Title: Four Wheels and Frontiers
Author: Follows, Roy
Published by: Ulric Publishing
Year: 2005
Date reviewed: 01.06
ISBN: 0-9537577-8-1

For many British people there is a blank period of history covering the decade and a half from the end of the Second World War. In south-east Asia the Federation of Malaya, as it was then, gained independence in 1957; Burma (now Myanmar) in 1948. Along with other countries in the region these fledgling independent states were under constant threat from Chinese-backed insurgents, and the former colonial powers retained various grades of forces in the region to counter the communists.

"Four Wheels and Frontiers" is set against this background. Roy Follows and his buddy Noel Dudgeon were part of the Malay Police, and had commanded various special units of Malay and Chinese forces in counter-insurgency operations. They were well experienced in the jungle, and had learned the skills needed for survival.

An idle conversation in 1957 about their forthcoming return to the UK on leave the following year developed almost casually into the crazy idea of driving home in a US-built Willys Jeep that they found in a Chinese-run scrapyard in Johore.

And so it was that on 1 February 1958 they set off from Johore. The Jeep was loaded down with spares, with rations acquired over the previous months in the time-honoured military fashion of requisitioning more than they needed for their official jungle operations, and with other bits and pieces bought in the no-questions-asked street market in Singapore known locally as the Thieves Market.

Their journey covered over 13,000 miles through jungle, over mountains and across deserts. In those difficult and nervous times maps were hard to come by, and most of their navigation was with the dubious help of very large-scale wall maps. Far from being gung-ho, though, Follows’ account is matter-of-fact. I had to keep reminding myself of the historical context and the conditions they would have found. There was very real danger of them being captured or shot — their overnight stop in a police compound in Thaton, Burma was interrupted by a gun battle a few streets away, and crossing northern Pakistan they were ambushed by Pathan rebels and held overnight. Follows does not play down these incidents, but is content to report them without embellishment.

Similarly, I had to keep reminding myself of the kind of roads they would have been following for most of their journey. Forget tarmac; think boulders, swamps, river crossings. Not surprisingly the Jeep suffered badly. There is a constant theme of breakdowns and repairs. They would lash up whatever they could from their stock of spares, and were generally able to keep going until they reached somewhere with a mechanic who could fix the latest crop of problems.

The places on their route through Malaya, Thailand, Burma, India and on through Pakistan and Iran are redolent of the era of exploration and empire: Rangoon, Moulmein, Mandalay, the Irawaddy and Indus rivers, Quetta, Bam. From more recent times the Burma Road, along part of which they drove, is well-enough known at least by reputation, but who now remembers the Ledo Road, which joins the Burma Road to Northern India, built between 1942 and 1944 by 28,000 US soldiers and some 35,000 locally-recruited workers (according to Follows — other sources give different numbers) at the cost of thousands of lives?

Inevitably the bulk of the book is devoted to the earlier part of the journey. Once they cross the Bosphorus it only takes a few pages to get to the English Channel, where, arriving at Dover, an officious customs officer confiscates their camera.

Did I enjoy reading this book? The answer is yes, and no. The "matter-of-fact" style of writing is disappointing. It is a shame that the two protagonists don’t come across as individual personalities: Follows says very little about their feelings; the reported exchanges between the two travellers are terse and clipped and deal only with the matter at hand. Nor is the Jeep itself established as a character. I suspect that Follows would see such a thing as inexcusably sentimental, but a book needs characters and the poor Willys Jeep, by turns battered, bruised, abused and nursed along, might have fit the bill.

On the positive side, I unreservedly admire their achievement, their determination and endurance. Follows has included plenty of black-and-white photos which help evoke the conditions and, with examples of official documents, the spirit of the times. Some of the incidents he describes are delightful: I loved the way that arriving in Burma without any currency they set up a roadside stall selling cigarettes and army socks to get the cash to pay for a ferry crossing. And the curious events in Darjeeling where they were invited by the proverbial man in a bar to form a "rescue mission" for an American expedition stranded in Nepal while allegedly hoping to film the yeti. Money, apparently, would be no object. They agreed in principle, but delays over visas meant they called it off. Later events showed the whole thing was probably related to an ill-fated CIA-backed uprising in Nepal against the Chinese.

Readers hoping for an exciting adventure tale will, I fear, be disappointed, but this book is interesting for its albeit low-key historical content and is sure to appeal to car and rally enthusiasts.