Drop Zone Borneo by Roger Annett

Author:Roger Annett [Annett, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844682157
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2012-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Although we’re not issued with weapons, we certainly get the point. What we are issued with are Escape and Evasion kits, including a 2-foot-square map of Borneo, beautifully printed on parachute silk, showing masses of detail, but on the Indonesian side of the border only – an ominous sign. A phrasebook introduces us to some basic Malay, the lingua franca of the tribesmen. Awas! – Watch out! – might be useful, as would makanan and minuman – food and drink. If it came to it we wouldn’t mind sampling the borak – rice wine – but might have a problem with the jarit, a Murut delicacy of pork, salt and rice, evidently buried in a split bamboo cane for months before consumption. The bag of silver Maria Theresa dollars we’re given would provide a goodwill offering and effective bribe. This old Dutch money is apparently welcomed as currency among the natives over in Kalimantan. So, we are told, are the British sovereigns paid out as bounty in the last war and still in circulation – the gold is popular for capping teeth.

I say hello to my old Cranwell mate, Barry Priest, co-pilot on the Hastings shuttle. In the 48 Squadron Ops he shows me a small box containing three Indonesian bullets.

‘Where did you find those, then?’

‘Dug out of a Hastings airframe last week.’

This makes me wonder where I can find a spare flak-jacket.

On one of the doors, a notice reads ARGO and as a sub-title, Argosy Re-supply Ground Organisation. This must be us. Here, we meet the crew we’re relieving as they land from their morning mission. They show us a briefing book of DZ information that’s been put together, with maps, local features, safety heights and aiming points. But there’s no substitute for seeing it all from the flight deck, so after tea and egg butties in the Indian cafeteria, we go along on the afternoon sortie.

My captain takes the co-pilot’s seat and I stow myself in the freight compartment with the outgoing co-pilot, Brian Nicolle (known to his mates as ‘Brawn’), to see, for the first time, the action down here. The soldiers have loaded the Argosy with a mixed collection of 1-ton containers and harness packs, for delivery around the nearer frontier DZs. The floors of the aircraft are taking a beating from all these heavy and sharp-edged loads. To protect them, the fitters have fixed up an emergency, but effective, set of plywood floor panels.

Brawn tells me, ‘The Army’s got one hell of a job getting it all in the right order. Last week there was a right cock-up – the Jocks got the rice and the Gurkhas got the bloody beer. They got on the radio and gave us a right bollocking. It was that Black Watch Major – you know, the bloke with the bagpipes in Djakarta.’

The first two 1-ton containers in the load today are ammunition for the fort at Stass, right on the border in Red Sector, just 20 miles south-west from Kuching.

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