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THE ARMED SERVICES AND AUXILIARY SERVICES
Malaysia and Indonesia, and its cessation, has had its effect on service training and commitments.
During the four days of the Kowloon disturbances, an account of which is given in Chapter 10, over 2,000 troops from 12 units were put at readiness or deployed in Kowloon. Their tasks ranged from enforcing curfews and cordoning areas to escorting civilian bus drivers, fire fighting and helping to re-establish essential services. The Army moved 58 abandoned buses from Nathan Road on the morning of 8th April. The particularly close relations which are maintained between the armed forces and the police contributed greatly to the speed and certainty with which action was taken.
On Sunday 12th June the armed forces were called upon to assist the civil authorities in dealing with the emergency created by the unprecedented rainstorm of that morning. Many hundreds of troops using picks and shovels, as well as the considerable engineering equipment of the garrison, were kept busy clearing blocked roads and repairing damage. A Bailey bridge in Sek Kong village stood for several months as a reminder of these efforts to restore the Colony's road communications. Helicopters of the Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force and the Army were used for reconnaissance and for supplying inaccessible areas, assisted by a detachment of six helicopters from HMS Eagle and one from HMS Hampshire, which were visiting Hong Kong at the time. A large-scale rescue operation was mounted by 48 Gurkha Infantry Brigade to move several hundred people by boat in the flooded Yuen Long area, while units of the Hong Kong and Kowloon Garrison, with the Hong Kong Regiment, helped to restore communications to isolated parts of Hong Kong Island.
Confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia ended on 17th August, bringing to an end the continuous rotation of forces through the Colony to and from Malaysia. During 1966 three infantry battalions, the First Battalions of the Royal Hampshire Regiment, the Green Howards and the Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers, each spent an average of three months in Hong Kong while training for operations in Malaysia. Four resident units, the First Battalions of the Queens Own Buffs and of the 2nd, 6th and 10th Gurkha Rifles, did at least one operational tour, and the minesweepers of the 8th