A heavy drone filled the darkness of the
predawn morning. Ahmad Dis looked up into the tropical black, his
nostrils filled with sharp coolness that had not yet turned into
the sweaty smoky mix that was the Malaysian morning.
No one else was awake. In fact, Ahmad
himself had intended to wake up only when his shift began after
morning prayers. But his bladder was full from the large meal the
Askar-askar Negri Johor had eaten last night in
celebration of their successful seizure of the Singapore waterworks
at Gunung Pulai.
Taken two days ago by thirty warriors of
the AANJ, they had scored a blow against the arrogant Singaporeans.
So what if they had spent so much money on their SAF? In the end,
had they not only complained like women to KL, to ASEAN, to the UN?
And made empty noises about mobilization? Had they not shown that
they were not brave enough to spill blood for what they believed
in?
The mass of noise grew louder.
Ahmad stared into the darkness above the
streetlamps at the main entrance to the waterworks. In front of him
was a simple chain link fence that surrounded the entire complex of
five buildings. Eight feet tall and topped with barbed wire, it was
enough to deter the curious. Next to the fence was a guard house
where Imraldi and Yusoff were on guard. Ahmad could see their
silhouettes where he stood, fifty metres away. Behind him was the
main office and control centre, where the water flow from the dam
was monitored. Pumping machinery and other equipment made up the
rest of the installation.
Now the sound was starting to hurt his
ears. It was far louder and had taken on a deep bleating
pulse.
Men were now starting to wake up because of
the noise. Coming out of the office where they were camped, every
one turned their heads to the black sky.
***
Everything looked green.
Captain Yap Beng Chuan stared out into the
Malaysian night, now cast in shades of green from the low-light
goggles he had on. They were not standard issue and flying a
helicopter with them was a pain. But Yap had plenty of practical
experience in their use, having been on the Singapore team that had
run the equipment through the SAF’s procurement process two years
ago. His co-pilot, usually a key role in any flight, had no such
exposure to the gadgets and was reduced to acting as spotter in
case anything unexpected came up on them.
Night vision goggles were still rare in
RSAF unit TO&Es and men with flying experience while using the
night vision goggles were even less rare. But the import of the
mission Yap now flew had been deemed a worthwhile risk of both man
and technology.
That mission was to retake the Pulai
waterworks. For that purpose, 40 men from the 1st Guards
Battalion and their equipment were stowed in the cargo of the
Chinook heavy transport helicopter now within ten kilometers of the
objective.
Ideally they would have used two of the
smaller Super Puma transport helicopters. Those were faster and
smaller. It also meant that if one was shot down or had to abort,
there would still be twenty men to take the waterworks – enough to
deal with the estimated forty enemy combatants on the
ground.
But the timing had been too tight. The
Pumas had been based in Australia as late as the day before,
whereas some of the twenty Chinooks were in Singapore when the
waterworks were taken. Pilots with Yap’s experience at night-flying
were also in too short supply for the country to spare more than
two.
“IP reached” the co-pilot’s voice said
before being lost in the rasp of radio static.
“Going down” Yap responded. He switched to
the general intercom channel, “get them ready, 30
seconds”.
“Roger” the crew chief answered.
The Chinook now went into a hover, and its
large rear cargo door opened, the dim red light of the interior
space facing away from the objective so as not to telegraph to the
enemy what was about to happen.
Two long ropes were flung into the open sky
on either side of the helicopter. The rope ends hit the ground and
when the reverse wave of the ground impact snatched at the anchor
points, two columns of twenty began sliding down to the
ground.
***
It had only been about ten minutes but
Ahmad’s head was starting to hurt more than at any rock concert he
had been to.
Everyone was now awake, understanding that
something was happening but not quite sure what. Pak Hendik, the
field leader of the AANJ and formerly an officer in the Johor
Military Force – the Johor King’s private military, suddenly began
shouting at the top of his lungs, “They’re coming! It’s a
helicopter! They’re coming!”
But the rest of the men, more patriotic
than professional, milled about.
They’ve come Ahmad
thought. Okay, so what do we do now?
He looked around. Some were staring blankly
at Pak Hendik. Others had, like Ahmad, understood what he was
saying but did not have the first idea as to how to respond. Show
they take cover and ambush the attackers? Or repel them by charging
forward? What if it was all a mistake and it was the Federal
Malaysian army come to reinforce them? Or a visit by the Johor
Sultan?
“Singapore! Singapore!” Pak Hendik shouted,
running into the office block. Some followed him. Others, unable to
hear the warning over the din of the helicopter or simply
unprepared for the possibility of an attack stood where they
were.
They did not stand there for
long.
Ahmad saw a spasm of light in the darkness
ahead. Then a slow, almost lazy streak of orange-redness zipped by
and a low thud-thud-thud-thud added to the cacophony of the rotor
blades. Two men standing by the main gate crumpled to the ground,
dead from the machine gun fire.
Ahmad and two other men close to him
dropped to the ground. Five others ran for cover.
From the office block behind him and the
guard house in front, AANJ men returned fire into the darkness.
They could not see past the lights of the compound and had little
to aim at once the machine gun fire stopped. But this did not stop
the untrained and jumpy men from letting loose with automatic fire
from their M16s.
Ahmad joined in from where he was on the
ground. He didn’t dare get up and move – the shredded back of a
third man testimony to the dangers of trying to run for cover. No.
He would stay and fight here. He yanked back the charging handle of
the M16 he had been given when he volunteered for this mission,
took aim at the spot where he had seen the flame from the barrel of
the machine gun and pulled the trigger, sending jerk after jerk of
recoil into his shoulder.
Ahmad, like his comrades, failed to hit
anything.
***
In contrast, the Guards fire team with
their “gimpy” had an embarrassment of targets in the well-lit
compound. Designed soon after the Second World War to benefit from
the success of the German Wehrmacht’s MG42 series of universal
machine guns, the FN MAG was designed to be light enough to carry
forward in an attack and yet robust enough to pour belt after belt
of ammunition into a target to keep enemy heads down.
It was being used in the latter role this
early morning.
Thirty seconds after they had opened fire,
a fourth man caught in the open was down and the machine gun team
then methodically pumped rounds into the brick guard house near the
wire fence. Heavy 7.62mm bullets easily penetrated the structure
and killed the two men inside.
Now shots came from the windows of the
office block. Bullets cracked over the heads of the machine gun
team, with little accuracy and little effect.
The machine gun now turned its
ministrations on to the office block. Made of the same materials as
the guard house, it would give its defenders much the same
protection – none. The first thirty rounds from the machine gun
silenced two of the three gun men firing back. The next twenty
neutralized the third. A further two hundred filled the front of
the office block with pockmarks and kept all the AANJ heads
down.
***
Caught just under the furious waves of
bullets and with no more ammunition to fight back, Ahmad hugged his
hot rifle and tried to make himself as small as
possible.
There was nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Imraldi and Yusoff, his friends at the guard house in front of him
were lying half out of the guardhouse, not moving and covered in
blood. The office block behind him had stopped shooting back and
now looked like it was being slowly devoured, chip by chip, by the
Singaporean machine gun.
He heard a chorus of heavy footsteps behind
him, loud bangs and then, nothing. Even the machine gun had
stopped.
Teary eyed, from the dust on the ground,
from gunsmoke and from fear, Ahmad turned his head back towards the
office block. He first saw a crouched lump, darker in the middle
than its edges. He stared, not understanding what he was looking
at. The lump sounded like it was shouting at him. But, deafened by
the firefight, Ahmad could not understand what he was
hearing.
He stared again. He squinted. He blinked,
trying to clear his eyes. Then he brought his left sleeve up to
wipe his eyes and did not feel the three bullets that crashed into
his stomach, ripped through his lungs and heart and exited from his
upper back. Ahmad’s body slumped back, his hands still in their
death grip around his rifle.
***
The mission’s objectives had been met with
minimal casualties. Two men had been cut by errant wires as they
had penetrated the perimeter fence, but that was all. Ten of the
thirty gunmen had been killed and five more injured. The waterworks
were now back in Singapore hands but now the hard work was about to
really begin.
Observation posts were set up on the road
leading up to the installation. Artillery and air support was
registered on the main highway turnoff to Gunung Pulai and
defensive positions were established in and around the
compound.
Two hours after the assault, a message was
received at the SAF headquarters at the Singapore Ministry of
Defence in Bukit Gombak “Objective Torrent secured. Awaiting
linkup.”
Singapore’s 3rd Division now had
forty eight hours to cross the Johor Straits and drive up the main
North-South Highway to relieve the Guards company.
