Operation Janus by J P Cross
TONY GOULD Operation Janus
By J P Cross Monsoon Books £8.99 Oldie price £7.69 inc p&p
Malaya is no longer Malaya, but Malaysia; and the Malayan Emergency (so called to avoid using the word ‘war’, which was seen as a deterrent to trade) has receded into history.
Several of us can remember our youthful ‘jungle-bashing’ in the 1950s (in my case, being rather late in the day, uniformly uneventful) but few have either the depth of experience or the knowledge of jungle warfare that Lieutenant Colonel John Cross, a sprightly nonagenarian, can claim.
Operation Janus is fiction, though it is based on a real incident – the defection of a British officer in a Gurkha battalion to the Malayan Chinese insurgents in the jungle. This untoward event was hushed up at the time; and later, when I was researching the history of the Gurkhas, I found no mention of it, least of all in the relevant regimental history. So I can’t say how closely J P Cross’s story mirrors the actual event, but I suspect not very.
His account of the eponymous operation, though fictional (and probably an amalgam of several different ops), is entirely – and rivetingly – authentic. As the following passage indicates, the jungle itself is one of the main challenges the defector faces:
‘The one-time Gunner had never been so far into the jungle before. Mentally, the hapless fellow was not prepared for its close-horizoned, all-pervading, never-ending green of trees, vines, creepers and undergrowth. Not a gap in the tangle; it rose from the ground, trunk by trunk and stem by stem, each one crowding upon and striving to overtake the other, and tied and netted together with the snake arms of creepers into a closely woven web. Aerial roots and liana-nooses hung from high above. Leaves laid themselves out in vast terraces, fantastic umbels descended in cascades and creepers united in stout, tightly wound, spiral columns. Vegetation teemed in the steamy twilight; great fronds broken under their own weight, ropes which had neither end nor beginning, plants with fat, sticky leaves or with hairy or scaly stems, and some with large, luxuriant flowers, exuding a strange and deathly scent. The boles of the big trees opened out like buttresses. It was also swampy in places and leeches prolific and squashy in his shoes and itchy and uncomfortable elsewhere. He felt overwhelmed even before he had really started.’
This hide-and-seek story has many strands, involving police and secret agents, army and even the RAF (with Auster aircraft used for aerial reconnaissance and drops of propaganda leaflets urging CTS – communist terrorists – to surrender), wireless and expert trackers and, above all, Gurkhas. Though the end is never in doubt, the tension increases as it builds to a satisfactory crisis and conclusion.
So far, so good. If I have reservations, they are to do with its being a novel and, in particular, with the characterisation of the principals on either side of the armed struggle. As in an old-fashioned Western, the goodies are all improbably good, and the baddies unbelievably horrid. I would have liked a bit more nuance.
The defector, Hinlea, is a caricature, rather than a character. From the outset, Cross emphasises his loathsomeness, lasciviousness and all-round unattractiveness. He chain-smokes evil-smelling biris, has a chip the size of a concrete block on his shoulder and is consumed with envy of his public-school-educated peers in the officers’ mess, where he is plainly a misfit. He is not even smart but – I quote – ‘a superb example of someone who had the impossible combination of incurable stupidity harnessed to unattainable visions’.
Scarcely a worthy opponent, then, for the Gurkha officer pursuing him, Captain Rance: modest, able, a brilliant linguist (like Cross himself) and, if a bit inclined to break the rules, it is always in the interest of the greater good.
But these strictures should not deter anyone in search of a gripping adventure story, or indeed anyone interested in learning the ins and outs of jungle warfare from a true expert.