Hero or Deserter?

by Roger Maynard

  About the Book

  Major-General Gordon Bennett played a decisive role in the defence of Malaya and Singapore in World War II. A colourful character, known to sport a straw hat with a rainbow scarf tied around it, his officers found him at times abrasive and cocky, but he was also known as an outstanding commander.

  He is, however, best remembered for his escape by boat from Singapore in the dying days of the Japanese invasion, which led to the imprisonment of 15,000 Australian servicemen.

  Bennett’s decision to leave his men to their fate is one of the most controversial episodes in the fall of the island. Though he was exonerated by Prime Minister John Curtin on his return to Australia, the 8th Division’s commander was never forgiven by the military’s top brass for what many viewed as a clear case of desertion. While Bennett alone cannot be blamed for the defeat – there were many other factors, including Britain’s military failings in both tactics and defence – he was and remains a ready scapegoat.

  In this vivid and comprehensive history of the 8th Division and its stoic force of fighting men, Roger Maynard investigates their conflicted leader, whose reputation as an outstanding soldier was shattered by war’s end. He also examines Bennett’s legacy through the prism of today’s military standards to establish whether he was, indeed, a hero or deserter.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Maps

  Dedication

  Introduction

  1. The Early Days

  2. Readying for War

  3. ‘Give Us More Men’

  4. Attack, Attack, Attack

  5. ‘It Was a Bloody Show, I Can Tell You’

  6. Kill or Be Killed

  7. ‘If Anyone Tells You They Weren’t Frightened, They’re a Bloody Liar’

  8. A Terrible Revenge

  9. ‘We’ll Blow Them All Away’

  10. The Battle Must Be Fought to the Bitter End

  11. Singapore Crumbles – The Getaway Begins

  12. ‘I Could Not Fall into Japanese Hands’

  13. Deserters or Stragglers?

  14. Inside Changi

  15. All at Sea

  16. Bennett’s Fall from Grace

  17. Living Cadavers in Filthy Rags

  18. Bennett Pleads His Case

  19. Rallying to Bennett’s Defence

  Epilogue

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  Index of Searchable Terms

  Picture Section

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Roger Maynard

  Copyright Notice

  This book is dedicated to Arthur Kennedy, Bart Richardson, Jack Boardman and Noel Harrison, who lived to tell the tale, and to all the men of the 8th Division who have shared their memories.

  INTRODUCTION

  The men of the 8th Division woke with aching hearts as dawn broke over Singapore on 15 February 1942. The city was in chaos; both military and civilians had suffered heavy casualties over the previous 24 hours. Fuel, food and ammunition supplies were running low and the army hierarchy was faced with the inevitability of surrender.

  These were tense times. The enemy had already been sighted advancing past Pasir Panjang towards Singapore’s commercial hub and, despite heavy shelling from the Australian military, enemy troops continued to progress along Bukit Timah Road. The Japanese seemed unstoppable and the Allies knew it.

  With no firm plans for their defence, Australian and British commanders chose to call a meeting at Fort Canning to discuss strategy. Senior officers with Malaya Command, including Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival and Major-General H. Gordon Bennett as well as representatives from the civil service, were to assemble at the heavily fortified military bolthole at 11 am.

  Bennett, conscious of the risk of aerial bombardment, ditched his staff car and requisitioned a truck to ferry him there. His aide-de-camp, Gordon Walker, took the wheel. The two men drove up to the security gate to be informed that only generals’ cars were to be admitted to the compound. The sentries on duty couldn’t believe that the commander of the 8th Division would turn up in an old utility and not a gleaming, chauffeur-driven limo, so at first refused to let him through.

  Doubtless Bennett’s sharp tongue quickly changed their mind and he was let through. Inside the building the atmosphere was as gloomy as the poorly lit interior. Overnight there had been reports of intense bombing, with roads and buildings suffering extensive damage. To add to the growing anarchy, a number of prisoners had been released from jails on the island, and some had attacked the police who were trying to maintain order. Bennett revealed he had even heard that the ex-inmates had bombed detectives, though how they had obtained the explosives was unclear.

  By the time the Allied top brass assembled around the table, it was obvious that the days of British rule over Singapore were numbered. How much longer could they hold out?

  A.H. Dickinson, Inspector General of the Straits Settlement Police, and Brigadier Ivan Simson, whose local role was as the British Army’s Chief Engineer, painted a hopeless picture of a city in disarray. The emergency services were so depleted that they were unable to rescue those trapped and injured in fallen buildings.

  The number of casualties was so high that nobody could provide a reliable estimate of the total. At one of the few operating civilian hospitals, medical staff and patients had been without water for the previous 24 hours. Indeed water and food supplies were practically non-existent among the civilian population. Overall the army had only enough to feed themselves for the next three days, although the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was said to be in a slightly better position, with an estimated 15 days of food supplies and 400 rounds of artillery ammunition per gun.

  It was morale that posed the biggest challenge. An unknown number of battle-weary stragglers – both soldiers and civilians – was now roaming those parts of Singapore which had already fallen to the enemy or were about to. Percival, like most of the others in the room, was clearly exhausted. Unable to conceal his despair any longer, he produced a letter signed by the Japanese commander, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who advised him that he had no choice but to surrender. Yamashita even outlined the way the Allies should relay their response. Hoist a white flag atop Government House and then drive down Bukit Timah Road in a car flying a white flag and the Union Jack.

  Accepting that capitulation was inevitable, Percival and those assembled around the table agreed to ask for a ceasefire at 3.30 pm and an unconditional surrender. They also wanted to retain some of their own troops under arms in an effort to keep law and order. The rest of their equipment would be destroyed so that it would be of no use to the enemy.

  The military and civilian chiefs shuffled uncomfortably in their seats as Percival brought the meeting to a close. Afterwards Bennett was driven back to his HQ at Tanglin Barracks, where he summoned his lieutenants to brief them on the latest developments.

  The news came as no surprise to most of them, who realised that the sacrifice of so many lives could not continue. The dead and injured were littering the streets and the number of Allied troops still able to wage war had dramatically reduced.

  One man, however, refused to accept the inevitable. He was thinking along very different lines. Major-General Gordon Bennett, while realising that his men were about to become prisoners of war, was in no mood to share their fate. Secretly, and with the connivance of a few brother officers, the commander of the 8th Division was privately planning his escape. As he later recalled in his wartime memoir: ‘I had determined I would not fall into Japanese hands.’1 His idea was to pass through enemy lines west of Bukit Timah village following the end of hostilities and get away to the
mainland by boat. Once ashore he would make his way north to Malacca or Port Dickson, where he would hire a fishing vessel to take him the 50 miles (80 km) to Sumatra. It was a dangerous strategy but Bennett thrived on risk.

  Apart from anything else, he viewed it as his duty to escape to tell the Australian government what had happened on the Malay Peninsula and more specifically how it could have been avoided. Above all, Bennett was in no mood to accept responsibility for the military debacle that had taken place between 8 December 1941 and 15 February 1942. And he was determined to get his own version in first.

  In truth he was not the only member of the Allied forces planning to leave Singapore and attempt a last dash for freedom. As thousands of Australian and British servicemen roamed the island, many of those separated from their units made for the harbour in the hope of bagging a berth on a commercial liner or native vessel. Eyewitness accounts of the time talk of men barging and pushing their way on board. Women and children certainly didn’t come first. It was not the Allies’ finest hour. There was widespread looting, drunkenness and a total breakdown of military discipline.

  Although Bennett made it back to Australia, not all of the escape attempts were successful. Many of the fleeing vessels were sunk at sea by the Japanese Navy or Air Force, those on board captured by the enemy in Java and either executed or sent back to Singapore to spend the rest of the conflict as prisoners of war. Come the Allies’ surrender, around 15,000 Australians found themselves prisoners of war in Singapore, many of whom were to die in labour camps on the Burma–Thai Railway, in Sandakan and Japan. Those servicemen who were fortunate enough to make it back to Australia were often ostracised by the community or by their comrades-in-arms when they eventually got home.

  Bennett himself, who had anticipated a hero’s welcome on his return, was to be sorely disappointed. While Australia’s Prime Minister, John Curtin, praised the commander’s actions, many of Bennett’s fellow officers on the army staff were highly critical of his behaviour. Some believed his motivation had more to do with saving his own skin than bringing back important information about the enemy’s military strategy to aid the government’s war effort.

  A few even used the dreaded D word. Whether or not Gordon Bennett could be classified as a deserter depended on how the law was interpreted. If he had been officially a prisoner of war at the time he slipped away, he was legally obliged to try to escape. But if he was not, he could only have left his post legally if his superiors had allowed him to do so. And so far as Major-General Percival was concerned, no such permission had been granted.

  But was Bennett under the authority of the British General Officer Commanding (GOC)? Or as commander of Australia’s 8th Division, was he his own boss and did not have to answer to the British?

  Then there was the question of the timing of the surrender. When the British agreed to a ceasefire to take effect from 8.30 pm on 15 February, did this constitute a surrender under the terms of international law? If so then Bennett, who left sometime around 10 pm, may have been within his rights. But not everyone was convinced that the Allied troops officially became prisoners of war at 8.30 pm. Many have since argued that the surrender happened much later, after all the men had downed arms and completed the long march to Changi, where they were classified as POWs.

  Regardless of the legal niceties, Bennett’s actions and the subsequent inquiries into the rights and wrongs of his escape captivated Australians for decades. There can be no more damning an indictment of an officer’s behaviour than that he deserted his men. That when the chips were down he turned his back on the soldiers he was there to lead and protect.

  Sadly the case of Major-General H. Gordon Bennett has also left a stain on the division he commanded. His name has become synonymous with a military controversy that refuses to die. The events surrounding his departure and the fall of Singapore have tended to overshadow a courageous fighting force who have been much maligned over the years.

  Their courage and sacrifice in the face of Japanese might is without question. Yet this has not deterred a few historians and armchair generals from condemning these brave men as an ill-disciplined rabble led by an irascible, unpredictable and pompous man who was not up to the job.

  Is this assessment of Bennett fair or is it a gross calumny on an individual who was also smart, innovative, dogged, inspirational and always determined to take the battle to the enemy? His strategy was always attack, attack, attack. Retreat was never part of his lexicon. Here was a soldier who had served with distinction in World War I, becoming a general at 29, a man who had carved out a successful career in civvy street during the 1920s and ’30s and whose military ambitions were so driven that he even wrote to then Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, offering his services as the 8th Division’s top-ranking officer.2

  There were, however, two hindrances to Bennett’s lofty career objectives. Firstly the poor relations he had with staff officers, who looked down on Bennett for leaving the army after World War I, even though he continued to play a role in the Army Reserve which was more generally known as the militia. And secondly his lifelong beef with arch-rival Sir Thomas Blamey, who in 1939 was given command of the 6th Division of the AIF in the Middle East.

  The two men originally fell out over a comparatively trivial incident in which Blamey accused Bennett of pushing him into a horse trough during a training exercise in 1912. Bennett denied his involvement, insisting it was a case of mistaken identity. Then in 1916, when both were serving in France, Blamey infuriated Bennett by reducing the number of days on his leave pass, which he had obtained in order to get married in London. The mean-spirited deed was never forgiven by Bennett, leading to a lifetime of rivalry and animosity between the men.

  Through such acts of disharmony are friendships fractured and careers endangered. While the hand of fate might fashion crucial moments in history, much more minor events can sometimes have an equal impact.

  Such is the case of Major-General H. Gordon Bennett, whose life was plagued by crises great and small and whose name will go down in history as one of the most unconventional and controversial leaders in Australian military history. Yet for all the criticism he attracted, the men who served under him remained surprisingly loyal. He may have left them to get on with it after the fall of Singapore, but when the POWs of the 8th Division sailed into Sydney Harbour after the war some had signs declaring their loyalty to Bennett, who was at the dockside to greet them.

  At Bennett’s funeral in 1962, thousands lined the streets to honour him as the cortege left St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney. Was this the response of a people who viewed Bennett as a deserter? Clearly not. They were paying their respects to a man whose career was prematurely terminated by an officer class who took issue with his behaviour and, rightly or wrongly, made him pay for it for the rest of his life.

  As to the conduct of the men of the 8th Division, history speaks for itself. The division had also sent battalions to Ambon, Timor and Rabaul, three smaller theatres of war which also took their toll. Hostilities on the Malay Peninsula, Singapore Island, Ambon, Timor and Rabaul claimed the lives of more than 10,000 men from the 8th Division, a quarter of them killed in action. During the Malay–Singapore campaign, 73 per cent of those who died in battle were members of the 8th Division, a figure all the more astounding given that they represented only 13 per cent of the Allied forces. Their extraordinary sacrifice is remembered every year on 15 February in Sydney’s Martin Place and other sites around the country, when the 8th Division Association holds a service and wreath-laying ceremony to honour those who fell and the courage of those who survived to tell the tale.

  The year 2017 saw the last such service. As the number of members has dwindled, the Association decided that the 75th anniversary commemoration of the fall of Singapore would be the last. But the division’s rich history will endure, as will the controversy surrounding the man who led them.

  Gordon Bennett was a remarkable leader. Cocky, short-tempered, selfish, argumentative
, distrustful – he was all of these. His life was an extraordinary adventure which, for good or ill, was to have a dramatic impact on the 8th Division. Their histories are entwined, their legacies forged on events which spanned much of the 20th century and part of the 19th, when Henry Gordon Bennett entered the world.

  This is their story.

  Chapter 1

  THE EARLY DAYS

  Henry Gordon Bennett – who always answered to Gordon – was born in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne on Friday 15 April 1887 in Balwyn. In those days it was a semi-rural area, green and lightly wooded. It was a tightly knit community, with its own post office and school. Gordon’s father, George, who was born in South Africa, was the village headmaster, which meant the family lived in the schoolhouse.

  Australia was a different country in the latter years of the 19th century. If you lived in this part of the world you saw yourself as a resident of the colony of Victoria, whose namesake was to reign supreme as sovereign for another quarter of a century. People knew their place and respected those above them. In Balwyn’s hierarchy the Bennetts were near the top of the ladder.

  There were nine kids from two marriages (George’s first wife died). Gordon was the eldest child from his father’s second marriage and inherited many of his dad’s characteristics, including his enormous energy, fierce patriotism and glowing pride in a job well done. Those who knew Gordon well also detected a hint of precociousness in his behaviour, a quality that would make him unpopular in later years.