Four Man Patrol Call Sign 93 in Borneo..
Patrol c/sign 93 were working over 200 miles deep into the jungle from our base in Brunei.
Our mission was to keep a check on eight villages along a main tributary of the River Barham. This large tributary very quickly turned into a fast flowing river and was as wide as the Thames in places.
We worked for some 20 miles along this river to villages in our area which were mostly only 1,000 mtrs or less from the Indonesian border.
We visited each village at least once every 7- 10 days.
We travelled in wooden boats honed out of a tree trunk attached with a small outboard motor.
Our guide was usually a local fisherman who knew the river well including its rocks and rapids. Some of the largest rapids and rocks stopped the progress of the boat from passing this meant we sometimes had to carry our boat and kit over the boulders along the rivers bank to re-set the boat back in further up the river.
We slept on the verandas of the Longhouses of the local IBAN Tribe who used to be Headhunters with the shrunken heads of the not so lucky Japanese 2nd world war soldiers which were hanging above us from the wooden railings in the Longhouses as we slept ---(but always with one eye open)
We stayed in our area looking after and protecting the local villages from attack by the Indonesian Army who would frequently raid a village somewhere on our patch.
Our four months in the villages on "Hearts and Minds" finished as we handed over to another Guards Para Four Man Patrol.
We were then helicoptered back to the forward Air Base at Long Banga only to have one nights rest before being re-issued with new kit and rations to be helicoptered again up to the border to start our next mission over the boarder into Kalimantan.(Indonesia) territory.
"Claret Ops" (Black Ops) After crossing the boarder we became forward long range jungle recce’e patrols to gather info and send back reports on enemy movements. Sometimes we used up to four of our four man patrols together to set up an ambush acting on intelligence reports of troop movements before the enemy crossed the boarder to attack the villages.
C/s 93 patrol completed three missions known today as “Black Ops”over the border into Indonesia.
We had sixteen active four man patrols but not all patrols went on these secret missions.
After our return to the UK the start of “G”squadron 22 SAS was born from volunteers of the Guards Para Company who had just returned from the two tours of Borneo (During 1964 & 1965)