by Pacific War Uncensored: A War Correspondent's Unvarnished Account of the Fight Against Japan
General Percival had actually served two periods of service in Malaya. The first one was in 1936 as a general staff officer at the headquarters for the Malaya Command, and his brief was to help develop the defences of Singapore Island. On this first spell of duty he told me that he was quickly able to see that the preparations for the defence of Singapore were inadequate, but there was little concern about this from the local population who seemed more concerned about the running of their businesses.
Like myself, General Percival had found that the Malaya Peninsula could be quite an inhospitable environment, but did not necessarily provide the impregnable natural defence to Singapore that many people envisaged. At this time, of course, the Japanese were increasing their influence in the area, and these matters, which I was able to corroborate through my own work, concerned Percival so much that he felt it necessary to record them in a report. I was interested to learn that a year later, when Percival finished his first tour of duty in Malaya, he had handed his report about the defence of Singapore into the War Office.
In spite of highlighting the deficiencies in Singapore’s defence in his report, Percival found that the government was not responsive, and seemed to pin a great deal of faith in a plan that they already had, which was to have the troops already based in Malaya defend the island against any attack from the Japanese until the British fleet arrived. There were various aspects of this plan that appeared to be deficient: one was that Percival considered there to be insufficient numbers of troops in Malaya to defend the peninsula; also, the British fleet would take two or three weeks to get to Malaya and could be delayed by war in Europe.
It seemed to me that the government hoped that a war with Japan could be avoided completely, but this went completely against the evidence that Percival had gathered. I thought back to the reaction my own article had received in Singapore, when it was described by the authorities as being a canard, and could see how single-minded and flawed their belief had been. When Percival returned to Malaya in 1941, having been appointed General Officer in Command, the Japanese influence had increased in the area and the prospect of an attack became all the more real. Like myself, he was dismayed to find that there was little provision for any air cover. More aircraft had been provided but they were mainly older craft that would not necessarily be of any use in the modern battlefield. Percival also agreed with what Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton had told me regarding the lack of naval defence, and deployment of the wrong types of vessel to fight the Japanese.
Since returning to Britain, the general had made it his main endeavour to challenge the official figures and statements that had been made on the defence of Singapore, and the proclamation that the defence of Singapore had been one of the most spectacular disasters to befall the British armed forces. He felt that some views had been put forward by commentators who had little first-hand knowledge of the conditions that existed in Malaya, and the decisions that needed to be made during the defence of Singapore Island were not made. One of his points was that the number of Allied troops defending the island had been overstated by the War Office; in fact Allied troops faced a greater quantity of Japanese soldiers, who were supported by a far superior air and naval force.
These were points that I could appreciate from having made numerous journeys up country into Malaya, both before and after the Japanese invasion. In fact, when faced with this superior force, the Allied troops’ retreat had taken place over ten weeks, in very tough jungle conditions, without the support of a flotilla of ships to help with their evacuation, as had been the case in the three-week retreat from Dunkirk and Mons. Due also to poor communications and confusion, some units had become detached and lost. Circumstances were not helped by the apparent disgruntlement of some of the Indian regiments, who may have been affected by Japanese propaganda. Therefore, rather than being shameful, the resistance put up by the defending troops was truly heroic. Criticism of their efforts was an injustice that General Percival strongly felt needed correcting.
The troops were also ill prepared for defending the island, and this was in spite of the War Office knowing in advance that there was a threat of invasion from the north through the supposed impregnable jungle. As early as 1938, the GOC for Malaya at the time, Major General W.G.S. Dobbie, contacted the War Office and told them about the vulnerability of Singapore to attack from the north, and that the jungle did not provide a natural defence and was indeed passable. No action appeared to be taken regarding this warning, and I had seen for myself the ease with which troops could make their way through certain areas where forestation was not as thick.
Another thing that General Percival took issue with was the continual postponement of a plan to pre-emptively defend against any enemy movement from the north known as Operation Matador. This would have involved occupying southern Thailand, but the delay in implementing the operation seemed mainly for political reasons, and the desire to not provoke any unrest. It would appear, though, that this was more like wishful thinking, and hoping that any potential problems that might interfere with the commercial operations in the area would just go away. However, General Percival was certain that if Operation Matador had been swiftly implemented, the course of events that took place in the Malayan campaign could have been altered.
He gave me a lot of facts and figures, which I combined with material that I had gathered myself during my period in Singapore, and went back to the office to write about our meeting. I found General Percival to be a gentleman, and very scholarly in his appraisal of how the war was conducted in the Far East. However, the level of criticism that he used in refuting official statements and figures I thought was rather tame, and when I returned to London I wrote a very long story about all that had happened. Virgil Pinkley considered this to be important enough to have it copyrighted. The story refuted a lot of the statements that had been made by Winston Churchill, both during and after the fall of Singapore.
I feel very sad to relate that after I had finished my article, none of the London papers printed it, although it did get printed in the Yorkshire Post and in most of the newspapers in the Far East, including those in Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong and above all, in Japan. It also led to a question in Parliament by a Mr. Dodds-Parker, a member of parliament, who asked Winston Churchill if he had read the dispatches by Harold Guard, correspondent of the United Press, regarding the campaign in Singapore and Malaya. Mr. Churchill replied that he had not read the dispatches himself, but from what he heard it would seem that Mr. Harold Guard would be better suited to a chair in Whitehall than a reportorial desk in the United Press.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Post-War
In 1947, life on Fleet Street was extremely busy, and for a time I was heavily involved with a project that the United Press had set up at the time called “The Executive News Service.” It involved me travelling around Europe selling a specialised service to industrial clients, who wanted all types of information. This became quite a big operation until there was a complaint made to the British Board of Industry alleging industrial espionage had taken place. I also covered the breaking news of the independence of Burma, as well as the Royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth. I got involved with the London Olympics the following year, which was not something I felt best qualified to do with my stiff right leg. However, with the threat of being fired still hanging over my head, I was happy to still be in my job in whatever capacity, although as time drew on that problem seemed to gradually subside.
I learnt at this time from the admiralty that the British government had decided to demolish the island of Heligoland up in the North Sea, off the coast of Jutland. During World War Two the Germans had developed Heligoland into a marine base, with heavy batteries of big guns that were a continual menace in the North Sea. The British navy had been given the job of demolishing the base, and a number of British correspondents had been invited to go across to Germany for the occasion. I went up to Hull where I boarded a naval mine sweeper called HMS Albercore, and travel
led across to Cuxhaven, which was a naval base in Germany used for operations in the demolition of Heligoland. There I met a lot of very interesting people, including Richard Dimbleby, who became famous as a BBC commentator and who also reported on the explosion of Heligoland from an aeroplane. The navy told me that 4,000 tons of explosives were going to be used to demolish the gigantic concrete submarine bunkers, pens and heavy gun batteries.
It was a large explosion, and though we were some miles away from the island, we felt the effect of the explosion, and also the huge tidal wave that followed it. The thing that intrigued me most about the operation was that I found out that the British and American governments had established a ring of listening posts, in various parts of Europe and the world, to listen to the effects of the explosion. This seemed to be such an elaborate operation for such a relatively minor explosion, until I later found out that this ring of seismographic stations had been set up not only to form a circle around Heligoland, but Russia as well. The establishment of these listening posts was a cover to listen for the explosion of Russia’s atom bomb, which they knew was going to come at any time.
A lot of changes at the office were taking place, and a whole batch of new staff, mainly American, were brought in to replace all the famous names within the United Press. My position was now safe, and much to my surprise I was assigned to cover The United Nations Conference, due to be held in Paris in 1948. The main topic to be covered was the creation of the State of Israel, which was a subject I had no great knowledge of; I had to do quite a lot of research in advance of my journey. When I attended the conference I found that I came into contact with many interesting characters who were delegates from the African and Arabic states.
I met all sorts of interesting people from Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. They were all fascinating people to talk to, because at that time they were the leaders of what could only be called rebellions in those nations. They were fighting for independence and the liberation of their countries from foreign domination. They used to tell me all about the developments in the Middle East, and the plans on the part of the Arabs to oppose the formation of the State of Israel. Gradually I began to get a better understanding of the issue, which was extremely complicated and still poses problems today. I do not think that it is unfair to say that the meeting of the United Nations was a non-event, and that nothing was settled.
I was delighted in 1949 to become reacquainted with a newspaper correspondent by the name of Patrick Maitland, who I had originally met in Australia and New Guinea. He was an amazing character, a member of a very ancient Scottish family who later on inherited an Earldom, giving him the title of the Earl of Lauderdale. He also had some very serious political ideas, and in the 1951 General Election he won a seat of Parliament for the North Lanark constituency.
One of Patrick Maitland’s projects was to promote an idea that he and a group of other MPs had come up with, called the Commonwealth of Nations. The basic premise of this was to cease the British Commonwealth, and instead have a community of many nations, all of whom were prepared to collaborate with one another. The movement gained quite a lot of momentum during 1951 and 1952, and Patrick Maitland wrote a book about it called, A Task For Giants. I became very interested in the Commonwealth of Nations; I wrote many articles about it, and sought support for it from the many contacts I had made around the world.
I continued to carry out my job at the United Press, covering news stories such as the Festival of Britain and the death of King George VI in 1952. During this time I also began to get invitations from the Foreign Office for a series of “chats.” I was not unfamiliar with the Foreign Office. Bob Scott, who had worked for the Ministry of Information in Malaya, worked there, and from time to time I had sought his help when covering news stories. He had been taken as a prisoner of war in Malaya, and remained there throughout the whole of the conflict. Afterwards, Bob Scott was involved in a lot of discussions and investigations at the Foreign Office about what had happened during the Pacific War. He told me some very interesting stories, and one that I remember in particular related to the sinking of the two British battleships, the Prince of Wales and Repulse.
They had been sunk not far from the Mersing area of Malaya, when they were on their way up the east coast of Malaya to Kota Bharu, where the Japanese landing was taking place. During this journey they got a signal from Singapore saying that there had been a landing further down the coast in the Mersing area. So the ships changed course, and it was during this manoeuvre that they were attacked with torpedoes from Japanese bombers that had been shadowing them. Further investigation into these circumstances showed that there had been no landing in the Mersing area at all, and that it had actually been a false alarm, caused by a buffalo straying onto the beach and setting off some land mines. A succession of explosions had lead to a signal being sent to Singapore reporting a landing, and this had then been passed onto the two ships telling them to change course. It could be said, I suppose, that the Prince of Wales and Repulse had been sunk by a water buffalo!
I was surprised, though, as to how much the people at the Foreign Office knew about me, and during my chats there, frequent reference was made to the news stories I had written, and to the people I had come into contact with at the United Nations in Paris from the Middle East. Eventually they made me a proposal—that I should visit a series of countries around the world, including those from the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East, to make an assessment of what was happening in them. For my journey the RAF would be at my service, to fly me to any point where they were able to go. I was very excited by the proposal, as it meant that I could go back and visit the places where I had worked during the war, including Hong Kong and Singapore. I went back to the United Press office to tell them, and they were keen that I take up the offer, as it would make a great story.
So I started to prepare for my journey, making sure that I had all the relevant documentation, passports, and visas. In February 1953 I was flown out to Malta to meet once more with Lord Mountbatten, who was now the NATO Commander in the Mediterranean. It was like meeting an old friend, as he had remembered me from our previous meeting in India. I talked at length with him about NATO, and what was happening in the various countries that I was to visit. He wanted me to talk to the people in these remote areas, and, as he put it, to “get into the skin” of them, as they may be important to NATO in the future.
From Malta I flew to Cyprus, and then onto Cairo where there seemed to be quite a lot of unrest. The country’s leader at that time was General Neguib, but his leadership was under question and there seemed to be more support from the people for a man called Nasser. Everyone was talking about him; you couldn’t even take a taxi without Nasser’s picture displayed on the dashboard. I met with General Neguib, but he had very little to say, and didn’t strike me as being a particularly powerful leader. It was also apparent to me that there were many American and Russian contractors in the country, all vying for contracts, in particular for the building of a great dam at a place called Aswan.
My next destination was Libya, and as I flew over the desert, the relics of the war were clearly visible below, with burnt-out tanks and the remains of guns, as well as other military equipment. I stayed in Benghazi, and once more I found there a growing feeling of unrest among the population. Oil had only just been discovered there, and it seemed to be at the centre of most of the conflict. The country’s ageing king, King Idris, was under threat from many dissident factions that were looking to take over. I then flew into Sudan, and Khartoum, where arrangements had been made for me to meet with Sir James Robertson, the British Governor. Here the level of unrest was even more in evidence. As I travelled by car to meet him, there were hordes of rebels brandishing spears, which they occasionally banged against the side of the vehicle.
I stayed in Sudan for four days before making my way to Kenya, where there was a big RAF installation not far from Nairobi. The country was in the middle of a terrible up
rising by the native Mau Mau, and I heard some terrible stories about the atrocities that were carried out by them in the jungle. I was taken on a military “sweep,” as they called it, in the area, which was operating against the Mau Mau. In the army patrol that I was with I was given a Sten gun by a young officer who showed me how to fire short bursts from it. I warned him that newspapermen did not fire guns, and that I might not be much help to him in an emergency.
Our patrol went into some tall elephant grass, which was tall enough to obscure the view for many yards in all directions. Occasionally on our patrol I heard shouting and shots being fired, but I could not see a thing and it was only when the patrol was over that I discovered that they had captured about half a dozen Mau Mau fighters. They were fearsome looking people, with their foreheads deliberately caked with mud, and draped in animal skins.
From Kenya I then travelled to a place called Habanya, in Iraq, which I used as a base to make journeys out to the surrounding area. Most of the time it seemed there was trouble brewing. The problems were mainly caused by the disposing of many Palestinians from their homelands, which was a result of the creation of the State of Israel. The United States had come forward in an attempt to alleviate the problems of the Palestinians, with what they called a “Point Four Plan,” designed to give them a lot of financial aid. In a meeting I had with General Sir John Bagot Glubb, commander of the Arab Legion, he told me that three out of every five dollars that was being given as aid to Palestine was being spent on administration. His exact words to me were, “The only thing that the American Point Four Programme had done for the Palestinians was to raise the standard of Bridge playing in Jordan.”
