“Gone to Gordon Highlanders” was the brief final note in farewell to Peter J. Henney who left King William’s College in 1949 with a slew of accolades from Head of School, Head of House, and Captain of School Rugger.  He was commissioned the following May, one of the many young National Service officers destined to lead a platoon somewhere across the Empire, and in June was at home with the Gordon’s A Company, halfway through the regiment’s final year in Germany.  Rumors of their departure to the Far East were abundant and already Derek Brown had earned his Military Cross with the Seaforths.  Soon they would exchange the “bleak flat wastes of Westphalia” for “treacherous jungle of what were somewhat ironically called the Straits Settlements” and conclude five years of uneasy peace.

The regiment sailed for Malaya in packed into the uncomfortable confines of the Empire Halladale.  Fairly fresh off a parachute course, Henney took over 11 Platoon of D Company which had undergone considerable change since leaving Germany and very few of the original members remained.  They found some Gurkha officers on board who were willing to share their experiences and knowledge of jungle fighting.  Members of the Malay Regiment also offered tutelage in language which had little impact, but sadly the company seemed void of talented linguists.  During the month onboard, they were able to tour Port Said and Aden, but after the long journey were fully ready to arrive at Nee Soon Transit Camp in the middle of Singapore island.  There they had a brief course in jungle training that consisted of “ulu bashing” with map, compass, and machete in the Municipal Reservoir area plus immediate action drills, basha-building, and jungle craft.  Many of the men, feeling very accumulated to life in the jungle, immediately got tattoos of tigers, palm trees and regimental badges.  In little time the battalion was on the move to Pehang.

Jungle operations were a blind affair – by night, if the moon was out, it was nearly blotted out by the jungle canopy and each man had to hold onto the equipment of the man in front of him.  It was difficult if not impossible to carefully follow the thin paths through the jungle and in the shadows it seemed extremely probable that a terrorist hid behind every tree.  Their jungle operations continued from their arrival in May through August across 20,000 square miles and often in torrential monsoons.  A company operational area could vary from 400 to 2000 square miles alone, sometimes without a single road for navigation.

At Gambang, D Company at least had a luxurious posting with proximity to the sea and were at the beach at least once a week (unless terrorist activity interfered).  Otherwise, it was the jungle that was most threatening with alligators lurking in marshes, snakes, and bloodthirsty mosquitos deterring any exploration into the wilderness despite how interesting the flora and fauna were for those so inclined.

It was D Company who led Operation Ness which started at four o’clock on the morning of June 18th.  The whole affair was based on information from Malayan Police who said there was a large terrorist camp of the road.  Their informer was reluctant to share much more or be publicly known after others who had been found out were barbarically drawn and quartered.  Henney’s platoon took up ambush positions by the road ready to capture any terrorists attempting to cross it.  It was a tense and quiet operation for several hours until a burst of Bren gun fire drew attention to one specific area of the jungle.  Six hours of mortars and Bren gun fire snapped and crashed through the thick foliage trying to reach any terrorists, but failed to bring out a single one.  The company was left with a choice of abandoning the mission or calling in an airstrike.  They opted for the latter which required a 48 hour wait and set off north in the meantime.

Along the Jerangkang River, 12 platoon was the first to find tracks of what appeared to be thirty or fifty men.  After a drop of rations, they took off in pursuit under direction of Major Wilson who seemed to want a successful mission by June 26th.  It had begun to pour when Henney took his 11 Platoon alongside 12 Platoon to sweep up the right flank of where their suspected terrorists were and it was his men that initiated the battle.

On finding their targets, he sent a burst from his Bren, the agreed upon signal, and the Gordons opened up.  Every bandit was hit in those opening bursts.  Two managed to get up to run, but fell again and and crawled for cover from the river bank.  Three were killed outright in the camp and the one escaped, but was dispatched by 6 Platoon.  The fifth, they all agreed, must of died of wounds, but without further proof they humbly limited their count to four which remained the grand total for the entire period from arrival through August.

The battalion displaced in August after their summer season.  The companies ended up much closer to each other on the west side of Malaya, though D Company was a bit further in the Cameron Highlands.  They found their accommodations to be significantly more luxurious than the other companies who dealt with the graphic results of terrorist brutality against men, women and children.  Rather than hunting bandits, Henney at least briefly focused on a prize boar which he stalked and shot outside of their camp.  The two-hundred-pound pig fed the entire company with roast pork for a week.

The year was ultimately frustrating and typical of the war in Malaya.  Very few confirmed kills amounted from the Gordons’ hard efforts.  Those in higher echelons also seemed to fail to recognize how impossible plans could be executed when tracks and trails apparent on the map were non-existent, streams were in fact raging rivers, and bandits and camps seemed to vanish from their supposed locations.  Near the end of the year, Lieutenant Henney, with the help of Lance Corporal Watt, did his best to educate incoming drafts at Battalion Headquarters on these challenges as well as the art of Ulu bashing and basha building.

His farewell from 1st Battalion at the beginning of 1952 was noted in the Tiger & Sphinx:  “Often Took Leave but was Loth to Depart… The usual outflow of National Service Groups to part-time service with the Territorial Army has steadily continued. In the last party we were frequently sad to lose 2/Lieut. P. J. Henney, who with his merry men kept setting off from Sorry Straits for Benighted Kingdom and returning with monotonous regularity on account of floods. famine and derailments en route.  Latest reports. however. indicate that they are now safely past the scene of the most recent sabotage, where a hundred homeward-bound Commandos are still sitting blasphemously on upturned railway coaches in the belukar.”

His time away from Southeast Asia was brief.  He was only with 5/6th Battalion for a year, during which time he lectured the territorials about the campaign, emphasizing the necessity of supreme physical efficiency ‘in the manner of a typical rugger man – all rather frightening.’  A year later, he was off, ‘unable apparently to tear himself away from the mystic East and returned to Singapor – this time as a civilian.’