Facts are not easy to ascertain about what really happened in March 1994 in Low's Gully atop Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, East Malaysia. All we do know is that the disappearance of five members of a 10-man adventure training expedition did the reputation of the British Army no good at all.
Almost as soon as the soldiers - three local Chinese servicemen and two British officers - were rescued after nearly three weeks, the accusations began to fly in a most unmilitary manner about who was to blame. The officers blamed the men for being unfit, cowardly, and unreliable. The men blamed the officers for taking them on such a dangerous trek without proper information and preparation.
In tonight's movie, The Place Of The Dead (Pearl, 9.30pm), British television company London Weekend Television retells the story. The title is what the locals call the spot which expedition leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Neill, decided was suitable for an adventure training exercise. Although the distance the group was intending to travel was only 20 kilometres, in some places the terrain was thick jungle, in others vertical cliffs.
From the beginning, the group split into two, with the pair of officers, Colonel Neill and Major Ronald Foster, trailing with the three hand-picked Hong Kong men they had chosen for the trip.
After that, there are several versions of what happened, but the net result was that this group nearly starved to death after getting lost and disheartened, surviving on water and a third of a biscuit a day. When they were finally rescued, Major Foster sold his story to a British newspaper, claiming his Hong Kong soldiers had been a 'tremendous liability' who had 'acted almost like children'.
There was, eventually, a full investigation which exonerated the poor Hong Kong soldiers, who held their tongues until explaining their position to this newspaper much later.