“At the conclusion of the Malayan Emergency in July 1960, plans were put into place to incorporate British North Borneo and Singapore into Greater Malaysia. This idea was met with fierce opposition from President Sukarno of Indonesia and in 1962 Indonesia began supporting revolutionary factions on the large, dense jungle island of Borneo. The Confrontation proper broke out in December 1962 when companies of the North Kalimantan National Army (NKNA) attacked police stations in Sarawak and Brunei. British reinforcements were flown in quickly, the first two companies of the 1/2nd Gurkhas arriving within hours. Other reinforcements soon followed and by February 1963 all towns in Brunei and Sarawak had been cleared of rebels.

The 1,600 kilometre border between Kalimantan and Sarawak, however, continued to be raided and troops of the Gurkhas, Royal Marines of Nos. 40 and 42nd Commandos, A Squadron of the 22nd Special Air Service, the armoured cars of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars, and other units patrolled the border. All these troops amounted to some 14,000 men to patrol 1,000 miles of border, or only 14 men per mile. With so few troops along such a massive border they were spread incredibly thin. Indonesian troops continued to mount raids across the border from 1963 (34 four attacks were launched across the border in July 1964 alone). These raids met with varied success. More Commonwealth reinforcements, codenamed SPINEFORCE, arrived in December 1963.”

This episode was written by Murray Dahm.

Murray is an ancient and medieval military historian from New Zealand, living in Australia. He has written more than 100 articles on various aspects of ancient and medieval military history and other historical topics from all periods. He is the author of Macedonian Phalangite vs Persian Warrior, Athenian Hoplite vs Spartan Hoplite and Leuctra 371 BC, all from Osprey Publishing. He is a regular on the Ancient Warfare Podcast.