Ferret Force

From Small Wars, Faraway Places by Michael Burleigh. Page 166.

As a former RAF officer attached to Orde Wingate’s Chindits, Robert Thompson was fertile in schemes to protect the planters. Bachelors were under special stress, so Thompson organized ‘sleep with planters parties’, whereby three or four male companions would drive out to the estates at dusk to provide additional firepower through the night.22 Major-General Charles Boucher, GOC Malaya, asked Thompson to organize an irregular ‘Ferret Force’, in which he and two others led company-strength patrols into the jungle to fight the CTs on their own turf. Dyak tribesmen from Borneo and Ibans from Sarawak were brought in to assist as trackers, with the black tattoos on the thumbs of the older Dyaks indicating success as head-hunters. The Ferret Force had some limited successes against the enemy, certainly more than the easily evaded large-scale military sweeps organized by the army.