THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY 1948-60
Disbanded in October 1945, the SAS was resurrected to tackle a communist insurgency in the jungles of Southeast Asia
Having been awarded an OBE for fighting the Japanese invaders in the Second World War,
Chin Peng – the head of the Malayan Communist Party – launched his campaign to throw Britain out of her Malayan colony by shooting dead three British plantation staff on the morning of 16 June 1948. The fighting quickly escalated as the 8,000 members of Peng’s Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) used guerilla tactics to attack government personnel and sabotage infrastructure. Defeating them in their jungle strongholds required something different from the norm, and in 1950 a former Chindit, Colonel ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert, was tasked to find a solution. His answer was to create a new unit that would operate in the same jungles as the insurgents, carrying out long-term patrols to hunt down the enemy and beat him at his own game. The new unit was called the Malayan Scouts (SAS Regiment).
After something of a rocky start, when recruits to the Scouts even included some deserters from the French Foreign Legion, Lieutenant-colonel
John Sloane took command and turned the tide. Out went the more outlandish elements of training, non-regulation dress and hard drinking, and in came a relentless focus on bush craft and professional soldiering. Volunteers for the unit now underwent extensive training at a specialist jungle warfare school manned by experienced instructors. Working with the air force, ‘green army’ units and the local Malay Police, the SAS teams would stay in the jungle for weeks, gathering intelligence, setting ambushes and attacking insurgent bases. During this period units from New Zealand, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Fiji also fought alongside the Scouts, laying the foundations of special forces units in those countries and forging strong links, many of which are still in place today.
Malaya gained its independence on 31 August 1957, and with it the reason for the insurgency disappeared. Three years later – with some 11,000 MNLA guerillas killed or captured and Chin Peng fleeing to China – the Emergency was declared over.