PC 494 Force 136 (2)

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In case your history is a little rusty, the conflict of World War II ended in Europe on 8th May 1945 with the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Four months later in the Far East, as a result of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered. The formal signature took place on 2nd September on board USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, although most fighting finished on 15th August.

You may remember from PC 493 that Philip’s company was tasked with gathering intelligence along the 200km railway line that ran between Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh, in preparation for an Allied invasion.

A much-folded silk map of Siam (Now Thailand) and Malaya (now Malaysia), with Singapore in the bottom right-hand corner.

Today you can travel between Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh in about two and a half hours, by either car or train. Google Maps says you could walk it in two days – but not through the dense Malayan jungle where you could only make about two kilometres in 24 hours.

It must have been surreal to leave Europe and arrive, via Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), by parachute, into the jungle terrain of Selangor. Philip’s first night was spent in this shelter.

Later he met the troops who would provide the intelligence he was tasked with collecting.

Major Philip Thomson-Walker, Squadron Leader Jimmy Robertson RAAF, Bob Elvidge and Sergeant Ted Wong (Canadian Corps of Infantry) and their soldiers. Probably taken after Japan had surrendered.

Some obviously were very pleased to pose for their photograph …..

Growing a beard gave him just the look ……

I wonder whether the kukri Squadron Leader Jimmy Robertson RAAF was brandishing in this photograph …….

….. is the same one as I have here in Hove, made by Pioneer in Calcutta in 1942 …….??

Part of Philip’s cache of treasures are silk sheets covered in numbers for coding. The one on the left is annotated ‘outbound’ and the one on the right ‘base’.

Seah Tin Toon (Tony) might have used these when trying to organise a supply drop

Not sure whether these Japanese Government ten-dollar bills have much value in 2026…..

But I do know that Philip’s writing was not the easiest to read; these are pages from a notebook, detailing ammunition supplies and useage. It looks as though the notes were written in ink? If so, I wonder how he got supplied?

I have relied heavily of Philip’s photograph album …. but how did he get the film and when did he get it processed? In KL at the end of the war, waiting to be repatriated?

Philip’s medals included his MBE, The 1939-1945 Star, The Burma Star, The Italy Star, The Defence Medal 1939-1945, The War Medal 1939-1945, The Territorial Army Medal and The Malta George Cross medal. The Malta George Cross Fiftieth Anniversary Medal 1942 – 1992, which was ‘commissioned by the Maltese Government to honour veterans of the George Cross Island siege’. In April 1942 King George VI had awarded the people of Malta the George Cross ‘in recognition of their continuing and heroic struggle against repeated and continuous attacks by the Axis powers during World War 2.’ Malta was the first British Commonwealth country to receive the bravery award, which ranks second only to the Victoria Cross and is normally given to individuals. I can only assume that Philip’s role in the SOE Inter-Services Research Bureau in June 1942 involved Malta.

The success of the Chinese Communist guerillas in the war against Japan encouraged a belief that Malaya could become a Chinese Communist State. Tensions rose and eventually war broke out in 1948. Called The Malayan Emergency (Note 1), the conflict lasted for 12 years, the communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army fighting the combined forces of the Federation of Malaya and the British Commonwealth. Taking twice as long as the Second World War, victory was eventually achieved through a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy that systematically cut off the insurgents from their popular base. This is another story!

Malaya became independent from Britain in 1957. (Note 2) During my time with Short Brothers (1986 – 1991) I visited Malaysia a number of times and got to know the modern federation, where Malays, Chinese Malays and Indians live in relative racial harmony. 

An ex-Army friend read the first part of my Force 136 postcard and wrote: “….. what a matter-of-fact summary of ostensibly unexceptional people doing extraordinary things over what must have seemed a limitless period – no end of tour or roulement or r & r (R&R? Rest and Recuperation) for any of them; and, as you note, seldom even a passing mention of it afterwards. One of the defining characteristics of that generation seemed to be understatement- even conditions in the jungle were at worst described as inhospitable or challenging.”

I hope I have been able to illustrate actions that happened many decades ago but contributed in their small way to the defeat of Japan. I have reflected on Philip’s relatively short time as part of Force 136 but believe it had a disproportionate effect on his life compared with his other experiences during his time anyone in SOE during World War Two. His hatred of the Japanese and the way they treated anyone but their own led him to boycott anything they made; he would never have considered buying a Sony television or Nissan car for instance. 

Richard 5th June 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 It was to all intense and purposes an all-out war. It was called an emergency so that insurance companies couldn’t say they were not liable for claims, ‘war’ being an exemption!!

Note 2 I have always been saddened by the economic comparison of two countries who both gained independence in 1957, Ghana and Malaya. Income per capita in 1957 was $190 in Ghana and $230 in Malaya. By last year Ghana’s had only grown to $2,500, whereas Malaysia’s had increased to $13,000.

PC 493 Force 136 (1)

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In my postcard ‘Five days in May’ (PC 484 March 2026) about my time as Battery Commander of 43 Air Defence Battery (Lloyd’s Company) Royal Artillery, I mentioned that my stepfather, Philip Thomson-Walker, had spent just over two months of 1945 in the Malayan jungle as part of Force 136. As I scribbled the note (Note 1), I thought it could become a stand-alone postcard, about Force 136. So here it is; actually, the first of two!

My divorced mother met Philip skiing in St Moritz in 1954 and one weekend he came to stay in the old servants’ quarters where we lived, on the top floor of No 15 Royal Crescent in Bath. As an eight-year-old I remember his pyjamas were made from an old camouflage silk parachute. They married and moved to Balcombe, some twenty miles north of Brighton, in 1955.

Like many of his generation he didn’t talk about the recent World War and his part in it, although the occasional nightmare and his bad back, injured in some hard parachute landing, were no doubt personal reminders, but somehow I knew he’d been part of Force 136, whatever that was! He died in 1993 aged 81. In 2002, some months before my mother died, I wrote to the SOE (Special Operations Executive (note 2)) Advisor in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, at that time in the Old Admiralty Building on Whitehall. My enquiry was extremely timely, as nine days afterwards the office was officially closed, but Duncan Stuart (an SOE Advisor) came up with most of the information I needed to fill in the enormous blanks in my knowledge of ‘Uncle’ Philip’s wartime experiences.

He graduated from Clare College, Cambridge with a MA in Mechanical Sciences in 1934. On 2nd September 1939, the day before war was declared, he was granted an emergency commission in the Royal Engineers. Three years later he was posted to the Special Operations Executive where he used his technical knowledge to enhance SOE’s equipment and operational capability. In September 1944 he joined Force 133 which had responsibilities for operations in The Balkans. The Military Mission to Jugoslavia (sic) was set up to support the partisans led by Josip Tito, who would become President of Yugoslavia.

Second Lieutenant Royal Engineers September 1939 (aged 29)

Based on the island of Vis, opposite Split on the now Croatian coast, Tito’s partisans were assisted by the author Sir Fitzroy Maclean (See PC 391 Tales of Croatia June 2024). The latter was allowed to purchase a house in Korčula, not normally allowed for a foreigner.

In February 1945 Philip attended a JEDBURGH course in Market Harborough. JEDBURGHs were originally 3-man parachute teams first used for post-D-Day operations, to liaise with and to reinforce resistance groups in France. The three men were of British, French and American nationalities, one the leader, another the deputy and the third the radio operator. By now an acting Major, Philip was posted (see photograph) to Malaya as Patrol Leading Officer in Force 136.

Malaya had been overrun in December 1941 by the Japanese Army, which also took Singapore the following February. Before Philip joined, a Force 136 officer, Captain Freddie Spencer Chapman, had succeeded in carrying out offensive operations against the occupying Japanese for over three years, with the aid of fighters from the Chinese Communist guerillas. For more than a year and a half, he and two other members of Force 136, John Davis and Richard Broome, had lived in jungle camps with Chinese Communist guerrillas, traveling long distances through dense and difficult jungle, while often suffering high fevers caused by malaria, beri-beri, black-water fever, tick typhus and pneumonia. Somehow, they had survived. In his book ‘The Jungle is Neutral’ (1950) Chapman attributed his survival to the ‘basic rule that the jungle is neutral, that one should view the surroundings as neither good nor bad’.

A photograph of Freddie Chapman from Philip’s album

Although the top command of Force 136 were British officers and civilians, most of those it trained and employed as agents were indigenous to the regions in which they operated. Burmese, Indians and Chinese were trained as agents for missions in Burma, for example. British and other European officers and NCOs went behind the lines to train resistance movements. Former colonial officials and men who had worked in these countries for various companies knew the local languages, the peoples and the land and so became invaluable to SOE.

Philip’s black & white photograph of the ‘green hell of Malaya’. It was into this inhospitable landscape that Philip parachuted on 10th July 1945.

A year after the end of the war, Philip was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE). His citation gives an indication of what he did in Malaya:

“Major Thomson-Walker dropped into Selangor on 10th July 1945 to take command of a patrol established by Flight Lieutenant Robertson. His organisation and planned dispositions for offensive action were exemplary, and his ability and attention to detail under the rough and ready conditions of jungle life were exceptional. In covering the main North-South railway from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh, he provided much pre-surrender intelligence on enemy troop movements, the value of which was enhanced by the fact that it was received from an area directly inland from the invasion beaches. As an organiser in Selangor, Major Thomson-Walker was outstanding amongst the Force 136 Liaison Officers, and the quality of his work is reflected in the praise accorded to his patrol on the occasion of an inspection in Klang on 11 September 1945 by the Supreme Allied Commander.”

Philip’s photograph album is full of grainy black & white photographs from his time in Force 136. First up, an indication that he didn’t land where he should have done.

To be continued …….

Richard 29th May 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 On a trip to Belize I spent one night in the jungle: “Night comes early, and it was noisy, wet, extremely humid and hot.”

Note 2 The Special Operations Executive was raised in July 1940 on the orders of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill; its sole aim was to “set Europe ablaze”. It operated behind enemy lines to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance, while aiding local resistance movements against Axis powers. 

Often referred to as Churchill’s “underground army,” the SOE’s unconventional warfare tactics and operatives profoundly impacted the war through a variety of dangerous, covert operations.

New Postcard

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Oh! Dear!

For the past twelve years I have been writing about this and that, my ‘postcards’; I have added a few photographs to help illustrate something. What’s that adage? ‘A picture paints a thousand words’. Given the postcards are 1000 words long, I am not sure why I didn’t simply post a photograph!! The phrase is widely associated with Fred Barnard, who popularised the concept in 1921 while promoting the use of graphics on public transport in the USA. And who could forget the 1971 hit “If” by the soft-rock band Bread.

However, mea culpa! Some of my photographs are taken off the internet without acknowledging their provenance and those that guard the copyright of such things aren’t amused.

So all of my PCs to date have been removed from this website. If you wish to read any back copy, then get in touch by email (richardyates24@gmail.com) and I can email it to you.

A reformed me will post as usual on Friday 29th May, PC 493.