This Day in History: 1958-07-06

Between the 6th and 28th July Lieutenant M Joy of the 2nd Battalion led a team which took the surrender of 18 Communist Terrorists (CTs) as part of Operation POLECAT to bribe and reward them into handing over arms, ammunition, themselves and their leaders. The team were told to wear hockey boots instead of jungle boots so any CTs seeing their footprints would think they were one of them. Lieutenant Joy was 6 feet 7 inches tall, and as he pointed out ‘it was difficult to believe there were many CTs in Malaya wearing [my] size 13 hockey boots!’.