But could not bring himself to sleep in the murdered man’s bed.

From Small Wars, Faraway Places by Michael Burleigh. Page 163.

On 14 June 1948 the head of the Malayan Security Service (MSS) reported to London: ‘There is no immediate threat to internal security in Malaya although the position is constantly changing and is potentially dangerous.’14 Seldom has an official assessment been proved wrong so swiftly. The tin-mining town of Sungei Siput in the state of Perak lay to the west of Malaya’s central mountains. Twenty miles east of Sungei Siput was an isolated rubber plantation called the Elphil Estate, run by a British manager called Arthur Walker. For Walker, 16 June 1948 was a special day since he and his wife, who had been in Malaya for twenty years, were going on leave to England. Mrs Walker had already left for Sungei Siput to do some last-minute shopping, while Walker was busy with paperwork in the estate office. At around 8.30 a.m. three Chinese men rode up on bicycles, walked into the office saying ‘Tabek, Tuan!’ or ‘Greetings, Sir!’, shot Walker dead and then left the office, ignoring a large sum of money in the open safe. A terrified Indian clerk looked at one of the men who stared back and then contemptuously spat on the ground before cycling away. Ten miles east, twelve armed Chinese burst into the offices of Sungei Siput estate and tied up two British managers, one a twenty-one-year-old trainee called Christian. Both men were murdered, the first of ninety-nine planters killed in the Emergency.15 One of the Chinese reassured a Malay clerk, ‘Don’t be afraid. We’re only out for the Europeans and the running dogs,’ a Maoist term covering collaborators of all kinds.16 Ambushes on roads and railways rounded out what was to be the modus operandi of the ‘bandits’, the term the British initially alighted upon to delegitimize their opponents.

These events gave thirty-two-year-old Chinese Affairs Officer Robert Thompson a welcome escape from daily routine in Ipoh. Thompson set off for the Elphil Estate where Walker had been murdered, arriving just as a company of Gurkhas drove in. He then went on to the Sungei Siput Estate, where he ate Christian’s food, but could not bring himself to sleep in the murdered man’s bed. While he drove home, more atrocities were occurring. At the Voules Estate in Johore, Communist terrorists (CTs) identified the Chinese headman, Ah Fung, demanding that he furnish them with fifty cents a week from every tapper on the estate. When Ah Fung refused he was tied to a tree and in full view of his wife and daughter had both his arms hacked off. A note reading ‘Death to the Running Dogs’ was pinned to his chest. Atrocities were not entirely one-sided. In December 1948 Scots Guards massacred at least twenty-four Chinese prisoners at Batang Kali, all allegedly shot while trying to escape in a miracle of marksmanship.