RUR 's Operational Deployment, Sarawak

Longboat Patrol

The 1st Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles was initially deployed into the 3rd Division's area in Sarawak to meet three threats to area security:

• Land borne-from incursion across 250 miles of rugged jungle frontier by irregular and regular Indonesian forces
• Seaborne-from small well armed Indonesian terrorists attempting to land and establish training bases for the third threat,
• the internal Clandestine Communist Organisation (CCO) centered in the intensely populated Chinese farming communities of Sibuy, Sarikei, Binatang and the upstream banks of the Rajang river as far as Song.

By 20 May 1964, B Company, C Company, and Headquarter Company were firm in their locations at Sibu and Sarikei. The rifle companies operated against the CCO through networks of narrow paths flanked by thick rubber plantations, swamp or high lalang grass. Waterborne operations were conducted using large launches, assault boats and longboats with patrols calling at longhouses to assure the local population of government protection, and to render medical aid. Other operations included ambushes by night and Cordon and Search, many conducted along with police and using specialist Army search and tracker dog teams. During this first period, forty suspects were detained with twelve convicted. Pistols, home-made bombs, daggers, swords, spears and large amounts of military and subversive literature were seized.

Complete in their locations further east and south by 22 May were A Company at Song, D Company at Bangkit and the Recce Platoon at Katibas. Living in company camps, patrols were sent out on foot, or deployed by boat and helicopter, to the Indonesian border to search for signs of incursion. The going cross country restricted movement often to less than 2km per day. The patrols also employed the local Iban people as trackers.

(Right, Lt Ryan giving 'Orders' to his Platoon NCOs)