About this site
This website has been created to preserve the stories and true life genres of my late father Rex, an itinerant soldier of fortune and his daring adventures during the second millennia of the twentieth century. When Japan withdrew its occupying troops at the end of the Second World War, the Malayan economy was in crisis. Wages were low, unemployment was high and strikes were common. The British administration dealt harshly with protesters and outlawed leftist political groups such as the Malayan Communist Party MCP, whose military wing, the Malayan Races Liberation Army, began a successful guerrilla campaign against the symbols of colonial power, the mines and plantations. In desperation the British Army resurrected a force that had been disbanded after the Second World War: the Special Air Service. Reformed as the Malayan Scouts, their task was to succeed where normal soldiering had failed and take the fight to the insurgents in the jungle, operating as guerrillas themselves. But this is not the whole story.
My second book, "Legends of the Dragonfly" tells of the numerous classified little talked about Jungle Q Squads lead by European Police sergeants and later Police Lieutenants who carried out unconventional jungle warfare against the experienced and brutal communist bandits, on occasions working alongside with the Malayan Scouts SAS. Q Squads were locally recruited volunteers led by a European Police Sergeant and later Police Lieutenants highly skilled in jungle warfare. They did not carry any rank insignia and the wore the uniforms of communist bandits. This enabled the search and destroy Jungle Q Squads, usually ten heavily armed men to get up close to the communist terrorists and eliminate them. But all this
changed when Special Branch along with the Special Intelligence Services of
both countries decided to up their game by recruiting former communist terrorists who I consider traitors
into the fold. This took the form of Surrendered Enemy Prisoners or SEP and Captured Enemy Prisoners also known as CEP. By this time during the conflict, many of the communist bandits were being starved into surrender by denying them the support of their sympathisers in massive relocation settlements. Along with a strong heart and minds programs and psych operations, this led to the eventual collapse of the communist insurgency in the Malayan Federation.
Legends of the Dragonfly is my second book in the dragonfly series based on his life in post war Malaya during a time that was known as the Malaya Emergency. The above picture is a typical Jungle squad which consisted of Malayan Police Special Constables led by a European Police Sergeant or a Police Lieutenant. The Jungle Squads were heavily armed ten men fighting patrols who pursued the communist bandits deep into their previously thought safe deep jungle hideouts.
