TEMPLER, Sir Gerald Walter Robert. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya. Second Edition. Kuala Lumpur, [Printed at the Government Prinitg Office, Singapore, by F. S. Horslin] for H. Q. Malaya Command, 1954.
8vo. Screw-bound in watered cloth-covered boards, front cover lettered in yellow; many separately paginated parts and appendices, diagrams in the text, two leaves with short marginal tears, one with marginal trace of paperclip; a very good copy of a self-explanatory rarity.
This restricted handbook gives hands-on advice how to conduct the anti-communist counter-insurgency against communists in Malaya, with a strict shoot-to-kill policy in place. In 1952 Winston Churchill appointed the experienced soldier and former Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office Templer British High Commissioner for Malaya to deal with the Malayan Emergency. The British, Malay, and Gurkha troops were deployed to spray 'communist' crops with herbicides and defoliants, hire local headhunters, create internment camps, etc. In 1960 the Malayan government declared the 'emergency' over. Templer wrote in the preface to the first edition in 1952 'the job of the British army out here is to kill or capture Communist terrorists in Malaya (p. xi).
COPAC locates only two copies, in the National Museum of the Royal Navy (1958 printing) and in the National Army Museum (founded by Templer; this edition).
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