by Trevor Royle
And from that hell of bloody death they brought our soldiers back.
And women wept in England then with happiness and joy,
And many an English mother ran to welcome home her boy.8
Once back in Britain 1st KOSB re-assembled at Shepton Mallet near Wells in Somerset. The new commanding officer was Lieutenant-Colonel D. C. Bullen-Smith, a future commander of the 51st (Highland) Division.
While the bulk of the BEF was involved in the great escape at Dunkirk, on 1 June a different fate awaited the 51st (Highland) Division which was deployed along a defensive line to the south-west of Abbeville near the mouth of the River Somme. Sixty miles away to the south-west lay the small port of St Valéry-en-Caux, with the road via Dieppe forming a southern boundary. As Brigadier Bernard Fergusson put it in his history of The Black Watch, ‘all the ordeal of the next twelve days was to take place within that modest rectangle’.9 As we have seen, the division had started the war under French command in the Saar region, but following the initial German onslaught they had been compelled to withdraw towards the fortified positions in the French Maginot Line. In the first phase of the German attack on the division’s flanks between 10 and 13 May, 4th Black Watch lost six killed and twenty-five wounded, with a further thirty being taken prisoner.
The speed of the German Army’s armoured assault meant that the division was cut off from the rest of the BEF, and its fortunes were now tied firmly to the French Third Army under the command of General Antoine Besson. During this difficult period it became clear to the British high command that some elements in the French Army were considering suing for peace. As these included the commander-in-chief General Maxime Weygande and Marshal Philippe Pétain, the renowned commander of the First World War, the threat had to be taken seriously. Churchill was determined to keep France in the war at all costs, and that necessity was to play a part in determining the fate of Fortune’s division. If the French were to sue for an armistice, as had been threatened, it would allow their powerful navy to fall into German hands, and make an invasion of Britain more likely. At the same time Churchill wanted to withdraw the bulk of the BEF through Dunkirk, even though that decision gave the impression to the French that their principal ally was withdrawing and leaving them to their fate. As the 51st (Highland) Division continued to pull further back into Flanders the political thinking in London was to have a decisive effect on what happened to them in the days ahead. Basically, Churchill’s policy was to retain the 51st (Highland) Division in France for as long as possible as a means of keeping up pressure on the French to stay in the war.
On 4 June the division supported a French attack made by the remnants of the French armoured and artillery forces along the Mareuil ridge to the south of Abbeville, but although the French fought with great determination they were outnumbered and out-gunned. This was the last full-scale Allied attack of 1940 but even as it took place the last of the BEF was being picked up from the Dunkirk beaches. Whatever the outcome of the attack on the Mareuil ridge, the 51st (Highland) Division was now on its own in France, together with the remnants of the 1st Armoured Division. The following day the Germans launched a fresh offensive along the line between the Somme and the Aisne, and the overwhelming power of their attack sealed the division’s fate as it withdrew to the coast. It was a time of desperate fighting and confusion when men were exhausted both by the need to retreat and to fight a rampant enemy. To the end Fortune hoped to pull his division out through the port of Le Havre, but after almost two weeks of hard fighting, on 12 June he was forced to surrender to his opponents, the German 7th Panzer Division led by General Erwin Rommel. One of the last formations to fight to the end was 1st Black Watch which was surrounded by two German divisions at Houdetot where the Scots were supported by some remnants of the French cavalry. For the commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Honeyman the order to surrender was difficult to accept – the moment was remembered by 2nd Lieutenant (later Brigadier) Angus Irwin, who commanded the Carrier Platoon: ‘As the final attack was coming in, Colonel Honeyman was standing near me and said, “I never thought this would happen. Certainly not that I would ever have to chuck the can in but I’m afraid we’re going to have to give up to save lives because we’re completely surrounded.” He then sent some runners to give the orders to cease-fire.’10
Just as the battalion was one of the last to surrender, so too were its men amongst the last casualties. An hour after the surrender Captain Neil Grant-Duff, commanding C Company, was killed leading his men in a brave but doomed counter-attack. His father had been killed in the First World War while commanding the same battalion. In a last gesture of defiance, 5th Gordons was ordered to make one final effort to clear the cliff-top positions outside the town, but this was forestalled when the French started surrendering in the face of a German tank attack. For one young officer, 2nd Lieutenant Donald Ritchie, who had earlier won the Military Cross, it was a harrowing moment: ‘I was completely overcome by emotion. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I was keyed up to attack this bloody ridge and then the reversal. I’ll never forget Platoon Sergeant Herbie Forsyth giving me a wallop on the back and a bottle of brandy to swig from and saying, “It’s not your fault, sir.” It was a terrible thing and we were completely unprepared.’11
Across the battlefield there were other isolated tragedies. During the fighting at Franleu, A and C Companies of 7th Argylls were quickly over-run, communications collapsed, and the other rifle companies were unable to offer supporting fire. With casualties mounting it quickly became clear that the battalion was incapable of creating a structured defence, and that it had ceased to exist as a fighting entity. The battalion War Diary described it as ‘the blackest day in the history of the battalion’, and this was reflected in the casualties – 23 officers and 500 soldiers killed, wounded or taken prisoner.12 Amongst them was the commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel E. P. Buchanan. Only D Company made it to safety, joining up with A and C Companies of the 8th Battalion which had reached the coast at Ault. Together with other survivors they formed part of a new breakout group known as ‘Arkforce’, after the village of Arques-la-Bataille in which it was formed. Most of the units involved in the operation lacked the carriers and weapons used by the rest of the division, but Arkforce was helped by the Germans’ decision to bomb the fuel tanks in Le Havre, and created a huge smokescreen. On 15 June the Argyll survivors were evacuated, appropriately enough on board the SS Duke of Argyll, an LMS railway ferry which normally operated the Heysham to Belfast route. Others also managed to escape against the odds. Amidst the carnage and the despair the only other bit of good news for the division was the escape of 4th Black Watch and 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers which had fallen back on positions on the River Bresle near Dieppe. Having defended it for three days under heavy German fire, they were able to pull back towards Cherbourg where they were picked up and returned to England.
Later (see Chapter 10), a new 51st (Highland) Division came into being, made up of replacement battalions which took the numbers of those that had been lost at St Valéry. Few families in the Highland counties were left unaffected by what had happened, and for all the regiments this was depressing, yet as the days wore on there came the heartening news that substantial numbers had managed to escape. Amongst them was Captain (later Brigadier) Bill Bradford, the adjutant of 1st Black Watch who slipped away and cycled to the Pyrenees with the intention of breaking into Spain. Arrested by the Vichy French authorities, he escaped again and stowed away on a ship bound for Algiers. From there he and two others crossed the Mediterranean in a small yacht and reached Gibraltar even though none of them had any sailing experience. On his return he joined 5th Black Watch in the reconstituted 51st (Highland) Division.
Even luckier was Captain Derek Lang, 4th Seaforths. Despite being wounded he melted into the French countryside where the French resistance helped him to get to Marseilles. From there he managed to board a ship bound for Beirut, and crossed over into Palestine at the end of the year. He returned to
his regiment and after the war was knighted and promoted to lieutenant-general in command of the army in Scotland. Another prominent escapee was 2nd Lieutenant Chandos ‘Shan’ Blair, 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, who spoke later about the sense of shock and disgrace he felt at being forced to surrender. Determined to escape at the earliest opportunity, he eventually absconded from the notorious Oflag VB camp at Biberach in Baden Württemberg, Germany. While outside the perimeter with a working party he managed to make good his escape, and walked the seventy-five miles to the Swiss border. From there he was given a passport and money which he used to travel to Madrid, and then crossed over to Gibraltar. Like the others, Blair returned to fight another day, and later, like Lang, as Lieutenant-General Sir Chandos Blair he became the senior army commander in Scotland and Governor of Edinburgh Castle.
For the rest, though, the war meant five long years in camps in Germany and Poland where the men were given agricultural work or laboured in coal mines, a dispiriting fate for professional soldiers. Even after the war had long ended a belief lingered that the 51st (Highland) Division had been ‘sacrificed’ unnecessarily, and in 1994 this was the subject of a book written by the historian Saul David. While his contention that the division ‘paid a heavy price for the miscalculations of the Government’ by leaving it under French command is correct, it is also true that General Fortune had little option but to remain with the French Army even when it became clear that the BEF would be withdrawn.13 At the beginning of June his division was at the point of honour, and any precipitate retreat would have been a brutal betrayal of Britain’s main ally. Besides, the 51st (Highland) Division was also undone by the speed and aggression of the German armoured divisions as they swung towards the coast to cut off any escape through Le Havre, and nothing could have prepared them for that.14
One positive thing came out of the experience. Shortly after the soldiers arrived at their prisoner-of-war camp at Oflag VIIC at Laufen, a group of officers devised a dance which became known as ‘The Reel of the 51st Division’. Its dance steps and movements were smuggled back to Scotland where the reel became immensely popular and was danced throughout the country to show solidarity with the imprisoned Highland soldiers. Devised by Lt Jimmy Atkinson, 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the key formation of the dance replicates a St Andrews Cross, the Saltire being the division’s shoulder flash. The reel was soon published by the Perth section of the Scottish Country Dance Society, with funds being raised for the Red Cross. It then entered the society’s repertoire, and it is still danced to this day at ceilidhs and balls, not just in Scotland but also across the world. As it turned out, though, St Valéry was not the only place where Scottish regiments were forced to surrender to the enemy. It also happened in the Far East.
When war broke out in Europe, Japan declared her neutrality even though she had signed an Anti-Comintern pact with Nazi Germany in 1936. However, the country entertained territorial ambitions in China and the western Pacific, and it possessed modern and competent armed forces which were fully capable of realising those ambitions. Throughout the 1930s extreme nationalists had come to play an increasingly important role in Japanese political life as the country’s armed forces became more deeply involved in attacks on China. Following the fall of France, Japan signed the Tripartite Agreement with Germany and Italy, and began making serious preparations for entering the war by occupying the northern half of French Indo-China. By the following year, July 1941, the southern half had been occupied, as was much of southern China. This territorial aggrandisement was met with US demands for moderation but by then it was too late to exert any diplomatic pressure. By October Japanese policy, formulated by Minister for War General Hideki Tojo, had put the country on a war footing, and plans were finalised for launching an offensive which would attack the Allied nations, subdue China and create a Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere incorporating Indo-China, Thailand, Malaya, Burma and the East Indies.
Japan entered the war on Sunday 7 December 1941 with a preemptive air strike on the US Pacific Fleet’s base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, an attack which President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced as a ‘day of infamy’. This was followed in quick succession by further Japanese assaults on the islands of Guam, Wake and Midway, while the Japanese Second Fleet escorted General Tomoyoku Yamashita’s Twenty-Fifth Army to attack the north-west coast of the Malayan peninsula. For the British this was a valuable asset as it produced almost 40 per cent of the world’s rubber and 58 per cent of the world’s tin; it was also the key to Britain’s major naval base at Singapore. The Japanese forces were outnumbered two to one, but the poorly trained defending British and Indian forces were ill-equipped to cope with the speed and ferocity of the Japanese advance, and by 14 December northern Malaya had been over-run. Within a further fortnight the Slim River defensive line had been breached, leaving Singapore at the mercy of the attacking Japanese forces. This was to be one of the biggest setbacks for the Allies at any stage in the war. Too late, the garrison in Singapore had been reinforced, but mostly by raw and untried troops. In 1941 command had been assumed by Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival who had divided the island into three sectors: the southern was held by two Malay and one Straits Settlement volunteer brigades; the western by 8th Australian Division and 44 Indian Infantry Brigade; and the north by 9th and 11th Indian Divisions. Shortly before the Japanese attack, 18th British Division arrived but it took little part in the fighting. There was virtually no air cover and most of it was provided by obsolescent aircraft.
Arrogance also played a part in Singapore’s downfall. There was a generally accepted (though wrong-headed) belief that the base was invincible, and the colony’s social life remained unaffected by the outbreak of war. When Alistair Urquhart arrived from Aberdeen with a draft for 2nd Gordon Highlanders his eyes had been opened to the reality of colonial life in its heyday. Private soldiers were treated with the same casual contempt the British settlers reserved for the Malay and Chinese residents; the prevailing feeling seemed to be that provided you were white and well-connected, social life still went with a swing. Above all, as Urquhart argued in his memoirs, no one believed that the Japanese would have the temerity to attack this invincible bulwark of British interests in southern Asia: ‘The regular soldiers never dreamed that there would be a war in the East. I used to shudder when I thought about it because I knew it would be a calamity. Our officers were in a situation beyond their understanding and our training lacked both skill and urgency. We had no tanks because in its wisdom High Command believed that they were not suited to the terrain.’15 Urquhart was not exaggerating. Some idea of the problems facing 2nd Gordons can be found in an order forbidding them from using their Bren carriers for more than 150 miles a month in case the tracks wore out. The battalion was also obliged to send drafts back to Britain, thereby losing experienced men, and the makeup of the battalion was in a state of constant flux.16
Although Singapore has become a byword for catastrophe in the history of the British Army, some regiments behaved better than others, and gave a good account of themselves during the fighting. Amongst these was 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders which had arrived in August 1939 to form 12 Indian Infantry Brigade with 4/19th Hyderabad Regiment and 5/2nd Punjab Regiment. Before the outbreak of the Second World War the Argylls had begun training for jungle fighting in earnest, and this was intensified in 1940. Not that their efforts were always appreciated by their superiors. In his memoirs Captain A. J. C. Rose remembered being assured by a staff officer in Malaya Command that ‘if we were not drowned in the seasonal rains we would be decimated by malaria’.17 Fortunately, the commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Stewart, was a tremendous enthusiast, and his men were quickly nicknamed ‘Jungle Beasts’ on account of their ability to survive and thrive in the enervating conditions of the Malayan jungle. They also mastered the art of manoeuvring the elderly Lanchester armoured cars equipped with two Vickers machine-guns.
For the battalion the story of the fall of Singapore i
s soon told. During the initial invasion of Malaya, 2nd Argylls was involved in delaying operations as part of the rearguard for 11th Indian Division, and did not engage the Japanese until 17 December at Titi-Karangan where Colonel Stewart ordered Pipe-Major McCalman to play the tune Gabaidh sin an rathad mhor (‘We’ll take and keep the highway’). Later, Stewart recorded that not only was the tune appositely named but that it had been first played after the involvement of the Appin Stewarts at the Battle of Pinkie which was fought in 1547 as part of Henry VIII’s attempt to force a marriage between his son and the infant Mary Queen of Scots. During the fighting at Titi-Karangan the Argylls lost 11 casualties but killed at least 200 enemy soldiers thanks to the Japanese tactics of attacking in ‘human waves’ against superior and disciplined firepower – according to Stewart ‘the perfect answer to a machine-gunner’s prayer’.18
As the Allied forces began their retreat there followed equally bruising encounters at Lenggong, Kota Tampan, Gopeng Dipang and Telok Anson which left 2nd Argylls exhausted and badly depleted. The fiercest fighting took place on the River Slim where the Lanchester armoured cars were no match for the heavier enemy armour. At one stage the battalion was reduced to ninety-four effectives under the command of Major David Wilson. As stragglers came in, the number increased to 250 men who were given the responsibility of guarding the causeway into Singapore. Many of those taken prisoner were either bayoneted or marched into captivity and, given the Japanese attitude to prisoners of war, they faced an uncertain future. At the end of the month Stewart returned to the battalion after a short spell in charge of 12 Brigade, and the battalion was reinforced by 210 Royal Marines who had managed to escape from the earlier sinking of the battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Renown.
Thus was born the composite infantry battalion which was christened the ‘Plymouth Argylls’, a pertinent title given the regiment’s associations with Plymouth, the city in which the marines were based. (The local football team is called Plymouth Argyle and its name could have been derived from the founders’ admiration for the style of football played by The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders when it was based in Plymouth in the 1880s. Another clue is that the team’s dark-green and blue strip mirrored the regiment’s tartan, but an alternative derivation could have been the name of the public house in which the founders first met.) Stewart renewed intensive training but time was running out for the exhausted and demoralised remnants of the Allied armies. On 8 February the Japanese started crossing from Johore into Singapore territory, and within three days had gained a substantial foothold as Percival’s forces moved back into the perimeter. During this period the Plymouth Argylls moved north up the Bukit Timah Road towards the airfield at Tengah. Two days of intense fighting followed during which the Argylls and the marines came under heavy aerial bombardment, and attack by Japanese medium tanks. On Friday 13 February the Japanese intensified their assault by shelling the civilian areas, a move which caused great damage and created large numbers of casualties. By then it had become clear to Percival that further resistance was futile: water supplies were running low, and a defensive battle would only cause unacceptable numbers of civilian casualties.
