Moyar Mark. A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq
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120 e Malayan Emergency
the top British leadership in Malaya. Briggs, aicted with a serious illness, le
at the end of November and returned to retirement in Cyprus, where he died
a few months later. e director of intelligence resigned because of dierences
with the police commissioner, and a short time later, the police commissioner
himself le.
On October 25, the Conservatives won the British parliamentary elections,
returning Winston Churchill to the prime ministership. Having long main-
tained that the Malayan Emergency required a vigorous and forceful approach,
the Conservatives now resolved to put their ideas into practice. e new secre-
tary of state for the colonies, Oliver Lyttelton, visited Malaya in December 1951
to size up the situation and determine how exactly the war needed to be prose-
cuted. Lyttelton reported back that the police and the civil administration had
to be upgraded, through the replacement of commanders, to halt the enemy’s
activities in the New Villages. Because of the inexperience of the civil servants,
Lyttelton noted, the central government “nds it necessary to issue more and
more directions. In this way the central authority becomes itself desk-bound,
clogged with paper and remote. I was told by one man in a district which
I reached from Kuala Lumpur in forty-ve by Auster, that I was almost the
only man from Kuala Lumpur (apart from the High Commissioner and the
Director of Operations) whom he had seen since the Emergency began. A
cold wind must blow some of the paper out of these Government oces. Only
an experienced, forceful and ruthless administrator will succeed in creating
a system equal to its task.” is individual, Lyttelton concluded, should be a
general who had command of both military and civil aairs, for the separation
of the military and the civil had fostered disunity and prevented resolution of
key problems. To the arguments from the British political opposition that the
military should not control political aairs, Lyttelton paid no heed.27
Shortly aer Lyttelton released his report, Field Marshal Bernard Mont-
gomery sent Churchill an appraisal that built upon the report and encapsu-
lated the situation in penetrating fashion: “e problem has been studied by
the Secretary of State for the Colonies; the measures necessary to begin to put
things right are clearly set out in his Report. But to determine what must be
done is only half the answer, and the easiest half; that of itself will not achieve
success. In all this welter of trouble ‘the man’ is what counts. e second half
of the answer is to produce good men, really good men, who have the courage
to issue the necessary orders, the drive to insist that those orders are carried
e Malayan Emergency 121
out, and the determination and will-power to see the thing through to the end.
Such men do not exist today in the Malayan Federation.” Getting down to
specics, Montgomery asserted that “the rst and really urgent need is to put
a really high class man into the Malayan Federation as High Commissioner,
and give him a rst class Chief Secretary and a rst class Commissioner of
Police.” Only one of those three posts, chief secretary, was currently occupied,
and according to Montgomery, its occupant, Vincent Del Tufo, “has no power
of command and gives out no inspiration” and “is, of course, quite useless as
Chief Secretary.”28
In accordance with Lyttelton’s advice, Churchill decided that the next high
commissioner should be a military ocer with control over all civil and mili-
tary operations. Lyttelton’s rst recommendation for the position, General Sir
Brian Robertson, turned the assignment down, eliciting derision from other
senior ocers, who thought that he ought to retire if he was unwilling to take
command in a time of war. Field Marshal Sir William Slim also declined the
job, but he had better cause, since he had already retired from the army and
he exceeded Robertson in age by ve years. Slim, as well as Montgomery and
other generals, emphatically advocated General Gerald Templer for the posi-
tion. Churchill summoned Templer on January 11 for an interview. Favorably
impressed, Churchill asked Templer to take the job, telling him that he could
have whatever he wanted, including ne civilians and soldiers for the most im-
portant leadership positions in Malaya. Templer accepted the assignment and
thanked Churchill, noting that having “the men to do the job” was “of primary
importance.”29
Born to an Irish Protestant family just before the turn of the century,
Gerald Templer le high school early to join the British army in the middle of
World War I. He attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he
was a poor student and might have been kicked out had the army not been so
desperate for infantry ocers. In August 1916, as his countrymen were dying
by the hundreds of thousands at the Somme, the seventeen-year-old Templer
was commissioned into the Royal Irish Fusiliers. Told that he could not join
a battalion in France until he turned nineteen, he and his father tried to use
personal connections with high-ranking ocers to get him to France post-
haste. It took over a year, however, before the young Templer got to the front
lines. Arriving in France in October 1917, he had more than one year of war on
the horizon, but a series of lucky escapes spared him the injuries and mortal
122 e Malayan Emergency
wounds that befell most of his comrades. In March 1918, for instance, he was
hospitalized for diphtheria just before his unit of 800 men suered 763 casual-
ties at the Battle of St. Quentin.
Aer the war ended, Templer had several tours in the Middle East, includ-
ing a stint ghting guerrillas in Palestine during which he was twice decorated.
He was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940 along with much of the British army,
which le him furious with Allied ineptitude but failed to shake his conviction
that Britain would ultimately prevail. So ardent and determined was he that
his seniors sent him to demonstrate British resolve to American ambassador
Joseph Kennedy, who was predicting an imminent German conquest of En-
gland. When Kennedy said that Hitler was about to wring England’s neck like a
chicken’s, Templer exploded in what he later admitted to be “the most undiplo-
matic language” and stomped out of the room.
In 1942, Templer became the youngest corps commander in the British
army. He grew impatient, however, at the lack of combat opportunities for
his corps, and eventually, in the summer of 1943, he relinquished the corps
command in order to take command of a British division set to participate in
the Italian campaign. His most distinguished performance occurred in Feb-
ruary 1944 at Anzio, where his division helped foil the Wehrmacht’s attempts
to overrun the Anglo-American beachhead. Constantly visiting the troops at
the front, Templer inspired his soldiers to hold on against ferocious German
attacks that reduced the division to one quarter of its original strength. At
the end of the war, Templer assumed command of the British sector of occu-
pied Germany, where his most memorable deed was ring Konrad Adenauer,
mayor of Cologne and future chancellor of West Germany, for inactivity.30
e situation in Malaya at the time of Templer’s arrival in February 1952
was even bleaker than it had been when his predecessor was killed. Gurney’s
death had buoyed the spirits of the guerrillas and deated those of the British
forces and had led to a slackening of British operations.31 In mid-February the
British writer Malcolm Muggeridge observed in the Daily Telegraph, “Over
large areas of the country law and order have, to all intents and purposes, bro-
ken down. Communications, especially by rail, are continuously interrupted;
road travel is hazardous, and oen requires an armoured vehicle and an armed
escort to be tolerably safe.”32
Templer began by overhauling the top level of the Malayan government.
Just a few weeks aer arriving, Templer red Chief Secretary Del Tufo, for
unsatisfactory performance. For senior commands that lay vacant, Templer
e Malayan Emergency 123
scoured every nook and cranny of the British empire to nd men of the highest
caliber. For the position of director general of information services, to provide
one example, Templer chose the headmaster of a grammar school in Shrop-
shire, an outstanding organizer who had been in charge of British black propa-
ganda operations in Malaya during World War II. To head the Special Branch,
Templer appointed Guy C. Madoc, a Malayan police ocer of ne judgment
and superior organizational talents. e one appointee not selected by Temp-
ler was the new commissioner of police, Colonel Arthur Young, whom Lyttel-
ton chose personally aer an exhaustive search for the empire’s nest senior
police commander.33
Next came the middle and lower levels of leadership. Templer made
these the object of intensive and ongoing attention, and provided much of
the attention himself. roughout his twenty-eight months as supreme com-
mander, Templer devoted the bulk of his time to touring the country, leaving
most of the administrative duties of Kuala Lumpur to two deputies. With
little or no advance warning, Templer visited every place where the war was
being fought, from villages and police posts to infantry battalion commands
and district headquarters. By observing commanders, questioning them, and
talking with others who had observed them, Templer identied weak leaders.
Four lieutenant colonels on Templer’s sta also traveled across the country
regularly to gather information on the merits of local leaders. Having received
complete authority over both the civil and military sides, Templer mercilessly
red ineective personnel in all branches of the government. With the British
ocials at the top of the Malayan civil service, who had been le alone by
previous high commissioners, Templer moved more gingerly, avoiding the
immediate large-scale purge that seemed justied, for fear that it would do
more harm than good. At rst, he red only the two worst he could nd,
one whom he described as “an awfully nice fellow but quite gaga,” the other
whom he called “absolutely burnt out and useless, though a nice chap.” Temp-
ler gradually eased others out and replaced them with more vigorous and
capable men.34
Templer and his leadership team excelled at nding replacements for the
castos. In response to requests from Templer, Lyttelton sent high-quality
British army ocers to serve in Malaya in a variety of capacities. While search-
ing for additional civil servants to send into the districts, Templer asked the
Colonial Oce for British administrators who spoke Chinese, but received
few, so he found an energetic former missionary to track down Chinese-
124 e Malayan Emergency
speaking missionaries and persuade them to work for him. rough the con-
stant evaluation of ocers serving in Malaya, Templer was able to identify
those meriting advancement into positions of greater authority. He hand-
picked the Malayan cadets for the new multiracial Federation Regiment and
sent two dozen of Malaya’s best cadets to Sandhurst for training.35
Intent on dramatic improvement in intelligence collection, Templer en-
larged the Special Branch and raised its quality by importing rst-rate British
intelligence ocers who had worked in India and elsewhere in the British em-
pire. Demonstrating greater initiative and creativity than their predecessors,
these ocers enticed current and former members of the Min Yuen to serve
as informants. Templer shrank the other elements of the police, from 71,000
to 54,000, on the grounds that funds and good ocers had been stretched too
thin by rapid expansion.36
Templer wished to enlarge the Chinese Home Guard units and entrust
them with weapons, but he struggled at the outset to nd adequate ocers.
As he saw it, the Home Guard would function better under the leadership of
British and Australian ocers than under ocers from the Chinese popula-
tion because the Chinese had shown themselves to be apathetic and unreliable.
Convinced that good government deserved precedence over self-government
at the present time of crisis, he had no qualms about putting white ocers
in charge of Chinese troops. British and Australian ocers were, however,
in short supply. In September 1952, Templer wrote to Lyttelton, “e Home
Guard is not progressing as fast as I would wish or had hoped. is is almost
entirely due to the lack of expatriate ocers (about which I sent you an urgent
telegram). . . . We will never get any sense into the thing until we get the British
and Australian ocers for whom we have been striving so long.” Soon aer
this message le Templer’s oce, carefully screened British and Australian
ocers began to show up in Malaya for service in the Home Guard. As a di-
rect consequence, the Home Guard experienced considerable improvement
during the remainder of Templer’s term. By 1954 the Home Guard received full
responsibility for the defense of 150 New Villages.37
Templer’s unremitting visits were also intended to bolster the spirits of the
counterinsurgents and never failed to accomplish that mission. Templer deliv-
ered rousing speeches to civil servants and soldiers at every stop. A British o-
cial wrote that “the impact was electrifying. Templer combined high powered
vitality and a slightly Machiavellian expression with ruthless determination
and an infectious sense of humour. . . . I, for one, returned to Seremban the
MAJOR GENERAL HENRY W. HALLECK
Halleck took over the occupation of Missouri in November 1861 and
cleaned up the mess made by his predecessor, Major General John C.
Frémont, by cracking down on abuses of power and replacing poor
ocers with West Point professionals. (Library of Congress)
GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT
Grant won renown as a leader of conventional military forces, but he failed to
combat insurgents eectively during the occupation of Tennessee because he
lacked the extra leadership attributes required in counterinsurgency warfare.
(Library of Congress)
BRIGADIER GENERAL ROBERT F. CATTERSON
Catterson, one of the most aggressive and successful counterinsurgency
commanders during Reconstruction, led the state militia units that
destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in Arkansas during 1868. (Library of Congress)
MAJOR LEWIS MERRILL
By diligently collecting intelligence and vigorously pursuing suspects,
Merrill rounded up large numbers of Ku Klux Klan members in York
County, South Carolina, in 1871. His success intimidated Klansmen
across the South. (Library of Congress)
GENERAL PHILIP SHERIDAN
Aer exceptional service as a com-
mander of conventional forces in the
Civil War, Sheridan foundered as a
counterinsurgency commander dur-
ing Reconstruction. His contempt for
Southern whites led him to tolerate
abuses of Southern civilians by federal
soldiers, and his inexibility kept him
from gaining political inuence with
local Southern elites. (Library of
Congress)
GENERAL ARTHUR MACARTHUR
e senior U.S. commander during
much of the Philippine Insurrec-
tion, MacArthur generally le local
commanders to their own devices,
which yielded success because those
commanders seized the initiative and
led their men well. (U.S. National
Archives)