was
and bayonet I tied a tourniquet round my among the dead.
thigh, blade through the bandage loop, Ian Tedford
brutally twisting and tightening to throttle
back the blood. Apoliceman, white-eyed Editors Note
with concern, handed me an ampule of This article was originally published in
morphia for Charles. I speared the needle 1957 in the book “The Unquiet Peace”
into his arm and squirted the merciful,
pain-relieving drug in and through to his
Meeting With A Family Friend
blood stream. His head and shoulders were
beside me as I sat in the front seat. It was a
It was a pleasant Sunday morning in May
joy to watch the agony fade from his face.
when several hundreds of us gathered
It took seventy-five minutes of hard driving
at the memorial cairn at Douglas for the
to reach the hospital at Kluang. Day was
fortieth, and final, official commemoration
breaking as we pulled up outside the casualty
of the disbandment of the 1st Bn. In 1968.
door. I jumped from the cabin. I had been
During the service, at lunch and in several
able to walk before, but now the shock had
interviews on the excellent DVD produced
worn off. My leg crumpled under me and
after the event, mention was made of the
I collapsed helplessly on the ground. They
feeling of “family” which has long existed
carried us into the clean white hospital to
in the Regiment (and is shared, within their
safety, and to the shattering experience of
ranks, by those in many other regiments).
uncontrollable reaction as the life-saving
shock wore off. I was there for thirty days,
This family-feeling forms a link with the
then went off on sick leave. Charles was out
past, with our history and with those who
two days before me.
had been there before us. It brought back a
memory..,….
61
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