JERTIH: Shaari Abu Bakar, quite literally, owes his life to a fallen tree.
The 67-year-old recalls vividly that day in 1980 when he and five of his colleagues from the Police Field Force (PFF, now General Operations Force) had to take cover behind the tree as a hail of bullets flew overhead or thudded into the trunk.
Shaari said he and his colleagues were on an operation to locate communist guerillas near Kampung Lalang in Pengkalan Hulu, Grik, when they came under attack.
“We were attached to Platoon 3 of Company A. Almost as soon as we entered the jungle, about 6pm, we came under heavy fire from the enemy. But we reacted swiftly enough to reach a fallen tree beside a river, where we took cover.”
Shaari said the patrol were pinned down and knew it was only a matter of time before they were flanked by the communists and eliminated, so they radioed for help.
“Our colleagues rushed to our aid and began firing at the communists... after a while, the enemy retreated and escaped.
“If it wasn’t for that fallen tree, we would not have had anywhere else to take cover and we would have been killed by the communists. When daylight broke the following day, we began tracking the group of communists and found remnants of clothing and a hat with traces of blood, so we know we wounded at least one of them,” he said when met at his home in Taman Seri Sepakat.
Shaari said his experience battling the communists in the jungle was still fresh in his memory as it was a life or death fight to defend the country.
“After a three-month basic training course in Kuala Lumpur in 1967, I was attached to the PFF in Ulu Kinta, Perak. Throughout my attachment, I took part in three operations to track the movements of the communists — the one in Grik, one more in Raub, Pahang and another in Gua Musang, Kelantan.”
Shaari said he retired from the police force in 1995, and was given a certificate of appreciation by the then inspector-general of police (IGP), Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Noor.
As deputy IGP six years earlier, Rahim had played a key role in the eventual signing of the Hat Yai Peace Accord between Malaysia and the Communist Party of Malaya, ending hostilities which had begun in earnest in 1948 with the murders of three European plantation managers in Sungai Siput, Perak.