SIR, - 1 said torture was necessary in Malaya and that it
was carried out by the police, not the army, as Mr. Edinger implies. Adding nonsense to untruth he claims that the reason the troops tortured was because they were in a panic. His 'first-hand' evi- dence of panic is armoured cars on the road, the order to carry arms at all times and the advice not to stop unnecessarily when driving.
These were common-sense precautions against ambush. 1 was on platoon detachment at Klian Ran. The road to the nearest town was bends all the way and jungle rearing up on one side and falling steeply away on the other. We made the journey daily in open trucks, troops squinting down their rifles. The enemy was boredom. Having made the journey thirty times and not been ambushed, the difficulty was to. keep everyone awake without sounding too much like a nannie.
When the inevitable ambush came, I was not, thank God, there. But doubtless my friends who were wished, in the seconds before the bullets ripped into them, that they had been in armoured cars. The officer leading in a jeep jumped clear as, dead driver at the wheel, it crashed over the edge. He then stood in the road in a vain effort to hold back the rear vehicle.
CHARLES ADEANE
4 Eldon Road, W8
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