Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
John Davis , the legendary British Malayan policeman who accompanied Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) secretary-general Chin Peng to the 1955 Baling pace talks, died on Oct 27 in the United Kingdom. He was 95. He is survived by his wife, Helen Quin, whom he married in 1946. The couple have three sons and a daughter.
SOE leader in Japanese-occupied Malaya who later found himself opposing Communist guerrillas who had been wartime allies. In Malaya Davis and his men lived in the deep jungle with guerrillas resisting the Japanese
AT THE time of the Japanese invasion of the Malay States in December 1941, John Davis was serving there with the police Special Branch, responsible for intelligence on the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). In anticipation of a Japanese attack, a plan had been devised by the Oriental Mission, Far Eastern office of the Ministry of Economic Warfare, to harass the invaders with āstay-behindā parties left in the jungle.
The MCP had agreed to co-operate with these, but the speed of the Japanese advance precluded Davisās participation at that stage. On the day after the surrender of Singapore on February 16, 1942, he and Richard Broome, of the Malayan Civil Service, crossed to Sumatra to seek news of the staybehind parties there. Japanese activity forced their almost immediate return. Davis, Broome and others were then dispatched by the head of the Oriental Mission in a small vessel to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where they arrived after 35 days without fresh food and a tiny amount of water.
Only a handful of 40 or so Europeans left behind in the Malayan jungle ā who included Lieutenant-Colonel Freddie Spencer Chapman ā avoided capture or death. Responsibility for them and for guerrilla action against the Japanese was transferred from the Oriental Mission to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Far East office (later known as Force 136) headquarters in Ceylon.Plans were now put in hand to restore contact with the guerrilla forces in Malaya, to trace any survivors of the stay-behind parties and maintain contact by radio and submarine.
Davis, by now commissioned into the 6th Rajputana Rifles, landed from a submarine with a group of Chinese on the coast of the northern state of Kedah in May 1943. Having established these as agents with the local population, he withdrew to Ceylon by the next submarine.
Returning to Malaya by submarine in August 1943, Davis met Chin Peng, nom de guerre of the MCP guerrilla leader operating in Perak, south of Kedah. Chin Peng explained to Davis his opposition to the Japanese occupation and also the extent of the combined guerrilla and civilian organisation, the Anti-Japanese Union and Forces (AJUF) opposing it.
They had heard that a European (whom they guessed was Spencer Chapman) had been training guerrillas in the AJUF camps for two years. Chin Peng arranged for the three men to meet on Christmas Day 1943. At a conference with the AJUF and MCP leadership on December 31, Davis signed an agreement on behalf of the Allied C-in-C South East Asia, Admiral Lord Louis Mounbatten, to provide arms, supplies and money in return for the guerrillas stirring up labour disputes and sabotaging Japanese shipping.
With radio contact with Ceylon broken for a long period, because of the loss of their sets, Davis and his party lived with the guerrillas in deep jungle. When contact with Colombo was restored in February 1945, he was appointed head of the Force 136 groups of agents in Malaya and promoted to colonel. A plan to co-ordinate operations against the Japanese in anticipation of Operation Zipper, the Allied landings in Malaya, was overtaken by the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the Japanese surrender. Davis was awarded the DSO for his leadership in Malaya in 1942-44 and appointed CBE for his liaison work with the resistance from February 1945.
After the war he joined the Malayan Civil Service, but his association with Chin Peng was not over. At their first meeting in 1943, Chin Peng had made clear that as an avowed communist he was also opposed to British rule in Malaya. Even so, he co-operated loyally with the British against the Japanese in pursuit of the agreement Davis had signed in December 1943, and was appointed OBE for his services in 1946.
He now resumed his MCP activities, declaring the use of force against the British as a justified means of establishing a communist state. After a series of communist-inspired strikes in the tin mines and the murders of a number of European managers of rubber plantations, the MCP was proscribed. Chin Peng led about 5,000 of his followers into the jungle, where they dug up their wartime arms and, on June 16, 1948, ādeclared warā on the British administration.
The 12-year Malayan Emergency began at that point, yet it might have been brought to a peaceful conclusion as early as 1956. By 1955 Chin Peng had recognised that his campaign of terror against the rural Chinese and Malays had failed. He sought talks with Tunku Abdul Rahman and David Marshall, the chief ministers of Malaya and Singapore respectively, but demanded a guarantee for his safety.
Davis, then a district officer, was asked, on the strength of his wartime friendship with Chin Peng, to be the guarantor. A delicately negotiated arrangement was made for Davis to meet the communist leader in a jungle clearing. There he greeted him with, āLong time, no seeā in Cantonese, and conducted him to the meeting, close to the border with Thailand. But despite the friendly atmosphere of the talks, agreement could not be reached with Chin Peng. He went back to the jungle and led his dwindling band of terrorists for a further six years.
Davis remained with the Malayan Civil Service until the Emergency ended in 1960, at which time he was deputy chairman of the war executive committee of Kedah province. His service to the country was recognised by the award of the JMN (Commander of the Order of the Defender of the Realm) in 1959 and the SMJ (Faithful to the Crown of Johore) in 1960.
On his return to England he became general-secretary of Kent Council Social Services (1961-74). He was subsequently to meet Chin Peng again during the latterās visit to England. During his call on Davis at his home in Sussex, Chin Peng conceded: āI have great experience of struggle but not of how to build socialism.ā
John Lewis Haycraft Davis was educated Aldro School, where he became a friend of Kim Philby, later to be notorious as a traitor, and at Tonbridge. He began his service with the Malayan Police in Pahang in 1931. He quickly mastered Malay and spent time in Canton and Macau learning Cantonese. This led him to intelligence work with Special Branch.
He was a man of outstanding personality and complete self-assurance, yet modest about his own achievements to a degree that few could comprehend. In 1946 he married Helen Ouin whom he had known since childhood. She survives him, with three sons and a daughter. Another daughter predeceased him.
John Davis, CBE, DSO, Malayan civil servant and veteran of the wartime Special Operations Executive, was born on February 12, 1911. He died on October 27, 2006, aged 95. The source - Times Online
An Old Enemy, Chin Pengās tribute : I well remember the day John Davis and I first came into contact. It was Sept 30, 1943. The place was Segari Beach on the Malacca Straits section of Perak in Japanese-occupied Malaya. John was there to establish links to the outlawed CPM - the only active anti-Japanese resistance group then in existence in the country.
But I can never forget my time together with John in the Malayan jungle. I remember him as an implacable leader in the most harrowing of circumstances. On one occasion, in the Bidor region of southern Perak, John and I, together with a band of CPM guerrillas, had gathered to recover a joint personnel and arms drop by RAF aircraft. Things went terribly wrong. Parachutes landed in wrong areas. Arms landed where personnel should have been and vice versa. And to top it all, we came under heavy Japanese machine-gun fire.
I was 20 years old at the time. John was in his early 30s. I had never encountered such a sustained attack before and perhaps for the first time in my life I knew the feeling of real fear. I looked across at John and he appeared calm and in control. This is the picture of John Davis that has stayed on my mind all these years. In full from Malaysiakini, subscription required. For those who do not subscribe, you can read it from the blog of James Wong Wing
Good info. I've just read (haven't finished yet) Our Man in Malaya, a book about him. I'm a patriotic guy so I dont really like the stories about British occupation in my homeland but this man is such a heroic figure in the fight to get rid of the Japs from the country. Such a fantastic leader and a good example too for our local heroes those day.
Good info. I've just read (haven't finished yet) Our Man in Malaya, a book about him. I'm a patriotic guy so I dont really like the stories about British occupation in my homeland but this man is such a heroic figure in the fight to get rid of the Japs from the country. Such a fantastic leader and a good example too for our local heroes those day.