by Peter Brune
There were large quantities of defence stores in Singapore and up country which had been shipped out in 1938–39. They included steel loopholes for pillboxes, sandbags, pickets, old and the latest types of barbed wire, including much high tensile steel anti-tank Dannert wire . . . The War Office had shipped such materials to Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, Singapore, etc., knowing that after war had started, there was invariably a strain on shipping and shipping routes to such oversea garrisons.54
In essential terms, therefore, General Percival had the materials at hand. Simson’s third point was profound—he gave five historical examples of ‘constructing permanent and field defences whilst time, labour, supervision and material were available and long before the defences were needed’.55 The five examples were Torres Vedras (1810), Sebastopol (1854–55), Port Arthur (1904), field defences used by both sides during the First World War, and the Givenchy Redoubt (1915–18). But it was the Port Arthur example that should have hit home to Percival. Simson pointed out that the Japanese attacked Port Arthur with no warning and no declaration of war; that Japan had its air bases in Indo-China within range of Malaya and Singapore; that the below strength RAF and no naval presence would not prevent enemy landings ‘up country’; and that the Russians at Port Arthur had held out for nine months. These points made, Simson then made his recommendations:
1 Anti-tank and machine gun positions in depth across roads and railways at as many natural defiles down the Malaya peninsula as possible; to prevent deep tank penetration as had occurred in France in 1940. I had noted many such natural defiles on my tours and I now indicated them on the map. Also I recommended detailed demolition plans to be prepared in advance and mine chambers built for all major bridges. Since they had already used tanks in China, it was expected that the Japanese would use them in Malaya, should they attack.
2 Any of the above positions selected to have some flank protection. Some flanks could be canalized for ambushes; others blocked by anti-personnel mines. Additional protection would be barbed wire, trip wires, booby-traps and such-like, all aimed at forcing casualties, delay and longer detour on the enemy and warning by the explosions. I specified some points where our flanks could be thrown forward to ambush the main enemy advance along the road or railway from three sides. In other positions the flanks could be refused.
3 A complete ring of permanent and field defences round Johore Bharu to keep the naval base out of shell range. A detailed reconnaissance had found several M.G. pillboxes in jungle about a mile or two apart near Kota Tinggi. This was the line now suggested for full development with flanks on the sea and Johore Straits. The history of these pillboxes was unknown to the G.O.C., B.G.S., or myself. Years later from the Official History (p. 16), I learned that they were built in 1939 by General Dobbie when G.O.C. His successor (General Bond) must have stopped this work as the Official History records that only £23,000 out of £60,000 allotted by the War Office was actually spent.
4 For the north shore of Singapore Island covering the waters and opposite shores of the Johore Straits, I proposed field and permanent defences in depth consisting of mutually supporting wire trenches, switch lines, pillboxes and various underwater obstacles, mines, petrol fire traps, anchored but floating barbed wire, and methods of illuminating the water at night. Rivers and mouths of rivers up country could be provided with similar defences also. The idea was that the water surface and shore line should always be the main killing ground.
5 To organise Chinese and Malays into guerrilla bands to operate behind enemy spearheads. To use various aboriginal tribes as guides and to give warning of enemy movement through the jungle.56
There is but one flaw in Simson’s argument. He mentioned to Percival that the labour requirements for his proposed fortifications could be acquired by ‘civil labour directly, or under contract’. As Percival’s biographer has claimed, Percival had tried to grapple with ‘the stranglehold which the Treasury maintained, via the War Office, on every aspect of expenditure in Malaya Command’.57 And the main problem was the poor rates of pay that the Colonial Office was prepared to pay—rates of pay that prohibited significant local labour recruitment.
Of all the service appreciations during the interwar period, there was but one measured and practical effort: that by General Dobbie. It was Dobbie who, in 1938, had made an accurate assessment of the Japanese options for the assault on Singapore via the Malay Peninsula; it was Dobbie who had tested his appreciation by exercises during the north-east monsoon (October–March); and, critically, it was Dobbie who had identified southern Johore as the vital ground.
On the basis of this appreciation, Dobbie had rightly concluded that a line of fortifications across southern Johore would give his limited and largely untrained garrison a set-piece defence of that vital ground; that such a location for these fortifications would offer protection for much of Singapore’s vital water supply; place Japanese artillery out of range of Singapore Island; and further, and most importantly, his line would severely restrict the Japanese from outflanking him from the sea by landings behind his line. Such a strategy would still enable him to defend northern air bases to some degree, by the posting of garrison forces at those localities. And this was a plan that would be relatively easy to enhance if future aircraft and more troops became available. General Percival had been Dobbie’s GSO1 and, as such, had planned and written this appreciation. To Percival’s credit the Japanese were destined to almost exactly conform to his appreciation.
Such a policy still allowed for a naval base servicing a fleet if it came, and still allowed for an RAF-dominated defence of Malaya and Singapore if it became reasonably resourced. Dobbie’s plan was the only arrangement that covered the failure of both and the reality of events as they existed at the time. Professional appreciations are easy to make—having a plan that is based on one’s existing resources and the quality of manpower is a much harder but more realistic exercise.
The pages of history bear ample testimony to the fact that after the senior commander, the most important soldier in a fortress is the chief engineer. And Percival had a newly posted, highly trained and motivated chief engineer on his staff: Ivan Simson. In his The Chain of Disaster, Kirby says that:
Percival refused point blank to consider these [Simson’s] proposals. He cannot be held entirely to blame for his refusal at a time when both Brooke-Popham and the Governor held the view that the danger of war with Japan was remote or even had passed. He was clearly committed to a defence plan approved by the War Office; he had great difficulty in getting financial approval for any expenditure, the wholesale construction of defences would have needed War Office policy and financial approval, and labour was in short supply. He knew that the civil administration would offer every objection to the construction of defences, both because they would be bound to encroach on private property, and on the grounds that his proposals were a sign that the army did not intend to fight for northern Malaya, the old cry that had bedevilled the deliberations of the War Committee throughout 1940.58
It has been established earlier in this chapter that Brooke-Popham had no control over the administration or finance of the army or RAF in Singapore. Besides, as Simson has pointed out, much of the material for his lines of fortifications had already been delivered to Singapore by the War Office in 1938–39. Further, the War Office could hardly have complained about building a line of fortifications in southern Johore and at key defiles along the north–south communications axis, enhancing airfield defences and deploying garrison troops at airfields, since they had in fact posted Simson to Singapore with express orders to improve fortifications. Kirby’s point concerning the civil administration’s possible complaints is thin to say the least—Percival was not responsible to the civil administration for either his policy or its implementation.
But the one real problem remained a labour supply for the construction of the fortifications. There could only have been one plausible—if undesirable—solution: to employ the limited available labou
r and machinery, along with the over 80 000 troops themselves. What was needed was a dynamic, determined, inventive approach. Percival seems to have possessed none of these traits. His failure to rapidly employ Simson on a coordinated, large-scaled and urgent building of fortification construction flew in the face of his former GOC’s (Dobbie) appreciation and their own joint plan.
The term ‘jungle training’ is misleading prior to, during, and for that matter, for at least a year after the Malayan/Singapore Campaign. The term ‘doctrine’ is essentially the repository of military knowledge.59 The truth is that there was no great jungle doctrine or repository of knowledge concerning jungle warfare in December 1941. Given that General Percival had only one second-grade and one third-grade staff officer in charge of his training at Malaya HQ, his task was always going to be difficult—and not helped of course, by the fact that their junior credentials gave them no direct access to their GOC. But there were two answers to Percival’s dilemma, and they existed in his own command: one British and one Australian. We will examine the Australian source in the next chapter.
There was only one real way of acquiring a jungle doctrine: train rigorously in it, apply the principles of war to its unique environment, and thereby begin the task of obtaining a repository of knowledge. Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Stewart had been promoted to command of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in February 1940. Of slim physique and known as ‘Busty’ to his predominately Scottish troops, Stewart was a born leader. While other British battalions were performing standard drills and often confining themselves to the confined and repetitious garrison work of service on Singapore Island, Stewart was confronting the potential for war in a new environment.
The inactive troops on Singapore Island christened the Argylls ‘the jungle beasts’ and derided their commander as having had ‘a touch of the sun’, and when Malaya Command proclaimed that the Kranji River on Singapore Island could not be crossed by infantry, Stewart and the Argylls promptly ‘staged a battalion exercise, and got the whole lot across the horrid muddy affair’.60 If all this was poor enough, it was the attitude of a number of senior officers in Singapore that displayed the ignorance, lethargy and sheer ineptitude to the question of training for war in Malaya. When Stewart had the gall to challenge the notion that Singapore might not hold out until relieved by the Royal Navy, a brigadier told him ‘to shut up and sit down, adding for good measure that everyone regarded his ideas as dangerous fanaticism’.61 But the most damning indictment of Percival’s attitude to training comes from the Chief Engineer, Ivan Simson. After having had a fruitful interview with Stewart concerning his thoughts on tactics, Simson then met with Percival and his BGS Brigadier Torrance: ‘I mentioned this meeting to General Percival and Brigadier Torrance in late November, only to be told by Torrance, without any remark from the General, that Stewart’s ideas on jungle training were those of a crank.’62
It is well worth summarising what the ‘crank’ had discovered. Stewart quickly ascertained that the jungle was not impassable and that six months provided adequate training time in it; that it was ideal for the attacker, since it offered ‘a universal covered approach’;63 that most of the standard doctrine of defence applicable elsewhere—‘good fields of fire, secure flanks, and above all, secure communications’—did not apply in the jungle if the commander’s control was broken. And his words concerning this issue were prophetic:
The jungle enormously increases the difficulties of control at all levels, for it prevents even visual means beyond the section. In Malaya, too, there was no wireless within battalions, while maps and compasses were lamentably short. Control, therefore, depended entirely on keeping open the single artery of the road. It became absolutely the dominant tactical feature, the only one to attack or defend. The battle was always for control, and therefore always for ‘the road’.64
Given his appraisal, Stewart also identified the exact Japanese tactics that were to be used in Malaya:
Control can be cut either by encircling attack on to the road, or by ripping it up by frontal attack straight down the road . . . itself. Such a narrow frontage allows of great concentration of artillery and other resources, and has the effect of scattering the enemy into the jungle on either side, where all means of control are lost.65
After this description of the Japanese tactics—which came to pass—Stewart then examined the best means of countering them. He saw the answer in ‘Tiger patrols’, which were three to five soldiers trained to venture out into the jungle and ‘lie in wait on the enemy’s road, there to attack his control and morale’.66 It would later be found that while Stewart’s ‘Tiger patrols’ were entirely feasible, such tactics were applicable to much larger sized forces, from platoons to battalions. And that notion implied ambush on varying scales. Ivan Simson: ‘The Australians sprang a most effective ambush along these lines at Gemas . . . but it was apparently the only one during the campaign. This could well have been repeated in many defiles both north and south of Gemas.’67
However, in basic terms, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Stewart and his Argylls were applying common sense to the question of jungle fighting—they engaged in cross-country movement through the jungle and living in it ‘for days at a time’68; wide encircling movements were practised; control of varying sized forces was rehearsed; and even the ration establishment and the value of hot sweet tea ‘five times a day’69 was recognised and later applied with great success during the campaign.
According to Simson, Stewart had, during their meeting, also foreseen the potential for static lines of defence:
There were only two places in all Malaya where static defences would have had no real flanks to go around without the enemy coming under fire from other defences:
(a) General Dobbie’s concept of the line in front of Johore Bahru and Kota Tinggi, and
(b) The north shore of Singapore Island.
In both cases the flanks rested on the sea, but neither defensive position was ever developed, though both were repeatedly suggested.70
In blunt terms, General Percival had a magnificent jungle training tool and the latest British Army engineering skills for a set-piece defence right under his very nose. He quite simply failed to identify them, much less employ them.
We have identified the extreme degree of difficulty that confronted General Percival during his seven-month period of command in Singapore and Malaya prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The varied quantity and quality of his resources—in terms of his soldiers and their equipment—have also been examined. It has also been noted that his staff was small and, in key areas such as training, of poor quality. But we have also highlighted the units in his command that did possess the necessary standards of unit training that would have allowed them to then train in the jungle and prepare themselves for demanding operations such as Matador and Krohcol.
However, the really damning indictment of Percival’s command was his absolute failure to marshal his best troops for either defence or attack from prepared, static defensive positions at defiles along the Malay Peninsula and the critical defence line in Johore. Further, as identified, his Indian Army battalions were best suited to a static role along the Johore Line or on Singapore Island—and perhaps, at some defiles along the Malay Peninsula. The comprehensive jungle training of his best units—the 22nd and 27th Australian Brigades, the British battalions on Singapore Island, and the Leicesters and Surreys—would have given him both a strong offensive weapon and a dogged defensive one. But they were not allowed to deploy their newly acquired skills. Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Stewart was, after all, a ‘crank’, and Brigadier Ivan Simson was simply a redundant voice in the wilderness.
The truth is that none of the constructive criticisms mentioned in this work constitutes brilliant military thought; none is revolutionary in design or in suggested execution; all were staring Percival in the face; and all were, in a large measure, either a part of, or a consequence of, thinking that had been initiated by Dobbie and Percival himself years b
efore. And, critically, they were suggested to him at the time. The truth is that to a large, and damning, degree the excessive complacency, the lack of thought and purpose so rampant amongst the civil administration had spread to the armed services in Malaya Command and amongst many of its formations. And, according to Lieutenant-Colonel Galleghan, 2/30th Battalion, there was ‘an unrealistic atmosphere . . . before Pearl Harbour [sic]’. As late as August 1941, he was requested by the British at Changi to stop playing reveille because ‘it would wake British officers’ wives . . .’.71
6
INTERNAL DISSENSION
On 28 February 1941, the Deputy Chief of the Australian General Staff (DCGS), Major-General John Northcott, arrived at Bennett’s HQ with the disconcerting news that the 8th Division was to remain scattered: Brigadier Taylor’s 22nd Brigade Group was stationed in Malaya; the 23rd Brigade’s three battalions were to be deployed at Darwin, Ambon and Timor; and the 27th Brigade’s probable destination was Alice Springs. Northcott then told Bennett that he (Bennett) must ‘either arrange with Malaya Command to take over an area command in Malaya, or return to Australia to take command of the larger part of the division’.1
Bennett’s response was both immediate and understandable. In his diary he noted that: ‘I must expect to stay here unless Japanese situation cleared up. I asked that a complete Div HQ be formed here or alternatively my DHQ be sent from Aust & that I be authorised to form a complete Base HQ. He said he would recommend it to Mil Bd [Military Board].’2 At this meeting Bennett also asked Northcott for a casualty clearing station, more equipment, interpreters of Japanese, certain staff officers including Colonel Derham, his senior medical officer, a VD hospital and various reinforcements.3 Three days later, in an effort to bolster his chances of securing his requests to Northcott, Bennett cabled Melbourne requesting further units including a second infantry brigade and a pioneer battalion. The next day, 4 March 1941, he sent yet another letter to Sturdee requesting again that his 8th Division be kept intact; he sent a letter to Brigadier Callaghan, his artillery commander, urging his support for these issues in Australia, and yet another to the secretary to the Minister for the Army, H. V. Howe, who had been one of his First World War staff officers. On 11 March, Bennett received news from General Sturdee that his force in Malaya would not be increased, but his staff there was enhanced later that month by the arrival of Major Wilfred Kent Hughes, his Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster-General.
