The Iron Broom

Gangster films, the Municipal Council decreed last week, could no longer be shown in Kuala Lumpur, the Malay capital. The Malaya sector of the Communist campaign for Southeast Asia was heating up so rapidly that the Kuala Lumpur city fathers decided that they had best call a halt on Hollywood terror.

The desperate, quality of the Malaya fighting was brought out in the struggle between two war heroes, Billy Stafford and Lau Yew. Billy Stafford had helped organize Burmese resistance to the Japs. Fifteen times he parachuted into the jungles on secret missions. Recently, he organized in Malaya what he calls a "killers squad" to fight Communists. Malayan Chinese call Billy Tlh Sau-pah, the Iron Broom. On one of his recent raids, Stafford was after Lau Yew, a Chinese who was once Billy's comrade in arms in the fight against the Japanese. The British considered Leader Lau Yew such a hero that they flew him to London for the 1946 victory celebration. Later Lau Yew became a rebel. LIFE Correspondent Roy Rowan accompanied the "killers squad" on their search for Lau Yew, cabled the following report:

"Toward dawn our guide led us to the rim of a deep hollow, blanketed with yellow kunai grass. At the bottom were three dilapidated board shacks, before one of which a woman puttered over her morning chores. As Stafford led the squad crawling down into the hollow, the woman glanced up and shrieked. Three armed men burst from the house and fled for an opposite hill.

"A sharp volley of police carbine fire brought down the foremost runner. The last man then turned and filled the valley with the blood-tingling screams of the terrorists as he wildly emptied his Luger in our direction. Two detectives, firing at close range, pumped 15 shots into him. His head was nearly severed from his neck when he fell.

"The police rounded up the third man and handcuffed him along with six women and another man found in the house. We were just about to leave when the whole hollow suddenly exploded with a blast of Bren guns, Sten guns, and rifles firing in rapid bursts. Bullets spat in the dirt and sizzled through the grass. Two hand grenades exploded, as a third bounced harmlessly on the ground.

"Hugging the ground, we crawled back up into the kunai grass on our hill and started returning the fire. Seizing the opportunity for a bluff, Stafford yelled out 'Here come Gurkhas! Here comes the army!' His men took up the cry and moved forward in a counterattack, blasting with carbines and Tommy guns. The Communists vanished back into the hills. Five of the six handcuffed women, caught in the murderous crossfire, lay crumpled on the ground.

"The man killed first, the one with his neck almost cut off, turned out to be Lau Yew."

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