TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL HISTORY RECORDING
S00369
Brigadier James Graham Ochiltree OBE (Ret’d) as Commanding Officer 2nd Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment, Malaya 1955-1957 and his wife, Leslie Margaret Swan Ochiltree, interviewed by Ian McNeill
Recorded at: Melbourne VIC on: 28 February 1985 by: Ian McNeill
Description Ochiltree speaks of his childhood and education; his early army training; 2 RAR prior to leaving for Malaya in December 1955; the Jungle Training Centre, Canungra; travel to Malaya; 2 RAR’s dual roles as part of the Strategic Reserve and as an operational unit, fighting communist terrorists (CTs) in the Malayan Emergency; weapons and armoured vehicles; the use of helicopters and other aircraft; aerial bombing by Lincolns; casualties and accidental weapon discharges; trackers, both Australian and Malayan; aspects of Operations Concorde, Deuce, Eagle Swoop, Rubber Legs and Shark North; frustrations during Amnesty; CT organisation and tactics; local support for CTs and resettlement; the organisation of anti- terrorist forces in Malaya and significant personnel; relations with various Commonwealth units involved in the Strategic Reserve and the Malayan Emergency; comparisons between the Malaya Emergency and Vietnam; problems with married quarters, both in Australia and Malaya and the solutions; Minden Barracks, Penang and difficulties in deploying 2 RAR to the mainland; troop rotations from Minden Barracks to operational areas; limited training facilities on Penang Island; differences between British and Australian administrative practices and ration packs; relations with the press; control of health risks, including VD; the many official visitors to 2 RAR; families’ welfare including natal matters; the importance of sport within the Commonwealth forces; the extent of his command responsibilities in Southeast Asia; 2 RAR officers and the imbalance in ages; the return of 2 RAR to Australia; the hand over to 3 RAR; various photographs; the pentropic division; the application of Malayan experiences to his future postings as Director of Infantry and Commandant of the Officer Cadet School, Portsea, and the RAR tie. Mrs Ochiltree speaks of 2 RAR family matters and welfare.
Transcribed by: WRITEpeople, August 2004
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McNEILL: The first question Brigadier, would you mind telling me where you were born?
OCHILTREE: I was born the 2 April 1918 in Armidale, Victoria.
McNEILL: And your parents, you said earlier that they, you had left your parents earlier?
OCHILTREE: No, my parents died, my mother died when I was eight or nine and my father a year later and I was brought up by an aunt who put me through school .
McNEILL: Where did you go to school then?
OCHILTREE: I was at Scotch College, Melbourne, from 1929 to 1936.
McNEILL: And from there you went to Duntroon?
OCHILTREE: I went straight to Duntroon in 1937, graduating in 1939.
McNEILL: At that time at Duntroon, were there infantry specialists, do you recall?
OCHILTREE: Yes, I remember when my fourth class at Duntroon had a number of infantry specialists who spent a lot of their time sitting in the sun reading books, so I was convinced that this was the thing for me, to go to infantry rather than the gunners who fiddled around with slide rules and things.
McNEILL: That’s right, and you graduated just in time before the Second World War?
OCHILTREE: No, just after it began, I graduated in December 1939, World War Two broke out a month or two before that.
McNEILL: I have a record of your service there and would like to concentrate on the experience that you had before and during the time that you were commanding officer of 2 RAR and firstly, may I ask what was the state of your battalion when you joined it in October 1954?
OCHILTREE: The battalion had just recently returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam.
McNEILL: In Korea?
OCHILTREE: Sorry, in Korea, in Vietnam, a number of the troops, officers and other ranks had been re-posted. The others were in a state of limbo because it was uncertain what the future would hold for the battalion and on my way through to take up the appointment in Melbourne, I was briefed by the Adjutant General, General Barn, who stated that, in the event of the government deciding to contribute Australian units to part of a yet to be raised British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve, 2 RAR, would, if the government agreed, be the battalion to go. The other battalions not being available, one in Korea and one just back from Korea. So, I was told, that it all depended on a political decision, whether or not we went to Malaya.
McNEILL: So, you were warned, pretty early, that this was quite a possibility?
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OCHILTREE: A possibility, yes.
McNEILL: And, then what was the approximate strength of your battalion, pretty low, I suppose?
OCHILTREE: I would say pretty low, I would say in the vicinity of about 300 plus. That only consists of battalion headquarters, a percentage of headquarter company, one rifle company, the others were non-existent or only had a few people in them. So, it was really one rifle company.
McNEILL: You can’t, I know it was a long time ago, did you have a support company raised?
OCHILTREE: There was a support company in name and with a few, a couple of officers and a few NCOs and men.
McNEILL: So when you had your influx of RMC graduates as platoon commanders and so on, your battalion started building up. Was it some time before men came in, were they more or less in limbo?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it was a trickle of reinforcements that came into the battalion. A number of officers came in and some of them came in and left almost immediately. We were short of officers, well up to strength in senior NCOs and warrant officers but the rank and file was very light on and, it wasn’t until a few weeks before we embarked in October that the battalion reached full strength. In the middle of 1956 I remember on one occasion the CGS came up and said he was favourably impressed with the state of training, everything seemed to be going well and he said that the reinforcements are coming through very well and you must be nearly up to strength and I said, ”No, they are not coming through well, they are hardly coming at all”. So he was furious at that and the next thing we had a visit from the Adjutant General who’d obviously got a rap over the knuckles from the CGS and the Adjutant General went into details, the strength of the battalion and from thereon the steady trickle became quite a flood but we didn’t get up to full strength until just before, a few weeks before embarkation.
McNEILL: That must have been a source of frustration then?
OCHILTREE: It meant we couldn’t undergo any concerted training, training was mainly in the individual, the section and to a certain extent platoon level training and when we got these influx of 1954 infantry graduates from Duntroon, we then planned an intensive course of officer training and that was rather knocked on the head because once again, the CGS on a visit, I think in about February or March, when he was in the mess, and I noted all the young officers with their parachuter’s wings on and I said what a good thing it was, they had all done their parachute training and he said, “Absolute nonsense, they should be out commanding troops, not fooling around jumping out in parachutes”. So the whole lot of them were then whipped away to 11 NS (National Service) Training Battalion where they could learn to command troops, so that rather effectively kyboshed the officer training program.
McNEILL: I see that you would have had considerable problems there and they would stem mostly from the lack of strength of the, until a couple of months before going, would they? What about supplies and Q items, issues, that sort of things to build you up?
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OCHILTREE: They were alright, the Q stores were full, but there weren’t people to issue them to. And then again, the plan was that when the Jungle Training Centre (JTC) at Canungra was established, we would go through a company at a time. And really the main company that was up to strength, A Company, together with D Company which came up from Watsonia, as a complete company, spent a lot of time at Canungra actually constructing the assault courses and the ranges, really building the training area of Canungra. So I meant the battalion was split between Ennogera and a company at the time going through, being trained and exercised on a company basis at Canungra.
McNEILL: And what was D Company doing down at Watsonia?
OCHILTREE: I have no idea.
McNEILL: It was there before you...
OCHILTREE: It was there before I took over the battalion.
McNEILL: Right. Then, you were the first battalion to undertake jungle operations since World War Two. I wonder what kind of training generally was being undertaken in the kind of atmosphere, at that time. I am thinking about question four and I suppose you have answered that to a degree, in that the only training that you could carry out was jungle training because that was the time when you were put together. Would that be correct?
OCHILTREE: It was jungle training but in the conventional war setting, really like World War Two in Papua New Guinea. It did not; there was no emphasis on counter-insurgency training because the idea of the Commonwealth Strategic Reserve was being employed in a conventional warfare role, not chasing communist terrorists around the jungle of Malaya.
McNEILL: Of course, and in any case, there wouldn’t have been much expertise in Australia at the time concerning counter-insurgency or anti-terrorists?
OCHILTREE: No, some of the people on staff at the JTC, Canungra had actually been attached to the British units operating in the Emergency in Malaya. One thing perhaps if I could just mention, in the questions on page 2, it says the government announced on 1 April 1955 about the Australian troops going to Malaya. I am not sure about the date, that seems a little early but it maybe correct, it probably is correct, but the main point in that paragraph, it says on 15 June the Prime Minister announced that the Australians would, like the British and New Zealand elements of the reserve, be available for use and operation against the communist terrorists. I am not aware of any such announcements and all the directives from Army Headquarters were saying that we were trained for our major role, the strategic reserve role and we would not necessarily be involved against the communist terrorists and in fact, the CGS at the time was opposed to our involvement in combating CTs in Malaya. This had a pretty profound effect on all our training, both that which we carried out at Ennogera, that which we carried out elsewhere and particularly at Canungra where the Canungra training was more or less of an individual section platoon basis but in the conventional warfare setting and the company exercised there were more of a conventional warfare type. Now and then they would bring in, because of the possibility of our chasing CTs, counter-ambush drills and a few things like that but the whole emphasis on all training was for our strategic reserve role, that is, conventional warfare.
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McNEILL: That is very interesting, I have been looking at the files on this matter and we will come back to this area, this subject when you get up there in December 1955, the difficulty of getting onto the mainland and so on.
OCHILTREE: There was one other point, if I could just to finish that off, it talked about ‘the Australian troops, like the United Kingdom and the New Zealand elements of the reserve.’ There were no New Zealand elements in the reserve; there were no New Zealanders present in the Commonwealth Brigade until after until 2 RAR had finished its tour of duty. It was only British and Australian.
McNEILL: Thank you, no New Zealand artillery?
OCHILTREE: No, there was only 105th Field Battery Australian and 2 RAR and initially there were no other battalions, so we were one battalion and one field battery, under command of a brigade group headquarters.
McNEILL: Perhaps, there might have been New Zealand Dakota aircraft; do you recall that at all, I mean you wouldn’t have had anything to do with them?
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: Thank you for that. Of course, the commander of the jungle warfare training, the Jungle Training Centre at the time, was Colonel Wharfe?
OCHILTREE: No, it wasn’t, it was Colonel Joe Kelly, who actually established the JTC and George Wharfe was the senior instructor of, I think it was the jungle training wing. Then in due course, Colonel Ted Serong was appointed at commandant of the JTC and Joe Kelly went off, I think retired.
McNEILL: And Wharfe continued to work under Serong?
OCHILTREE: Worked under Serong.
McNEILL: Do you remember what year Serong was appointed?
OCHILTREE: Yes, 1955.
McNEILL: Even while you were still going through, Serong was still in charge, so it was Kelly initially and it was, was it 1955 that the Jungle Training Centre was formed?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: And would have been formed for 2 Battalion, I suppose, to make it ready for Malaya?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: Did you see the British pamphlet, Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), at this stage when you were training in mid 1955?
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OCHILTREE: No, wasn’t even aware of its existence, let alone given a copy.
McNEILL: Did you receive visitors from AHQ (Army Headquarters) or British officers from Malaya to explain to you the kind of fighting or enemy you would be up against in Malaya?
OCHILTREE: No, the only visitor we had who knew anything about Malaya was Colonel Michael Biggs, from the British Defence Liaison Staff, who came up on a routine visit and was rather surprised that I was not permitted to go to Malaya to find out what the local scene was. He himself said would it help if he flew up to Penang, had a look at Minden Barracks and brought back a map of Malaya and Penang? This he did and he gave a talk to all troops on what Penang Island looked like and what the situation was and what Minden Barracks were like.
McNEILL: So you weren’t getting much help initiated from AHQ about your future role?
OCHILTREE: No, the future role was all directed towards conventional warfare and passed as strategic reserve and not a hint that we would be permitted to chase communist terrorists. Nobody gave us a copy of ATOM (Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations Malaya) pamphlet, nor particularly was I permitted to go up to Malaya as my successors were.
McNEILL: Had you asked, I mean it wouldn’t be up to you, had you asked to go to…?
OCHILTREE: No, I hadn’t asked, I was rather… kept my hands full trying to raise virtually a new battalion, organise it to go to Malaya. At that stage, it added a bit of uncertainty, even after the government announced that we would be going to Malaya, was that there was no decision on whether families or not would be permitted to go. This created certain problems because some troops had been separated from their families during their tour of duty in Korea, were not over anxious to have a further period of separation of two or three years leaving their families again in Australia. In that regard, I think it is important to notice that although the battalion was concentrated at Ennogera, we only had three married quarters allotted to us because the battalion beforehand was 1 RAR, which was in Korea understanding that its families were occupying the battalion married quarters so we had only three married quarters.
McNEILL: What about private hirings throughout Brisbane, was the government subsidising?
OCHILTREE: No, not that I know of, it was largely a matter of an individual finding his own and there was, I think there was from memory a rental allowance but again, a soldier has to be on the job from about reveille until after close of business in the day, it was always a problem. So there was only three families who had married quarters and this was a matter which, on a visit in the year down to Army Headquarters, I mentioned this to the Quartermaster General (QMG), General Pollard. And Cabinet was sitting at that time to discuss whether families or not would go and I told him that we only had three quarters and he said that seems pretty rough and then I wandered off visiting other people. He was called in by the Minister for the Army and he said ‘About how many families had married quarters?’ and he said [that] there were very few and he dived out again to check was I really shooting a bit of a line, as he reckoned I had a tendency to do. And it was like only three, and he couldn’t find me, I was somewhere in Victoria Barracks and he took a punt on it and he told Cramer, the Minister for the Army, that this was a fact, that 2 RAR only had three families in quarters. And later on in the day he was relieved when I assured him that this was
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a fact and this helped I understand, swing Cabinet into giving favourable decisions that families should accompany the battalion to Malaya.
McNEILL: That is very interesting.
OCHILTREE: But the fact that the troops had no married quarters in Ennogera was a very, a worrying thing for the married members of the battalion, many of whom wanted to go to Malaya but had a certain amount of pressure on them not to burst their boiler to volunteer if leaving their families was involved again.
McNEILL: Of course, do you recall how long before you went to Malaya that you were told that the wives would be called forward. I mean, I can check this out from files, but it might, you left in about, over the period September, October 1955?
OCHILTREE: October.
McNEILL: October, would it have been long before that that you knew wives would be coming up?
OCHILTREE: I can’t remember, I would say it was probably about two months before. The only reason I say it was putting in the plug to get the quarters, as I had nominated myself to a course in army health, at the School of Army Health and then went to Army Headquarters without Northern Command’s permission, it incurred their displeasure for so doing, and saw the QMG and I told him about it.
McNEILL: That was at Hillsville, the School of Health, and Army Headquarters was in Melbourne, of course?
OCHILTREE: That is right, yes. As a matter of interest, also at that time, the CGS, I was appointed to command the Australian Army Force, Singapore as well as administer the battalion and within Army Headquarters there was certain differing views: The CGS reckoned that the CO of [sic] the commander of the battalion could do both jobs, where AUSTARM Singapore or where Australian Army Forces Headquarters was going to be was not determined, and he reckoned that you could command the battalion which was part of the Strategic Reserve based in Penang and also command Headquarters Australian Army Force. He said he wanted me to be given a directive on the employment of the Australian army troops, particularly he had in mind the directives that had been given to Blamey in the Middle East and in Singapore and then later on in Army Headquarters I was told, “You don’t really need a directive do you?” by Director Staff Duties and I said, “No, I don’t really need it, I can get on without it.” Then later on the QMG of the day said, “CGS wants you to wear both hats. We reckon it is impossible because of our experience in Korea. You couldn’t be commander of the Australian Forces in Korea and still command an operational unit.”
McNEILL: There is quite a lot on the file about that, yes.
OCHILTREE: Is there. It wasn’t until we were halfway on the water between Brisbane and Penang that I heard on the radio that somebody else had been appointed to command the Australian Army Force, that was John Speed and I say I was delighted.
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McNEILL: It seems a bit of an amateurish army, a bit of a patchwork army at that time, they way things were underway. What was their reaction, Jim, to Headquarters Northern Command, to your fortuitous visit to Army Headquarters?
OCHILTREE: They were not terribly pleased because when on one occasion the 2IC of the battalion rang me on some matter when I was in Victorian Barracks, he said I better hurry back and I said, “Why?” and he said, ”Well, Northern Command are pretty hopping mad that you have side-stepped and visited Army Headquarters without their permission, albeit to discuss matters of some importance to the battalion, so you better hurry back”.
McNEILL: Who was the GOC of Northern Command?
OCHILTREE: General H.G.F. Harloff.
McNEILL: It is just as well you did go down.
OCHILTREE: It was a very useful visit.
McNEILL: What was the attitude of the CGS, General H.G. Wells, towards the battalion’s primary role as against its secondary role, that is a member of the British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve as against combating terrorists?
OCHILTREE: As far as I am aware, we had no secondary role at that stage. It was made crystal clear to me that our role as battalion was part of the British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve and that was the only role we were given. When any question came up of our possible employment against communist terrorists, the CGS was adamant that that was not our role and we were to concentrate on conventional warfare. This had repercussions later on after we went to Malaya and arrived there, we were the only battalion in the country which was not scheduled to chase CTs, this was a matter of some annoyance and irritation to the commanders of British battalions and the Malay battalions in the area, all of whom had been fighting CTs for some years, because the newly arrived Australian battalion was liable sit on its backside in Minden barracks, Penang, for a war which might never eventuate. It was also a matter of great concern for the Commander-in-Chief FARELF (Far Eastern Land Forces) General Sir Charles Loewen who exchanged… demi-official letters with the CGS on the matter and on one occasion came to me over lunch and said “I am finding your man Wells very difficult.” because General Wells, he went on to say, he was opposed to our employment chasing communist terrorists.
McNEILL: This is most surprising because on the files at, on the Department of Defence files of the day, it is clearly set out that the secondary role of 2 RAR was, as I say, to chase CTs and I recall you have told me earlier by telephone that it was the case that you had difficulty in establishing that role. And of course, if we go a little ahead to question 24, seeing this subject has been raised, you stated that it was during a visit by the Minister for External Affairs, Mr RG Casey in late October 1955, you gave him your views on how the battalion should be employed and that it was not until then, that Casey telegraphed these views to Defence and External Affairs. I have certainly seen that telegram.
OCHILTREE: In actual fact, what happened, it was over dinner at Minden Barracks. Casey was Minister for External Affairs, came and we had a parade in his honour, he addressed the troops and then over dinner that evening, he asked me how things were and I told him it was
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very demoralising the fact that we were looked like being the bridesmaid, never a bride. And I said that if the battalion could not be employed as the other battalions in the country were against, in the counter-insurgency role, it would be better to have the battalion and the Strategic Reserve out of Malaya. And he said, “Do you mean this?” and I said, “Yes”. “Then very well, I will cable the PM, tomorrow.” and he pulled out a notebook and pencil and wrote this down.
McNEILL: He certainly did cable back. I don’t suppose you have in your diary the date of the day that he was at Minden Barracks?
OCHILTREE: No, I haven’t got my 1955 diary, that has been mislaid but it would have been in about October 1955.
McNEILL: Yes, it was then we have the date of the telegram.
OCHILTREE: It was because we left Brisbane from memory on about the 19 October. It would have been, I think, before the end of October.
McNEILL: Now the Defence files refers to the requirement for three months training and the question of proceeding to the mainland and there was some Australian political sensitivity regarding coming elections or whether you would be allowed to fight CTs or not and also the lowering of morale of 2 RAR and then we have this article by Turner, your live-in correspondent for the Melbourne Herald, commenting on the problems of whether or not your battalion could fight the CTs. So the main issues are perhaps in this situation, were that the other units were all fighting CTs and yet your battalion was not prepared to or was not told to. At that time, the CGS was away in America I think, he was out of Australia.
OCHILTREE: I have no idea.
McNEILL: And the stand of the CGS as you have pointed out was he was totally against your involvement in any secondary role?
OCHILTREE: If I could just mention also, you talked about the three months preparatory period for training, until I read your brief, I had never heard of that. We were told to go to Malaya and form part of the newly raised, or in the process of being raised, the 28th Commonwealth Brigade and then train for conventional warfare and our training was also confined initially to Penang Island and that since it was an area which was devoid of training areas, you couldn’t fire weapons there. We were able to establish in the north of the island a couple of company training areas where companies could go, a company at a time, and do a certain amount of jungle training and then we, to fire a rifle, we had to go to a short range over in Province Wellesley, the other side of the water. And then a training area was established at Hobart Camp in the state of Kedah and the idea was companies should go there now to undertake training and also what was intended, since it was a relatively safe area, we would do a bit of counter-insurgency training but as the area was a black area, that is it was an area that had not been cleared of CTs, there was a possibility of a contact and an Australian casualty. So on two occasions, I had companies warned to proceed there to undertake training and on each of the two occasions, training and shall I say, limited operations, on each of those occasions, at the last minute, the order to go was rescinded. And once, at midnight, when
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troops where going early in the morning, the order was cancelled but that of course, caused a considerable amount of demoralisation among the troops involved. Now in fairness to Australia, and I didn’t know this until later on, there was an election coming on, I think in December, a federal election and I think the British suggested to Australia that Australia might have adverse political effect on the ruling political party which I think were the Liberals, if we incur Australian army casualties in Malaya and I think it was a British suggestion to the effect that, ‘you might like us to defer their committal to operations albeit even though they were on a limited scale until after the elections.’ Although, we all thought it was Australia buying in, Australia did buy in but I think it was suggested by the British it might be more diplomatic if we deferred them. But I didn’t know that until after we had returned to Australia. You mentioned also about the articles by Turner, incidentally, they were not attached to the brief, no attachments, there were two or three things where you said there was copies attached and there was nothing attached so I am not aware of what Turner wrote but we were actually saddled with a great gaggle of correspondents on the ship and I was instructed to give them accommodation in the mess at Minden Barracks to the exclusion of my own officers who had to be put under canvas. I demurred at this and said surely the correspondents, the press should go under canvas and I was told though very strictly they had to be accommodated in the mess and the mess was pretty small. It was designed for a pre-war British Army anti- aircraft battery; its major and a few officers and that was what Minden Barracks was designed for primarily. So what Turner wrote I don’t know although later on, we got some of his articles sent up to me and Turner was regarded as quite an irresponsible journalist. Later on when we actually went to operations, I got a copy of the Melbourne Herald which is headlined something about Australians in the battle under an artillery barrage, this was absolutely bloody nonsense and I spoke to the members of the press, I think there was a couple of dozen of them, and I said, ”Look,”, “this is quite true, we cannot impose any censorship on what you write but we would like it to be a little more rational, a little more considered.” but Turner was bloody pathetic and absolutely hopeless. And on the ship going up he wrote things about here they were, the troops playing two up under cover on the deck and the officers didn’t know and all this sort of business. I said to Turner, I said this doesn’t really help us (inaudible) true. He wrote a number of things. The only, the best of the journalists was a chap called Grigsby from the Melbourne Age who was very good and wrote well-balanced articles.
McNEILL: Did he, so you had two correspondents with you most of the time?
OCHILTREE: We had more, they were complete pests. They would be sitting in the mess and Casey, for example, could come in or some of the British generals and visitors and be talking and all the press could listen to every word.
McNEILL: Yes, so this was…
OCHILTREE: They would misrepresent things like the media does so often, they would take things out of context.
McNEILL: What was the British attitude, that is 28 Commonwealth Brigade to 2 RAR not going into a CT role, anti-CT role from the very beginning?
OCHILTREE: Irritated and frustrated, they couldn’t understand the Australian attitude, the brigade commander, Brigadier PNM Moore who had I think, three DSOs and a couple of
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MCs, whom I had known from the Middle East, was very frustrated about the whole thing and so also was the divisional commander the GOC of the 1st Federation Division, Major General Peter St Clair Ford, who after, I think, the second time, the orders were cancelled for our going onto the mainland offered to say, “If it happens again, I am going to resign”.
McNEILL: Would you mind spelling the names of the brigadier commander and the…
OCHILTREE: Peter NM Moore, DSO MC, and Major General Peter St Clair Ford.
McNEILL: Hyphenated name is that?
OCHILTREE: I think it was hyphenated but certainly St Clair Ford was his surname.
McNEILL: He was commanding FARELF GHQ?
OCHILTREE: No, he was the General Officer Commanding the 1st Federation Division which commanded amongst other things, the newly raised 28th Commonwealth Brigade. Then the director of operations, and the GOC Malaya Command was General Geoffrey Bourne.
McNEILL: Bourne?
OCHILTREE: Bourne, who lost his right arm in a skiing accident in Austria, a magnificent fighting chap, and he, on one occasion, before his first visit I was briefed, now make sure that General Bourne hates the word bandits you see…now remember that he doesn’t like bandits. He came along and he is talking to some of the troops, “Now I want you people to get off the island and go and chase bandits.” and he was frustrated by the Australian reluctance to commit us to operations and he said, ”Look, I don’t agree with the Australian attitude, I believe in fighting the enemies on our doorstep rather than the one that is over the hill, lets fight the enemy that is here rather than the one that might never hop over the hill”.
McNEILL: This would have been in December perhaps?
OCHILTREE: It would have been probably in November, I would think.
McNEILL: November?
OCHILTREE: November, and the same views were echoed by the Commander-in-Chief of Eastland Force, General Sir Charles Loewen, spelt Loewen, who is a Canadian, and again who was very much in favour of our early committal to operations. There was another case which I only heard of towards the end, down the south of Malaya, the 1st Federation Division was north Malaya and south Malaya was the 17th Gurkha Division. General, I think RNS, General Totty Anderson, he told me later on in the piece that he had asked for one of our companies to go down to Johore and help with operations there which he thought would be a great help, a bit of active training for our newly arrived companies, but he said that was knocked on the head.
McNEILL: Ridiculous situation.
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OCHILTREE: I think it was probably a good idea because I would not have been terribly enthusiastic, because it happened in World War Two for the splitting, the dispersal of ones units, the sub-units of the battalions throughout the country, but I didn’t even know of that request.
McNEILL: Who would have been giving you the orders from Australia on this issue of whether or not you were to fight the CTs. General Wells was one, but he is dead now. Is there someone I could speak to? What you say is quite different from what is in the files, it is irreconcilable, the government, we have government records to show that as early as June 1955 the prime minister had agreed to this CT role. I wonder who I could speak to?
OCHILTREE: No, I think he may have agreed to it but certainly it didn’t reach me and I would suggest that it didn’t reach the Jungle Training Centre at Canungra otherwise they would have openly put a slant, an emphasis on the anti-CT role. Again it was all conventional warfare, with the exception of patrol activities, silent signals and that sort of business and on a section, on a platoon base it be just as much conventional warfare as counter-insurgency.
McNEILL: Back to the JTC, the conventional warfare training would be more digging in, in a company position, in a defensive position?
OCHILTREE: I remember the climax of the companies training was a company in operations in the Wanguri state forest, semi-jungle, and then digging in a company defensive position and being attacked by Chinese.
McNEILL: By Chinese, and they would have been conventional Chinese from the Chinese army, not CT Chinese?
OCHILTREE: I don’t think it is politic to call them Chinese; I would probably call them mythical Asians.
McNEILL: Fantasians was the word at the time, wasn’t it. That is right. We may come back to some of those questions, but we went ahead a little bit there, if we go back to some of these questions, questions 9 please on page 4. Question 9: Do you recall where 105th Field Battery was stationed before going with you to Malaya?
OCHILTREE: At Holsworthy.
McNEILL: And did you have any opportunity to train with it in Australia?
OCHILTREE: No, we first met when they embarked in Sydney on the Georgic and we embarked in Brisbane, but there was actually no requirement. I suppose if it had been conventional warfare there would have been a requirement to train with them, but as it was, the fact that we didn’t train with them didn’t have any adverse effect on our operations.
McNEILL: Did you have a battery then at Ennogera that you could practice?
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: So I suppose the officers didn’t have much of a chance in practicing direction of artillery fire, for example?
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OCHILTREE: No. The training at Ennogera was pretty limited in scope due to lack of personnel.
McNEILL: Yes, that is right. So you received no briefing on the relevant emphasis you could expect towards your primary role or your secondary role, you have made it crystal clear.
OCHILTREE: All primary roles
McNEILL: All primary roles.
OCHILTREE: The person you can ask who might be able to give an answer on the directions of AHQ, I received no directions direct at any time from AHQ other than when the CGS had come and paid us one of his frequent visits. Probably Brigadier FW Speed, who is currently living in Brisbane, who was the initial commander of what became AUSTARM Singapore, might be able to give an answer.
McNEILL: Thank you very much Jim. Ian Porteous mentioned to me that the CGS, General Wells, visited you before your departure, an afternoon tea arrangement, he thought it might have been significant from the point of view of briefing you on your future role in Malaya, do you recall this at all?
OCHILTREE: No, the CGS visited us fairly frequently because one battalion to be prepared to go overseas and the first regular army unit from Australia ever to go overseas, it was a matter of understandable interest to the CGS and he used to visit us quite often and I must say he was very helpful although again he was stressing conventional warfare, but he came fairly frequently. There is no significance in the visits shortly before he left, except as you were mentioning, he was going off, I think, to America or somewhere. I remember he said I asked him would you be able to come up and visit us for all the presentation of colours by the Governor-General in September he said no I am sorry, I am afraid I will have to miss that, I won’t be here. No there was no particular significance; it was just, shall I say, a routine visit.
McNEILL: Yes, thank you Jim and you have made it clear about his attitude towards your primary role.
OCHILTREE: One thing perhaps I could also mention, coming back to Question 11, about did you find the training in Canungra served you well. Basically, yes, it was good, they live in the jungle and feed in the jungle and fight in the jungle. There is only one thing, which I disagreed with their training: the emphasis was on ‘firing from the hip’. Now they engrained this into every soldier that went through there whereas, the experience of others, the British, the Gurkhas and others who had served in Malaya, was when you saw a fleeting target, a communist terrorist, the time taken to bring a rifle from the hip up to the shoulder was fractionally longer than firing from the hip. But you would get a more accurate shot firing from the shoulder and you had to be a bloody good shot to be able to hit one CT a hundred yards away in the jungle or wherever it was, or even a few yards away, firing from the hip. To hit him and all the teaching, the counter-insurgency teaching in Malaya was to fire the aimed shot from the shoulder. And the hip shot was a waste of ammunition, and this was subsequently responsible for a lot of our near misses and complete misses because the troops having been told hip firing’s the shot.
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And I remember discussing this with Serong and Wharfe and they said ’Oh, no, you should be able to do it.’ It is quite different if you have got a horde of Chinese in Korea or of Japanese in New Guinea coming at you firing from the hip, that is fine. But being a 303 rifle-we had 303 rifles-up the shoulder was a much better bet, but all the training at Canungra was there. Later on I discussed this with Ted Serong and he said he saw my point but he said he couldn’t really agree, support my argument, that it was better to fire from the shoulder.
McNEILL: That is the training subsequently isn’t it, aimed shots from the shoulder are always better than a snapped shot from the hip?
OCHILTREE: I think that was borne out in Vietnam too.
McNEILL: Exactly, it is the training, or it is certainly the training I have experienced.
OCHILTREE: Other than that, the training at Canungra in answer to your question was pretty good.
McNEILL: SS Georgia, you said was the name of the…
OCHILTREE: Georgic.
McNEILL: Georgic, was that an Australian vessel?
OCHILTREE: No, British, I don’t know who.
McNEILL: What line it was? That is alright.
OCHILTREE: Yes, it was Cunard, I had travelled from Washington, Liverpool on its sister ship, the Britannic, the year before.
McNEILL: Was that a comfortable ship?
OCHILTREE: The Georgic, yes quite good, and the fact that the captain was particularly good. We were on British rations which we know aren’t quite as good as the Australians for one thing because I remember … there was a shortage of butter. I took this up with the ship’s staff and immediately they increased the ration scale. It was pretty good, it was a chartered ship because after it dumped us in Penang it went to, I think, Saigon and then back to evacuate all the French troops and took them back to Europe.
McNEILL: Did it really. Yes, they would have been all leaving in late 1955, of course. Do you recall what other major units were with you?
OCHILTREE: Yes, 105th Field Battery and a few bits and pieces and RAEMEs from RASC.
McNEILL: And you travelled on that ship with the main body, I suppose?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: Did an advance party go to Malaya?
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OCHILTREE: An advance party went to Malaya; I think it probably would have been early September.
McNEILL: And was that your 2IC with that?
OCHILTREE: No, it was Pat Shanahan who is OC Support Company.
McNEILL: Were you able to train on board ship at all, any space for that?
OCHILTREE: Very limited training. There wasn’t that much room for training. A lot of the time was taken up by, we had two very good district officers who were flown down before we embarked to give us a briefing on the situation in Malaya; the customs; the country and the difference of states; the Malay language; the pronunciation; things on protocol and about what the Emergency was all about; the history of the Emergency. That was a chap called Max Garling, an Australian, and another Australian called Max Wood and they were very good. They came down before and they worked liked blacks. They worked morning, noon and night, briefing the troops.
McNEILL: Were they from Kota Tinggi?
OCHILTREE: No, they were civilians; they were in the Malayan Civil Service, the MCS, district officers.
McNEILL: British?
OCHILTREE: No, Australians but they were the British service.
McNEILL: Were they, did we have Australians attached to the British civil service?
OCHILTREE: No, they were ones that I think, Max would have been in the army-he had an MM-during the war and they joined the Malayan Civil Service at the end of World War Two. A number of Australians did serve with the Malayan Civil Service.
McNEILL: So they were brought down by the Australian government. That sounds worthwhile.
OCHILTREE: And I think that I should mention again, showing how the British were anxious to help us. When Michael Biggs, if you can remember, who went up to Penang and brought back the map of Penang for me, when I mentioned it, he told me who the commander of the brigade was-Brigadier Peter Moore. And when I said I had known him from the Middle East, he said, “Oh, would you like him to come down for the presentation of colours?” and I said “Yes, I would.” and he said “Good, we will fix that”. So Peter Moore flew down especially from Malaya to be present for the presentation of colours, at the British expense.
McNEILL: My goodness. Where did you meet Brigadier Moore, in the Middle East, do you recall?
OCHILTREE: Yes, he was on the directing staff, the Middle East Staff College at Haifa. At that stage, he had one MC and subsequently in North Africa, collected another one or two and a DSO, I think, from…he was with the partisans in Yugoslavia with Fitzroy and MacLean and
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it appears in that book ‘Eastern Approaches’. Then he got, I think, another DSO in Korea. He was a sapper, a magnificent fighting soldier.
McNEILL: When did you…were you a student at Haifa?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: Do you remember when that was at all?
OCHILTREE: 1942, 1943.
McNEILL: Was Wilton on that course?
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: He subsequently went to Haifa while he was there?
OCHILTREE: It would have been beforehand, yes. This was the 2/13th Battalion which was part of 9th DIV. After the 6th and 7th Divisions, were recalled, 9 DIV stay over and was released and was at Alamein. And then after Alamein five of us, Australians, went to Haifa and then the 9th Division came back to Australia.
McNEILL: Thank you, I will return to that after the interview.
OCHILTREE: Peter Moore was on the staff there and I knew him. So I was delighted when I found he was the brigade commander, somebody I knew.
McNEILL: Did he remain brigade commander during your two years?
OCHILTREE: During the whole time, yes.
McNEILL: That was a good relationship then?
OCHILTREE: Very good, yes.
McNEILL: Was there any noticeable reaction from the press or the public or the opposition, government opposition, towards the battalion’s role in Malaya, the battalion’s sailing?
OCHILTREE: No, we used to get the…we got very favourable press from the Brisbane press and I must say we were given a lot of help by the then Minister for the Army, Josh Cramer, who particularly came out to the battalion for a dining-in night. I remember again this irritated Northern Command, because I arranged with Cramer’s private secretary for him to come to the battalion and Northern Command were having a dining-in night and they invited Cramer as Minister for the Army to go to dine and he said, ’No, I am sorry, I am going to 2 RAR.’ And he was very good, he came out and visited us and took a great interest in the...
McNEILL: Did you have a march through Sydney or Brisbane?
OCHILTREE: After the presentation of colours by Field Marshal Sir William Slim on the 28 September, the presentation of colours, we did the march through Brisbane.
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McNEILL: And that was as good as your farewell march - that would have served for that.
OCHILTREE: That was the 28 September and we embarked on the 19 October, or 18th and 19 October, sailed on the 19th, I think.
McNEILL: Do you recall if that march was well received by the people in Brisbane?
OCHILTREE: Yes, very well received.
McNEILL: What were the feelings of the battalion as it set out on this new role in the Georgic, one of excitement, uncertainty, confidence?
OCHILTREE: I would say of confidence actually. They were glad to get away from guards and sentries and we had been turning on parades around Brisbane. For example, we had the Queens Birthday parade in Brisbane and the whole battalion was ordered on parade but I had a company down at Canungra and they were building Canungra, or helping them build it and then so we had one or two rehearsals. I dragged them up from Canungra, which didn’t please the staff at Canungra, but I said, “If they are going to go on parade, they can’t come up the day before, they have got to come up and be checked out for their dress and drills and all those things”. Because we were the centre piece in the large Queen’s Birthday parade at, I think, Victoria Park in Brisbane. And then later on we had to get the battalion together to rehearse for the presentation of colours. I remember one sergeant in particular, that I asked him, “How did you like it in Malaya?” and he said, “It is better than chipping weeds at Ennogera”. Because a lot of the work the soldier could do at Canungra would literally be chipping weeds and gardening and keeping the barrack rooms tidy and that sort of thing, so I think they were relieved to be on the water and away. Another thing from the training point of view, my own experience early in World War Two, was that it wasn’t until we reached the Middle East, we were able to get stuck into proper, particularly company, battalion and brigade training. And the same thing occurred going to Malaya, we couldn’t get stuck into proper training until after we had got away from the distractions of a home environment. So in answer to your question everyone was relieved and pretty happy to be embarking and on the way.
McNEILL: And they knew their wives and families would be following them?
OCHILTREE: Yes, although one uncertain thing was that we had no…again we were allotted I think three married quarters in the Minden Barracks and you might like me to come to that later on.
McNEILL: Do you have any other comments at all on the experience of 2 RAR before going to Malaya?
OCHILTREE: No, I would say Headquarters Northern Command were most helpful. Particularly, I think two people were very helpful, one was then Colonel D.R. Jackson, who was the colonel in charge of administration and for a large amount of the time was administering command of Northern Command because General Harloff was on the sick list and Don Jackson was a tremendous help to us and again Colonel Jack McCaffrey, he was a GE1, was a tremendous help. Both of those officers bent over backwards to make sure we
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were given every possible assistance and they were ably supported by the rest of the staff of Northern Command. One thing I could possibly mention, it was typical of the difficulties we had. 2 RAR had always done the change of the guards’ ceremony in slow time but also, stamping of the foot and coming to attention. This riled the then GOC who issued a written directive - there would be no stamping of the feet and there would be no marching in slow time when changing the guard. So the GOC issued this written direction, and on one occasion in particular, I remember General Wells came to visit the battalion and the guard commander was a sergeant ex-Royal Marine. There was certainly a fair bit of stamping of the feet and General Wells said ‘It’s a jolly good guard’. And he went down to Canungra later on and he said, “Look, I am having a certain amount of difficulty with the drill and I am trying to get good, smart drill. I was very pleased with the 2 RAR guard yesterday”. Well at the same time that he was expressing his views to, I think the RSM of Canungra about this, I was summoned in by the GOC, literally stood on the mat and asked, “Ochiltree, are you wilfully, deliberately disobeying my orders?” and I said, “No sir, why?” He said, “Well I haven’t seen the guard changing guard in slow time but I am particularly concerned about this deliberate stamping of the feet. Yesterday, I was appalled at this and I want an explanation.” I didn’t have much to say about this except I did say, “I am aware of your direction, sir, and naturally I comply with your orders but I have checked out this stamping of the feet with both the senior infantry graduate who was the BSM of Duntroon and the 54 Graduating Class and with the Director of Infantry, and the drill which we are practicing is in conformity with that taught at Duntroon and the School of Infantry.” So I said, “Might I, with some diffidence, suggest that if you don’t like the way it is being done in Northern Command, you take this up with the Director of Military Training and with the Director of Infantry, with a view to having common uniform army policy?” I said, “It is a little tricky when you have got people coming from say Eastern Command being taught one thing and then in Northern Command you want it done the other thing.” And he took that pretty well. That was rather typical of the things that were irritating because I remember mentioning this to Colonel Bunny Austin, the Director of Infantry and the regimental colonel and he said “No, you should be right when you get them away” or words to that effect.
McNEILL: Well then Jim, we get to the arrival in Malaya and I see from the files that earlier reports from Headquarters Australian Army Force point to the difficulties in arranging married quarters for 2 RAR. Did the provision of married quarters cause any problems with morale or other problems?
OCHILTREE: It certainly did, I formed when we arrived there, we were allotted three quarters in Minden Barracks, one for me, one for the RSM, who was a bachelor and one for the quarter master, who had been withheld from coming with us by orders of the GSE Northern Command - he wanted the Ennogera barracks thing all tidied up even on the Q side. So I arrived here without a quartermaster, now this was a big, serious disadvantage. So we had three married quarters, the RSM was a bachelor, the QM wasn’t there and one for me and I then asked for more married quarters in Minden Barracks which had…and they were all occupied by British army families. I said if this is going to be the battalion home, surely we are entitled to a fair share, not all the married quarters, but a fair share and I was told, ”No”. So I left and I got a company commander and a couple of people to go around seeing all the estate agents and people around Georgetown and with a view to arranging hirings. And we arranged a few hirings and then later on following a visit by the Quartermaster-General, General Pollard, a firm of builders was engaged to build literally the Australian kampong in the north of the island. Until they were built, of course, we couldn’t have the quarters, so the
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Runnymede Officers’ Hostel housed a number of the officers and their wives and children and we housed a number of the other ranks families in hirings around the town and also used the E & O (Eastern and Oriental) Hotel to house some families. So the fact that we didn’t have any quarters until quarters were literally built in the northern island - it was a problem and the call for the families was delayed because we couldn’t find anywhere to house them. This caused a certain upset among a number of the married members and I remember General Pollard when he came up, he asked me to arrange a meeting so he could talk to the married members of the battalion and he told them, “Of course, we are doing everything possible to get them. We have arranged a house-hunting team; we are negotiating to get a builder to build the quarters, and we will try and get the families up as soon as possible”. It did have an adverse effect on them. In the meantime, I having asked a fair share of them, Headquarters of Federation Division has written to the Commonwealth Brigade in answer to my plea for a fair share of the quarters, words to the effect that “The Australians will never ever get any married quarters in Minden Barracks”. Now the Commonwealth Brigade rather unwisely sent this copy of this letter onto me for any views I might like expressed on this matter. Well I had plenty and a day or two later, driving along with the AAQMG [(A) Assistant Quartermaster-General] of the Federated Division and his DAQMG [Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General], the two of them being responsible for the letter, I said “I had seen a copy of this letter that you had sent to brigade headquarters.” and they said, “Oh, did you?” and I said, “(inaudible) any action that you want to take,” and I said “I have got plenty.” And I said “As far as I am concerned, you can stuff your married quarters.” I said, “I will not accept mine nor will…, you can keep the other two married quarters and I shall go and live with my family in the Runnymede”. And they got pretty red in the face and hot under the collar about all this, because I was not meant to see the letter. So I said, “You can tell the general that, I refuse. You can keep my quarter, I won’t take it, I will live in the mess with everybody else.” And then the next thing the brigadier came along and said, “What is all this you have done? You have upset the staff (inaudible).” and I said, “I have no intention whatsoever to live in my quarters.” I said, “My family will not come”. He said, “In that case, I will order you to live in the mess.” and I said, “Very well, so be it, I will not bring my family to Malaya.” So the next thing there was a hullabaloo about this and the GOC, General … swiftly flew down on an Auster aircraft and came and saw me and he said, “Now what’s the trouble?” So I told him, I said “Its quite iniquitous,” I said “This is our battalion barracks, we are here for conventional warfare.” and I said, “All your families have got the quarters here”. I said, ”We’re not asking you to boot them out, we are asking to have a fair share.” I said, “The CO’s quarter, you have got a singles officer living in the thing, a major. I’ve been given another quarter, I don’t object to that,” I said, “fair enough“. I said, “I don’t want to kick up a fuss and …” I said, “I do think we should get more quarters”. So he took the point and said, “We will sort this out.” and in actual fact, he did. We were then allotted an equitable share of quarters in Minden Barracks, but that was symptomatic of the, not the general’s attitude, but the Brit’s staff on their div’s headquarters - the Australians will never ever get any quarters.
McNEILL: Was this some months after you arrived that you were allocated some married quarters at Minden?
OCHILTREE: Yes, several months later. I think it was when some of the families were due to return to England or go elsewhere which was, for example, I think there was Royal Scots Fusiliers and they were not part of the brigade and that juncture, some RSF families in Minden Barracks. They’ve got quarters in Ipoh where the battalion’s based, they had moved out and some of us moved in.
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McNEILL: So you would have had, even with the allocation of married quarters at Minden Barracks, you would have had people living at Runnymede Hostel, people at the E & O Hotel, people in private hirings, in Georgetown and people in the married quarters.
OCHILTREE: Later on, out in the married quarters in the north of the island and then, in due course they built the Australian hostel, in the north of the island and the other rank families went there.
McNEILL: Just onto Runnymede Hostel that was a British hostel was it? The idea what? Couples would have a room or two rooms if they had children, and all eat together at the same time?
OCHILTREE: In the dining room, it was fine, it was good, it was a very good hostel, very well run.
McNEILL: So like a private hotel type of arrangement?
OCHILTREE: It had its own swimming pool, in was in Georgetown, so the facilities were good for families.
McNEILL: And then later in the north of Georgetown, were there built enough married quarters to house all of the married people of the battalion?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: So was that a better arrangement then?
OCHILTREE: It wouldn’t have been better if we had them, for example, ultimately we had in Minden Barracks: the battalion commander, the adjutant, the 2IC and one company commander - OC Headquarters Company. OC Support Company was further down the track, near Minden Barracks in the pass-over area where there were quarters, and with a few of the senior NCOs.
McNEILL: They were inside Minden Barracks?
OCHILTREE: Inside Minden Barracks.
McNEILL: Minden Barracks is that, that housed other British units as well, is it a big barracks?
OCHILTREE: No, the barracks, the buildings are large, magnificent- the mess was a bit like, a barracked equivalent of the Taj Mahal. It was very good and the British built very good barracks, the officers’ mess was a magnificent edifice..., but only designed to house officers from an anti-aircraft Battery, and there were quarters here and there round the [quad]: swimming pool, tennis clubs, NAAFI and that sort of thing... it was a good barracks.
McNEILL: And a big parade ground I suppose?
OCHILTREE: A big parade ground and playing fields.
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McNEILL: Did you think then that it was a good barracks for the battalion, were you happy with them?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it would have been ideal if there hadn’t been any other families living within it. Australian families, or to put it, there were more married families in the Australian battalion than there were normal families.
McNEILL: Because of the national service element?
OCHILTREE: Yes, national service and also the British other rank pay was not as good as the Australian other rank pay, although the officers’ pay was infinitely better. So it would have been pretty good if the battalion had sort of stayed there, that plus the hirings and the married quarters north of the island. But it meant that the hirings at the north of the island was a long haul for a chap going home after work, going out to the north of the island and then back again, it was I suppose from memory about half an hour’s travel, each way.
McNEILL: And what would he travel in?
OCHILTREE: Travel in unit transport, land rovers and trucks. Another thing also remember, when we went there Penang was a black area. That was, there was still CTs in the area and I know that they were a pretty harmless lot, but one had to take precautions against CTs. For example, and this is going ahead a bit, later on during retraining, we had a round the island relay, inter-company relay. Well, it meant I had to discreetly arrange with the police where there were suspected CTs to have a police presence and armoured cars around because, and again thank God we got rid of our gentlemen the press because that junctions was a matter I had discussed with the brigade commander. If the Australian press had said here is the Australian battalion has an inter-company relay and they have got to have police escorts and armoured cars here and what a delicate lot they are. On the other hand, if we dispensed with the police escorts and armoured cars being present and somebody had been ambushed [they’d shot], understandably in writing we would be accused of gross negligence for not taking out any precautions.
McNEILL: That is right.
OCHILTREE: Minden Barracks was basically a good barracks.
McNEILL: Were they close to Georgetown or in Georgetown?
OCHILTREE: I suppose from memory itself, what 10 miles away, I think it was about 20 minutes away.
McNEILL: So they were more or less in the, what you would call the countryside, the outer suburbs. Were there any particular problems or aspects concerning the location of Minden Barracks and Georgetown? Did you have soldiers going in there much?
OCHILTREE: Yes, we used to go in for leave at night. Georgetown was not bad but the main thing was lack of amenities for the troops in the town. I suggested to Grigsby, who used to be The Age correspondent, I said what we need was something like what we had in Tokyo, Empire House, and he said, “May I quote you on this?” and I said, “Yes.” and the next thing I
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was quoted in the Melbourne Age and bloody signals flew to and fro and I was told to shut it up. It wasn’t until General Pollard came up and he saw the problem - we needed somewhere for the soldiers to go in and have a few drinks and a meal - that we had the, I have forgotten the name of it, sort of the equivalent to Tokyo’s Empire House. I have forgotten the name of it, anyway he had this Australian building in Georgetown and that was great, because otherwise the soldier would go into town; go to a bar; there were out-of-bounds areas; and of course, out-of-bounds is a great incentive to anyone to treat himself to wander in and say, “I wonder why it is out of bounds?” and then get picked up by the military police, and we had quite a number of troops who had been apprehended in the out-of-bounds area. And the other thing, I don’t know if this is really fit for the publication, the fact that when my battalion went to the Middle East, we in 1940 went down (as an advance party) and we took over from the Highland Light Infantry and we took over their regimental brothel. We found that the VD rate when our battalion went down to Port Said dropped from, I don’t know what it was, four or five percent down to about .001, because the brothel was properly regimented. That meant the soldier could go in and have a meal and have a dance and whatever and because the prostitutes were under army medical supervision and police supervision, there was no VD. Now because the Malays didn’t recognise prostitution, they reckon there was no such thing as prostitution or brothels, I was frustrated with efforts to establish a regimental brothel, that meant the troops could really get stuck into anything. The VD rate went up as it did in Japan, in the early days of the occupation. So that was one of the problems, and proper controlled recreation centre for the troops, which we did get in due course. Might I say, this Empire House was not a brothel, we still had the problem with VD. When General Pollard was QMG, he came up and recognised the necessity for a proper recreation centre in Georgetown and for ....
McNEILL: On prevention of VD, did you have any problems with RMOs or unit padres insisting on the moral aspects of VD prevention, in other words, if I might say so, the rather improbable expectation that soldiers won’t cohabitate with women?
OCHILTREE: We had three padres, anyway I spoke to the three padres and I said, “Have you from your church point of view,” - there was one Anglican, one Roman Catholic, one Presbyterian - “is there any [inaudible] if I go ahead and establish a regimental brothel and control VD? Do you have any objections?” And they said, ”No, none at all.” From the church point of view there was no objections, they did everything possible to help stamp out VD and [inaudible] with the RMO.
McNEILL: Good, who was your RMO, do you remember?
OCHILTREE: Yes, we had a chap called Harry Gage, initially. He was only with us for a short time and then we got another very good chap called Peter Opie who was outstanding. We had very good RMOs.
McNEILL: This is only a small point but I am asking from the point of view of the chap writing the medical volume, can you recall whether prophylactics or condoms were issued to the battalion, at that time?
OCHILTREE: Yes, freely available. The only thing we find that I suppose, it certainly happened in World War Two that I know of, it happened in Japan and it happened in Malaya. I would say many of our troops regrettably when they get a few drinks in and dancing with
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some attractive looking bird, are liable to not take adequate precautions. Although we try and drum it into them - get yourself issued with all the necessary condoms and that beforehand and for God sake, use them! And then we would have these PAC (Prophylactic Ablution Centres) centres afterwards and I said I think regrettably a number of soldiers were pretty slack in their adequate precautions, and this would be borne out by the fact that we would get cases with soldiers getting a dose of VD several times. And although we would try to moralise with them and that sort of thing, my own experience with Australian troops, stretching back from 1940 onwards, was it was like water off a duck’s back to a number of soldiers. The only thing we got through to them, particularly in operations, was if a chap got VD if he was out on patrol for a week or 10 days, it meant that a patrol either had to be called off or you had to call in a helicopter to evacuate him or somebody had to go back with him, escort him back, it was a burden on his mates. And that had some effect, I remember talking to General Refshauge, the DGMS (Director-General of Medical Services) about it and others, and it was always a problem but the fact that if you could get it through to him that if you get VD because you have been bloody negligent you are going to put an extra burden on your mates. You have got to go on sentry duty or carry an extra burden on his back because you have been negligent; you are bludging on your mates. That seemed to get through a bit. I remember on one occasion later on in the piece in north Malaya, the company called for helicopter for a casevac. “What’s the trouble?” “A case of VD.” and I said, “I am not going to risk the life of a pilot,”- which it was a fairly dicey part of north Malaya- “and an expensive bit of equipment for some coot who has been negligent.” And I remember the RMO got a bit incensed and I said, “Is he going to die?” “He won’t die but he will get jolly sick.” and I refused to risk an RAF helicopter go in on the very hazardous mount thing [sic] to bring this chap out. In actual fact the helicopter had to go in for some other occasion and he did come out but it was always, it was a bloody problem. A soldier in the middle of an operation would get a dose and if you flew a helicopter in to evacuate him, you would spoil the whole, you would blow your security. It was [assail] of operation.
McNEILL: I suppose prostitution was fairly rife in Georgetown?
OCHILTREE: Yes, although the Malays turn a blind eye to it, it was rampant and so was VD.
OCHILTREE: One point I might mention, you asked about a happy location, was Minden a happy location. Logistically, when we did proceed in operations, it was a headache because there were very slow ferries going across from Penang to Butterworth and it meant that trucks sometimes had to be offloaded and go across. And some ones were only passenger ferries and vehicle ferries and it meant it would only take a certain load and the turnaround on the ferries, the very slow ferries going across was terrific. So it meant the rapid deployment from Penang would have been a headache and in actual fact when we had, as we did have internal security things and riots in Penang, it meant that the ferries stopped so that there would be no movement to and fro.
McNEILL: What about landing ships, were they ever used?
OCHILTREE: There weren’t any.
McNEILL: So you were reliant on civilian ferries to deploy the battalion on the mainland. How long would it take, do you recall, for the whole battalion to move across?
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OCHILTREE: The whole battalion could have taken a day or more, I think from memory, it took about 20 minutes for the ferry to go across, there were two operating, so it meant that it was a pretty lengthy operation and of course, the ferries only operated from about first light until say about 10.00 at night.
McNEILL: Would this of had any effect on your deployment had there ever been need to, for the primary role or subsequently, your secondary role?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it would have, if the primary role would become imminent and we would have had plenty of warning, I think the whole battalion would have been moved across from to canvas probably in the Butterworth area.
McNEILL: Yes, right, for subsequent deployment then. I see that 2 RAR was restricted by 53 other rank appointments?
OCHILTREE: I don’t recall that.
McNEILL: In that case then, you would not be able to answer why the battalion was restricted when it was on an operational role?
OCHILTREE: I don’t recall any restriction at all. I know when we did later on become organised, do major war training at the end of our tour of duty, we were like one company. There was one company that was not available to take part and that was because of the relief of soldiers and some who had only come, say, a few months beforehand, and they were all grouped into one company, C Company, which I then passed over to the next battalion, 3 RAR. But I know of no restrictions on, I can’t recall any restrictions to the 53 other rank appointments.
McNEILL: It is mentioned, I have got the FARELF monthly reports there but it is no point in continuing it then.
OCHILTREE: We may have been restricted say one member per section, I can’t remember the…
McNEILL: It sounds as if it was say an anti-tank platoon or something like that.
OCHILTREE: No, we had an anti-tank platoon but I remember I disbanded that in order to form the rugby platoon and later on, during an inspection by the GOC in Malaya Command, he had asked me who had authorised the disbandment of the anti-tank platoon and there was no authority for that.
McNEILL: That is right, this was so that you could continue in your rugby competition while you were on operation?
OCHILTREE: What I found was there was great emphasis in Malaya throughout FARELF in the ability to play sport and particularly rugby union, and we had our rugby players - and one would be in platoon on operations and one somewhere else in another company. It was impossible to get them together to do any training and as the battalion’s worth was judged to a certain extent by its ability to play rugby and walk and mount a good parade - also useful if you could kill a few CTs - I decided to group them all together. And we thought, how can be
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best group them together? So I put them into the platoon which we thought was least likely to be involved in major war operations and if it should, be the easiest one to be reconstituted. So I picked on the anti-tank platoon, so in the anti-tank platoon, we had our rugby players.
McNEILL: So this would go on operations like any other platoon but you were able to pull it up quickly?
OCHILTREE: Yes, and also to let the coach have ready access to it.
McNEILL: Of course. I just want to clarify in my own mind, when you were doing your major warfare training in August 1957, not long before coming home, there was this reorganisation with one of your companies you say wasn’t.
OCHILTREE: We left in operations.
McNEILL: Because they were the members of the new companies coming through, were they?
OCHILTREE: Yes, throughout the tour of duty, we received reinforcements as people do finish up, their engagement was drawn to an end and they were sent back to Australia for discharge and reinforcements came in. But towards the end of our counter-insurgency tour of operations, I grouped them altogether into one company immediately prior to handing over to the next battalion and we left that in the Sungei Siput area to carry on operations, so that 3 RAR came along and they got a complete experienced company and it was C Company. And so C Company was handed over to 3 RAR and complete, or not complete but at least all of these people who hadn’t done their tour of duty, was handed over and C Company was only represented by company headquarters, Golden Headquarters during major war training.
McNEILL: Thank you, it clears that.
OCHILTREE: On the restrictions, I could mention one thing, I don’t know if this is jumping ahead, but we had to draw off, siphon off troops from all companies to man scout cars and also armoured personnel carriers, so we had to really design a FARELF battalion which had a number of people to man the scout cars and that needed a driver and a shotgun, the man and machine gun. Also drive the armoured personnel carriers which we used to call “possums” to carry troops and also rations, so it meant that we had to restrict our companies by forming the scout car platoon and the coffin platoon.
McNEILL: Was this a duty requirement or was…these scout cars and Saracens, were they?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: The scout cars and Saracens were they something to do with your battalion resupply arrangements or security arrangements?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it was purely an internal operational requirement because if you wanted to move a platoon from A to B in an operational area, which was a black road in a black area, you had to have this armoured vehicle, an APC to carry them and also vehicles had to go in pairs and had to have a scout car at escort on the black roads. So when I would be driving
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around in my jeep or land rover, as it later became, I had to have my own scout car, and so naturally you had to have people to man them.
McNEILL: Of course.
OCHILTREE: I did put up a case incidentally, this may be jumping the gun a bit Ian, but to have some of the Australian Armoured Corps people man the scout cars. Sir Ralph Elderidge, who is the Director of Armour thought that was a wonderful idea, but it was not accepted because he wanted to get the Armoured Corps people into the operational area and have the experience but we had to supply from our own resources, the drivers and the shotguns for the scout cars and also the Saracens, the APCs.
McNEILL: These were British vehicles were they?
OCHILTREE: British vehicles.
McNEILL: The 2 RAR operated with a training officer who was initially Major P.M. Shanahan and at times, it had an assistance training officer, Lieutenant Warren Campbell, were you anticipating that a large part of the battalion’s time would be devoted to training?
OCHILTREE: We did, but the fact that Pat Shanahan was made the training officer; it was very much an ad hoc and a temporary measure. He had gone up, as I mentioned, and commanded the advance party, he knew all the ropes, he knew the people and he knew the area and whereas, the rest of us trying to get ourselves organised and housed and fitted out with jungle greens and weapons and equipment and this sort of thing, he was familiar with the area. We realized it important that we should begin training, as soon as possible, and I made him responsible for the organisation of training initially because he knew the area and he had been up there for some time the advance party, so it was a temporary measure. He designed for me the training program which - this company will go out to that area and part of the island and that company will do this and that - he arranged the training cycle for the first few weeks, but then again, as soon as possible, I sent him back to his company, which needed him. Support Company, because Support Company had the mortar officer, John Godwin, administering Command and Support Company. You may recall in those days they didn’t have a 2IC, so it meant that the mortar officer had to become the company commander and nobody looked after, or we didn’t have an officer to look after mortar platoon. So as soon as possible, Pat Shanahan was released from being the ad hoc training officer and sent back to his company.
McNEILL: Later on wasn’t (inaudible) MacNamara?
OCHILTREE: When we were getting ready, we were still on operations in Shark North and we knew we had to go into major war training for six weeks prior to embarkation. I made Russell MacNamara, the training officer, to go up and prepare, look at the area and design for me the syllabus for the training program for the battalion when it went to major war training. I divorced him from his company to go up and be the training officer and also at that time, Pat Shanahan who was the 2IC, was engaged on wrapping up the administrative aspects of the battalion prior to departure and I will mention the administrative problems and headaches later on. He was concentrating solely on, as 2IC, on wrapping up the administration so we could leave a clean ship behind and hand it over to 3 RAR and the British and so Russell MacNamara was made the major warfare training officer.
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McNEILL: And what was his appointment normally?
OCHILTREE: He was normally OC A Company. Because at this stage as training officer, I made him acting as 2IC in Pat Shanahan’s absence.
McNEILL: And he would go back to his company then or he would have been taken out of his company to prepare for that training and his 2IC [inaudible]?
OCHILTREE: Exactly. You will mention about training, that is right, MacNamara was training officer for training only for the major warfare role.
McNEILL: Question 26 doesn’t seem particularly relevant then, that was back onto page 8 – A and B Companies proceeded to training areas A1 and A2 and B Company proceeded to anti-terrorist operations in area A1, this was in January.
OCHILTREE: No, this was to what was known as Hobart camp and the plan was the two companies would go up there and carry out training but also, they would be practising with a bit of luck, bumping into the odd CT.
McNEILL: The Hobart training area in northern Penang.
OCHILTREE: No, no, no. The Hobart training area was in Kedah, on the mainland.
McNEILL: Yes, very far in, in Kedah, do you remember? I have a map here, there is Kedah; Penang.
OCHILTREE: No, not terribly far, no not very far, I think it was about half an hour’s drive from Butterworth.
McNEILL: A note in the Battalion War Diary states that on the 21 December 1955 you conferred with Commander 28th Brigade? You conferred with Commander 28th Brigade on the future operations of 2 RAR, can you recall a general tenor of those early briefings from the British, how did they see brigade operations or battalion operations developing?
OCHILTREE: No, because at that stage, 28th Commonwealth Brigade at Butterworth had under command, as far as the infantry was concerned, one battalion - 2 RAR. So we had brigade group headquarters commanding one battalion and also 105th Field Battery and I think some sappers, and a few things, but we were one battalion so there were no brigade operations envisaged.
McNEILL: Where were the other two battalions?
OCHILTREE: There weren’t, they didn’t exist. It wasn’t until later on, another few weeks or months, that the Royal Scots Fusiliers [RSF] joined the battalion.
McNEILL: And your war diaries often refer to 1R Lincolns [1 Royal Lincolnshire Regiment], that is ....
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OCHILTREE: They were even later on because initially we would be in operations in Operation Deuce based on Kulak and this was in the state of Kedah and then later on we went down to Shark North, we were based in Sungei Siput in Kuala Kangsar and we had the RSFs and ourselves.
McNEILL: What is the RSF?
OCHILTREE: Royal Scots Fusiliers, they were in Ipoh, we were in Kuala Kangsar, Sungei Siput and then later on still, the Lincolns replaced the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
McNEILL: 1R Lincolns, that is First Battalion Royal Lincolns?
OCHILTREE: Yes. When the RSFs joined us, it was great because I found with the brigade headquarters of about thirty officers, we were (inaudible), being rather guinea pigs and the spotlight was on us regrettably, and we used to get a visit I suppose four to five times a week from either the brigade commander, the divisional commander, then the brigade commander, then the GOC Malaya Command, then the C-in-C FARELF, then the chief of staff from Malaya Command. Every day in the working week, we would get a visitor.
McNEILL: What other brigades were in the 1st Federation Division?
OCHILTREE: There was either the 1st or the 2nd Federation Infantry Brigades but they were not in the Deuce area, they all had Malay battalions.
McNEILL: With British officers?
OCHILTREE: They were British officers and then more Malay officers were joining them but they were commanded by British COs and British brigade commanders.
McNEILL: Where was headquarters of 1st Federation Division?
OCHILTREE: Taiping.
McNEILL: Do you recall off hand where the other two brigades headquarters were?
OCHILTREE: One was I think in Alor Star and where the other one was I can’t recall.
McNEILL: Did you see them much or operate with them?
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: So operations at the most, in your experience, would have been coordinated at the brigade headquarters level?
OCHILTREE: Not really, it wasn’t, when Operation Deuce began they were coordinated by the Kulim DWEC, District War Executive Committee.
McNEILL: Not council, committee?
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OCHILTREE: No, committee and that was, as I later on talked in Malay about war by committee because it meant that the chairman of the DWEC, who gets a good write up in Spencer Chapman’s book, The Jungle is Neutral, John Davis who was with Force 136, a splendid chap, he was the chairman of the DWEC; the officer in command of the Independent Police District of Kulim, was Che Saleh bin Abdul-Rahman, the policeman; there was a home guard officer; a special branch officer who was a Brit, Alan Glass; there were two or three Malays and the idea of that would be to plan the war effort.
McNEILL: In the district?
OCHILTREE: In the district.
McNEILL: What was the name of the district?
OCHILTREE: Kulim.
McNEILL: Which was a district of Kedah?
OCHILTREE: Kedah, yes.
McNEILL: I would like to get onto that, that will be taken down, what you have said.
OCHILTREE: See, the operation order for Operation Deuce, although I wrote it, it was Operation Order 1/56 issued by Headquarters Kulim Force, of which 2 RAR was part. And so really all operations were between essentially the Malay OCIPD and myself – Officer Commanding Independent Police District of Kulim and that was Kulim Force.
McNEILL: And this would be controlled by a DWEC?
OCHILTREE: Yes, in actual fact there were two DWECs, there was the ordinary DWEC, which was the full one with the information officer and the representative and the planters and everybody, about 12 or 20 strong, and then there was the Ops DWEC, the Operations DWEC, the chairman, the policeman, the home guard officer, the special branch officer and myself.
McNEILL: Was that part of the major DWEC?
OCHILTREE: Yes, the Ops DWEC would meet every Monday morning, the DWEC once a month.
McNEILL: Were there other smaller DWECs within the major DWEC?
OCHILTREE: No, it would just be the DWEC and the Ops DWEC, and each state would have a SWEC, a State War Executive Committee.
McNEILL: That is a state re–province?
OCHILTREE: The state, no Perak. See Kulim was a province within the state of Perak.
McNEILL: So for provinces like district, the same thing, not like Vietnam?
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OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: Who was the chairman of the DWEC?
OCHILTREE: John Davis.
McNEILL: What was his appointment?
OCHILTREE: He was the district officer of Province Wellesley, Butterworth and Province Wellesley.
McNEILL: But this was to operate in Kulim?
OCHILTREE: Yeah, Kulim district I think probably rather than province.
McNEILL: Yes, it is quite a difficult organisation to get onto. Who was the DWEC responsible to?
OCHILTREE: SWEC, the State War Executive Committee.
McNEILL: Do you recall who would sit on that?
OCHILTREE: The divisional commander, General St Clair Ford, and usually in attendance would be the operational brigade commanders.
McNEILL: And other administrative bodies. Who would that be responsible to, Malaya Command?
OCHILTREE: Malaya Command in Kuala Lumpur.
McNEILL: So as you were about to say, it was like war by committee.
OCHILTREE: Exactly.
McNEILL: How did you find this then, I mean there are difficulties aren’t there? It is not just a military object fighting a counter-terrorist war.
OCHILTREE: It meant that because my relations with the chairman of DWEC, a Brit with experience in jungle fighting against Japanese, and a good British Special Branch officer and a very co-operative Malay police officer, they were very good and we would sort of work out things together and we would say, before we worked out the plan, we might say, divide the Deuce area into company areas and we discussed this with the police and the police would say, “We will look after this bit and the police Special Force people will do this and the home guard will do that” and we worked it all out together. Now when operations began, we would meet, I would meet once or twice a day with the policeman, the OCPID and then if something really blew up I would take the bull by the horns and go ahead and let him know what I had done or, particularly when we are doing night ambushes around Chinese New Year and things, when we expected movement from the CTs to pick up food, we would agree where we would put ambushes and that sort of thing.
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McNEILL: Would you be given a special area to operate in or would you have a special role throughout the whole Operation Deuce area. What I am getting at is, did the battalion have different types of duties to the police, to the armed police, the Malayan police?
OCHILTREE: We were not meant to really have much to do with the civilians, certainly not the indigenous population, language problems would occur there, so generally we would concentrate mainly on patrolling in the jungle, ambushing and also a certain amount of patrolling in the rubber. But the rubber was always a problem because the rubber tappers were all Chinese and there would be the language problem between ourselves and the Chinese and also as the Chinese, many of them were sympathetic to the communists. We would send the patrol out at first light and the Chinese rubber tappers would be tapping their little receptacle - this is a signal to the CTs that there was security forces around and you couldn’t really nail them on that. There was also another problem and I don’t know if it might be well to mention this, when we would go on Operation Deuce, Amnesty was on. Now Amnesty was a political ploy designed to…in certain areas throughout Malaya, there would be safe areas where CTs could come out and surrender. And Tunku Abdul Rahman, the prime minister, was trying to arrange a meeting with Chin Peng to discuss things and they said “Right, we will have surrender areas, we will declare a period of amnesty,” which was on before we arrived in Malaya and extended to well after we began operations. So it meant that in our area, if you saw some CTs sitting down and having a cup of tea, for example, you couldn’t shoot them. You had to call them on to surrender. I think “barrenty”, “surrender”, or “beware”; then the CTs wouldn’t surrender, so they would sugar off and you would give them a warning, you couldn’t shoot them.
McNEILL: So you still patrolled in these areas but they were Amnesty?
OCHILTREE: But everytime you saw a CT, you had to call out “barrenty”.
McNEILL: This was in the Operation Deuce?
OCHILTREE: In the operational area, in Deuce area, it was throughout Malaya. Now, this actually was responsible for them missing a few CTs in our first contact. My chap, by the name of Warrant Officer Hayden, had a patrol out and he saw a group of CTs, so he called out “barrenty”, so they naturally shook it off. Fortunately, he shot one, which was our first kill, he wounded the chap, but this was very frustrating.
McNEILL: But otherwise they would have surrounded them or charged them anyway?
OCHILTREE: They wouldn’t have called out a warning, they would have, hopefully would have shot the lot.
McNEILL: Yes, now only some areas were nominated as safe areas for the CTs to give themselves up and yet Operation Deuce was run in an area, which had been nominated as a safe area.
OCHILTREE: I have an idea from memory, the whole of Malaya might have been declared. Amnesty might have been declared throughout the whole area, for a month or something like that, I have an idea it was for the whole of the Federation of Malaya. But certainly it was Operation Deuce, if you were a CT and I came across you, I had to call out a warning.
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McNEILL: What a ridiculous situation to be in, yes, you don’t know when you are fighting or not fighting.
[Pause in recording]
OCHILTREE: Was there any significance with the confidence with the brigade commander on 21 December? No, I think it was purely…I put it plain to him and told him what we were going to do. And I think I showed him the operational order I had issued. I issued it and signed it as Commander Kulim Force.
McNEILL: This was for Operation Deuce?
OCHILTREE: Operation Deuce, and I remember he said it would have been better if you got the chairman of DWEC to sign it.
McNEILL: Yes, of course at that time, there was this problem and in November there was a problem of whether or not you could actually carry out CT operations. Was that?
OCHILTREE: Yes, I think at this stage, the 21 December, I think it had been agreed we would go on Operation Deuce, because it began, I think on New Year’s Eve, or New Year’s Day, I think we began our deployment.
McNEILL: By the 21 December, yes, so you would have been talking about Deuce and what you were to do.
OCHILTREE: You mention about there in this conference, how did I see the development of brigade operations, there were no brigade operations, this was a battalion operation in conjunction with the local security forces.
McNEILL: Can you recall in the early days whether you were told how your operations would develop over the next year or period?
OCHILTREE: No, we were left to it to go ahead and get stuck into Operation Deuce, and I recall at one stage, the C-in-C, FARELF, General Loewen came up, and there was talk of moving us elsewhere to an area where we were at a greater probability of bumping into CTs and I said, “Look, we would like to stay here until we really wrap it up and knock off the CTs”.
McNEILL: I am just about to come onto the method of operating in Operation Deuce so I will just leave that for the moment and I think we can have an orange juice or something else.
[Pause in recording]
McNEILL: You weren’t issued with ammunition at the time Mr. Casey arrived.
OCHILTREE: That is quite true.
McNEILL: Why was that, what was it all about?
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OCHILTREE: I don’t know the reason for us not having ammunition but we had to have troops holding ground, surrounding the parade ground and some of the high ground in the vicinity of the Minden Barracks parade ground when Casey was there because it would have been, since Penang was a black area, it would have been a little embarrassing if some CTs had put a shot across Casey’s bows or shot him, so the troops had rifles but no ammunition.
McNEILL: Did this have something to do with the fact that at the time you were not officially on operations, anti-terrorist operations?
OCHILTREE: No, I can’t recall why we didn’t have ammunition, we had rifles. I remember one of the journalists featured this in the Melbourne Herald, mentioning how ridiculous would it be, how it was that we had troops without any ammunition allegedly protecting the Minister of State for External Affairs.
McNEILL: I saw a reference in the early part of the battalion’s experience that you had new weapons, it didn’t say rifles. Was the battalion issued with new weapons, just before leaving, can you recall a small detail like that, where they had to zero their rifles, or machine guns?
OCHILTREE: I am pretty sure we went over there without rifles, but I can’t be positive.
McNEILL: We will just leave that, it was only a passing...
OCHILTREE: I know we came back without rifles because somebody said what happens about the troops who were diverted from the Middle East to somewhere in the Pacific?
McNEILL: That was to Ceylon wasn’t it?
OCHILTREE: Somewhere, there were some without weapons and “shouldn’t we have rifles?” We had then the SLR rifles and I suggested it was unlikely we would be involved in a conventional war between Georgetown and Sydney and it was much administratively simple if we handed our SLR rifles over to 3 RAR, which we did.
McNEILL: So you were issued with SLR rifles, British FN rifles then, I suppose before coming back?
OCHILTREE: Yes, we used them operations.
McNEILL: Would that have been one of the first battalions to ever have those rifles in the Australian army?
OCHILTREE: I couldn’t say, we were not issued with them until well into, certainly well after we had begun operations in Shark North, I would say it would have been the later part of 1956.
McNEILL: I will just leave it there. You were saying your wife was very busy up there, firstly because Peter Moore was getting married, was that right?
OCHILTREE: He came as a bachelor engaged, got married after, I think he was married but his wife hadn’t come out to Malaya. So my wife had to then run brigade welfare and then had to run a thing called SSAFA - Soldier, Sailors, and Air Force Association, which was soldiers,
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air force and police wives from north Malaya, and this kept her flat to the boards, working with the police wives and police committees and Red Cross and she didn’t have time to scratch herself. And then, of course, when our large content of wives, I have forgotten how many, well over one hundred came along, some of whom had only just got married and some had never been away from their mothers before, let alone away from Australia, she had her hands full. Whereas, the British battalions might’ve only had a sprinkling of married families, we had dozens of them, many of which posed problems.
McNEILL: Yes, did you have many difficult experiences with the wives and families?
OCHILTREE: Quite a few but I better not record some of them.
McNEILL: I know on the files there are instances of families having to be sent home because they weren’t acting in accordance with the Australian image, so those situations were already there, you could generalise on them, perhaps?
OCHILTREE: I think generally speaking the families were pretty good. Once they settled in, once they got to know a bit about customs of the country and got used to the fact their husbands were frequently away for several weeks at a time, they rallied around well. And my wife organised battalion welfare and the company commanders’ wives, where they had wives there, would organise company welfare and they were particularly good. And also they were very good when there was the odd married member was killed and their family were in Malaya; they found the wives were very good, the way they rallied around.
McNEILL: Did you get any of the wives or husbands playing up on each other when you have a whole company away and just the families back and so on?
OCHILTREE: I think you have got a fair bit of gossip and scandal and whinging that their husbands were away. I used to get the odd anonymous letter from a wife complaining of her husband not getting home, I used to get that in Ennogera, I remember one wife rang me up at Ennogera, this is going back a little bit, gave me a few groups about how I wouldn’t let her husband home for the weekend for weeks at a time, how I had him on guard duty every weekend. So, in due course, I summoned the soldier in and I said, having found out the facts from his company commander, I said, “I have had your wife ringing me up and giving me a blast, you haven’t been allowed home.” And he said, “Oh well,” and I said, “You bloody well can go home, you know it.” And he said, “I didn’t want to,” and I said, “Don’t bloody well dob me in, I have told your wife you are not on guard duty this weekend, you go home, do you understand?” So I would get a certain amount of this in Ennogera and the odd complaint when I was in Malaya. On the other hand, we tried to allow married members home to their families on a regular basis. Now this caused, now and then, a certain amount of resentment among the unmarried members who sometimes said “Oh, it is a married members’ battalion.” So it was one of those Catch 22 situations but we tried to be fair to the unmarried chaps and to the married ones.
McNEILL: In what way could you let the married members get home without also letting the single ones, is this from the operational area is it?
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OCHILTREE: From the operational area, yes.
McNEILL: And what would the single ones be doing, they would be resting?
OCHILTREE: No, we would try at the same time, work a rotation basis on stand down and provide transport to bring the single blokes back to Penang, at the same time.
McNEILL: So this is when you have a protracted operation, like Operation Deuce or particularly Operation Shark North, how long would company spend on operations in those cases, before rotating or…?
OCHILTREE: It would vary depending on the tactical situation, I would say usually speaking about a company would be there for at least four or five weeks to try and familiarize themselves with the terrain. For example, if you knew there was a CT track somewhere, they were liable to go to a new village to pick up food or something like that, you would want the company to be able to know where to deploy their troops. We tried to rotate the companies and rotate particularly the personnel back so they would get a bit of stand down on a regular basis. Again, what had an adverse effect on operations, I was compelled to maintain troops in Minden Barracks for internal security, so we used to rotate a company at a time back there so it would be a company on stand down. They would have guards and sentries and things to do around Minden Barracks but at the same time, would try and maintain the momentum of the operation in the operational area. And again, another thing that used to affect Operation Deuce, we had to keep troops at the base camp at Kroh in northern Perak, so it meant you never ever got the battalion concentrated as a battalion. Now, there were a number of reasons for that, not only the fact that we had to keep a presence at Kroh and Penang but companies operated from operational bases, so it was a matter of accommodation. So if you didn’t have enough company wired-in company bases for the whole battalion…one company on one occasion, we had them under canvas but then I think, we had to move that company back to Kroh. Operations were dictated to a large extent by the fact the battalion had to always…had to be all their command posts in close proximity to the police with whom we were cooperating.
McNEILL: And the police would be in a village or something like that?
OCHILTREE: The police would be in the village, say in Kulim, they would be in the police station and I had a command post in one of the garages; I had tarpaulins around the area and tent flies and tables and we got some electric light and it was there. And in Sungei Siput, where we had the command post, we were in a tin shed on the roof of a police station and so we were literally within a few…the head policeman and I were only a few yards apart. The other thing, we had to have good communications, telephone to many of the company bases because at night the radios usually wouldn’t work in the jungle and also you needed to have, if you wanted air support, you had to use the telephone so the operational areas were governed to a certain extent by having an operational command post in close proximity to the police and to communications.
McNEILL: Yes, then the companies would normally be working out, as you said in your first report, companies would work out more or less independently of each other or with communications back to the tactical headquarters?
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OCHILTREE: That was the normal pattern. A battalion would be allotted the battalion area and within the battalion we would allot the companies a company area and generally speaking, each company operated within that company area except if something blew up, an ambush or something or an attack on the rubber estate when we would have a battalion operation or, on two or three occasions, a brigade operation. But then after that operation, which were normally short lived because the CTs would usually leave the area, we would then move back to normal operations within the battalion framework and a company framework.
McNEILL: You are well aware of operation pattern in Vietnam, it is something like it in that you would have a fire support base with companies working out but of course, there is a different concept here, your tactical headquarters is next to the police headquarters and in some village or town. In Vietnam of course, it was in the middle of the jungle somewhere as a battalion headquarters. What about artillery, was there supporting, was it an axiom that you had supporting artillery to the companies?
OCHILTREE: No, not at all. Artillery was used solely in the harassing role, the idea was that you would pick out different areas where we didn’t have the patrols operating, where we hoped the CTs were trying to sleep, and to have spasmodic, intermittent fire during the night, particularly to try and keep them awake and to try and, in theory, drive them away from that particular area. So there was no requirement to have companies sited so they were within artillery support because there was never any need for artillery support in counter-insurgency warfare of this type.
McNEILL: The enemy wasn’t strong enough really?
OCHILTREE: No, regrettably, we were very sorry that, and I think everyone in the battalion was very sorry we were so late in the piece, sort of half way through the final round because on one occasion, I was visited by a senior Malayan police officer in the command post at Sungei Siput and he said that when he was there in ‘48, they had dozens of CTs physically attacking the police station and I said we wished that had occurred to us [inaudible]. And driving along, we were always very careful with our escorts on the black roads, we were never ever ambushed, we always practiced our counter-ambush drills and all this sort of thing but nobody ambushed us.
McNEILL: In some ways, it would have been a bit of a let down or a bit of a disappointment?
OCHILTREE: If we had been attacked?
McNEILL: No.
OCHILTREE: The fact that we were not?
McNEILL: Yes.
OCHILTREE: I was hoping we would be because one of the high points was when on the pipeline ambush, by Wally Campbell’s platoon of A Company, and that was the first time people really got stuck into us, ambushed us. Although we regrettably had casualties, so did the CTs and then later on, a captured document or CT said they had thought the way the Australians fought in their counter-ambush drill, they were Gurkhas and then afterwards they
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said on reports we got, was that they were very cagey where there were Australians operating. Of course, when we disseminated that information to the troops, that was a great boost to their morale, but the other occasion which our people were literally attacked, was then we moved down to Shark North, moved down to the company base at Sungei Siput.
McNEILL: Near Kroh, this is?
OCHILTREE: No, Sungei Siput, the troops were forbidden to… confined to camp that night. Some of the soldiers had decided to go into a coffee shop and have a drink or a cup of coffee and some CTs rode pushbikes through the area, through the village and tossed a hand grenade into the coffee shop which put the local special branch officer…was wounded and put into hospital and one of our chaps got a bit of grenade in the neck. And I was rather unkind when the brigadier came down the next day; he sympathised with him and I said, “It will teach you to bloody well do as you are told. If you had stayed within the confinements of the company base, you wouldn’t have got it in the neck as you did, literally.” But that was a great boost to morale, because when we went down and took over from the 1st Battalion of the Fed Regiment, the CO said to me, “You will never ever see a CT in our area; it is very quiet.” And the very first night, a couple of our troops copped it in Sungei Siput. So we thought, “This is great, there are CTs.”
McNEILL: Yes, right.
OCHILTREE: But no, in answer to your question, there was no requirement to operate with artillery support, artillery was purely used in the harassing role hoping we would disturb the CTs’ slumber. We also operated in Operation Deuce where the squadron of…I think it was the 15th and 19th Hussars and they were helpful. They used to help with road escort duties, especially if you have a VIP or something like that. And we had them again down in Shark North and then they were relieved, in due course, by a squadron of the King’s Dragoon Guards the KDGs.
McNEILL: Did you get to use helicopters very much?
OCHILTREE: The only time…we asked for a helicopter, once down in Shark North and it wasn’t made available, because we had an independent platoon in full flight and an Auster pilot spotted them fleeing through the rubber estate, having knocked off the estate manager, and I asked for a helicopter, but there wasn’t one available. After that, since we got very good support from the 1907 Light Liaison Flight, manning Austers… after that we used to practice going along flying in an Auster, with the passenger’s door off and working out what altitude you had to be at to drop a [30-shift] grenade so it would explode at ground level and also, my ops officer on a couple of occasions went for flights with that, with a Bren gun over his lap with a view that if he saw any stray CTs, he’d take a pop shot at them. No, helicopters we only used in Operation Eagle Swoop off the north Malayan border and that was used for a rapid deployment of troops, a casevac and for moving troops around the operational area.
McNEILL: How many helicopters did you have, can you remember, I mean are we talking about 10 helicopters, enough to move a company?
OCHILTREE: I suppose when we had Eagle Swoop, we moved a whole company in one go but I think we only had about four or five choppers and they would ferry them to and fro and they were very good. I remember on one occasion, at a CGS exercise in the sixties- is this
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applicable?-The question of employment of helicopters in jungle terrain was raised and some of the speakers said, ”Very difficult, they are very hard to operate and they don’t exactly understand the terrain the same way as the chaps on the ground do.” And I said that I had operated with RAF helicopters who were unfamiliar with that part of Malaya and I said it was very heavy jungle, a very mountain thing, and I went in with the lead helicopter with a Polish pilot. And after I had shown him the way, after that, we put a member of the intelligence section in the lead helicopter and they just went in. And after this had gone on for about…each flight had done about one sortie, each aircraft, they knew the terrain, the same way as we did. And I said there is no trouble. And one of the speakers at the CGS exercise said, ”It is very difficult.” and I said, “It is no more difficult that sitting in a truck and leading a convoy in, the drivers learn the way.” We found they were very good, the only things they were all hesitant about was under very…heavy storm overhead, rain and thunderstorm, they wouldn’t like to operate under that, which was very wise. And I remember for Eagle Swoop, the plan was, and this is probably going a bit ahead of things, after a CT camp had been found, this was the idea: the Lincolns come in on a TDP strike - Target Director Post. - bomb the area. And I said, “After that’s done, I will go in with a lead helicopter we will rope down and demolish any CTs that are still there.” And the RAF commander or the chopper commander was very reluctant to do this, he said, “Jungle trees falling down, it is pretty risky for them.” And I said, ”Look, damn sight riskier for me and the couple of chaps I have got in there roping down, the bloody trees falling down.” And then I remember it was Air Marshal Kyle who later became Governor of Western Australia, who is the C-in-C Far East Air Forces, was present at this briefing conference on what I was going to do in the operation and he said, “Bloody well give him what he wants and don’t belly ache about it.” So we had the choppers ready to do this when the strike had gone in. But those were the only two occasions which the choppers expressed any doubts. And the other one was if the LZ (Landing Zone) wasn’t secured they didn’t want to land. And again I said, “I am quite happy to go in and we will rope down.” And after they realized that it wasn’t as hazardous as they thought, there was no more trouble. They were magnificent, the RAF choppers.
McNEILL: Did you get resupplied by helicopters?
OCHILTREE: On occasions, yes.
McNEILL: I am wondering what the normal method of resupply would be and how often to companies which are out operating?
OCHILTREE: Most times, it would be a platoon or a patrol of a few, three or five men out and they would mainly carry up to ten days rations with them and that was usually the maximum duration of the patrol.
McNEILL: Ten days?
OCHILTREE: Ten days, however, most patrols were much shorter, some of them were only a few hours or half a day or a day or a day and a night or a couple of days and a night. If the need for a resupply occurred, usually on a company basis, it was usually by air supply, air drop.
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McNEILL: Yes, from Dakotas?
OCHILTREE: From Dakotas, even though I thought the Dakotas did a very good job because I remember going for a flip in one when I was studying air supplies in Malaya and you would see the thing going and you would see little LZ marked out and jungle everywhere and the thing would go into a great old dive and things would hurtle out and I thought, God, it would be a bit tough! But when the chap pulled back on the stick the aircraft kept going.
McNEILL: Kept going, yes.
OCHILTREE: And I thought the air despatch people did a very good job, the whole air supply was organised and very good and served as a model for our own Australian Air Supply organisation later on.
McNEILL: I understand though the soldiers had to recover parachutes, would that have been a bit of a joke, perhaps, because they would have to carry them and at the same time they could say the parachutes were irrecoverable or something?
OCHILTREE: If we recovered mainly, I suppose costs came into it to a certain extent, but they were very popular for use as a hammock or a tent cover, it was much better than a sheet of plastic. The CTs used to like it and understandably they used to use plastic, much better to have a bit of parachute, and also our own troops used to like having, that was the days before all the Australian lightweight equipment was really perfected to the extent it was later on.. They used to be recovered and brought back as far as possible, but the air supply system was very good. The helicopter support, when we got it, it was magnificent.
McNEILL: That operation, Eagle Swoop, if I recall, it seemed to be a vendetta against the CTs in the Kroh area after two or three of our soldiers had been killed in an ambush.
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: That’s not right?
OCHILTREE: Quite incorrect. A CT had surrendered, or been captured, and happily turned informant and he then said the independent platoon was operating in the area, at the Thai- Malayan border near Kroh; had a number of camps here and there; gave the whole pattern of where they were and really blew the gaff; gave a nominal role of members and strength-about sixty. So, the then Director of Operations, General Sir Roger Bower, was very keen on a scheme called TDP, Target Director Post. Now this idea was that you would find out where the CTs were based… Because, I think it was in Johore, there had been a great, there had been an air strike and it really demolished the whole CT contingent. The only thing was, as somebody told me, the only reason it was so successful, they dropped the bombs in the wrong place and they did hit a group of CTs. Had they dropped it where they were told to they would have missed the lot, it was a bit of luck. So the idea of this was, there would be an air strike where the CTs were gathered and then we would then go in after them. Now the scheme by General Bower was, first of all, and this is what Kroh was about, we would send in a small patrol, hand-picked, with a little black box and the SEP, the Surrendered Enemy Person, surrendered CT.
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McNEILL: He acted as your guide?
OCHILTREE: That was the idea. And they went in to all the various camps on the ground and found that they were all, in actual fact, they were all deserted and moved on, so the thing was a lemon and they came out. But the idea was, according to General Bower, was the patrol would go in with its little black box, go into the middle of the CT camp, plant the little box, withdraw. The black box would send out magic signals, the Lincoln would come in, home in on them and bomb them.
McNEILL: Really?
OCHILTREE: I said to General Bower, “CTs are a pretty clued up mob. They have been operating since, some of them since 1941, with Chin Peng, who was against Japanese and the others, their camps are well sited, they have their little sentries here and there.” and I said, ”It would be impossible for a soldier to walk in, excuse me, plant his little black box and get out again.” So Roger Bower was not terribly impressed with that idea or was I for my reasoning, but what we finally compromised at: we would send in the SEP and the small patrol to locate the camp of sixty; we would put the black box somewhere where with our map-reading the jungle, it hopefully would be pretty accurate, and say 20 degrees and about 600 yards, there is the camp. Patrol would withdraw then the idea, the Lincoln would come in and bomb it. The specially trained force for Eagle Swoop would then go in and land nearby and I was going in the chopper with a few chaps into the dropping zone and the others had all surrounded and we’d get in and knock them off or follow up and knock them off, so that was the idea, that was the approved plan. Choppers would bring them all in and everyone would rope down all the area and there would just be the remains of sixty CTs to gather up. Now in the event, the CT went in, first of all he bleated he had worn out his boots he had walked so far, and then he went to all these four camps and found they were all deserted. So he had plotted on the ground map where the crossing places were. I then said to Roger Bower, “Look there are no camps, we had hoped we would find it, put your black box down, bomb it and pick up the bits.” And I said “What I would like to do now [inaudible]”, I was then operating direct under the Director of Operations, brigade and division had nothing to do with it and he said, “Right-ho, go for your life.” So we went in and we couldn’t find anyone. Then by chance, what had actually happened: a patrol operating down under Sergeant Kennedy of Support Company, spotted the CT outpost having a smoke, by a CT wards point or somewhere then the guard wandered off. So the little four-man patrol, Sergeant Kennedy plus three, got a bit closer, then the guard came back so they all sorted it out, the CT was looking around, Sergeant Kennedy’s merry men were looking around, and in the meantime he got on the radio with Morse, we were using key because voice was [inaudible], radioed back to the company. And we had got them, so the company came in by chopper some distance away and was a process of surrounding the CT camp and the idea was they were going to surround and then charge in. And one of Kennedy’s chaps moved back a bit and he had a little twig or little bush in the fork of his legs and that moved and the CT sentry spotted this, blew the gaff. Kennedy tossed the grenade, knocked off one of the CTs arms and the whole sixty of them fled into Thailand. We helicoptered people into all the crossing points but the bird had flown so that was the end of that. Now one of the - and this comes to the point of TDP and its value - one of the Auster pilots spotted nearby or a few miles away, what he thought might have been an alternative CT camp. So we had all this, we had the thing spotted, and everyone had their compasses and
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maps out and we reckon we had the thing pretty well pinpointed on the ground so then we said, ”Right, here is a chance to put the great TDP into operation.” So the Lincolns came over at first light and we had follow up people winging in and all this sort of thing. They missed the target by about 800 yards. With all of the sophisticated equipment and they had a map reference for everything but in actual fact, there wasn’t a camp there it just had all the indications under the jungle canopy of being a camp.
McNEILL: But they still missed their box?
OCHILTREE: Missed the thing, so that was Eagle Swoop. Roger Bower was not amused, least of all was he amused at the fact that I said I reckon TDP is a bit of a waste of time. But they literally missed the target by 800 yards and the RAF had a great witch hunt on to try and find out what went wrong because the grid reference we had given them was spot on.
McNEILL: Just getting onto the RAF and the RAAF, there has been a lot of controversy about whether this bombing of large areas of jungle was much use. Did you have any experience of it?
OCHILTREE: Yes, I had a look at it after it had been, where we had had this strike, this was the only strike we had and the jungle was bent a fair bit, it had trees falling here and there. I reckon it was safe for helicopters to go in and rope down, as was the plan.
McNEILL: So where they did carry out a strike, you would say that they pretty well had devastated the area, if anyone had been there?
OCHILTREE: Yes, they would have a headache.
McNEILL: What about their area bombing against targets, like suspected targets and so on. I know they carried these out in the first year or so of the war. You have heard the expression “bomb in the jungle”, did you have any experience of that?
OCHILTREE: This was an area bombing, the idea was to really…
McNEILL: Bomb a whole area?
OCHILTREE: …I have forgotten, I think it was about 200 yards by 200 they reckon they would flatten which if there were a CT camp, or a group of CTs, it would demolish them pretty effectively.
McNEILL: Yes. So you generally support the idea of the area bombing patterns?
OCHILTREE: I think the idea of taking a little black box into the middle of a camp was like a cuckoo in cloud land.
McNEILL: Yes, that is right, yes it sounds like it has got its problems.
OCHILTREE: Among the other commanders, or senior British officers that we saw there, was Field Marshal Templer, who had been the original director of operations when the emergency blew up in 1948, and he was magnificent. He got around and talked to people and said, “Don’t be frustrated at the fact that you don’t find many CTs, you are lucky if you hit
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one now, at the tail-end of the emergency.” He was very good. General Brooke, who was commanding the Malayan forces, was very good and General [Cassels], whom the Australians met in Vietnam, who took over from General Roger Bower after independence, was very good.
McNEILL: Yes, do you remember when you saw Templer, he had just come out for a passing visit, was it?
OCHILTREE: He came way, I would have said in the later part of 1956. I think he came out as a guest in connection with Independence, which was the 31 August.
McNEILL: That would have been 1957, August 1957?
OCHILTREE: Yes, 31 August 1957. General Bourne I remember was very disappointed that he was reposted from Malaya; he said he reckoned he could see the tide turning and he didn’t want to leave the job half finished.
McNEILL: About how far out would the companies operate from you when they were dispersed from the battalion headquarters, how far up would you let them go, a couple of miles, can you recall?
OCHILTREE: It would be more, about five miles. Up in Kroh they were about, I would have to look at the map, but quite a considerable distance, the main thing was as long as you could keep in radio contact.
McNEILL: Would you confirm that the machine gun platoon was armed with six Vickers machine guns?
OCHILTREE: They were yes, Vickers.
McNEILL: Did you take them with you to Malaya, can you recall, it is a bit of a detail?
OCHILTREE: I think we were reissued with new ones when we got there.
McNEILL: But you had a machine gun platoon?
OCHILTREE: I think the machine gun platoon…I don’t think we got the Vickers when we were there because it was a machine gun platoon that was converted into the scout car platoon. They manned the scout cars; people can man a machine gun effectively should be just the chap to ride shotgun on an armoured car, a scout car.
McNEILL: Right. Was 105th Field Battery armed with 25-pounders?
OCHILTREE: 25-pounders. Our mortar platoon had three-inch mortars and then later on had 4.2.
McNEILL: You had two mortars, at page 9?
OCHILTREE: Have you covered the bit about the air lift, you remember question 28, I remember we spoke about it, I can’t remember if we recorded it.
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McNEILL: I don’t know, you could say that again. You weren’t airlifted, in fact?
OCHILTREE: Into Operation Deuce, the companies went by ferry across to Butterworth, bivouacked there and then, under cover of darkness, went by vehicle on foot into the operational area, companies in succession.
McNEILL: Right. Do you recall whether you were operating with a British one-man ration? This is question 31.
OCHILTREE: Yes, we had the British 24-hour ration pack.
McNEILL: At that stage was it the two meals, the big tin for dinner and a little tin for breakfast?
OCHILTREE: Yes, and there was sweets and things for lunch, mars bars.
McNEILL: And a bit of curry in it or something?
OCHILTREE: I don’t recall the curry, I remember one of things that our troops really liked was curry and rice and I think we used to swap our rations with some of the Malay troops and this was one of the suggestions we made periodically to the Australian Army food people and they came up and discussed rations with us. We wanted more curry and rice and things for the rations. It was a British one-man ration pack, 24-hour ration pack. Do you want to mention at this stage the fact that the rations when we were not on operations.
McNEILL: Yes, go ahead please.
OCHILTREE: This was again a bit of a thorn in the side, the British rations as you know, are not as meaty or as good as ours, as the Australian. But when soldiers, the Australians, were with integrated units, like on Commonwealth Brigade Headquarters, or in hospital, they got a special financial supplement, I think it was about an Australian dollar a day. The theory of it was since they were starving on the British rations, they could buy supplementary food.
McNEILL: Goodness gracious.
OCHILTREE: Now where it was absolutely ridiculous, a soldier say with VD would be hospitalised and get paid a dollar a day for his trouble. I remember jokingly saying to the British brigade commander, “If it comes to a point, our chaps are out on patrol because they are on British rations with their dollar a day” and he said, “I quite agree and if you put up a case and that, I will support it” and I said “Then we will need men with the establishment to have one auditor per patrol to keep a check on ‘three days had British rations and one day Australian’.” and I said “That is ridiculous,” I said, “The British rations might not be all that crash hot but they are not that bad.”
McNEILL: How do the British feel about that, they would be a bit insulted wouldn’t they?
OCHILTREE: Yes, although they were fairly philosophical about it. I know, I have an ex- British army driver, an ex-British army batman and they said “Now the British army knows 57 different ways of cooking potatoes.”
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McNEILL: Yes, that is right. What would you say to the proposition that it was in Malaya, that the Australian soldiers and leaders learnt the virtue of patience in anti-terrorist operations and that they applied this quality in Vietnam? That is question 32 on page 10.
OCHILTREE: I think our people really, basically Australians, were not terribly patient. They would learn it in ambushes for a time but they were not like the Gurkhas for example, who could stay in an ambush for day after day and I remember Field Marshal Slim, after the presentation of colours, he said, “Tell your troops to model themselves for patience on my Gurkhas, not like the British Tommies,” he said, “who wants to get up and have a brew up every couple of hours.” He said, “My Gurkhas can stay in an ambush without moving hour after hour, day after day.” And we found that with the Gurkhas when we associated with them, they were magnificent.
McNEILL: Were they, you would put them as the top jungle soldiers?
OCHILTREE: I would definitely, they were patient, they were good. I don’t think they…I never heard them getting VD; I never heard of them acting up. And joining some of the Gurkhas COs and I had quite a bit to do with them, they said, “Our troops, there is never any disciplinary problem because they are so well paid by Nepalese standards, they save up their pay and they go back to Nepal, and they are rich men.” And he said, “If they do any kick over the traces they get fined and that is a bitter blow for them.” I would say the Gurkhas were magnificent; we had some, I had some under command at one stage and they were splendid.
McNEILL: Onto a more tragic event, on the 31 January 1956, during Deuce, Sergeant Ewald was accidentally killed, do you recall the general circumstances of that event?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it was a night ambush and the ambush party having got into position, one of the cardinal things was once we were in position, you don’t move. For some unknown reason, Ewald got up and moved through the ambush area and he was sighted and he was shot and died of wounds. Now the chap that shot him was understandably pretty upset and I remember talking to the sergeant of the platoon the following day and he said, “If [Soin] hadn’t shot him, I would have.” Regrettably, it was Sergeant Ewald’s own fault; why he stood up in the ambush and moved in darkness and shot, I am blessed if I know. But he was a very good sergeant and I remember the circumstances extremely well.
McNEILL: After that, well not because of that incident, there were other incidents of accidental discharge and I am wondering what your reaction to them was or what could be done to stop them?
OCHILTREE: It was a source of never-ending concern, why some of these things happen. One chap going across in the ferry, going back on stand-down, he was sitting on the ferry, and his rifle went off and it resulted in his death. Now, before going on the ferry it was an order you would unload your rifle but he didn’t and he didn’t have the safety catch on, he must have just lent on it and pressed the trigger. On another occasion - and I remember all of these very vividly because we had an investigation after with everyone to see what went wrong - another one, a Bren gun went off when a patrol had based up the night, and killed somebody. Another one, I remember, this was due to a bit of strain and it was in jungle and the visibility was very poor and somebody actually thought there was a CT and he took a pot shot and killed the bloke.
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How, acts of stupidity, it was actually bad weapon handling and I reckon it was bad basic training. Because in one case, I remember seeing a chap, he had no rounds in the rifle, he was just palming the bolt, this was a .303 rifle, I remember as a cadet being told you never palm a bolt, you always press, it was a trigger thing, palm the bolt and then with his middle finger pressed the trigger all simultaneously. And I saw him and bloody well ripped into him but after some of these things, we had an investigation after each case and I would say with the exception of the one in the night ambush where the chap who shot him deliberately took shot, took pot shot at this moving target, thinking it was a CT and killed him, that was Sergeant Ewald, and the case in operation Eagle Swoop when somebody thought it was a CT, in the gloom and shot him, all the rest of them were just accidental discharges, just negligence. And I reckon it was bad basic training. We would put everyone through their tests of elementary training; we made everybody check their weapons before going on operations; we issued in routine orders every time, a little frame, a safety guide, one of the things I remember, ‘Never point your rifle on a man unless you mean to kill him.’ It was careless if it was under an arm, or something like that, it was just carelessness. So we then had a wholesale program of making safety consciousness and I remember General St Clair Ford at one stage, of course there were cables going to and from Australia. A [inaudible] right up in the press, another Australian accidentally killed, people back here were saying, badly trained and this sort of thing. I remember the divisional commander saying, “Don’t lean over too far backwards for safety or you’ll never kill a CT when you see them”. But no, it was bad basic training and bad carelessness on the individual. Why it happened, I just don’t know.
McNEILL: You don’t say it was due to excessive strain on the soldiers in the jungle?
OCHILTREE: It didn’t occur in those circumstances apparently. The only time when it could have occurred anything strange, was in Eagle Swoop, where somebody deliberately shot somebody he thought was a CT and the chap had been in the jungle for sometime and he was fairly exhausted. I remember it was Private Wilson who was killed but no, that was of great concern, it was just sheer carelessness.
McNEILL: Was there any evidence that might suggest deliberate shooting of one man by another?
OCHILTREE: Because he didn’t like him, do you mean?
McNEILL: Yes.
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: I mean you have got the odd fragging incident in Vietnam with Australian troops where someone went barmy and shot.
OCHILTREE: In Korea too, I remember in Korea somebody tossed a grenade into a weapon pit where the platoon or company commander was asleep.
McNEILL: That type of thing, you never found?
OCHILTREE: No, never.
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McNEILL: Did you have any incidences of self-inflicted wounding?
OCHILTREE: No, never.
McNEILL: Sarawak rangers joined the battalion on the 20 February 1956 for an attachment to the companies as trackers, did these trackers appear to be efficient and successful?
OCHILTREE: They were, they were very good. The only difficulty we found was that on one occasion, I think one got wounded and this made the rest of them a little touchy, particularly, as the tracker would be the leading man followed by the scout, and by the patrol commander. And so really the first, if they walked into a CT ambush or encountered any CTs, the first chap that was liable to cop it was unfortunately, the Iban tracker, so it was.
McNEILL: Yes, did you have Dyak trackers, I think Sarawak Rangers would be Ibans and Dyaks, wouldn’t they?
OCHILTREE: I think so, yes.
McNEILL: I think you were mainly [inaudible].
OCHILTREE: Sarawak Rangers.
McNEILL: Was there any question as to the loyalty of Ibans in this anti-terrorist situation?
OCHILTREE: None at all, no none.
McNEILL: Who administered them, paid them and clothed them?
OCHILTREE: They were administered by their own organisation, Sarawak Rangers.
McNEILL: If they were going to go with you for a month or so into the bush, with a company, I suppose you, back at the company headquarters, or at the battalion, you would have enough special food for them?
OCHILTREE: I can’t remember actually, they may have been quite happy with our rations, I don’t recall the rationing, but there was no problem.
McNEILL: What about language?
OCHILTREE: No, no language, mainly sign language, they would know what they meant to do and look for, CT tracks or something like that and what we used to do was have aborigines also, local aborigines as trackers, we found the ideal tracking team - and this was not on a battalion basis - was an Iban, an aborigine and a battalion soldier trained, who had done the tracking course at Kota Tinggi, and a dog and a dog handler. So between the four, including dog, five of them, there was a fair chance of picking up the tracks. So if an Iban got, this is a hypothetical statement, a little toey, one of our own chaps could pick up the track and so that little combination of a tracker team within a company worked very well. The only problem we found was on one occasion, I think as you mentioned, Piper, on his patrol on one occasion, where the dog got a bit puffed and somebody ended up, one of the troops had to end up carrying the dog. An alsatian, but the tracking was very good.
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McNEILL: The dog handlers, they were Australian dog handlers, were they?
OCHILTREE: Yes, they were trained at the School of Military Engineering at Casula.
McNEILL: Were they, before the battalion, before you went to Malaya?
OCHILTREE: Yes, and took our dogs to Malaya.
McNEILL: Australian dogs, and they were trained to at SME?
OCHILTREE: Yes, the idea was the dogs would be trained at SME, the handlers would be trained at SME, then they would bring the dogs back and you had the handler and his dog and they all went to Malaya.
McNEILL: Of course, the dogs didn’t come back to Australia then?
OCHILTREE: You couldn’t because of quarantine requirements.
McNEILL: What kind of dogs were they?
OCHILTREE: German shepherds, I don’t recall any other type.
McNEILL: Were they mine dogs as well as tracker dogs?
OCHILTREE: No, they were trained as tracker dogs and they were effective, they seemed to be.
McNEILL: I mean can you recall any examples where a tracker dog actually got onto someone’s tracks and you tracked him down?
OCHILTREE: Yes, Alan Parker had a very good experience of this. In 1956, at Sungei Krudda estate.
McNEILL: Could you spell that?
OCHILTREE: Sungei Krudda estate, running north of Sungei Siput, there was an estate, Sungei Krudda estate, and we had word that the CTs were going to stage an incident. Now whether it was going to knock off a rubber tapper, ambush some of the people, attack the rubber tapper’s house, or what, we didn’t know.
McNEILL: About what month was this, what year, or which half year?
OCHILTREE: I think if was 1956, in the middle of the year.
McNEILL: That will be enough.
OCHILTREE: So, we had troops on the way up, they had to cross the Sungei [inaudible] River, to get south to the estate and we had people going out to ambush the river since they were coming from the north over the river. The only thing is the independent platoon got over
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there before we did, then they ambushed the, they lay in wait for the rubber tapper, sorry the estate manager to go out with his police escort, in his land rover. They ambushed him, barricades across the road, shot him up, took the boots off the police, took the weapons and beat it. And after that we had a meeting to follow up and Alan Piper’s platoon went after them with an aborigine and a tracker and they tracked them for, it must have been a week, following them and this was great. We would get reports back from Alan Piper, tapped it out on the key where he was, and he finally came across them, miles away based up at night. And when one of the CTs - the idea was Alan was going to wait until first light and attack them - but the aborigine tracker had a shotgun and when one of the CTs moved, he let fire and of course, he missed them and the whole lot scooted. But we were allocated a dog with that and the dog really tracked them all over the country side. On another occasion, we had a contact near Sungei Siput at night, the next morning I went out with the patrol to see what had happened and the dog found blood and then went along and found a rifle and then found a bit more blood and then disappeared into a river or swamp so we missed the CT, but the dog was very effective, he just sniffed around and he went like a [red check] over things.
McNEILL: Did you establish a tracker platoon?
OCHILTREE: No, you had a dog platoon and if something occurred and the dog’s company wanted a dog and a handler that the dog and the tracker would go out. They would usually have at each company...
McNEILL: You would have a handler, a dog and an Iban?
OCHILTREE: And the soldier trained as a tracker.
McNEILL: Plus the tracker?
OCHILTREE: Whereas the Iban might get a little touchy, if one missed the scent, the dog or the Iban, our chap might pick it up and if he missed it, the dog might.
McNEILL: The handler wasn’t a tracker, he just handled dogs?
OCHILTREE: No, he handled dogs.
McNEILL: And all these were grouped in a platoon and you would detach them out to companies.
OCHILTREE: Except, that within the companies they had their own troops trained as trackers because not always did you want to see the dog on a patrol. So you would send out a small patrol with one of them that might be as a tracker.
McNEILL: And were they trained all at SME or at Kota Tinggi?
OCHILTREE: No, at Kota Tinggi, the human trackers at Kota Tinggi.
McNEILL: So they were only dog handlers themselves and the dogs trained at Casula?
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OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: Thank you.
OCHILTREE: I think we got, I can’t remember, I think we probably got replacement dogs at, in Malaya and would have had the handlers, if it was a new handler trained at Kota Tinggi. What do you do if somebody faints? I thought I had the DS solution to that, I said “Ignore him, sir”. “I wouldn't, no, you know what I would do?” “No, sir.” “Kick him in the guts and then if he is shamming, he won’t do it again and if he has fainted, he won’t mind.”
McNEILL: This is Slim at your presentation of the colours? That is a good photograph too.
OCHILTREE: That was Hayden after the first kill.
McNEILL: Who is that platoon commander?
OCHILTREE: There, that’s Sergeant Hayden who had the patrol who did our first kill, that is me, that is the RSM.
McNEILL: Who is in the middle?
OCHILTREE: The RSM, Mills.
McNEILL: Can I put No. 2 on the back of that, just a small?
OCHILTREE: Yes, sure.
McNEILL: Yes, well I will get, do you have another photograph?
OCHILTREE: That was a first kill too, I think they went out.
McNEILL: Yes.
OCHILTREE: That is a special branch officer from Kulim, Colin Browne.
McNEILL: In the white shirt?
OCHILTREE: And Alan Glass, that is me.
McNEILL: On the left of the photo?
OCHILTREE: That is Burns, my ex-British army driver. That is Heyden going back into the jeep, having come in to say, “I have got one for you”. And that is my signal bloke by the name of Hegney, H-e-g-n-e-y.
McNEILL: You can just see the head.
OCHILTREE: That is at the command post at Kulim, I didn’t know I had that until I dug it up the other day.
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McNEILL: I will put a small number three on that. This is from the ATOM pam[phlet], where you have your copy there I see, explaining the outline of the organisation in Malaya which you were talking about before with the DWEC and the SWEC, does that outline there accord with your own experiences, is that the way she went?
OCHILTREE: Exactly.
McNEILL: So often we get it in pamphlets, there is a bit of difference to the pamphlet on the ground.
OCHILTREE: No, this is exactly right.
McNEILL: Now you have told me that you would normally be briefed by [Anne Siton] on the relevant DWEC in which you were operating, you told me that, did you find any problems with this system?
OCHILTREE: A bit too much waffle, it would take too long for people to make up their minds sometimes. So generally what we would do is in Kulim the senior policeman, the OCIPD and I and the special branch officer would probably work out our plan and then put it to the DWEC and it would be accepted. Now down in the Kuala Kangsar DWEC, most of the time, it was a Malay district officer as chairman but there was an ex-Royal Navy chap who was a senior police officer and the policeman and I, would work out a plan together; and at Sungei Siput which came under Kuala Kangsar, there was a Pakistani born in Malaya called Yusoff Khan who was a tough, ruthless magnificent chap. He and I and the three of us, the policeman and Bob Middleton, Yusoff Khan and I would work out our plan of operations and then put it to the DWEC or just go ahead and do it. But basically, this principle was followed and it worked but as the Ops DWEC only met every week and the full DWEC every month, if anything occurred from say mid morning Monday before the following one, we didn’t bother about the DWEC we just, the three of us nutted out our own plan and went.
McNEILL: Went ahead, yes.
OCHILTREE: Now and then, the only interesting thing would happen, sometime you would get the brigade commander coming down to listen and sometimes he might buy in and sometimes there would be the odd clash of personalities.
McNEILL: Yes. It would seem to me that even though it could have been a bit clumsy with a lot of waffle that this might have been the only kind of system where you could satisfactorily operate with the civilians on one side and the military command? Do you have any comment on that?
OCHILTREE: No, I entirely agree, it was war by committee, which sometimes is a little time consuming, and, as I said sometimes a bit frustrating. On the other hand, the security forces were there, not in the state of war but in aid of the civil power, and therefore, as it was a civil government and the chairman was a civilian, a member the Malayan civil service, and the police and the army was subordinate, we had to go along with what was, similarly, when there were riots or anywhere and the troops would be used on internal security, it was in aid of the civil power.
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McNEILL: Have you ever considered whether and to what extent, a similar organisation to that established by the British in Malaya, might have worked in Vietnam?
OCHILTREE: I can’t imagine why it would not have worked.
McNEILL: There was a difficulty there that whilst it was working in Malaya, Malaya was under British rule for the major part of the insurgency. There would be some problem in Vietnam, in that respect?
OCHILTREE: Also the enemy in Vietnam was a little better organised and equipped and in many cases, instead of an insurgency it developed into pretty well conventional warfare, didn’t it?
McNEILL: That is right. But in 1960, 1961, 1962, there wasn’t much, there was just advisers, the enemy wasn’t all that big, of course, but neither did we have conventional forces at that time, either.
OCHILTREE: One of the basic differences, I think it was the fact that whether the Emergency as distinct from a war and being in aid of the civil power, it was important not to upset the local people. So therefore, we went to pains not to try and antagonise the local civilians, not to upset the rubber estate managers, or their employees, by any wholesale operation or demolition of their property and we took great pains to make sure we didn’t damage their rubber trees or their rubber tappers or anything like that. The other thing was, it was Templer’s idea, winning the hearts and minds of the people, and so you used to go and be on friendly terms with the estate managers and their estates. Now the only case where sometimes it was a little difficult, for example, on the Sungei Krudda Estate, the CTs had moved in the night before, had their barbed-wire road block all set up, everything all ready, they were in situ and the rubber tappers came out at first light, could see the CTs there but they took no action to warn their boss, the manager. So what happened after that, we realized that they had not done the right thing by the Manager, so we went in at about four, well in darkness, just before first light, or the policemen went in with us, grabbed all the workforce of the rubber estate, put them into trucks and wheeled them off to some other part of Malaya as punishment. There was no… they weren’t beaten up or anything, they were just dragged out of bed with their families, bundled into trucks and off out of the area, as punishment.
McNEILL: What operation was this on?
OCHILTREE: This was in Shark North where the manager of Sungei Krudda Estate and his police escort were murdered.
McNEILL: It was at that time?
OCHILTREE: At that time.
McNEILL: Yes, I remember reading about that in your…
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OCHILTREE: Because we got there just after, and there were dead bodies here and there, a few wounded and the CTs had taken their weapons, taken their boots off them and fled into the jungle.
McNEILL: If we can talk about the enemy?
OCHILTREE: This organisation as in the ATOM pamphlet has worked and it worked well.
McNEILL: And you believe generally that something like that could have been tried in Vietnam?
OCHILTREE: I see no reason, I wasn’t in Vietnam but I can’t see any reason why it did not, particularly not the winning the hearts and minds of the people and in that regard, in 1967, when I was in Bangkok, I was invited down to talk at a Far East Air Force intelligence conference on communism in South-East Asia.
McNEILL: Was this in Singapore?
OCHILTREE: In Singapore, I went down and gave a talk on that and one of the things that I suggested, that the Templer’s idea of winning the hearts and the minds of the people, could well be applied in Vietnam. “And the fact that,” I said “it’s not.” I said “There have been many cases where there have been suspected VC (Viet Cong) in a village in Vietnam, people have let fly and dropped a few mortar bombs and shot up the village, caused a lot of trouble. The VC have fled and the villagers aren’t terribly happy having their village laid waste.” and I said “The other thing is, if you have an informant, he has to be protected and if after you have driven VC out of any area in clearing it, it is important that the security forces should go in and protect that village and not leave them. And not drive in and burn the village down or knock it around and then push off and let the VC come back, this had been happening.” I said “It was a cardinal point of Templer’s plan, if a village has been under CT influence; you have got to extend your influence and give them protection”.
McNEILL: Yes, well that is very much so. If we talk then about the enemy, would you please outline the different kinds of enemy faced by 2 RAR, or were there different kinds, what sort of enemy did you?
OCHILTREE: Mainly independent platoons which were pretty mobile and had moved from throughout the country, or moved and stayed maybe within the one state, but move around, then there was static Armed Work Forces.
McNEILL: Static, armed work?
OCHILTREE: AWFs.
McNEILL: AWF, yes.
OCHILTREE: They were really the supply organisation, the Armed Work Force who would gather food and information and supply the CTs in the jungle.
McNEILL: ‘Armed Work’, it is not ’Working’, it is ‘Armed Work?’
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OCHILTREE: Armed Work Forces. And so really, if you could knock off your Armed Work Forces, you starved out the independent platoons, the hard core.
McNEILL: So the Armed Work Forces, were actually working for someone, in a tin mine or something like that, or people of them?
OCHILTREE: Some of them were, they were mainly, they were CTs and they would be in the jungle and they were the people who would nip into the village or get a contribution from a rubber tapper of food or something like that, or money, then they would then supply the independent platoons.
McNEILL: So the “work” part of that, Armed Work Force, it doesn’t mean working for the government or something?
OCHILTREE: No, it was a CT nomenclature.
McNEILL: Like a logistic, part of their logistic force?
OCHILTREE: They were armed, so if you could knock them off, you would really starve out the hard core.
McNEILL: The hard core CTs?
OCHILTREE: Usually the independent platoons.
McNEILL: Did you have any part-time guerrillas that worked in the paddy fields during the day and took up arms at night?
OCHILTREE: Possibly.
McNEILL: You didn’t hear much about them?
OCHILTREE: I remember on one occasion, we had an ambush party near Sungei Siput on a little track and, near the road, a taxi from Ipoh drove up and the chaps got out and said ”Cheerio, goodnight.” and came along on the track and they were CTs. And we reckon they had gone and changed into mufti and gone to the cinema in Ipoh or something while on R and R or stand down.
McNEILL: Yes, well there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t have, I suppose.
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: Did the people of Malaya have ID cards at that time, can you remember? Did you ever have any road checks for checking the civilian traffic?
OCHILTREE: Yes, I am pretty sure they did, but we certainly used to check them, particularly on food denial operations.
McNEILL: Yes, OK, then we will get to food denial. What sort of weapons did the CT enemy carry?
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OCHILTREE: Captured weapons, 303s, pistols, grenades, homemade weapons.
McNEILL: Did they have many weapons left over from the Second World War do you think, Japanese weapons would they?
OCHILTREE: Mainly British, I think. The captured ones I saw, were mainly 303s, they had their own ammunition making factories and also it was a great sin for anyone of course, to lose their rifle, to lose any ammunition.
McNEILL: Did they have, to your recollection, ChiCom force weapons that might have been imported?
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: So they were pretty well cut off from?
OCHILTREE: All were of all British origin.
McNEILL: They would have been pretty well cut off from China or certainly Russia, not like Vietnam?
OCHILTREE: No, and that of course is one of the main differences between the situation in Vietnam and the ones here, because ours could only take refuge over the border to Thailand where the Thais were hopeless, whereas of course, the ones in Vietnam were a much different kettle of fish.
McNEILL: They had their active sanctuaries, what we might call them. What sort of clothing did the CTs wear?
OCHILTREE: Usually, hockey boots, khaki drill or green jungle-greens and caps with a red star on the front.
McNEILL: Did they, was that like a British jungle hat or a, the Chinese?
OCHILTREE: No, the peaked cap, Chinese ones with a red star on the front.
McNEILL: Did they have equipment or would they have bandoliers?
OCHILTREE: Mainly bandoliers and a rifle or something like that.
McNEILL: Are you able to offer comments on the general resourcefulness or stoicism, fighting abilities of the enemy and how it was generally regarded by the troops of the battalion?
OCHILTREE: The resourcefulness, stoicism and fighting qualities were excellent. After all, some of them, like Chin Peng had been surviving in the jungle since 1945. And they were recruiting more people and the fact that they could stay and survive in the jungle for years and particularly, with indifferent rations, indifferent clothing and particularly, poor medical resources, shows they were actually determined and indoctrinated, very well indoctrinated;
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they were good. And they were very slippery, they knew the jungle, they always had their escape routes and their plans for evacuation and they would separate, then meet up; they were very good.
McNEILL: What did the troops of 2 RAR think of the enemy?
OCHILTREE: I would say, with respect. They respected their survival ability and they were always frustrated at the fact that CTs wouldn’t stand and fight, if you were lucky you would see one at a distance, going hell for leather out of it.
McNEILL: Yes, and even if they opened fire I suppose, that it would be shoot and run?
OCHILTREE: Yes, the good old days must have been in 1948 and the next few years when they really put up a good battle. Their main thing was to survive.
McNEILL: Were there difficulties in identifying the enemy, especially from the Chinese?
OCHILTREE: In a village, you wouldn’t know who was a CT in civilian clothes; he might come into villages to visit his family. We always made a point when we killed a CT to bring him in and put him on public display in the police courtyard and then some of the local people around Sungei Siput would come and see if it was one of their kinsmen who had copped it.
McNEILL: Yes. What kinds of fortifications do the enemy use in their jungle hide?
OCHILTREE: They don’t really have fortification proper, if they had a jungle base, they would have scouts or at least sentries out in the likely lines of advance and their main aim would be to ‘beat it’ to escape, if attacked.
McNEILL: So it would be little hoochies would it on top of a bamboo frame to lie on or something raised above the ground, perhaps and what about bunkers and underground hospitals or anything?
OCHILTREE: No, nothing like it, nothing that I saw or anyone in the battalion saw. The nearest to a well established place was I remember, in Operation Rubber Legs, south of Sungei Siput where B Company came across an armoury where they were manufacturing weapons and that of course, when they captured that, that was quite a blow to the local CTs.
McNEILL: Was this underground then or above ground?
OCHILTREE: It was built, dug into the ground. It wasn’t really a fortification, it was just a workshop.
McNEILL: No, when you say dug into the ground, does that mean with beams put across and overhead protection on it, or?
OCHILTREE: No, I don’t think it had any protection, I think just to keep the weather out.
McNEILL: Would you comment on your relations generally between the Australian soldiers and those others, the British, Malayan police and the local population?
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OCHILTREE: Basically good, we had in 2 RAR a number of UK enlistees and Scotsmen, Irish, Welshmen, Dutchmen, German, French and they got on very well. I remember on one occasion, Pat Shanahan’s batman, a chap by the name of Lundy, he was a Scotsman. The CO of the RSF said “Look we have got Al Lundy, his nephew is down there and he is a pack of trouble. Could I borrow your man Lundy to sort it out?” And he did and the next thing, they got in a brawl in Ipoh and finished up in the clink.
McNEILL: Did they really, the both of them?
OCHILTREE: No, the relations with the Brits were good. Our relations, we didn’t have much to do with the Malayan troops but they were alright, and with the police our relations were particularly good.
McNEILL: Were they?
OCHILTREE: I remember this chap, Yusoff Khan was splendid and he and I got on very well together and, on one occasion we had a food denial operation. The doyen of the planters, a chap by the name of Crawford, his wife was driving to Sungei Siput and came to a road block and our chaps and the Malayan police made her driver, a Malay, get out and be searched and the vehicle searched. And she put on a great turn and old Crawford came screeching in and lined old Yusoff Khan up and said, “How dare you insult my wife by holding her vehicle up?” Yusoff Khan said, “She could have easily or your driver, be bringing food out.” He said, “Absolute nonsense, I know my driver.” Then I was bought in and I said, “I agree with Yusoff Khan. I don’t mind if your wife’s, white, brown or yellow. Anyone who comes through, whoever it is, if it’s my wife, their vehicle and their driver will be searched.” Not the white woman would be searched but I said, “Anyone in the car, the vehicle would be pulled apart and searched.” And old Crawford was furious; he took it up with the division, the brigade commander, the division commander, but I sided with Yusoff Khan, who was getting hell from a white man to a coloured chap. And Yusoff Khan and I got on terribly well together. I remember later on, when Alan Stratton took 2 RAR back together and I remember he said, “We recall the goodwill that your 2 RAR had sewn with Yusoff Khan and people, they couldn’t do anything more for us.” I remember once on a visit when I was Director of Infantry going back, and Yusoff was away somewhere. I got out of the aircraft at Ipoh and there was a guard of honour; all the senior police were there to meet me and look after me. No, our relations with the police were excellent.
McNEILL: How many, would you get many police operating with you in an operation, like two or three with the company?
OCHILTREE: No, they would normally have a little area of their own or something like that, they were limited in numbers and they might have an ambush in that sector and we would be further down the road and (inaudible) suspect (inaudible) another couple of ambushes.
McNEILL: And they were wearing the khaki were they with the blue?
OCHILTREE: Green.
McNEILL: Green, were they.
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OCHILTREE: There were the ordinary Federation of Malaya police and then there were, I think we called them Police Special Group, PSG, I think, and they were mainly under white ex-Palestinian policemen and they were a little, pretty solid well trained fighting groups. Our relations were also made; you may not want to use this, quite good in Kulim. They had a case of a company commander after his first contact, deserted his company in the night, oh, got stuck into the rum, deserted the company, went into the Kulim Club got boozed with all appliances and things, put in a great old to do. And the local policeman, I think he was a member, called in the Malay and the company commander said, “I know who you are, you are a communist terrorist.” and abused him. The OCIPD came in and woke me up in the command post, so I went along and dragged the bloke out.
McNEILL: One of your companies was it?
OCHILTREE: Company commander, yes, company commander and we dragged him in and sacked him; he went back to Australia. But the fact that I had sided with the OCIPD and stood up with him; and the fact that we removed this company commander; and I removed him from command at daylight, when he had sobered up and then back to Australia, he said “This is great,” he said “I can’t do this with my police but you Australians can, this is wonderful.” It would have been, the chap should have been court-martialled. I mean leaving his company on operation without permission, booze and that sort of thing. But that would have brought in British army people, one of whom I think flattened him, civilian, Brit, Malay and Malays and God knows who it would have been. Laurie Turner and company would have had a ball. So, on rather cooked-up medical grounds, I had him shot back to Australia. That was again one of our problems, I had to relieve the whole company from operations.
McNEILL: I have listed on page 13, the various types of operations. First of all, how were your relations with the Malays, the local population?
OCHILTREE: Good. We, unfortunately shot one in an ambush, again this was in Operation Deuce. There was a curfew that meant that after, between certain hours of darkness, no one was allowed out their kampong and this bloke went to the mosque on a push bike and got shot.
McNEILL: Was he killed?
OCHILTREE: He was killed, but his family-I had to go to the funeral and scatter rose petals and things and convey my apologies-but the local Malays were philosophical about it; they realized the chap was in the wrong. We got on very well with the local people, the rubber estate managers.
McNEILL: On operations, do you recall the name of the utility helicopter, which was used?
OCHILTREE: I can’t remember, I think we called it a Willy 4: it might have been a Wessex or a Whirlwind 4.
McNEILL: I can certainly find that out. We have talked about helicopters so I will just skip one or two of those questions. Were you developing new techniques at all with helicopters?
OCHILTREE: Actually what question are we on Ian.
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McNEILL: This is page 15.
OCHILTREE: No, on 13, you mentioned about the sultans, did you have any, well the Sultan of Perak, when we were down in Perak, and the relations were very good. I remember calling on him and remember he had a dining-in night for all our officers and their wives and we used to invite his staff along when we had a party in the mess. He was, our relations with him, that was the only sultan with whom we had any dealing, were particularly good.
McNEILL: Was this the dining-in night that you couldn’t get the signal (sic) officers along to? You had officers and wives at the Sultan of Perak’s dining-in night; was that one of the times when the married officers were able to get out to something where singlies couldn’t go, was that?
OCHILTREE: No, that was the one we had in the…
McNEILL: Sometimes when you were rotating through operations was that, you might not recall?
OCHILTREE: We had as many officers and as many wives as we could and we had some of the single people there too. The Sultan of Perak was very good. He had been to, I think, George the Sixth’s Coronation and his English wasn’t very good and he would talk about his visit to Brighton and the Coronation.
McNEILL: Did the sultans of states appear to have much to do with the conduct of the anti- terrorist campaign?
OCHILTREE: No, nothing that I am aware of. However, we had to make a point of conforming to their codes of behaviour because Kuala Kangsar, where we moved to from Kulim was the royal town in Perak where the sultan has his palace. And our headquarters were in the old [inaudible], where all the wives used to live in, the high time before the war. And we had to make a point of making sure there were no incidents in the royal town and the troops particularly behaved well there. We used to go and use his tennis court, when we had time, which was only once. Leadership of these groups, that’s groups in…good.
McNEILL: We will go onto page 15 then, I think we have answered most of the questions on 14 if you, or do you have anything to add there at all Jim?
OCHILTREE: No, there is a point I mentioned, we had to get troops on Penang and troops at Kroh and we used to rotate them. And there was a point, one minor one: when Independence took place in August, I remember the Director of Operations said to me and the brigade command, “I don’t want any Australians in Penang, any troops in Penang in Independence.” He was very definite about it so much I didn’t say, “What is the reason for this?”
McNEILL: Who said this?
OCHILTREE: Roger Bower, the Director of Operations. “Now on 31 August, in Merdeka [Independence] I don’t want any Australian troops in Penang.” and he was so bloody definite that for some reason I didn’t query this, I said, “Very well.” so we didn’t, we kept all the Australians on the mainland except a few in Minden Barracks.
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McNEILL: What did he think that you would have?
OCHILTREE: Probably beaten the place up, or something like that. Do you want to know what the battalion attack headquarters looks like? Myself, the IO, who are called the ops officer, they used to do both operations and intelligence and sometimes a signals officer and the intelligence section. That was all and a couple of sigs [signals] people. So it meant that, for example, if attack headquarters at Sungei Siput, there was just myself, the IO, or the ops officer and then out in the wings it could be the sigs officer or anything like that.
McNEILL: Was David Minnett one of your IO officers?
OCHILTREE: He was the brigade IO initially and then when one of the company commanders went back to Australia.
McNEILL: You were saying that David Minnett was a brigade IO and then he came down as the company commander.
OCHILTREE: Later on yes, one of the company commanders and an RAASC officer, were returned to Australia and David Minnett came down to replace him, initially, when he was the brigade IO, and going back to the Sungei Krudda ambush he was the brigade IO, and I don’t know, you were asking about a battalion attack headquarters. The brigade one, I was acting as brigade commander when the ambush took place, no I am wrong, when the pipeline ambush took place I was commanding the brigade. And the brigade attack headquarters, which I established, consisted of David Minnett and myself so the brigade headquarters itself was equally small, because then we mounted a battalion operation consisting of 2 RAR, the Royal Scots Fusiliers and a Malay battalion and some Gurkhas from 1st/6th Gurkhas, so the brigade attack headquarters was equally small.
McNEILL: Yes, and it would establish itself near the DWEC, would it?
OCHILTREE: Yes, although at this stage having launched as a very quickly mounted operation, the ambush took place in the late afternoon and I was at brigade headquarters at Butterworth when the pipeline ambush took place. I drove down to Sungei Siput that evening held a conference, a brigade conference, at about 11 o’clock that night and the follow up again at first light the following day. So we really didn’t have much time, the only confrontation between was between me and the police.
McNEILL: This pipeline ambush, what operation was that on?
OCHILTREE: That was during part of Shark North and that is where Wally Campbell got his MC.
McNEILL: Could you describe that incident at all please?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it was a routine patrol going into the jungle, south of Sungei Siput following along a pipeline and the CTs were, had an ambush prepared, because apparently patrols had gone along that same pipeline before and so they.
McNEILL: Campbell was leading the patrol, was he?
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OCHILTREE: He was leading the patrol and ran into the ambush, his counter-ambush drill was so good that he killed two or three of the CTs, put the CTs to flight and subsequently, it was reported that they had said they were ambushed by Gurkhas and that is why they were cleaned up and had a few casualties. Wally Campbell got an MC, well deserved, and two if not three of his people got MMs.
McNEILL: Were there any other MC awarded in Malaya to the 2nd Battalion, do you remember?
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: No, or any other, could you at this stage mention any other particular examples, outstanding examples, of heroism or efficiency?
OCHILTREE: There was one in Operation Deuce, where Sergeant Anderson and his patrol stumbled on a CT base and Sergeant Anderson was wounded and suddenly (sic) died of wounds, but he stayed there and wouldn’t allow himself to be evacuated and ordered the rest of his patrol out and he got a posthumous MID (Mentioned in Dispatches). And then in Eagle Swoop, where Sergeant Kennedy accidentally came across the CT company base and he got an MM for that.
McNEILL: He shot one of them?
OCHILTREE: Tossed the grenade, and it didn’t do one of the CTs’ arm much good, we dragged him in and the SEP [Surrendered Enemy Personnel] who wasn’t with him said that is Bill or Fred or somebody.
McNEILL: Do you have any comments, going onto page 15, you have already answered that helicopters were used occasionally for resupply and medical evacuation. More commonly it was a Dakota or an Auster on resupply or a vehicle. Medical evacuation, what would that be most commonly?
OCHILTREE: That would usually be by helicopter, or the chap would be carried out on the stretcher.
McNEILL: To somewhere, to a vehicle?
OCHILTREE: The nearest road, where you could take him out on a vehicle. Sometimes, we were actually, although their physique was not necessarily designed for it, the Band, who, on establishment, doubled as stretcher-bearers, we used to use the bandsmen. Once we even found this armoury in Operation Rubber Legs, I sent the band in to carry out the loot.
McNEILL: 2 RAR was the first unit of the Australian Army to use helicopters in jungle operations although, of course, they were used occasionally in Korea. Have you any comments on the way they were used regarding the development of new techniques?
OCHILTREE: No, we found, the main thing was if you wanted one to land on the ground you had to have the secured LZ. If you didn’t want them to land but you were roped down, which was a piece of cake, again they preferred to have the LZ secured but not necessarily so. And
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for casevac [casualty evacuation], you need to have a secured place where they could land and you could strap a stretcher on and they would go off. And they were particularly good for the rapid redeployment around the place, moving a group here or a group here or as in Eagle Swoop, we moved people very swiftly about the place, along the border to try and block off any CTs escaping. And as I said earlier, it was very easy to get them following in, you would get one chap in the lead helicopter, if they were not familiar with the ground, to lead in and their map reading was jolly good and after that they would know where to go. They were a bit touchy when one of them on the Thai border, one of them reckoned he knew where all the LZs were. And I was sitting down in the scuppers and he started to land in a non-secured LZ, there wasn’t an LZ there at all; and I had to scribble this on the back of this in chinagraph ‘You are at the wrong LZ’, and pass it up to him, and he took off like a red shag.
McNEILL: I noticed in the battalion war diaries, there aren’t a lot of operation orders - (Jim displays a document) – right, that is interesting.
OCHILTREE: This is the one; this is the Eagle Swoop map with all the LZs and things on them, that is the artillery.
McNEILL: Right up on the border, would we be able to borrow that?
OCHILTREE: Yes, certainly. He went, I know the way. Zoooom.
McNEILL: Few operation orders were issued, what was the general method by which you issued fresh instructions to the companies during protracted operation?
OCHILTREE: Verbally.
McNEILL: You would go and visit them, would that be by helicopter or would they?
OCHILTREE: No, I would usually go by, most of the time it was in Operation Deuce and in Shark North, it was on the ground, you would go so far in your land rover and then go in, or all the way up to their company headquarters.
McNEILL: Would you normally have some sort of protection there, a scout car when you are moving on the road?
OCHILTREE: On the black road, I always had to have a scout car. Each company had its own scout car so when the company commanders, they might have come in to meet me or do something or other, he would have his own scout car. And the Coffins, the APCs, no I am wrong, we are talking about Saracens and things aren’t we? There were Saracens which we had but there was also big like armoured 3-tonners, not Saracens, plate all over them. The back doors would open and the troops could hop out. And I think it was one of the battalions, when they had a British battalion, they had some Treasury people coming on querying their allowances. They made arrangements when they were driving along the black road with the Treasury people in; they were saying “Keep you heads down, it is a very dangerous area here. Don’t look out the window or the slits.” And they had somebody firing a Bren or something along the side of it and in the pits and tossing a few grenades and things. And later on the Treasury people got out and said, “Oh God, it was terrible.” “That is just routine stuff, it is not really, no the ambush proper are terrible things.” So they didn’t cut their allowances.
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McNEILL: What was the way that the battalion, looking at Question F there on page 15, the kinds of ways in which the battalion conducted food denial operations?
OCHILTREE: They were done in the conjunction with the police and what we would do, we did this particularly in Sungei Siput in Operation Shark North, all the exit roads had troops and police manning them and also there would be police on the new villages in the area.
McNEILL: These would be about platoons of Australians would they of troops or sections?
OCHILTREE: It might only be a section or something like that, some of them would be camped beside the hoochies there and sleeping and living there beside them and then every Malay that went through with a pushbike, would be searched. His bike, the tubes taken off, everything tipped out and he would be stripped down and searched, so that no food could go out, a little bit of rice or meat or cigarettes anything like that. Vehicles, particularly trucks would be searched. Now that was very effective because it meant that the CTs couldn’t get food.
McNEILL: All the villages from one area then would have to be cordoned off at the same time wouldn’t they?
OCHILTREE: That is right. When we went back for retraining in the middle of the tour, at the end of 1956, that’s right, at the end of 1956, the Lincolns took over and the food denial operation was lifted, and one of the CTs later on surrendered or was captured and from an independent platoon. And he, under interrogation, said, “We were glad the food denial operation was called off. We had just about had it and were about to come in and surrender.” Because they reckon there were two ways of eradicating a CT: you either shoot him which we found, particularly shooting from the hip, was a difficult operation if you were lucky enough to spot one, or starve him out.
McNEILL: Did they have their own food gardens, very much the CTs in the middle of the jungle?
OCHILTREE: In the middle of the jungle, tapioca and things like that and the idea was if you spotted one, if you could you would ambush it or the planes would spread poison over them, spray them or go in and dig them up.
McNEILL: I have read, I have seen on files, this must have been about the first instance of defoliation or herbicides in Malaya?
OCHILTREE: We issued defoliants also around possible ambush sites around the area, thick undergrowth on the bend of a road, or something like that, used defoliants or get rid of…
McNEILL: Was it pretty effective stuff, did it actually clear the leaves from the bushes?
OCHILTREE: Mmmmm, most of the defoliation was usually done manually, by Malay employees.
McNEILL: Obviously, it wouldn’t have been on the sort of scale as in Vietnam?
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OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: And you didn’t have any local clamour about it?
OCHILTREE: No local reaction against it, because the only people who would have objected would have been the managers of the real estates, but they were just as happy to have likely places where the CTs could hide and ambush them removed as we were, probably more so.
McNEILL: I have heard that many of the managers of the estates survived on plantations, plantation owners survived because they paid taxes maybe to the CTs?
OCHILTREE: I haven’t heard of that, they used to have their own police protecting them.
McNEILL: ‘Cordon and Search’ and ‘Search and Destroy’ operations became familiar methods in Vietnam. Did you ever employ these kinds of operations in Malaya at all?
OCHILTREE: No
McNEILL: You wouldn’t have been on such a big scale as...
OCHILTREE: No
McNEILL: Would you say that most of the contacts would have been at section and platoon level?
OCHILTREE: Mainly, and sometimes on the company and on rare occasions a battalion and even rarer, a brigade operation.
McNEILL: What would you say was the high point in 2 RAR’s operations against the CTs, would you be able to think about that, what would you regard the high point?
OCHILTREE: I would say the pipeline ambush was the first really blood and guts stoush we had.
McNEILL: That was with Wal Campbell?
OCHILTREE: Wally Campbell and his platoon.
McNEILL: What was the name of that operation again?
OCHILTREE: It was part of Operation Shark North, it was just a routine patrol going up the pipeline and into the jungle.
McNEILL: What were the most unsatisfactory or frustrating aspects of the tour?
OCHILTREE: The inability to locate CTs, the fact that when you did locate one, frequently, mainly due to hip firing, the chap’d miss. One chap had said I only missed him by a whisker, I said it might have been a mile.
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The other thing were odd misfires, one ambush we had prepared on information. There were sixteen CTs going along, quite merrily; ambush set up; chap pulled the trigger on a Bren and it didn’t fire so he called out and some of the CTs looked around and beat it. That was absolutely demoralising, the bloody soldier, I could have killed him and so could his mates. So after that we really clamped down and made sure before we go on any operation, test fire your weapon.
McNEILL: What operation was that?
OCHILTREE: That was part of Shark North. And the casualties of own troops was a very worrying and demoralising thing. Again, Amnesty was infuriating-having to call out “surrender” or “barrenty” or “beware”, “beware” I think. So the chaps, he called out “barrenty” and off he goes. And the other one I remember in Rubber Legs, there were odd white areas declared where CTs could come in and surrender and we weren’t permitted to shoot them. And I remember the ops officer, the sig officer and I had gone out in Rubber Legs. a preliminary reconnaissance, were coming in and the next thing we saw coming towards us, a chap in civilian clothes with an aborigine as an arrowhead behind him, so we couldn’t shoot him. So we challenged him and they just vanished into the rubber estate, and I am sure it was a CT with his aborigine body guard. But you were not permitted to shoot in that white area, otherwise we would have got a caning.
McNEILL: You have mentioned the particular acts of bravery.
OCHILTREE: That’s right, the pipeline ambush, Sergeant Anderson and Sergeant Kennedy.
McNEILL: In June 1956 and again in June 1957, the battalion suffered what appears to have been its greatest casualties at any one time. Is the fact that the contacts both occurred in June, of any significance?
OCHILTREE: None, whatever, just chance.
McNEILL: Did the CTs seem to operate differently in a Monsoonal system as against a non-, the sun, or the open?
OCHILTREE: Both like a will-o’-the-wisp.
McNEILL: And so the loss of life suffered by the battalion near Kroh in June 1957 didn’t result in avenging operations, I take it. There were a couple of operations, you suddenly stopped on Shark North and went to the Kroh area?
OCHILTREE: Only part of it, what actually happened, we in the middle of Shark North, then got the information on the group sixty CTs up near Kroh. So Pat Shanahan-I was away on leave-raised and organised a special group of people, really highly trained people to go in and plant this black box idea and bomb them and kill them. And it was then after that, that the company went in, that they had one chap was wounded and Private Wilson was killed. And the operation continued because I brought up the rest of the battalion from Shark North and a company of the Royals came in. But they had all gone back into Thailand so, it was not an avenging operation, it was an operation.
McNEILL: Acting on intelligence from where the?
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OCHILTREE: And this SEP, who reckoned he knew, who was from this group of sixty, who said I will take you to all the camps, which I have got marked here. But the camps had not been occupied for some time and we finally did go in on Eagle Swoop and support company, it was purely a chance encounter.
McNEILL: The major warfare training conducted by 2 RAR, we are onto Question M, 2 RAR in August-September 1957, was situated against a first class Asian power, with a predominance in manpower with an atomic potential of weapons of up to two kiloton. Now the enemy envisaged was presumably from China, can you say whether overt aggression of China into Thailand against Malaya was considered a real possibility in those days?
OCHILTREE: I don’t think so, I think it was a possibility but not a probability.
McNEILL: Then, it almost answers this question, was it a constant source of concern for your military superiors or yourself and were contingency plans constantly being made?
OCHILTREE: That the Chinese might come in?
McNEILL: Yes.
OCHILTREE: No, there was no contingency plan whatever and I don’t think anyone ever seriously considered it. I remember the brigade commander prepared an exercise to take place in Penang which when we went back on retraining, halfway through the tour; we went through this on a conventional thing. But originally, the CGS Australia had said that half way through our tour we would go back and do major war training. Now when he came on a visit to us…
McNEILL: The CGS, Wells?
OCHILTREE: General Wells. We did not want to interrupt the operation and go back for either retraining let alone major war training. And so what I suggested to him and to John Speed and to the brigade commander-and the three of us all agreed-we were having enough difficulties becoming good CT hunters, let alone to go along and go to conventional warfare, say as in Korea or somewhere. And they reckon it is far better for the battalion, let us defer that until getting towards the end of the tour. So General Wells agreed with that, it was a sensible-we weren’t trying to put anything over him-it was a sensible thing to continue the anti-CT training. And then before our tour ended, this I remember the brigade commander said he had a conventional exercise all prepared and ready to go and choose some exercise, tactical exercise with our troops. And the CGS agreed and I remember him saying to me, “Ochiltree, I hope you are not too disappointed that you will have to defer your major warfare training until the end of the tour.” And I said, “No sir, that is fine.” Nobody ever, in Malaya or in FARELF really ever considered it was a probability that the Chinese would come in. However, at that stage one other thing did come in which I don’t think is generally well known, the Suez operation took place at that stage.
McNEILL: About 1956, 1957 wasn’t it?
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OCHILTREE: And the CGS was flying through to London for a CIGS conference, I think I am right in saying. And he said to me, “It is just a possibility, but when I am in London and they ask me, can I make your battalion as the only operational ready battalion, could it go to Egypt to fight? What would your views be?” And I said that would be terrific and he said, “Why do you say that?” and I said “Look, go along and get stuck into a few flesh and blood Egyptians, it would be much better than hunting an elusive CT, you might see one a month if you are lucky. I mean good red-blooded stuff, we would love it.” He said, “What would the troops think?” and I said, ”They would love it.” And he said, “If I am asked, how long will it take you to prepare the battalion to move?”-and we were in the middle of Rubber Legs then, with people all over the countryside-and I said, “72 hours.” and he said, “What do…” Do you know General Wells?
McNEILL: Vaguely.
OCHILTREE: He is a pretty astute and a very thoughtful general and he said, “Now Ochiltree, what do you base this 72 hours on?” and I said, “24 hours to bring the chaps back - some of them are on long range patrol a way out, some will have to come back by road, some will have to send choppers out to bring them back - 24 hours to concentrate the battalion. Then 24 hours to issue them with khaki drill and get rid of their jungle green clothing for Egypt and 24 hours to brief them on the situation and ring up and say goodbye to their families and show them what a piastre is and what an Egyptian is and in the middle of that, let them have a bit of rest. So I said, “72 hours from you say, ‘We go to Egypt to the Suez operation’ to when we get on the plane.” He said, “Are you sure?” He quizzed me in some detail and I said, “Yes.” so he said, “Right, take a note of this.” Well unfortunately, we didn’t go.
McNEILL: No, because he would have had to have the government and so on and with that it would have been a big deal.
OCHILTREE: But that was his… and that was the time he came and he agreed to the retraining for major war to take place at the end.
McNEILL: Well then, if the possibility of warfare against China seemed pretty remote to you and your British superiors, presumably you thought the whole strategic reserve was a, well its need must not have seemed very important to you at the time, more a political…?
OCHILTREE: Except it was a force that had been acclimatized, at this stage, we had the, first of all there was 2 RAR the only battalion, then the RSF joined it so we had two battalions, then the Lincolns took over from the RSF and then the Loyals came, so at least we were a three battalion brigade group, and we had a battery and there was a sapper squadron, so at least we were on the ground and they were acclimatized and people were pretty well physically fit.
McNEILL: But you didn’t see much possibility of being used – more a political exercise perhaps. You would have seen then, following question N, your secondary role as quelling the remaining CTs as being more important?
OCHILTREE: That was certainly General Bourne’s view as I mentioned earlier, he said I would sooner want to defeat the enemies on our doorstep rather than the one that might never come.
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McNEILL: Did a preoccupation with anti-terrorist operations have any effect on your ability to react in your primary role, should that have become necessary?
OCHILTREE: It would have because we would have had to be concentrated, we would have had to found some anti-tank guns from somewhere. And we would have had to do a certain amount of training, but in actual fact when retraining did take place, the battalion I think acquitted itself remarkably well, we had advanced to contact, we did attack, we did withdrawal and we did defence.
McNEILL: In your major warfare training, was it just your battalion training or would another battalion come in with you?
OCHILTREE: No, just one battalion.
McNEILL: And you would operate as companies or sometimes a whole battalion?
OCHILTREE: As a whole battalion, it was as a proper battalion with everything.
McNEILL: Advancing, withdrawing and so on?
OCHILTREE: Withdraw, the nuclear and everything.
McNEILL: Were you getting much training in nuclear warfare?
OCHILTREE: No, none.
McNEILL: You would just get the odd pamphlet and work it out from there?
OCHILTREE: I don’t know even if we had got a pamphlet if so, I didn’t read it.
McNEILL: Were you given any degree of notice that you would be given if you were to change from a secondary role into the primary role?
OCHILTREE: No, none at all.
McNEILL: It didn’t seem to be very seriously taken then?
OCHILTREE: No, and really I persuaded everyone to reduce our periods for major war training to six weeks. It was going to be longer and I said, “Look, couldn’t we cut it down a bit more and couldn’t we scrub it?” but it was quite clear we had to do it.
McNEILL: I have asked you questions about the RAAF bombers. It wasn’t usual looking at question 49C, it wasn’t usual to put troops into the target areas to assess the bomb damage?
OCHILTREE: No. When we did have the Lincolns do the strike on the suspected CT camp in operation...
McNEILL: Were they Australian Lincolns?
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OCHILTREE: Yes, I think it was 1 Squadron, RAAF. I sent a platoon in by chopper to go along and see if it was a CT camp and they had a look at the area and couldn’t even find a… because the Auster pilot who reported it said, “I hope you find a stick of bamboo or something in the hut” and they had a look at the thing but no, we didn’t send anybody in there. Although, on the original concept, the idea was we were to go in on helicopters and land in the middle of the bombed out area of the camp. [inaudible] wanted to go in initially to knock off or capture any of the remaining CTs and a follow-up platoon to follow any CTs escaping.
McNEILL: You have to knock off at quarter to four?
OCHILTREE: Is it 2.52 now, is my watch right?
McNEILL: Yes, on page 18, question 50, approximately a million people mostly Chinese from the deep jungle, squatters, were resettled into more than 600 new settlements.
OCHILTREE: Does that mean new villages, it probably does? What is ‘Short 391’?
McNEILL: That is a reference for me, Short wrote a semi-official history.
OCHILTREE: What Short was that - Bunny Short, a Gurkha?
McNEILL: No, he was an Englishman doing it for the Malayan Government but the Malays didn’t want his official history so he published it in England.
OCHILTREE: But was he a soldier?
McNEILL: An historian and an academic, I think.
OCHILTREE: There was a Short at the time I had some Gurkhas under command, after the pipeline ambush, Short was the Ghurkha battalion commander, Bunny Short.
McNEILL: Into about 600 new villages, have you any comments on the success of these new villages, in separating the CTs from the people?
OCHILTREE: Reasonably effective, it meant that the new villages were surrounded by barbed wire and they had perimeter lights and a few police patrolling around but I don’t think it would be terribly difficult for a CT, and the ones I saw while the police patrol that way, to creep up and pick up some food which might have been hidden under something, near the barbed wire, but they were certainly effective and the Chinese who were resettled hated it. I would go into a new village now and then and you would get a not exactly enthusiastic welcome.
McNEILL: Of course, they were taken away from their areas, farming areas, I suppose, you would expect them to be pretty upset.
OCHILTREE: Bloody-minded.
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McNEILL: It didn’t give a chance did it for the CTs to come in and proselytise and persuade them on the virtues of communism or something?
OCHILTREE: No, but the people of the new villages would be allowed to go out and say act as rubber tappers or workers and it was somewhere, a chap might be tapping rubber on a rubber tree near the jungle edge, where a CT would come out and say, “You better bring $5 or some food tomorrow or we will knock you off.” or something like that. So they were in a pretty invidious position, they were the meat in the sandwich.
McNEILL: Do you recall the names of the holders of principle appointments in 2 RAR? I have got a list here, it is very - it is a photocopy and the second page is better - of your extra regimental appointments, it just might give you an idea of some of the names. If you can say who you can think of, please Jim?
OCHILTREE: There is the, do you want the normal company commanders attachment?
McNEILL: Yes, well if you can, the RSM, company commanders?
OCHILTREE: Initially, the 2IC was Saunders; OC Headquarter Company, Thirlwell; Support Company, Shanahan: A Company, Huggard; B Company, Oxley; C Company, Chambers RASC; D Company, Thirlwell. Then Saunders left, Shanahan became 2IC; Geddes, an Armoured Corps chap from Malaya Command, became OC Support Company; A Company was taken over by Russell McNamara; B Company was George Bales, because Oxley went to BM of 28th Brigade; C Company became Mannett; D Company, Headquarter Company was Thirlwell and Warr, W-a-r-r.
McNEILL: That is not John Warr, is it?
OCHILTREE: No, Bob Warr, no relation to John Warr. Bob Warr became OC D Company; then Bob Warr was taken away from there and Terry Gray became OC D Company.
McNEILL: G-r-a-y, do you remember?
OCHILTREE: TJ Gray.
McNEILL: I can easily find those officers. Do you remember at all, what platoon commanders we’re in your companies? I mean you wouldn’t remember the platoons but, it is all a help because it is not recorded anywhere.
OCHILTREE: Support Company: Machine Gun Platoon was David Allen, he then became the ops officer; Ramsey was the adjutant; Kendell, Stuart Kendell you would know, was the IO; Mortar Platoon was John Godwin.
McNEILL: The football platoon or?
OCHILTREE: The football platoon, I have forgotten now, I think Alex[ander] Orr, Pioneer platoon, I can’t remember, no. A Company, Campbell, Anstey; Hands, B Company.
McNEILL: They are not in order of platoons are they?
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OCHILTREE: No, not in any order of platoon. It was probably Anstey, Campbell, Hands, at that stage I allotted them before they came, having had a report from Bunny Austin the Director of Infantry of how good or bad they were. B Company was Cohen, Piper, Porteous. C Company, Tinkler who was bloody useless and removed, Tinkler he was sigs, Illingworth was machine gun platoon, Alan Illingworth, McFarlane I think was the other one in C Company. D Company was, no C Company was Smith, Fletcher was Mortars, that is right.
McNEILL: You have got David Chinn to put somewhere.
OCHILTREE: David Chinn I made assistant adjutant after Alec Orr. Long was D Company, Long went mad. Tonge, yes David Tonge was D Company.
McNEILL: What happened to Long?
OCHILTREE: Went mad.
McNEILL: Barmy?
OCHILTREE: Yes, off his rocker. I think he recovered and I remember I had to go along and break the news to his wife and she said, “What’s the trouble?” and I said, ”You.” She was playing up and I said, ”You.” Her mother was staying and her mother got stuck into me and Audrey Long booted her mother out. She took it very well. No, he’d go back medically, he was a good chap Colin Long. Lapham was D Company, Lapham was a bloody nuisance, he was good in the field, but I remember Shannon took him up for Eagle Swoop and had to boot him back to his company. David Chinn was good, Harry Smith was good, McFarlane was good, Porteous – pretty wet but not bad. Hands was good, Piper really matured, Anstey was fair, Wally Campbell excellent, Colin Long quite good, Chinn quite good, old Chinn sent in his resignation at Ennogera. He sent me a cable, a telegram, please tear it up. Lapham acted up, he was good in the field, but I remember the sort of thing I mentioned, the great emphasis on sport. We had to put on a demonstration of Australian Rules against the RAAF at Kuala Lumpur in front of the British High Commissioner. We were about to go on Rubber Legs, Lapham was the football captain, so I cancelled the match and all hell broke loose. The general came down and saw me and said, “I think you better reconsider that Jim”, he said, “The High Commissioner is very interested in this demonstration match.” and I said, “Surely chasing CTs is more important than kicking a football?” and he said, “I think you better think again on that.” And I had to then think again and let the football match proceed and Lapham, the captain, play football instead of chasing bandits. Cohen was good, Tonge was good, Hand the Padre was quite good, [Pouis] was a Brit, David Allen, do you know David Allen, we used to call him bird brain, he was alright as long as you kept him on the line, give him a kick in the guts. I remember at Eagle Swoop, nothing was happening, Wally Campbell was commanding the little patrol going out looking for the CT camp and David Allen, pacing up and down, we had choppers going by and I said, “Push off back to Penang and your family, you are driving me mad”. So old David Allen went back to Penang and the balloon went up. Korff was a QM, well he was, I had to remove him, because he was kept back by direction of the GOC, Northern Command and wasn’t allowed up before we got into a great administrative tangle – no quartermaster in British administration. Goss fair, Chapman good, Padre Ganzer who was a Catholic excellent, Lucas the sigs officer good, a Red Cross bloke, Metcalfe too old, David Minnett good, George Bales quite good, Russell McNamara, not bad, Thirlwell very good, Shanahan very good, Ramsay very good, a Scotsman, Geddes, do you know Geddes?
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McNEILL: Yes, I do, Ian Geddes?
OCHILTREE: Ian Geddes, head in the clouds, Chambers RASC (sic) officer, bloody glad to get rid of him although not a bad chap, I would see him at Duntroon Society reunion, but to send a bloody ROC officer to a battalion going to war was crazy. I asked the Bunny Austin the Director, “For God’s sake, don’t let him come with his gross of badges on”. So he came along with bloody RAASC badges and everything on. Logan was quite good, Logan was the anti-tank bloke.
McNEILL: Well that is most useful, yes, well I know when they are talking about patrols now, just who is with whom.
OCHILTREE: The best patrol, we found an idea was a four man one, somebody in commanding of patrol, a tracker, a scout and a bloke with some sort of weapon, a machine gun or a shotgun, shotguns we found were useful. Particularly, I mean a crook shot, if you were ever here and I am excited and I start to pull a rifle up the shoulder, you have gone, with a shotgun you can fire it from the hip, it will spray out.
McNEILL: Were they bought in Malaya, were they with a special allowance or issued by the British?
OCHILTREE: No, they were issued to us by British ordinance.
McNEILL: I see, one shotgun per patrol or something, or one per Section?
OCHILTREE: Something like that, I have forgotten how many. Wally Campbell was one, Anstey and they were the only two that came to the battalion without their parachuter’s wings. Did you know about that?
McNEILL: Anstey was too heavy.
OCHILTREE: Yes, and so was Wally Campbell and they went in and failed their medical and came up and they said they wanted to do the parachute, the basic parachuter’s course and I said, “So do I, so you two go on a diet”. So they went on a diet and stripped the weight off and we went up for our medical in Northern Command and what was I? 34 I think, and they were about 22 and I said, “You couple of slobs, you are overweight, come on get down.” We all went through, got medically fit; we were all selected to go down and this was shortly after General Wells had come up and said, “What are all these people doing with their parachuter’s wings, wasted on this parachute training?” So the week before, we were due to go down and do what was three or four weeks basic parachuter’s course, I heard the CGS was coming up and I thought “if the CGS comes up and asks ‘Where is the CO?’” He is going down on this course which is in [inaudible] and there will be a replacement on the way. So I withdrew; Anstey and Campbell went down and got their parachuter’s wings. It is trivia.
McNEILL: No, it is interesting.
OCHILTREE: But they were both overweight.
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McNEILL: If we can get onto families, just for a few more minor points? Question 53.
OCHILTREE: You say do you recall the names of the commander, Commonwealth Brigade and any other, I have mentioned those, and they were excellent.
McNEILL: What was the reaction to families to long separations while the men were on operations?
OCHILTREE: Bored, frustrated, troublesome or philosophical.
McNEILL: Various reactions. Did you have any problems with wives playing up with other single men who were back from leave or?
OCHILTREE: Some played up, I don’t know if they played up with any of our chaps.
McNEILL: With the British soldiers coming in?
OCHILTREE: I don’t know, they were out at the kampong out in the north of Malaya (sic) and their company commanders’ wives, most of them were there and they had their own company welfare and they looked after the wives pretty well and the wife looked after the battalion welfare. And we would have meetings with them or we would go out and visit them or try and organise this and that for them. Basically, the wives were pretty happy, some of them were young and immature and inexperienced and then there was a very high degree of pregnancy and that shut a lot of them up. And when we got the Australian hostel built it meant that the band could go out and arrange dances for them and play at them all.
McNEILL: Where was that built again?
OCHILTREE: North of…
McNEILL: Where the married quarters were?
OCHILTREE: Yes, up in that area, the Australian hostel and there was a warrant officer there in charge.
McNEILL: Were officers and other ranks married quarters in the same area?
OCHILTREE: Same general area but kept apart.
McNEILL: Did you have an informal network to look after the wives based on the rank of the and the appointment of the husbands? I mean your own wife would have looked after battalion wives to a degree, would she had had the help of the wife of the 2IC, for example, and then the company commanders’ wives has roles to play.
OCHILTREE: And a lot of the CSMs’ wives and things like that.
McNEILL: They would have had roles to play?
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OCHILTREE: Some of them were excellent you see, Sergeant Simpson, Ray Simpson, whom you may know of, had a Japanese wife and she was very good. The NCO wives were excellent.
McNEILL: And what was Ray Simpson’s rank at that time?
OCHILTREE: Sergeant. He was very good, later on I heard about how he got to Vietnam for his second and third tour.
McNEILL: You can tell me now.
OCHILTREE: In actual fact, he went to Vietnam.
McNEILL: From SAS?
OCHILTREE: When I was Director of Infantry and we had…, I didn’t have anything to do with the staffing of the first initial AATTV [Australian Army Training Team Vietnam], but when later on I came over and took over from AD Jackson as Director of Infantry, I was responsible for selecting. I remember a number of them, they would meet me –.the warrant officers and all that sort of thing – and they would say, “We would like another tour.” and some of them would say, “I would like another tour.” – it was all volunteers as you recall.– and some of them would say, “Look, we don’t want to volunteer, my wife will kill me but I am volunteering but if my wife asks you, stand by me if I say, ‘Those bastards at Army Headquarters have sent me.’ so we want to go but don’t say I volunteered”. But I remember then, Simpson, in particular, and a few others said, “Look we would like to go back again.” and I remember writing to Ted Serong and saying, “What is your view on a second tour? Some of them, such as Simpson are very keen to go back.” and he said, “I am opposed to second tours and particularly people like Simpson. I don’t want him back.” and very adamant about this. So I think Ted must have gone, that is right, Ted Serong had gone; Dave Jackson was there and I sent Simpson back. And of course, I was delighted when he got his DCM and even more delighted when he got his VC. He was great, he loved fighting.
McNEILL: He really did, yes.
OCHILTREE: He was very good. He had his problems in peacetime but he was a very good soldier and he loved fighting and I remember, old Ray Simpson particularly, he was doing a course for a warrant officer at the School of Infantry; I told him and he said, “I would like to go back, can I go back?” But Ted Serong was very much against it, but several of them went back.
McNEILL: He used to play up all the time, he was a section commander of mine in SAS.
OCHILTREE: Was he?
McNEILL: He was a sergeant yes, this is from 1957, after he got back from Malaya, straight after he came out of 2 RAR, he joined SAS in ‘57 and stayed there until, well he left to go on the first tour – via [Tel Aviv] – but yes, he was not an easy man to control out of the bush.
OCHILTREE: But I remember Simpson was very keen to go back and so was several of the others that later on I sent back and I remember one in particular saying, “I want to go back but
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for God sake, don’t let onto my wife that I volunteered. I want to say, ‘ It’s those bastards that are at Army Headquarters that are sending me and naturally I obey orders.’”
McNEILL: If I can get on then to the second question under the families, was there a backup system from Australia for the welfare of families if there were problems at home?
OCHILTREE: Yes, we could send signals down and I think I had in [inaudible] family liaison officers who would go around and see the families.
McNEILL: They had them in the Vietnam.
OCHILTREE: I think I had them in Malaya, but we had no problems there because all the families I think that wanted to go, did go. We must have had, I am guessing now, I think over a hundred families.
McNEILL: That is quite a lot.
OCHILTREE: My wife used to have meetings of the wives and try and organise them and make them happy but they were pretty mature being regular soldiers wives, were in the main, pretty mature and sensible.
McNEILL: Were soldiers able to get back quickly for compassionate reasons?
OCHILTREE: Back to families, yes.
McNEILL: Say a soldier's mother or father had died or something in Australia, was he able to get compassionate leave?
OCHILTREE: Yeah, I don’t think we ever had, I don’t ever recall anyone having to go back on compassionate grounds, or compassionate reasons, when on operations. They could be brought back in a flash, and I remember at Eagle Swoop one of the troops, I have forgotten his name, his wife was about nine months pregnant when he went out and he was ambushing around the border, with Wally Campbell and company. And he sent back, tapped back, ‘How is my wife?’ and I would get on the phone back to my wife in Penang and she would nip out or ring up the kampong and back had came the wife, “Tell my husband I am quite alright, tell him to get on and chase the CTs.” So back, this would be tapped out to him, ’Wife fine’.
McNEILL: Was medical support for the families considered adequate?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it was good because we had a very good relationship with the British 16th Field Ambulance in Minden Barracks, those doctors were available for the families and also any serious cases or cases of children being born would go to the British Military Hospital at Taiping, the BMH at Kumunting, that was very good. I had a staff car and I left that with my wife for welfare and any pregnant wife would go down – or for the hospital visiting – use the staff car, going to and fro between Penang and Taiping. No, that was pretty good.
McNEILL: Do you feel you were given good support from Aust Army Force?
OCHILTREE: Excellent, couldn’t have been better and that was due to John Speed. Nobody could have been more helpful, more considerate or anything like this and he would try and
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when any criticism particularly on the accidental discharges and shooting, he would try and shield us from it, he was very good. AUSTARM were excellent.
McNEILL: Did you have any serious problems in VD or malaria?
OCHILTREE: VD, plenty that I mentioned earlier, VD was a problem and it wasn’t until we would point out, individually go around and talking to a platoon or a group and say, “Look, you are bludging on your mates. You’ve got wherewithal to prevent VD: if you get it once it is bad luck; if you get it a second time, it is careless; a third time, you are bloody self-inflicted wound, you are a careless, you are a stupid bastard.”
McNEILL: Yes, but of course you didn’t want to do anything to stop the soldier reporting he had it?
OCHILTREE: No, that was always the problem but I don’t know what the answer is. I remember talking to Bill Refshauge, the DGMS, I remember talking…
McNEILL: If he gets his head chopped off for reporting VD, well of course, he doesn’t report it does he?
OCHILTREE: …and particularly with Australians, we had the same thing in Egypt in the World War Two and we had the same thing in Japan.
McNEILL: You had your regimental brothel in Egypt though?
OCHILTREE: In Egypt, in Port Said, we had the one, I took over from the HLI [Highland Light Infantry] and opened a second.
McNEILL: What rank were you then, a captain?
OCHILTREE: No, I was a platoon commander and I was sent down with the battalion advance party to Port Said and [inaudible] came to the HLI, who were going out to Abyssinia in 1940. But the fact that coming back to this VD and out of bounds areas, this is a bit off the track, but when we went to Bombay on the Queen Mary in October 1940 the CO of the 17th Battalion got an old India hand, Andy MacDonald – who later on ran the Wartime Jungle Warfare School – an old Indy hand to get all the officers together and one of the things he said, “Don’t go down Grant Road; it has got all the girls in cages and everything. They are rotten with VD, it is a terrible place.” and CO John Crawford, a splendid chap, at the end of it said, “I don’t want any members of the 17th battalion down Grant Road, now Grant Road remember that”. So after about a day in Bombay, a couple of us said, “What is the name of the road we are not to go down? Grant Road, got to go to Grant Road.” and you couldn’t get through – the whole battalion was down, looking at the girls in cages. So similarly in the out of bounds areas around Georgetown and elsewhere, this is before Independence, out of bounds, it was a great attraction for a soldier to go down out of bounds areas which were probably the most highly infected with VD. I don’t remember a single case of malaria, we had sandfly fever, I remember I had got it in Syria in the war and I remember getting it in Malaya during Operation Deuce and we had quite a bit of dysentery. And the dysentery, Kuala Kangsar, I don’t know if you ever heard this, it was bound up… but they found out that the water, the sappers tested it…by the
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doctors. Pure? It only had the town sewer draining into it, so we had a number of cases of a amoebic dysentery, a lot which weren’t diagnosed until after we had returned to Australia. When 3 RAR took over, the first Christmas, they had something like about 30 or 40 cases in Kuala Kangsar of amoebic dysentery then the Brits found out it had the town sewer draining into the water supply. They would clean their teeth in impure water or the ice that was made by the regimental contractor. Regimental contractors were very useful, I don’t think they are mentioned here. They were great.
McNEILL: What did they do?
OCHILTREE: They use to do all the dhobying [laundering], the tailoring. The party would come in from ambush or go out early morning for an ambush, they would have morning tea, bed tea delivered to the chaps in bed, supper when they came in from the patrol, they would do the tailoring, they would do everything, they were magnificent and they would be under a contract.
McNEILL: You say they had morning tea in the ambush position?
OCHILTREE: No, in the barracks, bring around bed tea for them or if they come in from the patrol, from an ambush, before our cooks got going they would have morning tea waiting for them. At one stage I said to Dave Mannett, Dave you ought to give them a copy of our op. instructions or op. orders or put them on the distribution list with signals so they would know when the party is going in and who is sending an ambush back out.
McNEILL: Did you find any examples of leakage of information from your DWECS at all, just coming back to that, did you ever suspect?
OCHILTREE: Suspected, when we were down Sungei Siput in Shark North the information was very poor and the Special Branch officer was gambling heavily but we weren’t suspicious. Then, just towards the end, Peter Moore said to me, “Before you leave, I must tell you something.” and when we were on the boat about to come back I said, “What were you going to tell me?” and he said, “So and So, the Special Branch officer was removed, is suspected of, he is losing money gambling and he was getting money from the CTs for passing information from informants.” so he said, “That is the reason why a lot of your ‘acting on information’ ventures were abortive”.
McNEILL: Special Branch, was he British?
OCHILTREE: No, Chinese.
McNEILL: Chinese, yes.
OCHILTREE: I asked somebody when I went back I wanted to know [inaudible] Malaya what happened to him. “Oh, we sent him to a safe area, way out in the Cameron Highlands or somewhere.”
McNEILL: Did your troops feel excessive strain or stress do you think because of protracted natured of operations?
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OCHILTREE: Not so much in protracted operations but the lack of success that was frustrating to them. But it was like looking for a needle in a haystack and then once you found the needle, in many cases in was ‘unsuccessful contact’.
McNEILL: Is there anyway that this stress or strain showed itself or are they just letting their hair down normally in the bars and so on?
OCHILTREE: I remember the Minister of Defence and his wife.
McNEILL: Cramer?
OCHILTREE: No, he was Minister for the Army, Minister of Defence, I have forgotten who it was, it was after Eagle Swoop, he was coming with a visit and I was asked to turn on a dinner party for him in the Penang Club, black tie and all, him and his wife and he said he wanted to come and visit the soldiers in the Soldiers Club, that is what we called it, the Soldiers Club in Georgetown. And I said “John Speed”, I said, “God, no.”
You can imagine, they had just come back from Eagle Swoop, that’s right, the soldiers had been out on operation for a few weeks coming back for a bit of R and R and probably boozed in a Soldiers Club and an elderly Minister of Defence with a black tie and a wife in an evening gown coming in, he was really asking for it. ”Anyhow, I will give them a dinner party but I will not take him to the Soldiers Club.” So we did a bit of confrontation on this and he said, John Speed said, “Defence and Army have said you have got to take him to it.” and I said, “Well I won’t”. So finally we agreed that I would give him a dinner party at the Penang Club, that was all arranged and then the Minister of Defence changed his mind and didn’t come to the dinner party.
McNEILL: A lot of trouble. Can you recall any other medical problems, other than VD, malaria, stress or strain?
OCHILTREE: No, I know 3 RAR had scrub typhus; I don’t think we had any. We had one very good chap, an MM from Korea, Richardson who was a corporal then, and the sergeant was then, I got [him] down as an instructor at Portsea and [inaudible] RSM dropped Richardson. He got bitten by a scorpion in B Company; we had to bring in scout cars to evacuate him because he had been bitten by a scorpion. No, no medical problems.
McNEILL: Civic Action, in 1960 the British government?
OCHILTREE: Excuse me, what about question 61?
McNEILL: Question 61, yes. Have you heard of Malayan veterans experiencing the kind of physical and mental traumas as are attributed to some Vietnam veterans?
OCHILTREE: No, none at all, absolute rubbish. My son was in Vietnam and I said, What do you think about this Agent Orange thing and he said, “Absolute bullshit”.
McNEILL: Yes, thank you Jim. Civic Action, question 62. In 1960 the British government commenced planning a scheme that would extend into Malaya, a large civic action program which was then operating in Singapore, Operation Concorde. The aim of such civic action was to promote a feeling of goodwill by the local people towards the services and they had
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political rather than defence significances. I have listed there a lot of civic action activities, which were carried out and I am wondering whether, in Malaya, in ’56-‘57 well for a beginning, was civic action ever much a turn?
OCHILTREE: No, we used to call it civil affairs.
McNEILL: So the term was used.
OCHILTREE: We didn’t really have much to do with it, on a battalion basis we didn’t have anything, everyone was too busy. The battalion wives used to help with the Red Cross fête and a few things and I remember getting the battalion caterer to make an enormous cake for the Red Cross fair. Some of the wives used to help the Blind Society and all that sort of thing. More spontaneous and on an individual basis, it didn’t have really much to do. You see, when we were in early days, first of all we were so frantically busy ourselves, and all the time the battalion was busy and the families were busy, getting settled in and getting adjusted and that was quite a handful for both on my wife, the company commanders’ wives, the officers’ wives and the senior NCOs’ wives, making them all happy, running the odd dance at the hostel for them. We used to make the band readily available to go and play at schools, orphanages, hospitals and the band was a wonderful thing to have, a good band. And I was amazed at the, we used to let them go around initially to perform at clubs and that for free. But then that upsets the British because they used to charge and their band performers used to go into band funds to buy new instruments and new uniforms and we reckoned that is fair enough, so at non-charity things, like playing at the Penang Club or the Penang Sports Club or some gymkhana club, we would charge; they would make a donation for the band fund which was used for buying band instruments. But for an orphanage or for a school which was all for free, the band would go out and I remember play for a lot of aborigines out in one of the remote camps and the band was a wonderful public relations thing.
McNEILL: But on operations then you wouldn’t be likely to be using your Assault Pioneers to try and dig a well or fix buildings around the place, they would have their own tasks.
OCHILTREE: Usually, if it was digging a well, it would be the local sappers in the brigade or the local authorities in the village.
McNEILL: You weren’t getting any encouragement from politicians or Australian army force.
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: Well we will get on to Merdeka on 31 August 1957; did the granting of independence have any direct effect on 2 RAR?
OCHILTREE: None at all except, we where as I mentioned earlier, told to keep the troops out of Georgetown and off Penang.
McNEILL: Did you actually do that, do you remember?
OCHILTREE: Oh yes,I did what I was told.
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McNEILL: Have you any observations to make concerning the effect of independence on the Emergency from the point of view of the inhabitants of Malaya and their support of the communists or on the communists themselves?
OCHILTREE: I think that most of the people, the thinking people were glad that independence has been achieved; it was a great success for Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Prime Minister. I think the Malayan Government themselves were delighted and pleased, that we had broken away from the British yoke and all that stuff, we were no longer under their heel. The ordinary rank of the people, couldn’t care less I don’t think they understood it, but it did cut the ground from under the CTs, it meant that no longer could a British general command operations, it was then in the hands of the Malayan government. But since we were at the tail end of things, it didn’t have really much of effect on us.
McNEILL: No, well this is how it would have been and then the new battalion coming in wouldn’t have known what it was like, there wasn’t a good comparison there as far as Australians are concerned.
OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: You came out of operations just before independence, there is no significance in that date I suppose that you came out.
OCHILTREE: It was purely, worked out when the ship would be there, how long we would need to clean up Minden Barracks and paint the walls and have everything spic and span to be handed back to the British. With their barrack stores people inspecting any barrack room damages, which I will mention later on, how long would it take to get on the ship and there was a certain amount of discussion between the British headquarters, AUSTARM and myself on how long and I wanted – so many weeks and they cut me back to two weeks or something or other. And then there was retraining, how long we would need, how we can cut that down. I wanted to stay in operations until the last minute after the battalion was drawn. Some of us stayed on because we are ambushing a particular village. No, there was no significance - not related to the Merdeka. The only thing that occurred, the Duke of Gloucester, who was the guest of honour for the Merdeka, representing the Queen, expressed the view to visit the Australian troops, so I arranged with actually Michael Hawkins, his military assistant or ADC who came and visit and I said, “We would like to turn on a parade”. So in actual fact, I have forgotten a date for that, we got back a certain amount of troops to have a guard of honour. And then the Duchess the Gloucester said she had been experienced in Red Cross and nursing in Australia, she would like to meet some of the Australian nurses, so we brought some of the Red Cross and a couple of the nurses up from Taiping. We had a certain amount of difficulty there. The matron said she wouldn’t release them and I said, “Well I reckon the Brit matron is game.” and the Duchess of Gloucester said she wants to meet the Australian nursing sisters and I think a couple of them were brought up and the Duchess of Gloucester met wives, families, children and we had a parade for the Duke, but that was in Merdeka, after Merdeka.
McNEILL: And there are no highlights concerning the celebrations as they may have affected 2 RAR.
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OCHILTREE: No, we were kept out of the limelight. Understandably, there is no reason for us to get into the limelight.
McNEILL: Now we go onto the relevance to the Malayan experience to Vietnam, would you like a cup of coffee?
OCHILTREE: No thanks, I think I will probably ask you if you would come up to Macedon, it might be better in due course, to do with Americans, you might like to talk about it when you come up there or today.
McNEILL: Yes, we can leave it, I will have to come up anyway. How much more have we got, there is not a lot here but it is very meaty, as you were saying before.
OCHILTREE: I would like to talk to you about the effects of British Army Administration.
McNEILL: Oh good.
OCHILTREE: That was really a shock to the system, about the British preoccupation with statistics: shoot to kill ratio and vehicle accident ratio and health ratio; sickness ratio-the place was statistically went berserk and we learnt a lot from the Brits and also the fact that 3 RAR…
McNEILL: [inaudible]
OCHILTREE: …No, no, a company commander, Max Simpkin who acted as a company commander, rifle company commander, then sat in understudy to Pat Shanahan as 2IC, got the whole of the administrative system well by the throat so that when John Wright came up with 3 RAR, Max Simpkin came as 2IC and was able to show him all the ropes and all the pitfalls and what to do, whereas we found the British Army Administration was a headache, we were not used to it. And that affected my wife and welfare.
McNEILL: You have given a bit of thought to the idea of what you might have learnt, the Australian Army might have benefited from in Malaya, which was applicable in Vietnam.
OCHILTREE: A lot on the, particularly on the general: winning the hearts and the minds of the people; on small patrols; a lot on dress; on relations with the civil populace.
McNEILL: We better not go into it for the moment or it will spoil it for tomorrow. I will turn it off here then.
OCHILTREE: And then I’d go through the photos with you and you look at any others I have got?
McNEILL: We could do that now, I would rather have that on the tape. And I can take these photos back too?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: Thank you very much.
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OCHILTREE: Donald Ramsay who lives in Sydney has a photograph, he wrote me about the 2 RAR officers at Ennogera and this is one taken in December ‘56 and there would be quite a few changes and then quite a few changes between then and when we left.
McNEILL: December ’56.
OCHILTREE: Yes, that is when we went back for R and R.
McNEILL: Don Anstey has taken off a bit of weight since then, I mean since he was, when I first, he had put some back on too.
OCHILTREE: But he and Wally Campbell who were both overweight, not suitable for parachute training and I remember the RMO at Northern Command who examined the three of us said yes, I was 100% fit, the others went…Don Anstey had some skin trouble too I think and he had to get that cleared up, so he said we are all fit and he reckoned I was a bit older than usual but if I am crazy enough to do it that is alright with him.
McNEILL: I can borrow, take this one?
OCHILTREE: Yes, that and these.
McNEILL: Thank you. You will want copies of these will you Jim.
OCHILTREE: If I could?
McNEILL: Yes, certainly.
OCHILTREE: There is that one, that was the presentation of colours, Bill Slim and myself.
McNEILL: I will put that down as photograph 4.
OCHILTREE: This is not Malaya, that is Thailand, that is me briefing the American commanding general on the SEATO exercise so that is nothing to do with Malaya.
McNEILL: Where were you then, what was your?
OCHILTREE: I was shadow posted as the G2 intelligence on Headquarters SEATO Field Forces.
McNEILL: Photograph 5.
OCHILTREE: But that is really nothing to do with, I have dug that out by mistake. There is Templer, me and Phyl Daymon and the Red Cross representative, the Australian Red Cross representative.
McNEILL: How do you spell her name?
OCHILTREE: D a y m o n, Phyl Daymon, Australian Red Cross representative of Malaya.
McNEILL: And where was this taken, in Malaya but KL?
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OCHILTREE: That was taken I think down at Taiping, Brigade Headquarters when we went from Butterworth to Taiping.
McNEILL: We will call that photograph 6.
OCHILTREE: There is Templer, there is Scott who became deputy commander of the brigade but after that they had the deputy commander to look after the administration of training but I previously whenever Peter Moore went off, I was the senior battalion commander and took over command of the brigade. There is Templer, that is Goulson from the Lincolns.
McNEILL: Which is Templer, shaking hands with you?
OCHILTREE: Shaking hands with me, there is Goulson.
McNEILL: How do you spell him, do you remember?
OCHILTREE: G-o-u-l-s-o-n, he was commanding the Lincolns, that is Scott, who was made the deputy commander of the Commonwealth Brigade.
McNEILL: What rank was he?
OCHILTREE: A full colonel. I don’t know who that is?
McNEILL: Half a face there, yes, we will call that photograph 7?
OCHILTREE: This is the day, we arrived disembarked in Penang, that is MacGillivray, Donald MacGillivray, the British High Commissioner for South-East Asia or High Commissioner for Malaya,1 I am not sure which.
McNEILL: Talking to officers of the battalion?
OCHILTREE: Yes. That is in the mess of Minden Barracks.
McNEILL: Can you recognise those officers from left to right?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: Just from their heads?
OCHILTREE: Hands, Campbell, Godwin, Davies, Chapman, Chambers, Illingworth, Metcalfe.
McNEILL: That is from right to left, thank you.
OCHILTREE: I can tell you that tomorrow if you like. Is it tomorrow you will come up?
McNEILL: We might as well finish the photographs off. That was?
1 High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya
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OCHILTREE: The Duchess and Duke of Gloucester. That is my wife, Prince William, Duchess of Gloucester, Duke of Gloucester, me, I don’t know who that is, Alec Orr, Phyl Daymon the Red Cross girl and I think Matron Doig, the matron-in-chief, she must have been visiting, I think.
McNEILL: Photograph 9.
OCHILTREE: That is a photo my wife liked, that is me on Eagle Swoop in a chopper looking out flying over the Thai border.
McNEILL: Excellent, photograph 10.
OCHILTREE: I don’t know if you want that, that is the start of the round Penang relay race, where we had to have police on the vulnerable points.
McNEILL: Photograph 11.
OCHILTREE: That is the presentation of colours, I don’t know if that helps, and I think that is the lot. I have got more photographs, sorted ones at home. Here are a couple. That is the parade for the Duke of Gloucester.
McNEILL: Who has the sword there, is that MacNamara?
OCHILTREE: MacNamara yes. There is Hawkins who lost his left arm. Who else, that is me down there with the Duke of Gloucester.
McNEILL: What are they in open order march are they, for the guard of honour?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: Photograph number 12.
OCHILTREE: That is brigade headquarters at Butterworth when I was commanding in the brigade, General Peter St Clair Ford, the division commander, the American admiral who was visiting and me.
McNEILL: Photograph 13, at brigade headquarters in Butterworth. It looks pretty cool there, cool sorts of buildings.
OCHILTREE: Yes, not bad. That is our arrival back on the New Australia before the parade - General Pollard, my wife, my daughter and me and I remember I will tell you about that tomorrow too, because Reggie Pollard whom we knew well, said to me, “You are well turned out,” and he said, “all the troops are well turned out?” I said, “Better, they have all had freshly dhobied slacks and shirts but the bottom of their suitcases are not permitted to be touched until this morning.” I said, “Thank God for that.” He said, “Why?” I said, “The minister said you were to... on the ship that took 3 RAR out, there was khaki drill to be brought up and you were to change on the ship into khaki drill because he wanted the Australian troops to do the march through Sydney in khaki drill.” and I said, “Bloody ridiculous.” and he said, “That is what the minister said. He didn’t want any jungle green stuff, he wanted the khaki drill.” And I said “I would have been impossible.” I said, “How are
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you going to dhobi it? And how is the tailor going to alter it? And how are you going to get four fingers’ width sleeve? How are you going to get an inch above the elbow? Get knife- edge creases? How are you going to get colour patches formations on?” I said. “We don’t have tailors or sewing machines on board.” and he said, “I know but that is what the minister said and you’re in ace of getting a signal.” And I said, “If I got the signal I think I would have turned a blind eye, I would of sworn I hadn’t got it, it had been mislaid”. He said, “God, you would have….” He said, “Hmmm, I don’t know how that would have gone down.” I said, “I would have refused to go through in shabby, ill-fitting untailored things, going through.” and he said, “As long as the troops are as well turned out as you.” And indeed they were. Now after that apparently, I put in recommendations afterwards and I said the field force should wear jungle green, the uniform they go to fight in. I said to Reggie Pollard I said, “Look, our people are proud of the uniform, they have worn the jungle green for the last two years in Malaya, they have done probably only a fair job but they are proud of their uniform and there is one thing that we reckon our troops are as well turned out and as good as any in the country.” And he said, “Right, well fair enough”. So we marched through in jungle green. But if I got the signal I would have tossed it over the side of the ship.
McNEILL: That is very interesting. What is your daughter’s name?
OCHILTREE: Margaret, she is now currently the first Secretary Aide in the Embassy in Bangkok.
McNEILL: Is she? On those jungle greens, were you initially in khaki in Australia?
OCHILTREE: Yes, as you can see in that photograph with MacGillivray, the High Commissioner.
McNEILL: Yes, that is right; you arrived in Malaya in khaki.
OCHILTREE: And we got out of them as quickly as we could and we had again the regimental contractor who was there to do all the tailoring because the British army issue, the shirts particularly, were a pretty ropy lot.
McNEILL: That was that woollen.
OCHILTREE: No, not a woollen one but you can see it. [Jim shows garment] - That is the ordinary shirt and you have got to be pretty good to be able to make that issue shirt into a shirt like that, so we had these shirts sent up from Australia – a special issue to be worn by parades and on special occasions. An ordinary Australian made shirt, but the contractors did the tailoring, the laundry, the sewing on of formation signs and regimental flashes and the badges of rank, everything.
McNEILL: And you had British jungle green trousers, British issue trousers?
OCHILTREE: Trousers, boots and the jungle hats.
McNEILL: Was there any distinguishing signs of 2 Battalion, the colour of their gaiters from Korea or anything?
OCHILTREE: Black.
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McNEILL: Black?
OCHILTREE: And the belts, when we wore belts for parade, they were painted black. Black boots and black gaiters as they came from the presentation of colours, Puckapunyal way back in 1952, because the King had just died, their drums were kept in black and the battalion had black gaiters and black belts.
McNEILL: They were blackened before that?
OCHILTREE: After it. So 2 RAR always wore that and we had two belts, so we had the belt we could wear with the webbing because we didn’t have all the webbing and pouches and things black but we had an extra belt for ceremonial purposes.
McNEILL: The pouches were all black too, were they?
OCHILTREE: No, it would have been impractical and unrealistic too, black and navy black for ceremonial purposes and dress purposes.
McNEILL: That is the belt and gaiters?
OCHILTREE: And the rifle slings too.
McNEILL: And that became the standard for the whole army didn’t it?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: It was quite practical to have black gaiters especially.
OCHILTREE: The other thing we introduced there were flashes in the stockings, we had scarlet, I designed them, scarlet and white, scarlet for flashes.
McNEILL: This is when you wore shorts?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: You were issued with British shorts or tailored shorts?
OCHILTREE: Tailored shorts, we had. We were issued with British ones but the British ones look pretty ghastly, we had them all tailored.
McNEILL: Did the soldiers have tailored shorts too?
OCHILTREE: Yeah, or did they or did they not, I have forgotten now. For parades we used to wear slacks, I have forgotten about the shorts.
McNEILL: We better leave it there because…
OCHILTREE: It was funny with the flashes, later on when I was Director of Infantry I put up a thing with the Dress Committee: we should have flashes as the Brits did in their corps
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colours. And the Dress Committee was furious, knocked it back and said, “No it doesn’t apply to infantry, it should apply to all corps. Not approved.” So I took it up with the adjutant general, General Harrison–no I wrote to him about…to AG, and I said, “This is a cavalier approach, adopted to my considered recommendation.” And he was livid. The director of the Dress Committee in future, not just because just one head of corps put up a thing just to knock it out because it applied to everyone, get everyone’s view. And I said we had these colours flashes, in the stockings.
McNEILL: That was attached the little flags.
OCHILTREE: On the garter, and they were jolly good. PIR [Pacific Island Regiment] had them, adopted them but our dress committee, it was a knock back.
McNEILL: They were against it.
OCHILTREE: Yes. No I don’t think there were any with shorts there.
McNEILL: Alright, well thank you very...
OCHILTREE: Do you recognise that?
McNEILL: Yes, the infantry regimental…
OCHILTREE: Do you know who designed that?
McNEILL: No.
OCHILTREE: Peter Farquar and myself. Before I took over as D of Int, next to Dave Jackson, I said, “We will have a regimental tie.” and he said, “That seems like a good idea.” but he said, “I am too busy, will you do it?” So Peter Farquar and I sat down and we did a lot of homework on the thing and got all the British colour code, rifle green which is the regimental colour code number 132 and something, badges are knocked out and samples prepared by ASCO [Australian Services Canteen Organisation] and Dave Jackson agreed, sent to all the battalions COs who agreed too, and to Ralph McGarrett, the honorary colonel and ... we went to press. So my only claim to fame was as a co-author of the RAR tie.
McNEILL: That is fair enough too, it is a good tie.
OCHILTREE: Because we found the off duties dress, as you [inaudible] did, was slacks, shirts, sleeves down and a tie. We didn’t have a regimental tie, all we would get was the Infantry Corps tie, which I didn’t think was such a crash hot tie.
McNEILL: That was a striped tie, I think?
OCHILTREE: It was, yes.
McNEILL: I will cut the tape there and we will continue tomorrow.
McNEILL: Continuing on the 1 March 1985 – Jim, the first volume of the US army Official History on Vietnam highlights the difficulties faced by the US advisers in the late fifties in
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attempting to structure a Vietnamese army which, on the one hand, would be organised to repel a North Vietnamese invasion over the demilitarised zone and which, on the other hand, could combat an insurgency by the Vietcong. This situation does not seem to me to be very different from the situation faced in Malaya, where the British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve was organised to counter overt aggression and at the same time, in its secondary role carried out anti-terrorist activities. Have you any comments on the similarity of the situations, particularly in the late fifties very early sixties, in Vietnam and whether the British solution would seem to have been applicable to Vietnam, before the war really got strong in Vietnam?
OCHILTREE: Well the situation, there were certain similarities but on the other hand, in Malaya at that time, a possibility of open warfare against the major power was a very remote one and very little attention was paid to it. When for example the 28th Brigade underwent conventional warfare training, major war training, just before we returned to Australia, we were the only battalion involved. The other battalions, the Commonwealth Brigade, kept on with chasing CTs so really, whereas in Vietnam, there was always a distinct probability that the North Vietnamese would, and indeed they did, launch an attack over the DMZ, this situation didn’t arise as far as Malaya are concerned. Also, another point was, in the event of it being overt aggression by a major power in Vietnam, we would have had adequate warning, or would have had pretty reasonable warning, with say China or somebody who was going to invade Malaya, so the situation wasn’t really similar and also, whereas in Vietnam, both the forces had to do counter-insurgency as well as prepare for what later came about with the more conventional warfare against the Vietnamese.
McNEILL: Thank you. You referred in a telephone conversation to an American interest in the ATOM pamphlet, could you please elaborate on these circumstances, do you remember him visiting?
OCHILTREE: I remember we had the American military attaché, who was accredited to Kuala Lumpur, visited me on a couple of occasions and was extremely interested in how we organised and conducted counter-insurgency against the CTs. He visited us in operation Shark North and visited all the company bases and really had a good briefing and a first hand view of the situation at that time in the Sungei Siput area. And then later on at the end of exercise Eagle Swoop, he visited me and had a number of very personal questions about how we organised Eagle Swoop and how it was conducted and what the results were. The Americans were extremely interested. That was the only occasion in which American army people or a person actually came and visited us.
McNEILL: How long did this chap stay with you?
OCHILTREE: About a day. Which was enough to go around and have a look at what was going on in the 2 RAR area of operation Shark North.
McNEILL: Do you remember if he had a helicopter or anything?
OCHILTREE: No, he purely came I think, probably landed at Ipoh at I picked him up from there.
McNEILL: And he was from, a military attaché from Saigon?
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OCHILTREE: A US military attaché in Kuala Lumpur.
McNEILL: And they seemed interested in what you were doing?
OCHILTREE: Very interested including our method of operation and things such as the ATOM pamphlet which, I had explained to him as I had to others, this is virtually our bible in which we base our framework of our operations.
McNEILL: What comment do you have on the ethnicity of the new villages in Malaya as against the agrovilles in Vietnam?
OCHILTREE: First of all, what is an agroville?
McNEILL: That is where they had concentrated people in Vietnam particularly in the Mekong Delta, into small groups, into villages with their own medical and educational facilities and health and hygiene and tried to fence them off from the Vietcong, it was a similar concept, it was a concept taken I believe taken from Malaya with the new settlements, I was wondering if you had heard much about the agrovilles, they call them the agrovilles?
OCHILTREE: No, I don’t know anything about the agrovilles but as far as the new villages were concerned with Malaya, they were accommodated people who were suspected of being sympathetic, particularly actively sympathetic, towards the CTs and a whole village might be removed and fenced in with all facilities within the barbed wire and that would be guarded by the Federation of Malaya police and barbed wire perimeter lighting. And people, they were allowed to go out and work, say in the rubber estates and elsewhere but they would be searched going out and searched going in so that they couldn’t take any of their food out to the CTs. And also we would frequently ambush in the vicinity of new villages when we suspected CTs may be coming in for a food pickup. Basically they were pretty successful.
McNEILL: Were they set up throughout Malaya, or concentrated in particular areas?
OCHILTREE: No, they were set out throughout Malaya, but as far as possible, I might even say, the inhabitants of these new villages came from that particular district.
McNEILL: Do you know what became of those new villages after the emergency? Were the fences taken down and the villages became thriving communities or did the people go back to where they had come from, I mean you weren’t there then but you just might have heard?
OCHILTREE: I visited Malaya several times after independence and my recollection is that the villagers, the inhabitants of the new villages were released to go back to their normal place of residence and normal work.
McNEILL: And a lot of these people who came to the new villages or forcibly put there were from the deep jungle, was that right, squatters, Chinese?
OCHILTREE: No, these were local people in a village nearby and the village might be suspected or some of the people had been suspected and they were moved out and rehoused in the new village. They didn’t come from the jungle.
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McNEILL: So they would have just left empty thatched houses and cottages and kampongs behind them would they?
OCHILTREE: Yes. The inhabitants were not particularly happy, certainly the ones in our area were understandably a pretty unhappy looking bunch, since they had police and troops wandering around with weapons and were liable to have their huts searched and their belongings certainly were searched.
McNEILL: Question 68, from your experience in Malaya and again as Director of Infantry, 1963 to ’64, are you able to point to areas where the Australian army experience in Malaya influenced our operational procedure in Vietnam?
OCHILTREE: Not really, as I didn’t serve in Vietnam, I don’t think I could make any comment on it except that I think a lot of the experience and particularly living in the jungle and patrolling, rations, weapons and equipment did influence our thinking in Vietnam and particularly I think the importance of a high state of operational readiness, where people would be deployed very quickly at short notice. We used to always keep people, in each company base, on immediate standby so if there were an ambush, a suspected ambush or some activity, we could deploy troops literally within minutes, which was important if you were going to catch these rather elusive CTs. Other than that, I don’t think I can really comment on this question.
McNEILL: Are you aware to what extent the Malayan experience was significant in the formulation of Australian doctrine on counter-insurgency especially as enunciated in the counter-revolutionary warfare pamphlet 1965?
OCHILTREE: The Malayan experience certainly was taken into account and was utilised, when those pamphlets were prepared, I had nothing to do with the preparation of the pamphlets, but I think I am right in saying that the experience from Malaya was used in that particular pamphlet on counter-revolutionary warfare.
McNEILL: And you wouldn’t be able to say your comment on whether there were any practices from Malaya adopted in Vietnam, were inappropriate because of different enemy or for any other reasons?
OCHILTREE: Not really, no.
McNEILL: Question 71 wouldn’t be applicable either. Did you meet Sir Robert Thompson in Malaya at any time?
OCHILTREE: I didn’t, no.
McNEILL: Just before we get onto the last one or two questions. You mentioned yesterday that you were involved, was it as Director of Infantry, in the pentropic division or just before, as it was being brought in, the writing of pamphlets for it; you were saying it was a bit of a dogs breakfast?
OCHILTREE: No, I wasn’t concerned, I was Commandant of the Officer Cadet School (OCS) at Portsea when the pentropic division was raised, but later on when I was Director of Infantry, I was able to compare the pentropic battalion against what we call the standard
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battalion and I was never a supporter of the pentropic battalion. When I was Director of Infantry, I asked to see the documentation on which the decision was finally given to that Australia would go pentropic. No such papers were released to me and later on I was given to understand that there wasn’t any basic document that anyone put the stamp of approval on. I didn’t support the pentropic battalion, for a number of reasons, is this of any interest?
McNEILL: Yes, it is.
OCHILTREE: The main one was the battalion commander was a colonel and therefore he would be ordinarily in his late thirties or forties. He also had a very large unit to command and I always thought the essence of being a good standard infantry battalion commander was to get to know the men and be known by the men and since the pentropic battalion was so large, it was I think impossible for any commanding officer to get to know all ranks of the battalion which he commanded. Also, it was an administrative headache. I remember when I was being critical of it, was told that it really consisted of five small battalions, but of course small battalions are a self contained administrative unit, whereas the companies, the pentropic companies were not self contained and administered by themselves, still the CO of the battalion had responsible for administering as well as dispensing justice where need be. I didn’t meet one pentropic battalion commander who didn’t express the same misgivings and then when I was Director of Infantry, I remember visiting the headquarters of the 1st Division and was asked by the deputy commander, “Was I then going to help get rid of this nonsense?” and I said, “I can do my best.” but at that stage the CGS at the time was very much in favour of the pentropic division and that posed particular problems when we had pentropic battalions within Australia and we were still maintaining forces in Malaya. Because each time a battalion had to go to Malaya, the pentropic battalion from which it came had to be carved up and the standard battalion formed from a pentropic battalion. The standard battalion then had to go to Malaya leaving a shell of a pentropic battalion which then took several months depending on the reinforcement situation to again become operational.
McNEILL: Who was the CGS at that time when you were Director of Infantry?
OCHILTREE: General Wilton.
McNEILL: Wilton? He told me he was against the pentropic battalion, it was the CGS before him, Garrett or Pollard, I am not sure.
OCHILTREE: General Garrett was a CGS when the pentropic division was introduced. General Pollard I don’t know what his views were, but he was the CGS following General Garrett and then General Wilton succeeded General Pollard, but they all shall I say, lived with the pentropic organisation.
McNEILL: The pentropic was disbanded in Wilton’s time wasn’t it, about ‘64 or something?
OCHILTREE: I would think probably about ‘65 or ’66, about that time, and the other thing, since we were still part of ANZUS and liable to fight with and certainly train with the United states and New Zealand forces, one of the problems that was raised with the pentropic organisation and both the British and the New Zealanders and the Americans raised this with me: if a pentropic battalion would be placed under their command, they wouldn’t really know how to fight such an organisation. And particularly, if say for example, an American battalion was to relieve in the defensive position of an Australian battalion, as I said we wouldn’t have
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enough soldiers to fill the holes in the ground and again when an Australian battalion relieved one of the other national battalions, we would have too many troops in the pentropic battalion to fill the holes in the ground.
McNEILL: Yes, it gave a lot of problems, didn’t it?
OCHILTREE: And this was a matter which was raised and I attended in the United Kingdom, the Quadripartite Infantry Conference at Warminster. General Wilton asked me to discuss with the Americans their views on the pentropic battalion and also how their taskforce headquarters, compared to an Australian task headquarters and the answer was, “Quite differently.” General Wilton was under the view that the American taskforce commander, commanding say a few battalions in the brigade, had no responsibility for administration of the subordinate units but only for operational. And when I discussed with my opposite number and the American general at the quadripartite conference, he said, “No, this is quite incorrect. The taskforce or the American brigade commander has all the same responsibilities as one of our taskforce headquarters.” And it was subsequent to that, that General Wilton got General Anderson who was then I think commanding the pentropic division to undertake a study of the best organisation that we in Australia should adopt. I’d left the job at that stage and as a result of that, we scrubbed the pentropic organisation.
McNEILL: Thank you then Jim. Was your experience in Malaya able to be put to use in your appointment as commandant OCS 1957-1960 or as the Director of Infantry?
OCHILTREE: Yes, both actually, I learned a great deal from my tour of duty in Malaya and the things I was able to put in effect particularly at Portsea, was to stress the importance of leadership and good man management; the importance of any commander at any level of seeing what is going on at first hand and being seen by the troops to be commanded; not sitting in an ivory tower and not visiting troops, particularly on operations. I also found, having had a certain amount of trouble with poor selection of officers in 2 RAR, was able to ensure that for our Australian battalions later on, going to Malaya, they really had a first rate team of officers, warrant officers and senior NCOs. This was especially important when 4 RAR was raised in Woodside, when that battalion went overseas with I think the best team of officers that any Australian battalion had with it and also, RSM, CSMs and senior NCOs – they were all hand picked and went. The other thing that I thought was terribly important was the importance of knowing, making sure that regimental officers were aware that the main responsibility for the maintenance of health within their troops and this is particularly applicable to platoon commanders, primarily rested with them and not the RMO. It was a regimental responsibility and that was the thing which I remember was drummed into us when I did this very good short course at the Army School of Health in the Hillsville, it was such a good course that when we went to Malaya, I sent a considerable amount of officers to the FARELF School of Army Health to learn the same thing. And as a final thing, I found it very useful in Portsea, since we had cadets from Malaya and Singapore and the Philippines and Fiji, was to make sure that the officers on the staff of OCS had a good understanding of any of the differences or the problems encountered by Asian cadets. And when I was in commandant of OCS, I used to write to, particularly to Malaya, to the commandant of the Federation Military College where some of the cadets had come from, and keep him in touch with what was going on and also with the GOC of the Federation Army, because we had a number of Malayan cadets.
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At one stage, because a nephew of the Tunku had been failed at Portsea, the newly independent Malayan government decided they would send no more cadets to Portsea and I actually wrote to General Brooke who was the GOC of the Federation Army and got him he was instrumental in persuading the Tunku to resume the sending of Malayan cadets to Portsea. And we also had for example, the Sultan of Pahang sent his son as what I called a “private patient”, he paid the bill to Portsea. But I found all that was basically the fact that I had served in Malaya and I knew a bit about Malaya and the Malays. And I found both as the Commandant of the OCS and the Director of Infantry Malayan experience was great– very, very useful.
McNEILL: Then, have you any further comments Jim regarding your experience in Malaya or its aftermath, which you think might be useful for the official history?
OCHILTREE: What I found overall, if you had a good battalion, and it was capable of playing good rugby in particular and had good sporting teams and well-behaved and well- dressed troops, this was a tremendous help. And also if you could conduct a good parade, particularly one in public, this was very good for public relations in the eyes of the indigenous population and if it was an incidental that you could kill a few CTs, this was another advantage. But there was great emphasis by the Malaya Command and the British commands throughout on understanding and quite rightly having good, well-behaved, well-disciplined troops who were good ambassadors for their particular country and their unit when they were overseas, and our troops actually were, with a few exceptions, generally very well-behaved and well- disciplined. We use to enforce our own discipline: our relations with the civil police as well as the military police were good and if any soldiers did kick over the traces, he would be dealt with by ourselves as distinct from the local police. And it was particularly important there was great emphasis on sport and this was very good for the morale of the troops – if you could win a few cricket matches and to do well in the Malaya Command Rugby Competition, good for the battalion, good for the country.
McNEILL: Did the battalion do well in that competition?
OCHILTREE: Reasonably well, we would play a certain amount of rugby, we didn’t win the competition but it was a good morale boost for the troops, the fact that we had grouped together some of the – illegally – all the rugby players in one platoon, it meant that you could give them pretty good training and give them a workout and then have the team together rather than have to drag somebody out of operations to play football. But parades were very important, we used to have ANZAC Day parades, Queen’s Birthday parades and one of the best was the final Queen’s Birthday parade in Penang before independence, which was a pretty spectacular affair consisting of Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy, Royal Air Force, Royal Australian Air Force, British Army, Gurkhas, Malaya Army, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, as well as members of our own battalion and other Australian troops in the area and that was a very spectacular parade and the final one before Independence.
McNEILL: And you had the trooping of the colours after that?
OCHILTREE: No.
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McNEILL: That was in Australia wasn’t it, before, that is right? That was your final parade then before coming home, major parade?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it was.
McNEILL: There was no marching through the streets of Georgetown or something, before leaving?
OCHILTREE: No, in actual fact, when we embarked, we marched onto the New Australia but the colours, because there was no longer a British dependency and was independent, the colours were covered and we didn’t march through with the colours on board as we would have normally done if Malaya had not been independent. We had a number of things which we learnt from and which much of the battalions benefited from, particularly, we found the system of British administration was to us a pretty harsh and a tough one and we had to learn the ropes of British administration. The problem was solved for 3 RAR, the next battalion in that they sent one of their company commanders up, initially to serve as a rifle company commander with 2 RAR and later on as understudy of the 2IC. Then when 3 RAR arrived, he assumed his normal appointment of second in command and that was a tremendous benefit, so all the mistakes that we had made and all the ropes of British administration he was full bottle on. There was a number of things for instance: for example, if I could start with the barrack room damages, when we moved out and in the barracks on operations for Operation Deuce, the barrack-room damages people, or barrack stores people conducted an inspection of the barracks and where there were a mark here or a chip here or a broken light shade there, they socked us for them and we had to pay. This was carried to rather ridiculous extremes–for example, in the ceiling in my office which I think it was about 12 feet high, there was a broken lampshade and we were called upon to make good that damage and I suggested to the brigade commander that this was quite ridiculous. I certainly didn’t get a step ladder which I would need to climb up and break it and that was, as I say it was purely and fairly typical of the rather punitive system of barracks room damages. Any way, we had taken over the barracks in good faith from the Royal Scots Fusiliers. There were damages certainly there, although it was doubtful if we caused them and we paid. However, we learnt and so when the 16th Field Ambulance took over from 2 RAR at the end of our retraining, we had made them all spic and span. And first of all, when we took over from them, we said, “There was a mark on the floor and there was a mark here and there and they said, “You Australians are pretty tough,” and we said, “We learnt from you people.” And then finally when we left, we left the barracks absolutely spotless. We had people up scrubbing floors and everything at five o’clock in the morning and I inspected every barrack room so there was no come back as far as that was concerned. But barrack-room damages were pretty tough and also it was applied to some of the families in married quarters. Young wives were told by the British army sergeant that they had caused some damage and on one occasion my wife had to intervene and tell the sergeant it was quite ridiculous, this wife had not caused the particular damage, but they were pretty tough on their damages.
McNEILL: And who would actually pay the cost of those damages, would it be a levy on the whole barracks, the barrack block?
OCHILTREE: We would actually pay those out of…if we had caused the genuine damage and we knew who caused it, the soldier would be called upon to pay it and he would be fined,
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otherwise we would pay for them out of regimental funds. Or in the case of the officers’ mess, I mean if we caused some damages, we paid them out of mess funds.
McNEILL: These new barracks that you took over, you moved from Minden Barracks to Kuala Kangsar, was it?
OCHILTREE: Yes, but they were not new barracks, they were ones that had been occupied by the Federation Regiment.
McNEILL: Yes, but the battalion actually marched into those barracks at Kuala Kangsar?
OCHILTREE: We took, there and other places throughout the Sungei Siput area in the company bases, we took over from the Federation Regiment.
McNEILL: And all of this time of course, the married quarters remained back at Penang?
OCHILTREE: And the families. The other thing I should mention, the other quote that we had that was a little irritating. The Malaya Command conducted both in north and south Malaya, a vehicle accident competition, where you lost so many points for any damage. If you broke a tail light it was so many points; if the vehicle was written off it was more points; if somebody was injured or killed it was a lot more points, and there were was an accident ladder, which was published periodically and we were down at the bottom of the ladder. And I remember the brigade commander saying, “The standard of driving is not good, you will have to do something about it”, and we constantly remained at the bottom. But I spoke to my opposite number, commanding the Royal Scots Fusiliers and I asked him, I said “I can’t understand why your drivers are so much better than ours because you are always at the top of the ladder.” and he said, ”We’re not,” and he said, “do you report everything?” And I said, “Yes, we report every damage.” And he said, “God, you are pretty naive, we only report it if we kill somebody or the vehicle is a write off.” and I said “What do you do?” and he said, “Well, just out of regimental funds or something, we will get the local garage to repaint the dented mud guard or pay for it ourselves and patch it up.” Whereupon, we adopted the same principle within 2 RAR, we painted out things and got the local garage to repair things and got to the top of the ladder and I received letters of commendation from the divisional commander for the improved standards of driving of the officers of the battalion, because it was all a matter of gamesmanship. That was fairly typical and again, there were medical statistics for another one. The head medical chap in FARELF was sent up to find out very discreetly why the Australian incidents of skin disease was so much infinitely greater, about six or seven times greater that any of the British battalions, so we conducted investigations. And I discussed with Peter Oatley, the RMO and he said, “Well if somebody has a sore on their foot, I take a record and I treat him on Monday and I treat him on Tuesday and I give him dressing on Tuesdays so we put it down, we treated him five times; so the Brits then regard that as five different cases. They treated a chap that went back 50 times, it was one case”. So it was purely a matter of a different method of accounting for things. Another thing was, we had on discipline. As one battalion under a brigade group headquarters we were constantly under brigade surveillance. And on one occasion the brigadier said to me, “I am very worried about the discipline in 2 RAR.” and I said, “Oh,yes.” And he said, “You have got to do something about it.” and I said, “Oh,yes.” and then I said, “Might I ask what gives rise to this concern?” and he said, “You have got five outstanding courts martial.” And I said, “We have been here for six months and that’s not bad.” And the reason why incidentally
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they were outstanding, is there was something in the legal system, for in Australia you had to give I think, the Commander AUSTARM authority to convene courts martial or something like that, so we had these five that had banked up. So when there was a pause, the Royal Scots Fusiliers joined the brigade and on one occasion I was visiting the brigade of Lord Butterworth and I saw the staff captain [Ayer] and I said, “How are things?” and he said, “Terrible.” and I said, “Why?” and he said, “These bloody Scots,” he said, ”They have got about thirty courts martial.” and I said, “ They have only been with us for about a month.” and he said, ”Yes, they are all in all, the trouble in the world, these Scots.” so I thought it was actually magnificent when the RSFs joined the brigade and we were not under the strict surveillance. I must admit, the final word on that, there were no more adverse comments from the brigade commander about the standards of the Australian discipline, we were really light compared to some of the others. And when the Lincolns joined the brigade and when the Loyals joined the brigade things were even better, because brigade headquarters had other things to worry about than one battalion and one field battery. But those were the sort of things that kept us rather fully occupied: and we had the barrack- room damages, discipline, vehicle accidents, a great emphasis-nothing was quite right-on good administration. And we also had annual administrative inspections, where a team of officers-usually the formation commander and his staff-would go back, looking at pay books looking at leave records, going through how many pairs of socks you have got in the company Q Stores and this was purely a British idea. And when I was asked by the brigade commander, when did we want our administrative inspection I said, “We Australians don’t have them.” and he said,” Well, you are jolly well are going to have one now”, which indeed we did, headed up by the divisional commander but those were things that were new to us and we learnt through experience and again subsequent battalions knew all about it by time they came.
McNEILL: Did the local police have any jurisdiction at all over Australian soldiers, for example if an Australian soldier committed a criminal offence such as stealing in the market or stealing from a Malay or a Malay shop, or punched up a Malay person or something like that who would deal with him? Did you ever have any cases like that, there would have been some no doubt?
OCHILTREE: There would have been a few minor ones where I believe technically and legally since a non-resident soldier had committed a civil offence, he could be tried by the local police. However, our arrangements were they would be handed back to us and we would deal with them and we would deal with them usually with less publicity more expeditiously and frequently more effectively than if they had gone to a Malay court.
McNEILL: Did you ever have to send families home for misdemeanours?
OCHILTREE: No, sometimes we sent the head of the family, which meant the family, would follow but those cases were very rare.
McNEILL: So you didn’t have it on the wife’s side, for example, misdemeanours to the extent that you had to send them home?
OCHILTREE: No, never.
McNEILL: It happened later on occasions.
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OCHILTREE: One of our other problems I think I should mention and this was certainly reflected in the selection of people for subsequent battalions because we had a significant proportion of officers who came to us at Ennogera, one in particular when he first came in to meet me announced that he wouldn’t be staying with the battalion, he would be leaving for various reasons. And we had a number of officers who were posted, stayed a short time and left. Some they were reluctant drag-ins and didn’t want to go to the battalion and go to Malaya and others because I got rid of them. But our greatest problem was, and this was a matter that I frequently raised with the then Director of Infantry, was that the majority of the captains were older than I was and they were certainly older than their company commanders. And this was quite ridiculous and it meant that when some of them went to Malaya with us, they were alright on non-operational duties but they were suspect during operations. This was a matter also investigated – I’d taken up with the Adjutant General before we left and when General Refshauge, the DGMS paid us a visit he was briefed to go into this one. And he entirely supported me and he was appalled that the majority of the captains were older than I was and certainly older than their company commanders.
McNEILL: What would have caused that I wonder, they were from the Second War and come up through the ranks or something and they weren’t going to be promoted to major?
OCHILTREE: No, I think it was and again I am openly critical about this, I think it was bad personnel selection, the battalion was being filled up with his officers and insufficient attention was given to picking the right chap for the right job.
McNEILL: Because normally, an RMC or an OCS graduate wouldn’t have been older than his CO at the stage of a captain because he would have been promoted onwards?
OCHILTREE: No, all the officers who I regarded as unsatisfactory on account of age and this was not necessarily, this was not the officers fault, they were not graduates of either Duntroon or Portsea, they were wartime commissioned officers.
McNEILL: Wartime commissions or wartime experience, yes. Have you ever written of your experiences in Malaya, either in published or unpublished articles?
OCHILTREE: No, never.
McNEILL: Do you recommend any particular books, which you consider, are accurate in the portrayal of the conditions as they pertained during the Emergency?
OCHILTREE: Yes, there is one, I think Menace in Malaya by Miller which was a good one. There is one which was published in the sixties, War for Running Dogs by Barber, and Richard Clutterbuck, who I knew as a veteran colonel of sapper on the planning side for Eagle Swoop has written a book. I can’t recall the name of it, now Major General Richard Clutterbuck, who came to Australia two or three years ago talking about on the ABC on the Emergency and civil affairs. And then one by Rupert Myer, Shoot to Kill, he was commanding the South Wales Borderers, he was very good – I think he shot himself later on. Those are the only ones I can recall off the top of my head, and I still regard it as a very good basic book the ATOM Pamphlet, and the other thing which we found was very interesting reading particularly in Malaya, was Spencer Chapman’s book The Jungle is Neutral, because
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he knew Chin Peng and John Davis, who was our chairman of our DWEC at Kulim. I can’t recall any others. Peter Moore, the brigade commander, gets a very good write up in Fitzroy Maclean’s book Eastern Approaches because he was with the Partisans and in Yugoslavia during the war and Fitzroy Maclean came and visited us in Malaya, among others. We really had, again we were rather like guinea pigs in a way, every visitor of any note came to Malaya came to visit us: the press; the people from the British magazine Soldier; people like Fitzroy Maclean; the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester; odd sultans; Australian politicians; retired governor-general like Sir William MacKell; we had, I would say of an average, particularly during Operation Deuce, we would have had an official visitor every second day.
McNEILL: On operations, just harking back, in Deuce and Shark North was there some pattern to the operational plan that you were developing then, were you given an area and other battalions and units given other areas all with the idea of like drawing the purse strings or catching the CTs in a net, was there some any overall pictures like that or was it just going into one particular district on a sort of round about pattern?
OCHILTREE: The overall system of operation Malaya was to clean out the state, eradicate the CTs and the CT influence and as each state or district was cleared it was made a white area and so the idea was to make all the Federation of Malaya white, naturally. The areas we went into, black areas and as was in Deuce, we were the only battalion in the area and our task there was to destroy the Armed Work Force and the Independent Platoon, primarily the Armed Work Force because then that would eventually starve out the Independent Platoon. In Shark North, when we took over from the Federation Regiment, it was, we had a battalion area and the idea, and so the RSFs and the Lincolns had adjacent areas, and the idea was to just destroy the Armed Worked Forces and the CTs so that eventually the whole area could be declared white.
McNEILL: In one of the early reports from Headquarters Australian Army Force, they mentioned that you had an area, it might have been about five miles by ten miles it was a huge area, and you were expected, and in it were 40 CTs suspected and they were mobile. It was the real, a needle in the haystack situation where it would be almost impossible to find them; did you have this feeling of frustration and the difficulties that you would ever find anyone?
OCHILTREE: To a very large extent, yes. For example in Shark North the battalion area from memory was 370 square miles, consisting of jungle, rubber and villages including new villages, so it was very much a kind of find the needle in the haystack. And we depended very much on intelligence – where there might be a food pickup or a suspected food pickup or something of that nature – only the intelligence was very much lacking, because in Shark North, Special Branch information was virtually negligible.
McNEILL: Would that be because the population were frightened of the CTs, or didn’t know, or sympathetic?
OCHILTREE: They were frightened of the CTs, some of them were sympathetic to the CTs, because the Sungei Siput area was where the Emergency began and it was a very, very black area and then again compounded by the fact that the Chinese Special Branch officer in Sungei Siput was suspect himself and was subsequently removed from that job. I think another point that also, and this probably relates back to, it could be applicable to Vietnam but certainly some of the benefits I experienced at other battalions, we cooperated
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very closely throughout with the police and as I think I mentioned in Deuce and I think I mentioned in Shark North, the senior police officer and I were within yards of one another and we would speak every hour or so. And every operation we would plan in conjunction with the police and I think there was a Malay in Operation Deuce; down in Kuala Kangsar there was an actual navy chap, Bob Middleton, who was outstanding; and then in the hub of my area of Shark North was a Pakistani, a Malay born Pakistani, Yusoff Khan.
McNEILL: How do you spell that?
OCHILTREE: Y-u-s-o-f-f K-h-a-n, and he was very good. He had been a house boy to the Japanese during the war and he was a great source of information and help. And he told me on one occasion, when he was house boy to the Japanese, some of the villagers in Sungei Siput where he was living, ambushed a Japanese patrol and knocked off a few Japs and the Japanese took no retaliation. And the locals thought this was a good thing and then subsequently, they rounded up everybody in the village concerned and put them into a rubber shed and set fire to it and machine gunned them. So he said, “After that, we learnt there wasn’t much point in active resistance to an enemy in force who deals with you fairly ruthlessly.” He was a splendid chap to work for and on one occasion the information was very light on and I suggested, “Couldn’t we get some information?” and he said, ”Yes, we could pick up some of the rubber tappers.” – from an area in which we knew was very sympathetic towards the CTs – and he said, “We can bring in one or two of those chaps and interrogate them.” and he said would I agree to that and I said, “I think it would be a good idea, grill them a bit.” And he said, “I will have to kill them afterwards.” and I said, “Isn’t that a little ruthless?” And he said, ”No, when I interrogate somebody, it hurts them a bit and it would do bad for public relations and it wouldn’t do me much good.” Fortunately, I think the day after he left me to mull over that, the Sungei Siput ambush took place in the rubber estates, so we didn’t interrogate any of the rubber tappers from that area which was suspect. All we did was, since they had obviously as I mentioned yesterday, informed the CTs of the rubber estate manager’s early morning route and had laid an effective ambush. We just, as I said, picked up the whole lot put them in trucks and moved them down to Johore I think they went; we sent all of them and their families for punishment.
McNEILL: That was after the plantation owner was murdered?
OCHILTREE: Yes, but the relations with the police were excellent.
McNEILL: Good. Would you say that most of the time on Shark North and on Operation Deuce, you were performing framework operations, as described in the ATOM pamphlet?
OCHILTREE: Yes, basically.
McNEILL: I would just like to identify the three maps that you gave me Jim. The first one on which you...
OCHILTREE: Could I just before that mention one point; we did find the fact that we had to keep troops on Penang at Minden Barracks and troops at Kroh, meant that we couldn’t concentrate the battalion for operations. This meant that we were always shy of anything up to two companies, so it meant that we couldn’t deploy the whole battalion in Shark North over the 370 square mile of territory.
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McNEILL: So you have about what, two companies out at a time?
OCHILTREE: No, we would have the whole lot out but frequently within the company, they might send out two platoons and keep one in reserve or they might send out all three platoons.
McNEILL: But if you have got troops having to stay back at Minden barracks and other troops running and driving the armoured cars and so on, as you say you don’t have your full battalion to put into the operation, I was just wondering how much of the battalion you would have had to put into operations about, or would all the companies be there but be under strength?
OCHILTREE: The Company at Kroh would undertake training in operations, the companies were down in Shark North, we would all be conducting operations. The method by which we drew off the drivers for scout cars and escorts was we would reduce the strength of the platoons in each company, so each company contributed a fair share to the unusual appointments.
McNEILL: And how many were kept back in Minden barracks about?
OCHILTREE: Usually, we used to repay it a company at a time through.
McNEILL: Yes, and they would be the leave company as well, would they?
OCHILTREE: Yes, the idea was to take them and give them a bit of R and R and let the married peoples go and live with their families for a time.
McNEILL: Yes. I think later in Malaya the troops have said they expected about a month in the jungle and then about four days rest and then back and forwards like that all the time?
OCHILTREE: Something like that.
McNEILL: Of course, you wouldn’t have done that then with a whole company; it seems a lot if you were moving companies out only for four days into Minden Barracks?
OCHILTREE: No, we wouldn’t do that, when a company went back to Minden Barracks they would go back from memory for about two or three weeks, I have forgotten the precise period but we would have a great plan of rotation, so a company would go back to Minden Barracks and it would be relieved in its company base by the Minden Barracks company and so the companies would go to different areas usually when they came back from the tour of duty in Minden.
McNEILL: If you had one company back for about three or four weeks at a time, the other companies would be out on operations then I suppose for six or seven weeks?
OCHILTREE: It would depend, they would usually operate from a company base and depending on what was happening the company commander might send out a patrol here, a patrol there, they might have any type of patrol planned and they may only be out for an ambush for a night or out for a patrol for two or three days.
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McNEILL: I was meaning on operations, they would be out from Penang, they would be on the mainland in the operational area for six or seven weeks, now during that time, that six or seven weeks, would individuals be sent back to Minden?
OCHILTREE: Yes, we would try and work a rotation, if say a chap had done so long in the operational area, let him go back in addition to the company that was at Minden Barracks to go back.
McNEILL: Yes, that what I was getting at.
OCHILTREE: We would also let them go down on leave to say Singapore or Kuala Lumpur and frequently we used to send down a guard of honour to Kuala Lumpur for some occasion, ANZAC Day or they would also have a guard which would go down for on the C-in-C FARELF’s house. I remember on one occasion, General Festing was the Commander-in-Chief at that stage, I sent down a party under an officer to guard Flagstaff House and got a letter from General Festing and I must say, the Brits wrote very refreshing letters. And he thanked me for it and he said, “It was very refreshing to have some of your troops down, they are quite different from the average British Tommie. I enjoyed having them, thank you very much.” So I summoned the officer who was commanding them, John Harding, “What the bloody hell what was so refreshing about what your people said that caused the C-in-C to write to me in this way?” He said, “What happened,” he said, “General Festing came out and saw our chap who was on guard at the gate and said, ‘How do you like it here, soldier?’ and he said, ‘The biggest bludge I have ever had, sir.’ and he said, ‘Have you any suggestions? You are getting plenty of [inaudible], any suggestions?’ ’Yes,’ he said, ‘I would get rid of that bloody silly flag of yours, that is up in the post.’ and the C-in-C said, ‘What is wrong with it?’ and he said, ‘Well it is six feet by about four feet and every time the wind blows it gets curled around and we have got to pull it down and unreel it and that.’ and he said, ‘What I reckon you ought to do sir, is get a smaller flag with the same design.’ And General Festing did it and he said ‘What a jolly good idea.’ I was amused when I got this letter saying, “Very refreshing what your soldiers say”.
McNEILL: Good for him. About these maps, the map with you on the right LZ, what was that operation?
OCHILTREE: That was Operation Eagle Swoop.
McNEILL: Eagle Swoop, thank you. And the map, let’s see how would we identify that map.
OCHILTREE: This is Shark North.
McNEILL: And is there some way, is there a city on it.
OCHILTREE: The battalion headquarters was at Kuala Kangsar.
McNEILL: It has got Kuala Kangsar in the bottom left hand corner.
OCHILTREE: And Sungei Siput.
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McNEILL: That is enough, yes, that will do it.
OCHILTREE: And also shaded in by the intelligence, that is the jungle you see and the roads, this didn’t appear on the basic map and that’s been [inaudible] by the intelligence section.
McNEILL: The shaded in.
OCHILTREE: Here is the jungle you see, in black.
McNEILL: That is the jungle edge isn’t it, the jungle fringe is given by, you have given the outline of the jungle around the roads, on either side of the road, so it would be a relatively clear valley, I take it where the roads were going, yes?
OCHILTREE: You see the battalion headquarters initially was at Kuala Kangsar and this was accommodated, this was remote from the operational area which was here, so I moved the command post, attack headquarters to Sungei Siput and established there which was really in the hub.
McNEILL: And that is Shark North is it?
OCHILTREE: That is, our battalion area is Shark North.
McNEILL: And did you operate for the whole time of Shark North in that area.
OCHILTREE: Except when we went up to Eagle Swoop, most of the battalion went up there leaving a skeleton down here and so we were here, the Royal Scots Fusiliers had their headquarters at Ipoh and then later on the Lincolns.
McNEILL: I can get that from the operation order. And what’s this final map, the smallest of the three, what operation was that for, do you remember?
OCHILTREE: This is one for our retraining, where we had battalion headquarters initially at Hobart camp, here.
McNEILL: Down in the southeast corner.
OCHILTREE: And this was the exercise showing...these were the…we advanced up here, attacked, did a couple of attacks, then withdrew and this is marked up in Chinagraph for the withdrawal.
McNEILL: When was that major warfare training, was that just before you left to come home?
OCHILTREE: Immediately before we left about, it began about in September, October of 1956.
McNEILL: I am sorry, 1957 that would have been?
OCHILTREE: 1957, yes.
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McNEILL: Thank you Jim. Obviously because the wives were up in Malaya with you, you would not have been writing letters home, would you?
OCHILTREE: No, except not all wives came, the soldier who may have had a limited time before his engagement expired, he wouldn’t want to nor would the army send his family up here. This was possibly another one I should mention, some people went up there and said we will re-engage when we get up there and then when they found out they were a bit browned off with things, they didn’t re-engage, so they then had to come back and be replaced. Later on, soldiers had to re-engage an advance, so you wouldn’t have this unnecessary movement and expense.
McNEILL: You have two diaries there, how detailed are they Jim, would they be useful?
OCHILTREE: Not detailed at all, I don’t think they would be very useful to you because these were just left within the command post if I went off so anyone could have access, see where I was and if somebody said we wanted to come here, I would be able to look and see what I was doing, so the IO or the adjutant, the ops officer would just add anything in. Here for example I have got my GOC and brigade commander coming; and where we went and a few things like this; when the padre’s going to and fro; when the band was going to a new village to play; when Communist Youth Day was; 72nd Martyrs Day holiday – these were days in which we thought the CTs might come in, particularly Chinese New Year, and have a food lift and also I don’t think anyone, other than me can interpret them.
McNEILL: Could I have a glance, please? Thank you.
OCHILTREE: I think in the front it has got the names of the rubber estate managers.
McNEILL: There are certain entries around, I would like the chance to have a look at them?
OCHILTREE: Yes, by all means.
McNEILL: And I will return them to you. Thank you very much.
OCHILTREE: Some of it is my writing, some of it is David Allen, the officer of ops, there is a lot of odd things in them.
McNEILL: I think that just about wraps up our interview, thanks very much Brigadier, it was…
OCHILTREE: I think one point I should probably mention, as I said our relations with all the high head quarters were good – brigade headquarters and Peter Moore excellent, most helpful; Fed Div Headquarters very good; then when we came under the command of the 17th Ghurkha Division, very good; Malaya Command most helpful; FARELF and the C-in-C FARELF, all of them were most helpful and our relations with the supporting our arms people, the 15th and 19th Hussars and the KDGs good; with Bruce Bogle and his field battery; with the other battalions in the brigade; the Loyals, the RSFs and the Lincolns were good, and particularly with the police were good, both on Penang, in Kulim and down in Shark North. The only trouble we ever had was when we took over from the Federation Regiment, I think I should probably mention this. I sent down an advance party to take over at Kuala Kangsar and
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the next thing, in the middle of the night, at first light, the advance party came back and the OC of the advance party was fuming and he said he’d tell me later on in the day what happened and I said, “Well, get to bed and have a bit of a kip and tell me later”. A few minutes later, after I’d sent him off, the CO of the Federation Regiment rang me and said could he come up and see me and I said, “It’s a long way to come.” and he said, ”No, I will come up.” And he came along and he said, “Look I am afraid there was a bit of a misunderstanding with the advance party, it was all a bit of a misunderstanding. If I could offer my apology, will you accept it?” and I said, “Yes certainly.” so he pushed off. Then later on in the day, the OC Advance Party came in and told me what had happened and he said the CO was as full as a boot, had come in, woken up each member of the advance party, dug one up and said, “Where do you come from?” and the chap said from Holland and he said, “You are a bloody liar, you are an Australian.” and he said, ”No, I am a Dutchman”. And he woke up the next chap and he said, “Where do you come from?” “Germany” He said, “You are a bloody liar.” and in actual fact, by chance the people he woke up and abused in the middle of the night, around midnight, were, happened to be Europeans, and he really got stuck into the whole lot of them and told them what a lot of trash they were. And so the OC of the advance party picked them all up and said, ”Right, home chaps”. And he said he wanted to make something of it and so I said, “Look I didn’t know about this but I have accepted his apology and there is nothing more we can do about it.” We went down very much on our guard and found out the Federation had removed all the shelves in the Q Stores and done everything-even the boards going over an open drain they had picked all those, taken the whole lot away, taken everything.
McNEILL: What was the name of the OC of the advance party?
OCHILTREE: Geoff Lucas, the signal officer, a very good chap and a well balanced officer.
McNEILL: Just one other question. Did you find any difference between the way you wanted to operate the battalion and the way the British operated; did you ever have any conflict on Australian methods versus British methods?
OCHILTREE: No, because basically our method of operation, once we learnt the ropes, were based on the ATOM pamphlet and so were likely identical. The only difference I noticed was when I went down to take over the preliminary reconnaissance with the Federation Regiment, the CO took me around and – well initially I had been to a briefing at the Ops DWEC, and the Special Branch officer said what the enemy was doing; and the information officer said what they were doing on the information side; and the chairman said a few odd things; and the police said a few things, but nothing from the Federation Regiment, so I didn’t say anything. But later on I asked the CO I said, “What are your people doing?” and he said, “They sit in the company bases.” and I said, “Don’t they patrol?” and he said, “No need to patrol. There were no CTs.” And he took me to each of his company bases and we went along and have a glass of orange juice or a cup of coffee, went around and said “There we are, that’s the lot.” and I said “What about operations?” and he said, ”No, we don’t do any operations there are no CTs here, this how you see how a battalion operates in Shark North, establish your company bases and make sure all the administration is right”. He was a prize lunatic, a very rich man I found out subsequently, he used to wake up his officers in the middle of the night, drag them all into the – and they were mixed with British and Malay and Indian – drag them into the officers’ mess; feed them champagne half the night. He would pay for the lot and send them back to bed. Bloody lunatic.
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The Brits must have suspected, because later on when we took over from the Federation Regiment, Peter Moore the brigade commander said, “How did the handover and the takeover from the Federation Regiment go?” and I said, “It was alright.” and he gave me a long hard look and he said, “I will ask you about it some other time”. Obviously the word had filtered through, there had been a contretemps and a fracas, most extraordinary. That was the only serious difficulty or difference we had with any other unit – navy, army, police, home guard or any of the other operational units, but unfortunately, we were there very late in the day and we came at the last couple of wickets were due to fall in the second innings. And it would have been great if we had been there early in the Emergency when there was a fair bit of blood and guts and you could get stuck into a CT which would stand and fight. Again, what we did was very little compared to what the British battalions, the Gurkha battalions, the Federation Police, the Fijians, the Rhodesians because they had been scrapping away there since 1948 when the Emergency began.
McNEILL: On the company bases, where these pretty fixed positions where they… if you were going to operate in a particular area, you would go to the base which was the company base for that area?
OCHILTREE: Yes.
McNEILL: And it would be surrounded by a cyclone fence or something like that?
OCHILTREE: By barbed wire with, and in some cases, perimeter lighting and established huts would be built there, tin huts and kitchens established, light, water.
McNEILL: And this would be so at most company bases?
OCHILTREE: Yes, all the company bases and that limited to a greater extent, the number of troops or a number of units that could be deployed in a particular area or sub-units because you did need, if you were going to do it for any length of time, you wanted a secure base with all your barbed wire and your posts and that around it, mind you if a company went out on operations, they were a relatively short duration, but the main company bases from which everyone in Malaya operated were things that had been there for years.
McNEILL: Yes, and would there be enough room in the company base to fit the whole company?
OCHILTREE: Yes, they were designed; each company base was for a standard rifle company of about 120 to 130 men.
McNEILL: And you didn’t have these being attacked at all, they would be too strong?
OCHILTREE: None of ours were ever attacked which was disappointing, the troops would have loved to have been attacked by a group of CTs but they never were.
McNEILL: Yes, so the company commander would always have to leave some troops back in the base and he would normally remain there himself would he, with communications?
OCHILTREE: It would depend on the operation, if it was a framework operation where there was a company area or so of 20 square miles, he would have his patrol plan out and the
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company commander in the main, would stay there but not always. For example, after the pipeline ambush, that was Campbell’s platoon of A Company, the whole battalion went into the jungle and so did the Royal Scots Fusiliers and the Gurkhas, everyone went into the jungle looking and hunting for CTs. But generally speaking – Eagle Swoop was an exception – that was a company operation mainly and the company went out, initially support company into the jungle and stayed there. And on Rubber Legs the companies went out into the jungle but for a long term thing, the idea was to clear an area rather than to go along and have a crack at a particular group of CTs, they were in established company positions.
McNEILL: So the idea of clearing an area, would be going through the jungle and so on hoping to come across a CT base, it wouldn’t be actually interrogating people in a village, that would be done by the police?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it wasn’t much good interrogating people in the village, various methods were tried to get information in villages. In an enclosed area where every villager would go through and stay for a minute or two and so it would give an opportunity for a villager that had information to give it and then the others would just stay there so no one in the village could point the bone at somebody saying, “He is an informer.”
McNEILL: Who stayed a long time?
OCHILTREE: So they would all stay a similar time, a couple of minutes.
McNEILL: Right. Did you have anything in Malaya like an infrastructure, a communist terrorist infrastructure in the villages, which we had in Vietnam, Vietcong infrastructure? The infrastructure was the normally unarmed communist terrorists who would live in the villages and would try to parallel the government apparatus down to the smallest level.
OCHILTREE: No, nothing of that nature, our intelligence on the overall CT organisation was quite good, we would have certainly in my command post, at headquarters in Sungei Siput up on the wall we would have a chart of the organisation, the CTs in the state of Perak an ordinary family tree with photographs of the known CTs and then as we knocked one off we would put the cross through.
McNEILL: Unless you have anything else to say Jim I think that is just about it and I thank you very much for the effort that you have put into this, it has been a most interesting interview.
OCHILTREE: I’m afraid a lot of it has been very haphazard and a lot of it has been dependent on my particular memory.
McNEILL: Of course, it will, it serves to supplement the record we have which will be very good. If Mrs Ochiltree doesn’t mind, I would like to ask her a couple of questions just about the wives situations and the families. Thanks very much Jim.
McNEILL: Brigadier Ochiltree was just saying as soon as independence arrived on the 31 August 1957 all the out of bounds signs came down because they were a British device and the Malays didn’t want the British saying that any of their areas were out of bounds to people.
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MRS OCHILTREE: I don’t think I was told that.
McNEILL: Mrs Ochiltree would you mind telling me your full name please, first?
MRS OCHILTREE: Leslie Margaret Swan Ochiltree, which is rather a mouthful.
McNEILL: Thank you. Do you recall any difficulty before the battalion sailed for Malaya in October 1955, whether you and the other wives knew that you were going to Malaya, did it all seem fairly cut and dried that you were going to go at some stage?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, to me it did, yes, I wasn’t aware that there was any doubt that the families were going, I didn’t think.
OCHILTREE: We didn’t know until later in the day, remember I went down and did that course at Hillsville and cabinet was meeting ... and we got there and then the government had finally decided that they would let families go.
MRS OCHILTREE: My recall wasn’t terribly good on that one.
McNEILL: Then there was a period after the battalion went to Malaya when you were called forward when quarters became available, maybe a month, two months or something like that?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, there was a period of time in between that when my husband said he wanted to settle the battalion in and we would rather not have any women around.
McNEILL: I can imagine that but he didn’t have much choice either because there wasn’t too many places to put them?
MRS OCHILTREE: This is true, no; the quarters situation was pretty grim.
McNEILL: You were saying about General Pollard, he said when you were on your way to Malaya that, what did you say that he said to you?
MRS OCHILTREE: He came on to welcome, he was visiting up there and said you are going to have welfare on your plate which was a bit of a foreign word to me.
McNEILL: Yes, what did he mean by that and how did it turn out?
MRS OCHILTREE: It actually turned out that naturally I looked after my own our own women, but then there was, well we had the battery and also I had garrison welfare which is when the RSFs moved out, their CO’s wife had been coping with the garrison welfare and they moved out of the barracks and we moved in and so I was handed that one, SSAFA.
McNEILL: What was that?
MRS OCHILTREE: Soldiers, Sailors and Air Force Association, and I was handed a stack of files which I had to read through, which I didn’t really understand very much but you soon got the feel of it.
McNEILL: And this association was just for Australians was it?
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MRS OCHILTREE: No, people who, what do you call them, the MORs, the Malayan other ranks who lived in.
OCHILTREE: The Malayan other ranks, the police, the British.
MRS OCHILTREE: It was a great big organisation that I had dropped into and had to find my way.
McNEILL: What was your role then?
MRS OCHILTREE: I was like the chairman of this lot.
McNEILL: Goodness, and it was responsible for the welfare of the families or the men as well?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, nothing to do with the men, this was the families.
McNEILL: Throughout Malaya?
MRS OCHILTREE: Throughout the northern,
McNEILL: Throughout the northern district?
MRS OCHILTREE: The island I was responsible for.
McNEILL: For where?
MRS OCHILTREE: Penang. Families on Penang.
McNEILL: What sort of things would you do?
MRS OCHILTREE: We used to meet once in a blue moon and if there were any complaints, then you would channel them along the proper lines.
McNEILL: Did you have socials or?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, this wasn’t a social thing; it was just purely to see that everybody was being looked after properly that there were no complaints about the schools or the hospital or quarters and generally family welfare.
McNEILL: Would wives come along to see you, knowing you were the president or would you have days where you would sit in an office or sit at home?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, it was just a normal chain of command, I mean you hoped that the ORs would go to their sergeants and the sergeants would go to the company commanders and that, it didn’t always work that way and anything that was wrong you fixed. It seemed an awful lot, but it wasn’t really.
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McNEILL: Did you find an informal network developing amongst the battalion wives to help you in any way?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, because I tried to get it going before we left Australia, we got ourselves involved in the Northern Command fête, we ran a stall extremely successfully which meant that we, I have forgotten exactly what it was that we made, aprons or something for people, we were supposed to but it got a bit bigger than that. It got people working together and it got the officers’ wives to know one another. When we went up there, everybody knew everybody and this helped me because you didn’t have a whole lot of people going in that didn’t have a clue and saying, “I wonder what she is like?” Of course, they knew what she was like and the chain sort of worked but I used to get around the ORs, if I wanted to know anything that was going on, in anyone was in strife. I found that a lot of the sergeants’ wives were, the senior sergeants’ wives, no they were actually the Senior NCOs’ wives were very helpful.
McNEILL: And they would be knowing what was going on?
MRS OCHILTREE: They knew exactly what was going on.
McNEILL: Did you have, the wives were living in a pretty idyllic existence in the sense of, I mean I know their husbands were away but they had servants, many, almost all for the first time. Did they seem to be a really happy group do you think, ORs and officers wives or did many find they had time on their hands and started playing up?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, of course a few of them did but they probably would have played up at home too. I think we are getting ahead a bit because in the first instance, there weren’t quarters for everyone, I went straight into a quarter but a lot of them were living in an Australian hostel, there is another name for it which I wish I could remember, but I can’t.
McNEILL: That is not Runnymede is it?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, that wasn’t the Runnymede, this was further along the coastline towards Batu Ferringhi.
OCHILTREE: Tanjong Tokong.
MRS OCHILTREE: Tanjong Tokong, where the other ranks’ wives went in waiting for quarters. There were a lot of officers’ wives in Runnymede and there was some of them in the E & O, so there were a limited number of people that were housed in the first instance. It was difficult because they had lots of little kids, particularly among the other ranks, the officers they were no problem, I mean they looked after themselves. But it was difficult, and they were in a difficult situation, a lot of them had never seen a brown face before and they were a bit scared to go into town, a little apprehensive of the whole deal, but once they got over in the quarters and they had a house to run albeit – they were a duplexed type house – they were fine, Australians are pretty used to looking after themselves, I mean, they weren’t any problem.
McNEILL: When they finally got married quarters, or a hiring, or a house to live in were they allocated servants then?
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MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, I have forgotten what the scale was, we had two I think they all had at least one each. Only the officer’s families had two didn’t they Jimmy, from memory.
OCHILTREE: At least one and on a sliding rank scale.
McNEILL: Yes, that’s right, then what about shopping and things to do on Penang, was that pleasant, was Penang a good place to be do you think, for the wives and families?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, it was a pleasant place; it was a lot easier than a lot of Asian places would have been. I think Penang Island I would imagine would have been a much more pleasant place to live than Terenda. Because it was an established town.
McNEILL: Yes, I think that is right and Penang is certainly more pretty than Malacca.
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, and well some of them weren’t in a containment area whereas Terenda was a containment.
McNEILL: There was duty free shopping on Penang Island, wasn’t there?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, shopping wasn’t bad; we had a small Singapore Cold Storage food. My cook used to shop mostly in the markets and I think that once the girls got into the swing of it, I think a lot of women did to, in the ordinary open market.
McNEILL: I was the staff captain in Singapore from 1961 to 1963 and I can recall orders at that time coming out, or requests coming out through the military system for husbands to let their wives be aware that they weren’t supposed to wear short shorts around and short bathing costumes in front of the Malays and so on. Do you recall anything like that at that time?
MRS OCHILTREE: Of course, that was sort of the opening spiel when they arrived.
McNEILL: Was it?
MRS OCHILTREE: That it wasn’t the done thing to walk around in shorts and this was the day of short shorts, I mean the girls did wear short shorts. A dress was, no let me think, the planeloads of wives came up and they came to Butterworth I seem to remember, didn’t they Jimmy? Yes, because I remember Peter Moore and I going over to greet one lot and then they would go down to the hostel and I would talk to them when we got there and give them a chat about it wasn’t quite the thing; and amongst other things, not to put the kids in nylon frocks so they would get heat rash; and don’t be upset, it is much better to let your little boy run around in just a pair of shorts and no T-shirt rather than have him covered in prickly heat; it was these sorts of things that I knew about and some of them, well the ones that came from the south, they were not used to the tropics. Those sort of things but yes, we did say be modest in your dress. And the officer’s wives set an example by being modest.
McNEILL: And on the beaches, what about was there any problem in swimming, I mean you can’t be too modest in a swimming costume?
MRS OCHILTREE: I mean, if you go swimming, you go swimming just in your swimmers.
McNEILL: It was only...
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MRS OCHILTREE: There is walking around the street and what you did in your own home was your own affair but not walking around the streets. Some did, some didn’t.
McNEILL: You can refrain from answering this if you like but I will put the question to you. Do you think that there were many wives and families who shouldn’t have been up there from the point of view of the Australian image or they were bad for the Australian image in Malaya? Would you hear about them very much?
MRS OCHILTREE: I doubt if I would have heard. If I did, it was pretty minimal.
McNEILL: Yes, there wasn’t much opportunity was there, what I am getting at to is for you or the sergeants’ wives to come down a bit on some wife who was playing up or something?
MRS OCHILTREE: I would have considered it was none of my business.
McNEILL: Yes, it was more a military affair or civil?
MRS OCHILTREE: Had there been any, shall we say, goings on, I would have spoken to my husband about it or if there had been any complaints, I would have told whoever had told me to refer it, to tell their husband and put it through the normal chain of command, because I didn’t consider that the wives were in any position to sort of moralise or carry on. If there was any disciplinary measure to be taken, it came through the male command, not through the women. I mean we were just there as dependants, not in any official capacity.
McNEILL: Thank you. We will get onto one or two more questions. Was much done by the wives to help the local community in any way, rolling bandages or anything you can think of?
MRS OCHILTREE: Not a great deal, we helped with the Red Cross fête, we were all involved and we had a stall.
McNEILL: Is this the officers’ wives or?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, anybody who wanted to come and muck in. We had fruit salad and ice cream, which seemed an Australian thing to do and also it would be easy, that worked quite well. Some of the officers’ wives used to help with the blind babies, I seem to remember.
McNEILL: There was an orphanage, not an orphanage, a hospital for blind babies?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, I think there was, but personally I really didn’t have time because I used to try and visit as much as possible, I had to keep my ear to the ground, we had thousands of babies, I may say when we got there. I think when we came home on one leave, I think I visited 14 babies that had been born in the couple of weeks while we’d been away, so it was a fair population.
McNEILL: Really, and you would go around to all the wives who had babies, did you?
MRS OCHILTREE: Of course.
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McNEILL: You felt that was your job or you wanted to anyway?
MRS OCHILTREE: I didn’t want to wrap the babies but it is just, the girls had no mothers up there and I guess even though I wasn’t very much older than most of them, I guess I was a mother figure.
McNEILL: Yes, that’s right and they seemed to appreciate that?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, I mean everybody likes having their babies clucked over.
McNEILL: That’s true.
MRS OCHILTREE: It was hospital visiting and of course, our hospital was at Taiping. The only wives that went into the local hospital were the ones that had missed the bus or had miscalculated or something. So we had a few babies born in the Penang hospital but not many.
McNEILL: What about schooling, do you have any comments on the British schooling or where that was or did you have a child at school there yourself?
MRS OCHILTREE: We had two children at school,
McNEILL: In Penang?
MRS OCHILTREE: In Penang, Margaret who was older, she was too old for the British school so she was booked into the local convent.
McNEILL: Local, in Penang?
MRS OCHILTREE: In Penang, which is, an excellent school but she was the only Australian girl at her school. Mick Shanahan’s boys went to the boys’ Catholic school.
McNEILL: You wouldn’t be Catholics?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, we are not Catholics.
McNEILL: No, but it was convenient was it?
MRS OCHILTREE: It was convenient, it was either that or we send Margaret to the boarding school at Cameron Highlands, which was co-ed and I didn’t care for, or leave her at home.
McNEILL: The Catholic school was that run by British nuns or French?
MRS OCHILTREE: No actually it was a convent of the Holy Infant Jesus which I think was a French order, the Reverend Mother was about 5 feet nothing if she was that, she was Irish, as Irish as she could be and they had a mixture. It was a big school, it had been going for a long, long time, boarders and day girls and also they ran an orphanage within the school, it was a big complex and the education was excellent.
McNEILL: What was done then for the primary schools?
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MRS OCHILTREE: The primary school was the British Army, the BAC School which of course, before we went up, there was just a fairly small school because the British regiments don’t have as many married personnel as the Australian Army. I don’t know where they were getting the teachers from, I think they got some up from Australia, I am not absolutely sure, but the school had to expand to fit our lot and first up it was in Georgetown itself and then it moved out to Minden Barracks and it was quite adequate.
McNEILL: Yes, but was there a secondary school then in Penang or just the convent?
MRS OCHILTREE: No.
McNEILL: For a secondary school, they have to move somewhere else?
MRS OCHILTREE: For a secondary school they had to move somewhere else but our kids were the only ones, and the Shanahan boy, were the only ones that were old enough for secondary school, they were all mostly ankle-biter types.
McNEILL: And you went to respective Catholic schools according to sex?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, no it wasn’t a co-ed school, there was a boys’ school and a girls’ school.
McNEILL: It was a co-ed Catholic school?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, the Catholic school was not co-ed but the BAC school was co-ed.
McNEILL: But that was primary?
MRS OCHILTREE: That was just a primary school and what would have happened after primary school, I wouldn’t know because the occasion didn’t arise when we were there.
McNEILL: They could have even been left in Australia I suppose if they had wanted to be?
MRS OCHILTREE: Or there was this boarding school in the Cameron Highlands, run by the British Army.
McNEILL: As I was saying to you earlier, of course, this is the first time that an Australian battalion has gone abroad and taken its families with it and I am just wondering looking back, you see any particular problems which arose at the time, which you might have heard were subsequently overcome, or any particular inconveniences or happinesses you found? I mean first of all, most wives wouldn’t have had the chance for an overseas posting?
MRS OCHILTREE: This is absolutely true, a lot of them used to get upset when their husbands didn’t come in very often. I think generally, if there wasn’t anything wildly exciting going on, they used to come in once a fortnight, I think that was the general run; they would come in for a couple of days once a fortnight but naturally if they were chasing CTs up in the [inaudible], they weren’t going to say “Hey Joe Blow, you have got to go home, it is your weekend off”. And some of them used to ring me up and say in tears, and say, “Mrs
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Ochiltree my husband hasn’t been in for three weeks.” and I’d say, “Lucky old you, mine hasn’t been in for four”. I mean you could jolly the girls out of it, I mean naturally, particularly the young ones who have got their little babies and things, they needed their husbands now and again but it was an artificial situation, but most of them coped pretty well. I mean actually the ORs’ wives on the whole, and after they had their infants, were easier than the officers’ wives.
McNEILL: Were they, yes, well they had something to occupy themselves with. So what, by and large, do you think it was a pretty happy existence then for the wives and families?
MRS OCHILTREE: It was a pretty happy existence, I mean there wasn’t a lot to do, they had to make their own amusements. There was a beach, plenty of beach to go to, they could go to films, they weren’t terribly exciting but occasionally there would be a film.
McNEILL: Was there a cinema in Minden Barracks?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, but I don’t ever remember going to it, but no, there was no set up for films every so often but they had this hostel that the other ranks formed this club, the Families’ Club, and they used to have parties there practically every weekend.
McNEILL: Did they, was this at the Australian Hostel?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, run by the other ranks themselves. Some of them had dances; there was always something going on; and barbecues and there was a bit of beach out in front of the hostel. It was a bit of private beach.
McNEILL: Was that in Georgetown that hostel?
OCHILTREE: In Tanjong Tokong, north of Penang.
McNEILL: How do you spell that?
OCHILTREE: T-a-n-j-o-n-g T-o-k-o-n-g.
McNEILL: Thank you, and that was the hostel that was subsequently built for the Australians, is that right?
OCHILTREE: There were two things: there was the Australian Hostel at Tanjong Tokong which were the other ranks and there was the Garrison Club, the one we had in Georgetown. The one that General Pollard was instrumental in getting when we said we need something like Empire House for the blokes to go and let there hair down.
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, it was a delightful old building.
McNEILL: And then you had the Runnymede?
MRS OCHILTREE: And the Runnymede which was the officers’ hostel.
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McNEILL: So you had the officers’ hostel, the ORs’ hostel and the Garrison Club and at the ORs’ hostel, you would have people living there who were awaiting married quarters and at the Runnymede, you would also have people there awaiting married quarters?
MRS OCHILTREE: But the British used that too.
McNEILL: And the British used it and at the ORs’ hostel they had the socials, they ran socials?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, there was a great big dining room where they could – it was like a huge big hall with a stage – and they used to have dances.
McNEILL: I suppose they used to have socials at Runnymede too, with the officers?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, not really, I mean they would have a party there occasionally.
McNEILL: Did you find yourself having morning teas and things like this with the officers’ wives or any?
MRS OCHILTREE: Not if I could avoid it.
McNEILL: It wasn’t your scene, morning teas?
MRS OCHILTREE: It was not my scene but then of course I had them, I remember when the dear old Archbishop [Holtz] came up and we had a wives tea party. Yes, the girls used to come over occasionally for lunch or tea or something but not as a general rule, I am not a tea party lady.
OCHILTREE: Mention how you ran a brigade welfare before Rosemary came out.
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, but that all tied in with the first bit. I ran that until Mrs Moore came out and then I handed it out to Mrs Moore, who was far more capable than what I was because she was a British army colonel’s daughter and knew all about it. Well if she didn’t, she should have.
McNEILL: Brigadier Moore wasn’t married, he had brought his…and then he got married back in England, I suppose?
OCHILTREE: And brought his bride out.
McNEILL: How long was he out there in Malaya as your brigade commander before he was married, how long would that’ve been about?
OCHILTREE: He arrived in Malaya I suppose a few weeks before we did and I think he was married just before he went out.
McNEILL: So about 18 months or so he was there, single?
OCHILTREE: No, he only arrived in Malaya a bit before the battalion arrived and he got married shortly before he went to Malaya.
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McNEILL: So he bought his wife out fairly soon after?
OCHILTREE: She was child bride stuff. I remember he said, “Is Rosemary going to take over welfare?” and Peter Moore said, “Rosemary has no experience of that, you are doing a good job”, so Leslie went over with all the files and dumped it on Rosemary’s lap, literally and said, “It is all yours”.
McNEILL: Fair enough.
OCHILTREE: You mentioned about malaria earlier. We had an interesting case there: Penang was malaria free; you didn’t need to take Paludrine and our daughter Margaret got something which was diagnosed eventually as malaria. And Malaya Command, amended Malaya Command Routine Orders instead of saying, 'It is malaria free, dependents need not take it’, it said ‘dependents are advised to take it’. It was really, the Brits at the Medical Corps were most upset and so were the Penangites - malaria-free zone. I remember the doctor saying to Margaret, “When were you last on the mainland?” and Margaret said, “I haven’t been on the mainland. I came up on the ship with my mother and, and I haven’t even been taken to the mainland”. So she got malaria.
McNEILL: Well that’s a point, did the wives go on or the families go on the mainland much?
MRS OCHILTREE: There wasn’t much to go over there for, I mean Butterworth was across there but that was under construction - it wasn’t the set up it was later on. And I think there were air force wives on the island weren’t there, before their quarters were built? So there really was no…Butterworth’s… there’s nothing at Butterworth.
OCHILTREE: It was RAF; the only RAAF was the Airfield Construction Squadron.
McNEILL: Yes, two years is a long time to be cooped up on one island, I mean even people found this in Singapore which is a big city, a little bit they found it but you could drive off Singapore and drive into Malaya.
MRS OCHILTREE: You could drive off the island and drive into Malaya if you wanted to. I mean a fair few of them had a trip down to Taiping.
McNEILL: Or Kuala Lumpur?
MRS OCHILTREE: They had a trip down to Taiping to have all of these babies that they were having.
McNEILL: Of course, well that’s right. Well did you take the Paludrine then, because you…?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, from that moment on, we took Paludrine all the time we were there. Whether the others did or not I don’t know, that was their problem, if they got malaria that was tough. But you see we were in the situation…I wasn’t a bit surprised, because the vehicles used to come on and off the ferry from the mainland straight into Minden Barracks, straight past our front door.
McNEILL: They could have had mosquitoes on them?
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MRS OCHILTREE: They could have had mosquitos; that is obviously how Margaret got it.
OCHILTREE: A mosquito’s got a wing and can fly.
MRS OCHILTREE: I mean when you look at it in a containment area, the trucks weren’t… the vehicles weren’t really supposed to come past our quarter but quite often they did.
McNEILL: You would think they would be fumigated or something, just cursorily anyway, before getting on?
MRS OCHILTREE: I mean you would have to have somebody down there with a spray-gun as they came off the ferry.
McNEILL: It must have been effective because it is like on Singapore, there wasn’t any malaria on Singapore either.
MRS OCHILTREE: But we just took the Paludrine, that was that.
OCHILTREE: Civil debts were another problem because before we left to come home, we told everybody to go around and tell your wives to stop shopping, ticking things up. And then we sent a team of an officer and the padre around all the main Singapore Cold Storage and the shops and saying, ”Our battalion is going home on such a such a date, we suggest you, so and so, if any of them have got bills, chase them.” So we didn’t want them to go ahead and have bills, unpaid bills. So we made quite a feature, it was quite a major operation, the civil debts collection and that worked pretty well. The other thing, we had a few problems, I should have mentioned it, was mixed marriages with the Malays and that sort of thing. I remember we had two troops, two soldiers who married two wealthy girls, Da Silvas, and I remember you were allowed to take back so much furniture and effects. And I remember when these two soldiers were coming back and they’d put in their inventory - things had come back. There was the grand piano and I remember AUSTARM Singapore raised their eyebrows a little bit about this; this was a character [sic], like bring a record player and a radio and a couple of chairs and a beach umbrella and things but a grand piano was a bit thick.
McNEILL: Did you have to counsel soldiers who contemplated marrying an Asian?
OCHILTREE: Hmmm, hmmm.
McNEILL: As I understand it, the law was if they did married an Asian she was entitled to come back into Australia whether or not people liked it or tried to frighten them off or what. That was correct wasn’t it?
OCHILTREE: They can bring them back, yes, anyone.
McNEILL: I do recall from 1961 to 1963 when I was there the Asians had to find a certificate from the local policeman; have a tuberculosis x-ray, but I believe it was all hooh hah - a design to try and frighten the soldier off. Because whether she had a bad police record and if she did have TB - and she could have had any other diseases as well - and come from anywhere, if she married the Australian, she was entitled to come back.
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OCHILTREE: It is the same today.
MRS OCHILTREE: If you went to England and you married an English bird, you could bring her back and it is exactly the same.
McNEILL: It is exactly the same.
MRS OCHILTREE: It is just the colour of her skin that is the only difference.
McNEILL: Are there any other points that come to mind Mrs Ochiltree, that you think might be useful from the families’ side, I mean I know it is thirty years ago?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, thirty years is a long time, it is very hard to remember way back there. I don’t think so.
McNEILL: We were covering the main sorts of areas, unfortunately, in a certain sense for the historical record, because the families were together you don’t get the benefit of the husband writing back the day to day activities in letters to the wife as you do in other wars and of course you can gather those letters and they are very interesting.
MRS OCHILTREE: No, I don’t think so, we played it by ear and it seemed to work.
OCHILTREE: I think it was tremendously good. The fact that I was telling Ian earlier that by the time the 3 RAR came up, that quarters were available for them and there were a number of people from the battalion who hadn’t done their tour of duty and went across to 3 RAR, so we had a bit, a fair bit of local knowledge that could be passed on.
MRS OCHILTREE: We were pretty naive when we went in there. I remember one family were moving out of Minden and we had a particularly nasty little British sergeant who - I don’t remember how it actually happened how I got to hear, whether one of the wives rang me up or whether she came up across the paddock to tell me that Mrs Whatever-her-name- was was in tears - that this sergeant was billing them for this and billing them for that. And I had heard about this gentleman, so I got in the car and screamed down and stood over him while he did the inventory. Because he was a little fella with a runt complex and being particularly nasty. I mean OK, there were a few scratches on the furniture, but general wear and tear, I mean you don’t bill people for every tiny scratch, so we learnt about things like that.
McNEILL: Did you have many incidences of wives just being unable to cope with the whole newness of everything and maybe a baby as well and a husband away, coming up and really crying on your shoulder?
MRS OCHILTREE: There was only one occasion that I actually had the doctor call me and say, “Could I come down and help?” because this lass I guess she had post-natal depression and the like. But it was…she was being just a very silly little girl and she needed a little bit of straight talking. And I went had a look at her, and she had tears all over the place, and had a beautiful little baby and I am afraid I ticked her off. Please don’t print that because she would know exactly who it was, if she picked up the book. No, there were, on the whole, it was
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pretty good but there were the odd ones who would get a bit irrational at times, particularly if their husbands hadn’t been in, and complain and carry on.
McNEILL: You are talking now in the general sense of just being, finding it a little bit difficult to make, to get on rather than immoral or something like that?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, there were no, as far as I knew, no immoral bits to it but not coping was just a bit of depression or maybe they missed their mums or just as I say, their husbands hadn’t been in for a while and something had upset them and there would be a few tears and carry on but there was nothing major.
McNEILL: Do you think there is anything else, does anything else come to mind?
MRS OCHILTREE: Not really, as I say, they all integrated pretty well, they got on with it. When we had riots in Penang I was a bit worried about the ones out at Tanjong Tokong then, because it was a bit isolated and if there weren’t too many men at home it was a bit tricky but they were just advised to stay at home and stay in their own quarters and not go into town, which I didn’t do.
McNEILL: How long, were these inter-racial riots, were they?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, I have forgotten what it was all about?
McNEILL: How long did they last for?
OCHILTREE: I don’t know, a few days.
McNEILL: I remember in the war diaries it mentions curfews. There is just one last question, you would have come up by air, on chartered aircraft, yourself?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, the kids and I went up on Strath Banker from Brisbane.
McNEILL: Was that normal for the wives to come up on a ship?
MRS OCHILTREE: We were the first ones remember.
OCHILTREE: You see, my family…Reggie Pollard suggested they should come on the Georgic, he said, “You are going to take them up?” and I said, “No.” and he said, “Why not?” and I said, “Because I have got my hands full. I don’t want to have wives, mine or anyone else.” And in due course, my family came up on the Strath Banker with David Minnett’s family and Bruce Bogle’s family.
MRS OCHILTREE: No, Susan wasn’t on that.
OCHILTREE: Wasn’t she?
MRS OCHILTREE: There was a blonde girl – Ted Bruce’s 2IC, I think – I have forgotten what her name was.
McNEILL: So you had yourselves booked on this, it is a straight civilian...?
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MRS OCHILTREE: Boat.
McNEILL: As against the Georgic, it would have been chartered wouldn’t it? And how did other wives come up, generally on boats?
OCHILTREE: En masse, on a flight, on chartered aircraft, they would go from Australia to Butterworth and I would release the husbands in time to get the house in order and to make sure they were there to meet their wives, give them a few days off.
McNEILL: Coming back then to Australia, what was the boat, the ‘Fleminia’ was it?
OCHILTREE: The New Australia.
McNEILL: The New Australia; did the wives travel with their husbands on that boat?
MRS OCHILTREE: They did, yes.
McNEILL: Did they, could the whole battalion plus families fit on the same boat?
OCHILTREE: Yes, it was a little cramped but we fitted.
MRS OCHILTREE: Sort of, the officers deck was an open deck at the back, that is where they…where you sat amongst all the babies. The Adjutant’s wife, when they used to have welfare work to do down at the ORs’ quarters down in the nice, comfy part of the ship, in the afternoon when all the babies were screaming for their amahs. So Trudy and I used to go down there and one of the senior NCOs’ wives said to us one day, “Why do you always come down around about this time?” and we said, “Well, you should go up and hear what goes on where we have to sit”.
McNEILL: I see, all the children plus the officers were up on this area?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, we used to have this tiny little area with all the squalling babies, it would be much nicer talking to the ORs’ wives.
McNEILL: These are officers’ babies?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, first they had been torn away from their amahs.
McNEILL: I remember in Singapore a lot of babies learnt to count in Chinese before English, I am afraid the amahs got quite a…I mean the burden was given to the amahs, sometimes unfairly.
MRS OCHILTREE: Ah well, the amahs was employed to look after the baby.
OCHILTREE: I mentioned about the troubles of the press, how they handled this, they were absolute pests. I don’t think I mentioned beer to you; we used the NAAFI [Navy, Army and Air Force Institute – the British canteen service] which had Tiger beer and Anchor beer. And then on one occasion, on a Saturday, we had been in Georgetown and came back and there was some rather fat oaf on our doorstep and he said, “I am from Swan Beer.” and I said,
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“Oh, yes.” and he said, “I want to come and talk to you about making Swan beer an exclusive beer for the battalion.” and I said, “You can make an appointment sometime, come and see me in the office.” And now, “I am here now, I am busy”. A truculent character and he had a letter from…he said, “What I want you to do, and I am authorised by the Prime Minister,”-he had written to Menzies-“to conduct a beer tasting session of Swan beer for the troops and if they vote for Swan beer, you are to have Swan beer and not the local stuff.” And I said, “Go to hell”. So I booted him out of Minden Barracks – what a truculent character. And I said, “The troops can have what beer they like. If they prefer Anchor beer or a Tiger beer or a Swan beer they can, but you are not going to have a monopoly.” and he said, “You will hear more of this, I will take this up with Defence and everything”. And I didn’t hear anymore and I think eventually in the NAAFI, we gave them a choice of Tiger, Anchor or Australian beer.
McNEILL: The Australians had started coming up?
OCHILTREE: Yes, that’s right, Australian beer but it certainly…if you wanted the British NAAFI and the officers’ mess and the sergeants’ mess to be given a monopoly of Swan beer, I reckon they were not too keen on Swan beer and I preferred, as so many of the troops did, Anchor beer or something, which is a lighter beer.
MRS OCHILTREE: It was better for them too, the lighter beer was much better in the tropics.
OCHILTREE: He came up without any appointment, just drove into Minden Barracks and he was waiting for me at the quarters.
McNEILL: A bit of a nerve.
OCHILTREE: We also used to have Australian politicians visit us. We had after Eagle Swoop, the Minister of Defence, Phil McBride and Lady McBride was coming and I was told, right, they wanted me to have organised something for them. So the idea was taking them around Minden Barracks and give them a briefing and I had a dinner party organised for them at the Penang Club of which I was a member. And they said, “No.” They wanted - it was black tie and long dress - and they wanted to also visit the troops at about six or seven o’clock on the Saturday night in the Garrison Club in Penang in Georgetown. And I said, “Not on your life”. You can imagine, troops who had been out in the jungle for six weeks letting their hair down at seven o’clock on Saturday night and some portly elderly politician and his wife had come in, so there was a great old do about that. Peter Moore stood up, John Speed was in a bit of a dilemma and I said, “I am sorry I refuse, they can’t come. I will give them dinner, wine.” And so we came to a bit of an impasse on that, and then at the last moment McBride was too busy to come and visit the battalion, he visited the RAF at Butterworth. You can imagine how ridiculous it was and we had a day of visiting when all Liberal and Labor politicians came in and I gave them a briefing and then I said, “Now if there are any questions you would like to ask me, please don’t hesitate to ask.” And I remember one of them stood up and said, “This frankness is most refreshing, if only we had this back in Parliament in Australia, and then the great votes of thanks. So then they went to the Sergeants’ Mess and some of the sergeants got stuck into them about bringing back cars. And one of them wrote to me and said “Here is the question I asked your Minister of the House, here is the answer: I think he completely evades the point. Now if you give me a bit more facts and figures I will take it up with him.” So I went bang, I said, “Thank
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you very much I don’t wish to have my name bandied around Parliament, but me, the humble battalion commander was saying the Minister for the Army is talking a lot of trifle and being evasive.” And I said, “Thank you for your interest.” and that was that. We used to have politicians visiting us.
McNEILL: Did 105th Field Battery come back with you on the same boat?
OCHILTREE: Yes, the same ship.
McNEILL: And wives and children?
MRS OCHILTREE: And wives and extra children.
OCHILTREE: We marched through Sydney when we got back.
McNEILL: How were you received on that march?
OCHILTREE: Pretty well.
McNEILL: Did you march with weapons, did you leave your weapons up there, do you remember?
OCHILTREE: Yes, we did. Again it was suggested to us that maybe we should take our weapons, given the lessons of the Australians going to Java in World War Two without weapons and not being tactically loaded, hence the administrate [sic] it would have been a headache, 3RAR would have then had to draw from ordinance new weapons, we would have had these weapons [inaudible] for British base back in Australia and we would have to get them back.
McNEILL: Of course, British weapons were they?
OCHILTREE: So we came back unarmed but from memory I think we were issued with rifles when we got to Australia, on the ship. We didn’t march through Sydney with rifles.
McNEILL: Would 105th Field Battery have its own guns, you wouldn’t remember, I suppose?
OCHILTREE: No, they were issued to them in Malaya.
McNEILL: Were they 25-pounders?
OCHILTREE: Similarly, we handed back our three inch mortars and we were given British 4.2 inch mortars in Malaya.
McNEILL: Were you, that was something new to work on?
OCHILTREE: Yes, that was quite interesting, I remember the first time we did a practice run with live ammunition with them, the old 4.2 inch, a couple of mortar bombs landed out and landed about where that bookcase was from where I was standing, which was a bit…anyway, it didn’t go off.
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McNEILL: I think we have just about covered everything and thank you very much indeed Mrs Ochiltree for coming in as well to talk about this. Thanks very much Brigadier.
OCHILTREE: You are welcome.
McNEILL: You were saying something about Mrs Simpson?
MRS OCHILTREE: Yes, she was one of our charming wives and she had a quarter way out, isolated in Batu Ferringhi and she was an absolutely charming person, she didn’t speak very much English but she was an absolute delight, they were a very, very happy couple.
McNEILL: Did she have much to do in the welfare of wives as well?
MRS OCHILTREE: No, she was isolated and because of her language problem and the fact that she was Japanese, it did make it a bit difficult for her but she was a very happy, a very intelligent woman and I would have liked to have got to know her a lot better but with the language problem of course, it made it a bit difficult but she was always a joy to go out and see.
McNEILL: Thank you very much Mrs Ochiltree.
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