Survival tactics on a grueling jungle trek

By Sager Ahmad

Reprinted from The New Straits Times
Times 2 - Events
Saturday, 14 November 1996

MY biggest disappointment in the trip to inspect the wreckage of the B-24 in the jungle of Kuala Pilah, Negri Sembilan, was not taking enough pictures. The big raindrops fell like a hail of bullets around us, forcing us to flee. I also had to secure the camera equipment. I had been disorientated due to lack of water, after having gone without it for half a day, and weary from the incessant slope-climbing and going around in circles. The first thing I did when rain fell was to look for a big leaf to collect the water trickling down from the forest canopy. It tasted like nectar! Luckily we were in a tropical rainforest and not a desert. Throughout the day we survived on lempaung, a kind of jungle fruit that grew in bunches like rambai, each the size of a tennis ball. It was crunchy like nutmeg and sour, but it helped kill our thirst and hunger.

We were at a place that was actually the beginning of the Muar river, no deeper than a thumb and less than 10cm wide. It is hard to believe that some 150km south it is more than 100m wide as it enters the Malacca Straits in Muar. What I should have done was take out my camera, pack it to prevent damage by rain and mud, and start taking pictures. I paid the price for not doing that. Earlier we lost two precious daylight hours when our guide, Pak Abu, lost his way, misled by marks made by Forest Rangers on trees.

We finally found the wreckage after he decided to look for the logging trail. I had got wind of the wreckage from Thomas Foo, vice-president of the 4x4 Adventure Club Kuala Lumpur who was doing a recce in the Jelebu area for 4WD activities. Foo said some loggers had told him about the possibility of a wreckage lying at the end of the logging trail, now overgrown by creepers and blocked by fallen trees.

Reaching the wreckage required a ride in a 4WD and then on two motorcycles driven by the Orang Asli guides. The rest was on foot. While trekking - uphill all the way - we found the fresh footprint of a tiger. Pak Abu said it was a kucing hutan (jungle cat) and decided to lead us off the trail. He led us on a roller coaster trek down the slope, through rivers and up slopes and rocks and we finally camped under a huge anvil-shaped rock where our skills in starting a fire using wet wood were put to a real test. We did it though, thanks to Mohamad Razali, the Utan Bara Adventure Team (or Ubat) leader who had taught surveyor Ghazali Yaacob, who was in our five-member group, and I about jungle survival in a course in Taiping earlier this year.

Two months prior to this trip, some members from the survival course including Mohamad, Zoe Rai and another friend had made an unsuccessful attempt to reach the wreckage from Kampung Langkap. We were very disappointed when villager Tok Batin Ketos told us that the Royal Malaysian Air Force had come earlier, cut up and taken away the wreckage by helicopter. There was also no publicity on the event in the media. Nobody at the RMAF Museum at the Sungei Besi Air Station seemed to have the faintest idea about the salvage work. The RMAF public relations people in the Ministry of Defence were also in the dark. A check with the British High Commission too drew a blank. I finally managed to track down the museum's former curator, Mejar Mahadi Munap, who has since left the service. Mahadi said he did send a squad to recover the wreckage some years ago but he himself did not participate in the effort. He said the exercise was abandoned as the Museum's Chairman Mejar Jen Datuk Muslim Ayob said it was not worth the effort and money. Besides, they didn't have the budget for it. Muslim has since retired.

In November last year, while recovering the wreckage of a World War II Japanese Aichi light bomber in a swamp in Gambang, Kuantan, I had felt that it was the toughest trip I had ever experienced. But after returning from Kuala Pilah, the Gambang exercise seemed like a Sunday stroll in the park.