MALAYA: Death in a Rubber Patch

In the stealthy Malayan jungle war against the British, slim, scar-faced Yang Kuo slipped in and out of villages and rubber plantations under a dozen aliases, and boasted to Communist comrades that five British imperialists had died for each of his assumed names. From rain-forest hideaways, he trained and indoctrinated terrorists with such skulking zeal that he rose to the post of secretary of his state committee and finally to the job of vice secretary-general of the Malayan Communist Party.

One night last week a patrol of rifle brigade troopers, accompanied by special branch officers and tracker dogs, saw shadowy figures rise and run for the edge of a rubber patch near the central Malayan town of Semenyih. They fired. One fell. Next day in Semenyih a handful of Communists who had given up identified the body of Yang Kuo. Said one, gazing down at their old master in murder: "We surrendered, and we still walk and see. Here lies former Comrade Yang Kuo, white-faced, pale and dead." British leaders were jubilant. Yang Kuo was the No. 2 Malayan Communist, second only to Chin Peng himself.