Descent into Hell: The fall of Singapore - Pudu and Changi - the Thai Burma railway

by Peter Brune

  On Christmas Day, the British War Office ordered that the British 18th Division’s 53rd Brigade was to sail from Cape Town straight to Singapore, and by the onset of the New Year, the whole Division was committed to sail from Bombay as reinforcements. But there were problems with the deployment of the British 18th Division to Singapore, just as there had been with the Indian reinforcements. The 18th Division had been earmarked for the Middle East and it was anticipated that its training would be completed there. However, because both its task and destination had been changed, the 18th Division was to leave for Singapore without transport and supporting arms. Moreover, to compound these problems, its soldiers would face the inevitable problem of being inactive during weeks at sea and then face the additional challenge of acclimatisation.

  In addition to these troop reinforcements, Middle East Command was ordered to send the 7th Armoured Brigade and the Australian Government was asked to approve the despatch of the I Australian Corps—the 6th and 7th Divisions—to the Dutch East Indies. The truth is that the Australian Corps and the 7th Armoured Brigade were the only proficiently trained and battle-hardened formations chosen for Malaya and Singapore’s reinforcement—and yet they were the last to be moved. In all this, Kirby has made a most critical point: ‘The difficulties of finding shipping and the need for speed . . . led the Chiefs of Staff to select those formations which were immediately available and nearest to the scene of operations, regardless of their fighting value.’54

  If serious mistakes were made by the British War Office with regard to the standard of reinforcements, the Australian Army stands even more culpable. Its response to the plea for a further commitment would be the deployment of the 4th Machine Gun Battalion and about 1800 infantry reinforcements. Both parties were destined to arrive in Singapore on 24 January 1942.

  The 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion was raised in Western Australia in November 1940 and had been trained there and in South Australia before being posted to Darwin. Thus, when it arrived in Singapore in late January 1942, the Battalion had received around fourteen months’ training, which was comparable with units throughout the AIF. But the quality of many of the roughly 1800 infantry reinforcements sent with the machine gunners was a disgrace. Major Wilfred Kent Hughes, HQ, 8th Division AIF:

  A very large number of these reinforcements were entirely untrained, had never fired a rifle, and many of their rifles had burred ejectors, which jammed after the first shot. The fault in the rifles was discovered during an inspection shortly after their arrival and a team of fourteen armourers working without ceasing for 48 hrs remedied the defect. The lack of training of the men could not be overcome in the few days before they were under fire. The fault lay not in the material, but in those responsible for sending such raw material.55

  Lionel Wigmore has made an attempt to explain this terrible blunder by stating that ‘the practice had developed of sending raw recruits to the Middle East where they received their basic training under expert instructors in the excellent training organization established there’.56 Army HQ in Australia knew very well that there were no ‘expert instructors’ nor ‘training organization’ in Malaya. Brigadier Rowell had passed through Singapore in August 1941 on his way home from the Middle East to become Deputy Chief of the General Staff. He had suggested at the time that ‘candidates from the 8th Division be sent to Australian schools in the Middle East’.57

  This suggetion might have provided a more proficient pool of officers to command reinforcements and to replace casualties in the division. As for the standard of training of the reinforcement other ranks, Wigmore has asserted that:

  Even if there was a shortage of adequately trained reinforcements in Australia early in December, the needs of the 8th Division could have been foreseen. If necessary a shipload of reinforcements could have been sent from the Middle East where, in mid-December, after all units had been filled, there were 16,600 in the reinforcement pool (including 10,000 recently arrived), and whither, in 1941, a percentage of the men in some 8th Division units in Australia had been sent as reinforcements. In Australia on 8th December there were also 87,000 militiamen on full-time duty, many thousands of whom had already received months of training. Soon after war with Japan broke out these were debarred from enlisting in the AIF lest their units be unduly depleted by a large number of such transfers. Even so, these militiamen constituted a pool from which fairly well-trained volunteers might have been sought.58

  For the Australian Government and Australian Army to complain at the time—and after the campaign—that Britain’s response to the reinforcement of Malaya was feeble, and subsequently that the fall of Singapore was ‘a great betrayal’, has less credibility when their own efforts to provide quality reinforcements were so pitiable.

  The last point concerning Bowden’s statement is the question of RAF reinforcements. It will be remembered that Brooke-Popham had urgently requested RAF reinforcements upon the outbreak of hostilities. The first effort came on 19 December, when Australian crews flew from Singapore to Darwin to collect and deliver eight Hudsons, which arrived in Singapore on 23 December. The period 12–14 December saw twelve Blenheim planes fly from Egypt by the long and tedious air reinforcement route. Any aircraft crews flying from the United Kingdom as reinforcements were facing up to 60 hours’ flying time spread over fifteen to 21 days. The crated Hurricanes already mentioned—and numbering 51—had left Cape Town by ship on 17 December. The trouble with this arrangement was time: time to arrive by sea and further time to assemble and then test the new aircraft.

  Vivian Bowden contended that any reinforcement of men and material for Malaya and Singapore ‘that is not powerful modern and immediate is futile’. By Christmas 1941 he would, tragically, be vindicated. To add further gloom to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Malaya, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese on Boxing Day 1941, and in the Philippines the Japanese were quickly forcing the Filipino and American Armies into the confines of the Bataan Peninsula.

  12

  THE WITHDRAWAL FROM KAMPAR

  It will be remembered that by 19 December 1941, Brigadier Paris, who had been given orders to defend the Grik Road, had sent the remainder of the Argylls and a troop of field guns to Lenggong, approximately halfway between Grik and Kuala Kangsar, to reinforce the existing Argylls’ company and the Malayan Independent Company already deployed there. To their rear, at Kota Tampan where the River Perak ran close to the road, Paris deployed a company of the 5/2 Punjab.

  After arriving in Lenggong at 7.00 am on the 19th and joined by the remainder of his battalion an hour-and-half later, Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart was told that the Malayan Independent Company ‘reported its patrols as being still on the other side of Sumpitan, four miles ahead’.1 Beyond that patrol limit, the road passed into a jungle defile. Stewart decided to take the defence of the road to the enemy by ordering the Malayan Independent Company to advance and seize the defile pending the arrival of the Argylls’ D Company. In keeping with his philosophy of defence of roads in depth, he planned that the following Argyll companies were to hold the road to a distance of three kilometres against enemy outflanking efforts and to provide a firm base for his advance. His armoured cars constituted ‘mobile forts’ between companies and were to facilitate company manoeuvre.

  Stewart later recorded that the Independent Company patrols were not in fact holding Sumpitan. When the company subsequently debussed at Sumpitan they were ambushed by the Japanese. But all was far from lost. Stewart would later recall that: ‘. . . shortly the Argyll armoured cars of D Company Group arrived, and in turn smashed into and surprised the Japs in close order, in large numbers, and at short range. Under such circumstances the fire of well-served machine guns is devastating.’2 After an artillery barrage along the road, which unfortunately failed to hit the most forward elements of the enemy force because of their nearness, D Company attacked along it with their armoured cars and infantry.

  Although the Argylls were later withdrawn, they took but three casualtie
s, lost an armoured car, but gained precious time—and the Japanese ‘made no further aggressive move throughout the day even by patrols’.3 At dusk on 19 December, Stewart withdrew his battalion back about three kilometres to avoid the risk of an enemy outflanking movement.

  There was a welcome lull in the fighting on 20 December—and with good reason. At around 4.30 pm a Chinese man reported to Stewart that at midday he had observed a Japanese force moving down the River Perak in boats and along its banks. He further reported that local labour was being forced to carry their mortars and to guide them to Kota Tampan. Should this force gain a causeway which crossed a swamp south of that venue, Stewart believed that: ‘. . . it was the end, not only for the Argylls but of Kuala Kangsar and much of the 11th Division as well.’4

  In an immediate response to this threat, the rear Battalion HQ, a part of C Company (which had been originally deployed in the rear of the Argylls), two armoured cars, a section of carriers and two mortars were hastily loaded and transported by the 2/3rd Australian Motor Transport Company to a track junction near the 57-mile peg to keep open the approach to the causeway. The Japanese thrust was repulsed. The Argylls then withdrew to Kota Tampan at around 10.00 pm—they had been ordered to hold it till dark.

  On the morning of 21 December, the Japanese attacked again. They were repulsed. Orders were then received for the Battalion to withdraw that night through the 5/2nd Punjab, which was then moving up to cover the southern and western shores of Chenderoh Lake. Stewart’s Battalion subsequently passed south-west through the Indians at Sauk, which was about sixteen kilometres from the junction of the Grik Road and the Trunk Road, west of Kuala Kangsar.

  After having arrived back to its 12th Brigade from its fighting under Brigadier Key in Kelantan, the 4/19th Hyderabad was sent to hold the main road at the River Siput, which lay east of the Iskandor and Enggor bridges where the main road and the railway crossed the River Perak. Even though the 3/16th Punjab had beaten back a Japanese attempt to cross the River Krian at Selama on the 20th, the 11th Division and the 12th Brigade were, because of the threats to the River Perak crossings, withdrawn behind that obstacle by the morning of 23 December 1941. Lionel Wigmore, in The Japanese Thrust: ‘The Iskandor and Enggor bridges were destroyed, and during the following night a pontoon bridge at Blanja, south of Kuala Kangsar, was sunk. The 12th Brigade was now at Sungei Siput, and the 28th Brigade at Siputeh, at a junction of the road from Blanja.’5

  The operations conducted by Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart and his 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders during this period are noteworthy. The Argylls’ companies had been trained to fight as self-contained units, and had addressed in some real measure the issues of movement in closed country; defence in depth on roads and in defiles; the problem of enemy outflanking movements by a skilled use of both machine guns and mortars; the difficulty of maintaining communications in close country by being well-drilled in both attack and defence; and they possessed a well-coordinated ability to withdraw using transport that was close enough to their troops, but far enough away to be relatively safe. Such military qualities are not gained readily, but are acquired through rigorous prior thought and extensive training—and this process takes time. Mistakes were, and will always be, made, and out of the prior theory and initial battle experience come lessons, re-evaluation and a developing jungle or, as it was called at the time, a ‘bush warfare’ doctrine. The salient point is that that process was well under way with the Argylls—but it had, with few exceptions, not begun elsewhere.

  The 11th Indian Division’s withdrawal behind the River Perak by 23 December 1941 gave General Percival the opportunity to assess the senior command positions within it. He made four changes of which three were forced upon him. As all three of the division’s brigade commanders had become casualties, Lieutenant-Colonel Moorhead was appointed to command the newly amalgamated 15th Brigade, Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart of the Argylls was promoted to command the 12th and Lieutenant-Colonel Selby was assigned to the 28th Brigade. In The War in Malaya, Percival wrote that:

  Then there was the question of the divisional commander. I felt that an officer with the widest possible experience of bush warfare was required to lead the 11th Division in future and suggested that Brigadier Paris, the commander of the 12th Indian Brigade, should succeed Murray-Lyon who, undoubtedly a brave and tireless leader, had had limited experience in that particular type of warfare.6

  This is a curious statement. There was in fact no such creature. The desire for ‘an officer with the widest possible knowledge of bush warfare’ was nothing more than Percival’s vague attempt to explain away Malaya Command’s abject failure, since his arrival in Malaya, to have made any effort to address the issue of ‘bush warfare’. There was in fact no developed jungle fighting doctrine. Lieutenant-Colonel—now Brigadier—Stewart had made a most impressive effort to do so. In fact his rapid escalation from ‘crank’ to brigadier was, in the space of a mere month, quite remarkable. Two fair criticisms of Murray-Lyon’s command of the 11th Division might be made. The first was that his dispositions lacked depth—particularly on roads. The second was that his selection of units to man forward parts of his perimeters was often questionable, although, in fairness to him, such decisions are normally made at the brigade leadership level. But with respect to Murray-Lyon, almost all the prerequisites for success—even partial success—were denied him. Further, there seems little or no evidence that Paris had made any great study or had become ‘experienced’ in ‘bush warfare’. That credit would seem to belong to Stewart, and would seem peculiar to the Argylls. The wisdom of Percival’s decision to promote Paris should be judged against the fortunes of the 11th Indian Division over the following weeks.

  There was already friction between Percival and Heath. The delays in the implementation of Matador, and Heath’s desire on a number of occasions to withdraw the 11th Division earlier and further than Percival wished, would seem to be the prime issues. Heath wanted to promote Brigadier Key, an Indian Army officer who had performed admirably at Kota Bharu, to the command of the 11th Indian Division. Percival’s promotion of Paris to that position and Stewart to command the 12th Brigade therefore saw two British Army commanders placed in command of two Indian Army formations. Nonetheless, Paris was an impressive commander. Brigadier Stewart described him as:

  A wise and sympathetic leader, with an understanding of the factors that make for morale, he never aimed off, but asked of his units only the irreducible minimum necessary to his purpose. This, combined with his sense of close timing and of realism, enabled the Battalion [the Argylls] to avoid destruction on a number of occasions . . . I personally have never known a commander who gave greater moral support to his subordinates in battle, or one in whose judgment I had greater confidence, whether it was as Brigade or . . . as Divisional Commander.7

  At no point in his book does Stewart make mention of any great mastery or competence by Paris in ‘bush warfare’.

  On the early morning of 22 December 1941, elements of the 5th Japanese Division rushed into Kuala Kangsar. Lieutenant-Colonel Tsuji recorded that after viewing the ruins of the Iskandor and Enggor bridges and the pontoon bridge at Blanja they were filled with ‘anger and disappointment’.8 To compound this frustration, Tsuji noticed that within the troops of his 5th Division ‘signs of exhaustion could be seen’.9 And little wonder. However, the successful demolition of the three bridges over the River Perak also enabled General Yamashita to concentrate his force for the crossing of that obstacle and offer his 5th Division soldiers a much deserved respite.

  Lieutenant-General Nishimura’s Imperial Guards Division had originally been placed on 25th Army’s order of battle for the occupation of Bangkok, but after the ‘cooperation’ of the Siamese authorities, Yamashita determined that Lieutenant-General Matsui’s 5th Division spearhead should be reinforced by it. He ordered the Perak to be crossed at 10.00 pm on 26 December with the 5th Division to cross at Blanja and the Guards at Kuala Kangsar. To traverse the Per
ak the Japanese used boats brought overland from their Singora landings and a number of collapsible motor launches.

  General Percival meanwhile had rightly concluded that although the road system on which the campaign was being fought was beginning to converge—and thus enable him to minimise the chances of having his line of communication put in jeopardy—he was now confronted with the challenge of holding the lateral road stretching from Jerantut through Kuala Lipis, westward to Raub and thence to Kuala Kubu. This road was the main link between east and west Malaya. Therefore, should the Japanese push him beyond Kuala Kubu, the only road from the east coast would be severed. He determined that ‘we should withdraw the Kuantan garrison at a time to be decided later in accordance with the development of the situation’.10

  In compliance with these orders, General Heath chose two prime defensive positions behind Ipoh. The first was some 32 kilometres south at Kampar, and the second, designed to shield the vital road junction at Kuala Kubu, was just north of Tanjong Malim. To provide defence in depth along the Trunk Road between Kampar and Tanjong Malim, he selected three further locations: Tapah, Bidor and ‘in the Slim River area’.11 To delay the enemy on the main road through and behind Ipoh, Heath chose Brigadier Stewart’s 12th Brigade, while Brigadier Selby’s 28th Brigade was given the same task from Blanja. For his first set-piece defensive position at Kampar, Heath deployed Brigadier Moorhead’s 15th Brigade. This formation had been reconstituted by amalgamating the 1st Leicesters and the Surreys to form the ‘British Battalion’ and included the composite Jat/Punjab Battalion, the 1/14th Punjab, the 2/16th Punjab and the 3/16th Punjab. Heath’s choice of the 15th Brigade for the Kampar position was astute given the circumstances: it had had a rest and was partially re-equipped. On 23 December, the 15th Brigade began the task of preparing its positions.