The Story of a Forgotten War. In June 1948, a group of Chinese Communists walked into the office of a rubber plantation in Malaya and shot dead the British manager. It sparked off a war that lasted 12 years and cost many thousands of lives. Piers Plowrighttells the story of the Malayan Emergency through the memories of the Communists, the locals and the British. He also tells his personal story of serving in the Malayan jungle. In his first return trip there, Plowright confronts his past and finds out how the local people, as well as former British servicemen, look back on this time. Producer Vanessa Harrison