1958-9 Malaya Emergency.

Back in '58--'9 I was serving with `A`Battery RAA. Toward the end of my few months there I was hospitalized for about 16 weeks all up, first at Taiping Military Base Hospital then Cameron Highlands and finally Singapore M.B.H.
While in Taiping I read an Anthropologist's biography called Noone Of The Ulu my memory being that Richard Noone the Anthropologist's brother was the author, however I am now in some doubt and it could be that the story of Pat Noone had a foreword by Richard and was in fact written by Dennis Holman. Noone lived with the Malay Aborigines for years between WW1 and WW2 . The Aborigines became a source of fresh supplies and local knowledge for the Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army during WW2 and after the war were lumped in together with that group as `communist terrorists` during the Malayan Emergency 1948-60. This story had a profound effect on me and was the single most important influence in my taking the `discharge` option at the end of my six year enlistment in '63 thus saving me from service in Vietnam.
While I was in Taiping Hospital I met a Kiwi from 1st Battalion RNZA who had just survived a tiger attack. He'd been wheeled into my ward recovering from surgery with heavy bandaging, loud swearing and incoherent raving. After he'd settled down I listened in disbelief to his story of the tiger attack that had occurred as he attempted to get some sleep in his `hootchie`. The tiger, he said, had plucked him out of his stretcher and was in the process of carting him off when the sentry, who'd heard the commotion, fired his weapon and the tiger dropped him and fled.
This immediately brought to mind my own `tiger` encounter when Slim Lynch and I were `volunteered' to fill and sterilize the Troops water bottles. That process involved thre tablets in each bottle and filled from a stream of running water. Having decided not to carry weapons due to the load we'd be under, we set off for a creek with a pool not far from where we were camped. As I was lowering the bottles to the ground, I was amazed to see a huge tiger stop on the other side of the pool and proceed to drink barely fifteen feet from where I stood. The tiger never once took it's eyes off me and I knew the full fear of being caught in the `spotlight`. Transfixed, I watched it lower it's head and drink and then, still watching me, it moved off into the jungle. Much relieved I gathered up the water bottles and turned to find Slim had disappeared too..and who wouldn't have?