Finding Cpl Aussie Fewell 1GJ

the south. It was good to see such a strong turnout and we were rewarded with a fine sunny, early autumn, day. Having taken part in the Service of Remembrance at the Ulster Ash Grove, where our wreath was laid by Maj Gen Nick Cottam, we all then march

Senior Officers attended in goodly numbers, which is always greatly appreciated by Association members. In addition to those pictured below, Gen Sir Bob Pascoe took the salute along with James Leaversley, the Vice Lord lieutenant of Staffordshire. It was good to see Maj Gen Jamie and Carolyn Balfour and Brig Mike Smith.

back to our own respective Regimental memorials to remember, in our own personal way, fallen and injured comrades. The RGJ Association wreath was laid by Gen Sir Nick Parker. Following the Services at the NMA, 200 Association members, their partners and families, took advantage of the complimentary lunch that was arranged close by, at Lichfield Rugby Club. It was a good day all around

BITS AND PIECES Part 1

John Fritz-Domeney (Winchester Branch) on fire fighting duties 1977 looking like he hadn't slept for a few weeks, but he looked like that on the RIT in 1972 as well . Who remembers the weapon training sheds in Peninsula Barracks? I was informed they were turned into homes and sold for the staggering price of approx £250k each

Late last year the RGJ Association was contacted by Mrs Anthea Prentice as to her former Fiancée Cpl Fewell who tragically died in Borneo, she wanted to find out any information and where he was buried, as back in the mid sixties the MOD did not share a lot of information due to the troubles in Borneo.

I committed myself to find out what I could, as I thought it was going to be a mission.

I contacted Ex Cpl Keith Kneller who I knew from 1RGJ as I remembered he had served in Borneo and actually knew Aussie. Winchester and he started finding out some more information.

He spoke to his old OC Mark Scrase Dickins whom spoke highly of him and did say he was known as 'Aussie' but no one knew where the name originated. He also found that his name is inscribed at the National Arboretum in the Midlands.

Fewell Norman John 23883023 Cpl 1GJ (43rd & 52nd)

DoD 12th Aug i964

The Colonel’s preliminary inquiry was with the JCCC (Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre) Innsworth, Glos who indicated that he was cremated, and his ashes are in the Kranji Military Cemetery in Singapore.

He gave me some very useful information as at that time he was doing entries in the Battalions news magazine book and explained what had happened that fateful day.

Cpl Fewell was in the Recce Platoon and was on Patrol in Sarawak- Kuching District, they had some form of contact and had to withdraw quicklysomewhere along the withdrawal Cpl Fewell tripped and fell forward, his SMG self loaded on impact with the ground and fired a 9mm round through his torso, the Recce Platoon Serjeant Bernie Hickmott formally from 3GJ (RB) and the section carried him out but he was already dead.

After passing on this news to Anthea , she asked if we could locate where he was buried. At that moment in time the Colonel was waiting for Innsworth to get back to him with more information and a certain lady kept her word. She had done some excellent research and found out that back in the 1970's, the Government of Singapore redeveloped an area containing the Military Cemeteries of Ulu Pandan and Pasir Panjang. As a result, graves located in these two cemeteries were to be relocated to Kranji War Cemetery.

Families of those involved were contacted and given options on what they wanted for their loved ones:

exhumed and reburied at the new site.

the remains cremated and scattered at the new site.

the remains cremated and returned to the family in their country of origin.

Records indicate that Cpl Fewell's family opted for his remains to be cremated and returned to them in the U.K. thereafter we have no records to show what the family chose to do with the ashes and sadly the family never contacted Anthea as to the location of Cpl Fewell's remains,

Anthea is now married to Michael an Ex Para who pushed her to contact the Green Jackets to find out what happened to her Ex, and hopefully a lot of questions have been answered.

The story doesn’t quite end there though as Dick 'Sam' Muskett came forward with further information regarding Aussie’s death. He wrote;

“Hello Mark, I can maybe help a bit on the Aussie Fewell story though there are a few details I am unsure about. I've set it out below as the memories occur to me, and there are some aspects that are probably not repeatable in a non-regimental setting - Aussie's insistence of carrying an SMG, the decision to tell the two patrols to move quickly through the jungle at night when there was no immediate risk to any of our positions, the difficulty that command had in accepting that Aussie was clearly dead and insisting on pushing on with his body was not a smart decision settle, so joined the Army hence the name. A familiar story....

As a Green Jacket finale, some little while after he was killed and they'd taken his body to Singapore for burial, they organised a sort of memorial service for him, in the mess tent in the Kuching camp. The presiding padre just managed to strike the wrong note completely, as he talked about when we were in the jungle we should feel that butterflies were Aussie's spirit, forever with us etc. etc. Most of the congregation walked out and went to the bar, where we felt that Aussie was more likely to be with us.

Anyway, a long time ago and far, far away, there was a small war on the island of Borneo. Nobody remembers and nobody cares much, except for those of us who were there.

I was in the 1st Bn's Recce Platoon at the time although I wasn't on the patrol where Aussie died. The Platoon had six Iban soldiers from the Malaysian (previously Sarawak) Rangers attached to us, at least two of whom had served with British and Commonwealth troops in Malaya during the Emergency. They were expert scouts, able to tell you not only how many people had passed along a track and how long ago, but often the weapons being carried, whether they were moving in a way that suggested tiredness or carrying heavy loads including casualties and so on.

The Platoon was based outside Kuching and we had two main operational tasks. We carried out out patrols of two to four days duration along the border with Indonesian Kalimantan, mainly looking for evidence of hostile troop movements, regularly used camp areas where Indonesian incursions into Sarawak could lie up, either on their way in or when they were returning. We also usually had a patrol on standby so that if a Rifle Platoon had a contact or one of our border forts was attacked overnight, the standby patrol were choppered out and either dropped on the contact area, or between the fort and the border in order to hopefully intercept the raiders returning back across the border, or dropped at the fort to help the resident Rifle Platoon clear the immediate perimeter, and using the skills of the Ibans, form a picture of the numbers involved, what casualties

they had taken and the speed they were retreating at. And like every other platoon, we also sat in night ambushes on tracks, if there was reason to believe that a raid was planned.

On the days we are talking about, we had two patrols out, operating independently in two sectors on our side of the border and looking for any evidence of enemy movement in the area. The Pl Comd, Mark Scrase Dickens was the I/C of one patrol, with Aussie Fewell that unit. I'm not sure who commanded the second patrol as we had two Sergeants, Bernie Hickmott and Ross Grainger, but I'm pretty certain Ross was in charge of the third patrol back in Kuching, where I was. As I remember, each patrol would have had six to eight Recce men plus two Iban Rangers. The significant factor in the unfolding events as I understand them is that the second patrol included a Fijian rifleman Ratu 'Pepe' Racanate (sorry, I've spelt Pepe's family name wrongly but he had the honorific Ratu as he was from a significant family) and Peter Yeo, a rifleman of Chinese family. The story as it got parlayed after it was all over was that the patrol that included Pepe and Pete, and that would of course had two Iban Rangers, was seen by a local Land Dyak man out hunting.

Recce Platoons of the British Army, in every active service theatre they found themselves, have always cultivated a slightly 'informal' image. Riflemen wore clothes and carried kit they felt comfortable with, personal weapons were also subject to choice to some extent, so long as appropriate ammo was available - so there were at least a couple of US Armalite rifles in the platoon, as well as SLRs and the usual mix of long-barrelled Browning automatic shotguns and short Remington pump action guns. Aussie had decided that the SMG had an unfairly bad press and it was a practical close range weapon, if it was kept clean and the mags were regularly emptied and re-filled. However, he was also convinced that a forward grip, under the barrel, would improve its quality in a short range encounter. He was persuasive bloke and convinced someone in the armourers to make and fix this forward grip.

So the Land Dyak out looking for something edible to take home for tea saw a group of soldiers, wearing a range of non-uniform clothing, carrying a selection of weapons including parangs/goloks on their belts, all dirty and in some cases with camouflage face paint on, one of them was Chinese, another over 6 feet and Black plus two others looked local. The Dyak legged it as fast as possible to a longhouse where Border Scouts with a radio were based. The message that got back to Kuching was that an Indonesian incursion force had cross the border and was moving fairly fast in a northerly direction.

Base broke radio silence and alerted the two Recce patrols to the presence of raiders who had crossed the border and seemed to be heading in a direction that would offer several possible targets. It was now late in the day but it was decided that both patrols would keep moving and aim to rendezvous, if neither had run into the Indonesian raiders in the meantime. The patrols pushed on into the dark and at some point while they were negotiating a narrow track along a hillside, Aussie slipped down the bank and his weapon went off. His comrades got him back up to the track but it was clear that he was dead. A discussion ensued about the practicalities of continuing the pursuit of the reported Indonesian unit, whilst carrying Aussie's body but there was a school of thought that he wasn't dead and that if he could be got to a clearing where a night-flying helicopter could get it, he could be saved. One of the rifleman in the patrol told me afterwards that rigor mortis was starting to set in and it was absolutely clear that Aussie was dead. And that's about it really. He was a good guy.

Having started out trying to locate any information regarding the death of Cpl. N.J. "Aussie" Fewell, I was very fortunate to find Mark Adams also late of the Green Jackets. The information he and his colleagues found about "Aussie" for me, was amazing. Though, of course, harrowing, but all wars are harrowing for the men and women taking part, and my heart goes out to all of them, including the families of those killed during any action. I am also so grateful to Dick "Sam" Muskett, for providing such in depth detail, of this "forgotten war". However due to the hard work of many people involved with the GJs, Cpl N.J. Fewell is no longer a forgotten soldier, who fought in a war many 1,000s of miles away, and is rarely if at all, mentioned. As a result of this information I was able to dedicate a "Poppy Cross" on Remembrance Day at our local RBL Remembrance Garden, which helped me a great deal, and I will continue to do so every Remembrance Day.

I have also to thank my husband Mike for pushing me to put my mind at rest, as to the whereabouts and the manner of his death. I am deeply grateful, and if anyone else who knew him would like to get in touch, Mark has my email address.

With good wishes to all.

Anthea

HOW NOT TO PARK YOUR VAN !

Photographed from a different angle it can now be seen that he has really not got any idea about parking. Amazingly he managed to reverse back over the curb eventually, accompanied by a lot of screeching and grinding before puttering away in a cloud of smoke presumably for the nearest scrap yard !

I do wish I could remember what the note on his windscreen said though…………...