All Systems Go!

This morning’s post brought the contract for my second book, so now it’s all systems go!

This book as I’ve mentioned before will be about the Malayan Emergency and this time it will be predominantly picture based.

I’ve long wanted to write a book on the 1st Battalion, The Suffolk Regiment’s part in the Malayan Emergency, and indeed, part of me is ashamed for leaving it far too late when we now have just a handful of surviving veterans left who served there, but this will be a celebration of their efforts none the less.

For almost three-and-a-half years, the Battalion campaigned against a ruthless and largely unseen enemy in Selangor State and around the Malayan capital, Kuala Lumpur.

They changed their tactics and ethos to fight the communist terrorists in their own backyard, deep in the jungle, and hunted them with great determination, ensuring that the spread of communism was kept at bay in Malaya. They lost twenty-one men on active service, but attained a large number of awards for gallantry, including the award of the Distinguished Conduct Medal to Lance Corporal Bill Price; the last to be awarded to a soldier of the Suffolk Regiment (Below).

This book will like my first book, contain many anecdotes and personal reminisces of the Battalion’s jungle campaign along with an historical commentary as to the high points of their service there between July 1949 and January 1953, but their story will be told predominantly in the pictures they took.

I’m really excited about this, so onwards and upwards and now to start choosing the photographs.....