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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ BRITISH AND FRENCH SERVICEMEN IN THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY AND THE INDOCHINA WAR, 1945-1960 EXPERIENCE AND MEMORY Bollag, Manuel Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 3 BRITISH AND FRENCH SERVICEMEN IN THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY AND THE INDOCHINA WAR, 1945-1960: EXPERIENCE AND MEMORY By Manuel Bollag Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History King’s College (University of London) September 2010 4 Abstract Between 1945 and 1960 the British and French governments sent thousands of regular and conscript soldiers to Malaya and Indochina. There, assisted by locally-raised troops and units from other parts of the British Commonwealth and the French Union (or the former empires respectively), they attempted to suppress communist-inspired insurgencies. This thesis examines responses of British and French army personnel, both male and female, to these conflicts, the territories and local communities. It begins with an analysis of the forces’ composition and the international context they operated in. It then asks whether soldiers labelled the conflicts as local disturbances, wars of decolonisation or Cold War theatres. In parallel, it inquiries if they saw their enemies as bandits, nationalists or communist agents. The last two chapters investigate military views on centres of population, infrastructure, environment and peoples, or rather, the extent to which they occupied soldierly minds. Behind this scrutiny lies an attempt to identify imperial affinities, pre-conceived colonial images and pronouncements on Britain’s and France’s imperial records. In scrutinising these issues the thesis seeks to verify the often-cited, but insufficiently supported, claim that Britain’s and France’s armed forces were strongly linked and attached to the colonial empires through conquest, policing and defence. More specifically, the project seeks to fill a gap in the existing literature in regard to military reactions to the end of empires. It does so through a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, drawing from and feeding into imperial, military, political, social, European and Southeast Asian history. The project has relied to a large extent on oral sources. Careful consideration has therefore been given to the ways, in which events have been remembered, how this memory has been shaped over the decades and how it compares to academic studies. 5 Table of Content Abstract 4 Acknowledgements 6 Timetables 8 Introduction 16 Chapter 1: The British Army, allied forces and the Malayan Emergency 42 Chapter 2: The French Army, allied forces and the Indochina War 51 Chapter 3: “Part of a wider Soviet-inspired drive” – British soldiers views on the Malayan Emergency and insurgents 63 Chapter 4: “I had not joined the resistance in order to give my life for colonialism” – French opinions on rebellion and rebels in Indochina 84 Chapter 5: “Pleasant, clever, businesslike but not really trustworthy” – British soldiers’ thoughts on Malayan land and people 122 Chapter 6: “The Indochina War gave me a love for these people and this country” – French soldiers’ stances on Indochinese land and people 159 Conclusion 201 Appendices 209 Bibliography 263 6 Acknowledgements This lengthy and complex project would never have reached this stage without help from various corners. I will be forever grateful to my grandparents, my parents and Thomas Bucher for creating, passing on and managing the funds, which paid for large parts of tuition and expenses. Arianna Thornton-Ciula, formerly of the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s, Christophe Thirode and his colleagues from Ocean24, as well as Melanie Forder kindly provided me with work that added further funds. Khaled Rifahi facilitated the selling of household items whose proceeds covered the costs of the first year. My thanks also go out to the people behind the Lacey French Travel Bursary and the Central Research Fund, which (repeatedly) provided money to pay for travels in Britain and France. I should also acknowledge my extended family, Florian and Renate Plattner, Hitsch Roffler, Fränzi Thoma, Karsten-Dirk and Claudia Steffens, Filippo Runcini, Melanie Keyston, John and Arianna Thornton-Ciula, Jan Willemsen, Jose Martinez Solano, as well as Jeppe Songe-MØller and Lene Lund for offering me free asylum during holiday breaks and, with that, financial breathing space. Anne Morton for her part lowered the rent for her Montmartre studio thereby allowing me to do more research in Paris. Angela Stamatis did her best to provide me with a quiet and functioning work place/accommodation in London. Moreover, the efficient ordering services of the mademoiselles at the Librairie la page in Kensington and Sarah MacArthur’s provision of various discounted books also deserve a mentioning. The research itself would never have got off the ground without the participation of the veterans listed in the bibliography, many of whom also provided me with background material. Paddy Bacskai, Tony Rogers, George Tullis, John Veys, General Simon and Henri Dupont deserve special mention due to their crucial roles. Many regional secretaries of (and others involved with) the National Malaya and Borneo Association (NMBVA) kindly agreed to distribute my questionnaires or to talk their branch members into participation. These secretaries (and others) were Geoff Parkes, Ron Stevens, Tony Darney, Fred Burden, John Mcauley, Trevor Devine, David Rigley, Bert Godsiff, David Evans, David Peacock, John Hollis, Brian Roche, Arthur Hewitt, Eddie Young, John Sincock and Roy Taylor. Apart from these, Frank Burdett, Roy Follows, Frederick Hudson (who also sent me his memoirs) and John Jackett spoke about various aspects of their tours in lengthy e-mail conversations. Equally important was the aid from archival and library staff, most notably the Imperial War Museum, the Liddell Hart Archive, the National Archives, the National Army Museum, the British Library, the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum, the Royal Green Jackets Museum, the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment Museum (i.e. Steve Finnis), the Service historique de defense/Bureau des témoignages oraux (particularly Oliver Buchbinder), the Association nationale des anciens et amis de l’Indochine (ANAI) and the Union nationale des combattants (UNC). Monique Huteau-Bidoir, Marie-France and Olivier Duhamel, Claude Corniquet, Jean- Claude Dubuisson, Pierre Geevers and staff of the Association nationale des anciens combattants de la Banque de France kindly allowed me to use material from their websites. The same goes for the makers of www.britains-smallwars.com. 7 Further, Captain Robert Bonner from the Museum of the Manchester Regiment, Liz Grant from the Somerset Military Museum, Celia Green from the Regiment Museum of the Royal Welsh and Annie Burden from the NMBVA forwarded much appreciated background information on protagonists and institutions. Jean-Baptiste Bazin, Bénédicte Delestrade, Kevin Haynes, Noor Salik, Afzal Shaikh, Godfrey Spickernell, John Thornton and Michael Wahnich gave me details on British and French school syllabi. As regards the writing style, structure and angle, as well as literature, I’m very grateful for the support and patience of my supervisors, Sarah Stockwell and Richard Vinen. Not only did they read and comment on my various drafts but they also wrote references and helped with administrative matters. Further valuable input came from (in alphabetic order): Robert Aldrich, David Anderson, Martin Alexander, Huw Bennet, Jürg Bollag, Patrick Chabal, Daniel Branch, Raphaëlle Branche, Martin Evans, Jean-Charles Jauffret, Karl Hack, Robert Holland, David Killingray, Keith Miller, Andrew Porter, Itai Rabinowitz, Martin Shipway (who also let me sit in his seminar), Anthony Stockwell, John Stuart, Martin Thomas and John Wilson. Andrew Porter, Sarah Stockwell, William Philpott, Andrew Thompson and Gilbert Millat gave me the opportunity to present my research to wider audiences. Finally, Arianna Thornton-Ciula (again!), Daniel Ronzani, Peter Fritz, Frédéric Python, Melanie Keyston and Julie Cros offered free IT-support and help with French correspondence. Further, I apologise to anyone whom I forgot to mention. Last but not least, I assume full responsibility