“He also showed concern to befriend the Ghurkas and look over their installation. Pendita
Ungau baptised forty people before returning. However he didn’t return to Indonesia. There was a group of
more than two hundred TNKU soldiers (actually elite commandos from the RPKAD commando regiment)
waiting up the river.”
At 4 a.m. on September 28, the elite Indonesian commandos cut off the Ghurka communication
wires, confiscated all their food in the village and told the people to assemble in a large pebbled area of the
upper Balui and began their six-hour long attack. Their commander was no other than Pendita Ungau, who
emerged wearing the uniform of an Indonesian army Captain.
Cunningham continued: “Over six hundred Kenyahs were forced to remain at the pebbled riverbank
as the Indonesians launched their attack on the Gurkha base. Hungry children were crying as bullets
ricocheted off the rocks. Everyone was praying loudly to God.”
Harold James and Denis Sheil-Small in their book, The Undeclared War, state: “On 26 and 27
September about a hundred and fifty raiders crossed the border undetected, infiltrated into Long Jawai (Long
Jawe) and hid in the longhouses.
During the early hours of 28 September, the Indonesians moved stealthily
out of the longhouses and approached the Security Force post situated in the school house. At first light, a
fusillade of MMG and rifle fire raked the building; a bomb from a 60mm mortar ricochetted off a tree and
exploded directly overhead.”
This assault knocked out the Gurkha and police radio operators as well as the radios before any
message could be sent.
Also shot dead was another Gurkha, a policeman and a Border Scout. The remaining
Scouts (with the exception of one) ran into the forest and were captured. Back at the school house, the
remaining Border Scout, four Gurkhas and a policeman returned fire before retreating up a hill away from the
building where they kept the enemy at bay for three hours before withdrawing further into the jungle when
ammunition ran low and two of them were injured.
They reached safety a few days later.
Three of the Border Scouts captured earlier, managed to escape and brought the news to the 1/2nd
Gurkhas’ Battalion HQ on 30 September. Lt-Col Clements was commanding the Battalion at this time and he
worked out the raiders’ escape route and the position of their camp. With the assistance of the helicopters of
the 845 Royal Naval Squadron, Gurkhas were roped down into two ambush sites on the Batang Balui and by
evening, Lt Pasbahadur and 11 Platoon were in ambush positions.
Soon two longboats came into view packed with armed Indonesians. Executing a perfect ambush, the
Gurkhas armed with GMPG (General Purpose Machine Guns) poured a hail of bullets into the boats. One
sank at once, the other was banked. All 26 men in the boats were killed. Among the items recovered from the
wrecked boat were the two radio sets taken from the dead operators at Long Jawe. The enemy camp was
found on 12 October. The raiders had gone but they left behind the mutilated remains of the seven Border
Scouts who had been murdered in cold blood.
After fresh troops were sent in, the hunt continued along the Balui. By the end of October, several
retreating Indonesian raiders had been found and killed in Aput and Sungai Kilong and the rest were
presumed to have escaped into Indonesia though several must have died of starvation in the jungle.
A total of
33 Indonesians are known to have been killed, 26 in the boat ambush. The failure of the Border Scouts to
detect the incursion, particularly since the Indonesians were in Long Jawe for two days before the attack, led
to a change of role.
From then on it was decided that instead of a playing paramilitary role, they concentrated on gathering
intelligence in a “hearts and minds" campaign and the natives would be the “eyes and ears” of Sarawak.
