Hero or Deserter?

by Roger Maynard

  Gordon Bennett himself was quick to take advantage of the social scene, attending dinner with the governor while his men were being transported north over the causeway that linked Singapore with the mainland. Then it was on by train up the west coast towards Kuala Lumpur. The 2/18th and the 2/20th would be based at Port Dickson for the time being while 2/19th set up temporary home at Seremban, just inland.

  The boys could not have been happier. They had money in their pockets and plenty of booze and entertainment on which to spend it. With beer at ten cents a bottle and 3 cents for a packet of cigarettes, even lower ranks could afford to splash out from their army pay of 30 shillings a week.

  From time to time some of the officers even made it down to Singapore, where the party life was in full swing. A few were lucky enough to get invited to the palatial residence where Sir Shenton and Lady Thomas held court over evening cocktails. Others were welcomed as weekend guests at the grand homes of the Singaporean business elite or the country estates of plantation owners.

  For those with excess energy there was plenty of sport, including cricket, soccer, rugby, hockey and athletics, while in the evening those with a theatrical or musical leaning presented battalion concert parties. For the more literary minded, locally produced newsletters with names like Thumbs Up and Second Two Nought always provided plenty of laughs for the men on the ground and their families back home.

  Within a few months a little slice of Australia had been transplanted to the equator. But how long would it last?

  War? What war? While the discipline and training were constant reminders of why the 8th Division was there, it was easy to forget that much of Europe was in flames and that Asia might be about to follow suit.

  Not that Gordon Bennett was oblivious to the threat. War or the perceived threat of it required only one response, he believed.

  Attack, attack, attack!

  But would the Allies be up to it? Would they share his ethos? Or would they be part of Malaya’s downfall?

  Chapter 3

  ‘GIVE US MORE MEN’

  By the middle of 1941 some 6000 Australian soldiers had been deployed in Malaya, a tiny proportion of the nation’s total population of 5.5 million. Although further Allied troops were on their way, it was not a large force to protect a country that spanned 400 miles (645 km) from north to south. To add to the challenge the tropical Malayan climate could be exhausting and much of the jungle-covered terrain was inaccessible. The temperature rarely fell below 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27°C) in the shade throughout the year and the sheer humidity came as a shock, especially to the boys from Victoria, with its cold, blowy winters.

  Training in such inhospitable conditions was uncomfortable and debilitating, especially those energy-sapping exercises which saw men hacking their way through heavily forested terrain for days on end.

  Bennett thought long and hard about how his men could accustom themselves to jungle life. Conventional training was clearly not enough. Instead he told his men to take a lead from those who knew the conditions best of all: indigenous tribespeople. The Sakai people had lived in the dense forest since the third century, surviving as nomadic hunter-gatherers and wearing little more than loincloths made out of tree bark. Their greatest skill was the ability to move quickly and silently through the wilderness with the agility of a wild animal. And because they were surrounded by bamboo, most of their furnishings and receptacles were made from cane. They used it to make beds to lie on, rafts to sail on and even cups to drink from.

  Inspired by the ingenuity of the tribespeople, Bennett organised for some of his men to meet and learn the ways of the jungle from the Sakais. They stayed with them in makeshift camps and ate the traditional salt meals, which invoked friendship.1

  This unique experience would later enable members of 8th Division to make the jungle their home and undoubtedly to strengthen their warrior-like skills against the Japanese. What they didn’t know at the time was that the top brass back in Australia had other plans, and these plans had little to do with the law of the jungle. In fact Army HQ had earmarked the Malayan force for duty elsewhere.

  Bennett had already been told that his division was only there as a temporary boost to the country’s defences and would ultimately join the Australian Corps in the Middle East. Certain that the Japanese threat would not eventuate, Thomas Blamey, who was in command of the 6th and 7th Divisions, was urging the General Staff to hasten the deployment of Bennett’s division to the Middle East, insistent that his need was much greater than Malaya’s.

  No doubt Blamey would have been glad to know the men of the 8th were equipped for desert warfare, much as it was the bane of their existence in the wet and steamy conditions of the jungle. They would have preferred light footwear and headwear, not boots that left tell-tale prints in the mud and steel helmets that clattered against the vegetation, advertising their location. To make matters worse their rifles were too bulky to handle in confined spaces and their brown-coloured uniforms, which were fine for the desert, were hardly suited to the jungle.

  In anticipation of a sudden move to the Middle East, the division’s transport had also been designed for rapid mechanised movement along well-built highways and open country, not densely vegetated terrain where roads were few and enemy soldiers might be hiding in the trees and bushes.

  Then there were the rivers, which could often only be negotiated by swimming. The fact that a third of the men couldn’t swim was an obvious disadvantage which the officer class had somehow overlooked in their training. Nobody had thought of making swimming lessons compulsory.

  Yet for all the initial hardships the Australians proved to be remarkably adaptable to the Malayan conditions. Perhaps it was the outdoor lifestyle they’d enjoyed back home or the ‘can do’ Aussie spirit, but they would often put their British counterparts to shame in training and in battle. Bennett observed that the British units and their junior leaders were not given enough training in how to plan and wage small battles. In close country, he asserted, all depended on an instant reaction to the enemy, whatever the situation.

  ‘Instead too much attention seems to be paid to barrack-square discipline, immaculate guards and sentries, spotless turnout and all the other outward and visible signs – highly necessary if kept in due proportion – of an efficient unit,’ he wrote. ‘As a result too little attention seems to be paid to tactics which alone enable soldiers to fulfil their reason for existence, that is to fight and beat the enemy.’

  This was to be a recurring theme in Bennett’s musings in his diary and later in his memoir. ‘In war, a good soldier must be physically aggressive and a good commander must be mentally aggressive,’ he declared.2

  Only the 2/Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who were part of the 12th Indian Brigade, seemed to be up to the challenge, both as a fighting force and their response to conditions. Like the Aussies the Scots recognised the problems posed by a tropical environment and trained accordingly.

  The 12th Indian had arrived in Malaya in 1939 so had a head start against the new arrivals but it did not take long for the Australians to acquire the same level of skill. Urged on by AIF HQ to become ‘jungle minded’, the men of the 8th Division were told that thick country did not favour static defence and that only offensive action would work against the enemy. An army booklet issued in 1940 stressed the necessity of training all ranks in moving through the jungle since ‘the difference between trained and untrained troops is immense’.3

  It was a message with which Gordon Bennett would have doubtless concurred, but other army thinking contained conflicting views on the military prowess of the enemy.

  In 1940 Army HQ warned that the Japanese likely possessed a high standard of armament and technical training, great physical endurance and few bodily requirements compared with British troops.

  They were also ruthless, had a talent for misleading their opponent and ample experience of landing operations.

  Such guidance proved to be remarkably prescient, yet a yea
r later AIF Headquarters in Malaya described the enemy as poorly trained and weak. Previous experience had shown that the Japanese soldier was ‘peculiarly helpless against unforeseen action by his enemy’.4

  In reality it turned out to be almost the reverse with Allied forces being largely unprepared for the quick and ruthless tactics of the invader.

  It is difficult to understand how such mixed messages could be conveyed when Bennett himself was in charge, but it was, perhaps, symptomatic of a large and unwieldy military machine which was often at odds with the officers who drove it.

  There was also the question of the 8th Division’s future in Malaya and if it would be replaced or augmented by other battalions which remained on standby in Australia.

  Firmly of the opinion that he needed more men in Malaya to counter the Japanese threat, Bennett lobbied hard for his proposals to be taken seriously. He would not have been encouraged by the Deputy Chief of the Australian General Staff, Major-General John Northcott, who was of the view that much of the division should either stay at home or be sent to the Dutch East Indies.

  A commitment to send troops to the islands of Ambon and Timor only added to the intransigence. Back in late February 1941 the Dutch had agreed to provide air support in defence of Malaya in return for a similar pledge by Australia to protect Ambon and Timor in the event of Japan entering the war.5 Under the deal 24 aircraft would be sent by the Dutch to Singapore while Australia would commit three squadrons for the protection of the two islands. But it didn’t end there. As part of the agreement Australia promised to send land forces to protect the RAAF, a demand made by Sir Charles Burnett, who was the country’s Air Chief Marshal.

  The so-called Singapore agreement, which would also commit Australia to providing air support out of the Northern Territory, had significant implications for Bennett who now faced the very real possibility of having to rely on a vastly diminished 8th Division, since it seemed a third of his men would have to stay in central Australia, a third in Darwin or the Dutch East Indies and the rest in Malaya.

  Though not Bennett’s responsibility, he was becoming increasingly aware of the lack of air cover for Allied forces in the region. The British had a decidedly uninspiring body of aircraft at their disposal including two squadrons of Vickers Vildebeest biplanes, disparagingly known by those who used them as ‘flying coffins’.

  Lance-Sergeant Kevin Timbs, who grew up near Glen Innes in rural New South Wales, had arrived with the 2/20th in Malaya in February and had learned a lot about the country’s military capabilities.

  ‘We were all pretty knowledgeable about what was going on and how prepared the British and Australian forces were to defend themselves, but we were also worried,’ he confided.

  Earlier in the year he and his mates had seized the opportunity to go straight to the top with their reservations when the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies had dropped by on his way to London. ‘Seeing Menzies a few of us decided to put him on the spot and voice our concerns,’ he explained. ‘One of our group asked bluntly, “When are we going to get air support?”

  ‘“Haven’t you got it already?” Menzies queried.

  ‘“No,” Kevin said bluntly.

  ‘“The only bloody things we’ve got are three Rooster Buffalos and an old biplane.”’

  If Menzies was taken aback by the intense questioning from lower ranks, he didn’t show it. ‘Oh, that’ll be all fixed by the time you see action – there’ll be thousands of planes,’ the prime minister told Kevin.6

  If Menzies’ pledge was verging on the over-optimistic, it was an accurate reflection of so much of government and military thinking at the time. Was it mere PR to boost confidence in the troops or did they seriously believe their own rhetoric?

  Even Bennett reinforced the view that the Allies were the superior force when he came to inspect a prisoner of war camp at Mersing on 30 September. It was built, he emphasised, to hold all the captured Japanese who would try to infiltrate Australian positions.

  Significantly, the construction of the east coast camp, some 120 kilometres north of Singapore, also gave credence to the rumour that the Japanese might carry out their assault from the north. Even Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief, British Far East Command, was among the VIPs who visited the lads in Mersing to congratulate them on their high standard of workmanship and in particular the design of the barbed-wire fencing.

  More troops arrived during October and November. Brimming with energy and enthusiasm, they soon dug themselves in along the peninsula’s east coast from Mersing in the south to Endau in the north. To all intents and purposes they were ready for action. What could go wrong? It was a question that few expressed publicly but many considered privately.

  As Australia’s grand strategy further evolved that year, three new fighting units were created – known as Sparrow Force, Lark Force and Gull Force – all of them made up of men from the 8th Division battalions.

  Lark, comprising some 700 men from the 22nd Battalion, would head to Rabaul in New Britain, to the east of New Guinea, where it would protect an Australian Air Force base and flying boat anchorage. Sparrow, which was made up of about 1400 soldiers mainly drawn from the 2/40th Battalion, would reinforce West Timor, a Dutch territory in the East Indies which nestled alongside a Portuguese colony on the same island. And Gull Force would be sent to Ambon, one of the most strategically important islands in the area because of its large, deep-water harbour, which could accommodate a small navy.

  Some 1150 members of the 2/21st Battalion, most of them from Victoria, would be earmarked for service on Ambon, where they would join 2600 indigenous troops.

  Back in Malaya Bennett realised his position was on the line, with all the loss of power and responsibilities that entailed. He could either stay where he was with a vastly reduced 8th Division, or return to Australia and command the rest of his men. At least that was Northcott’s ultimatum.

  Bennett, sensing that circumstances would soon change, wisely chose the former, writing in his diary: ‘I asked that a complete Div HQ be formed here or alternatively my Div HQ be sent from Australia and that I be authorised to form a complete Base HQ.’

  It is a measure of Bennett’s determined character that he never took no for an answer, firing off letters to General Sturdee and other senior members of the military calling for his division to be kept intact. There was a slight weakening of army resolve when Sturdee agreed to increase Bennett’s staff numbers but not his overall force. They included the appointment as his deputy assistant quartermaster-General Major Wilfred Kent Hughes, who had served with distinction in World War I and had been a citizen soldier.

  ‘Kent Hughes arrived like a breath of Heaven – he will be really good. He knows his job,’ Bennett noted in his diary.

  To add to the good news Army HQ told Bennett that his entire divisional headquarters could join him, as well as a reserve motor transport company, a stores depot and a field park company. Slowly Bennett was getting his own way but it still fell far short of his wish list, which required the presence of his entire division, minus those troops already committed to the Dutch East Indies in the event of war.

  The commander of the 8th Division was not only making his presence felt within the military hierarchy, he was also exhibiting a less harmonious side to his character in the way he handled his fellow officers. Bennett’s reputation for making enemies was amply demonstrated when relations soured between him and Brigadier Harold Taylor, who commanded the 22nd Infantry Brigade. The two men, both citizen soldiers, fell out during a defence exercise which involved troops moving from Malaya’s west coast to the east. Taylor was slightly younger but equal to his boss in terms of aggressive nature and opinionated manner. Both men had their own way of doing things and did not countenance interference, so when Bennett decided to monitor the exercise in person, Taylor was ready for trouble.

  Tempers exploded when Taylor decided to interrupt the exercise in order to give his men a couple of hours’ break fo
r breakfast. The sight of an entire brigade downing eggs and toast and piping hot mugs of tea sent Bennett into a rage. Finally, frustrated by the time it was all taking, he ordered his brigadier to get his men moving at the double. Taylor, who was already upset over his commander’s eagle-eyed presence, turned around and, in so many words, told his superior where to go.

  Bristling with indignation, Bennett threatened to send Taylor back to Australia. Taylor sensed he had gone too far and sought the intervention of Bennett’s chief signals officer, Colonel James Thyer, who had witnessed the altercation. Thyer engineered a meeting with the two men to patch things up, but just as Taylor left the room he foolishly quipped, ‘I still think I am in the right.’7

  The two officers were never going to agree and from that moment on tried to avoid any professional or social contact. Once again Bennett’s giant ego had got in the way of common sense. He sorely needed friends and confidants and Taylor, while verging on the insubordinate, was to prove himself a courageous soldier in the coming months.

  Other officers were to fall foul of Bennett’s volatile temperament and not-so-thinly veiled criticism, especially members of the Staff Corps, whose military philosophy would always be at odds with his own. There was also a perception that Bennett did not get along with his British counterparts – a suggestion that is hard to believe given his respect for the Empire and Australia’s colonial ties with the mother country.

  In fact he was to become a staunch supporter and admirer of the man who would become Britain’s General Officer Commanding, Malaya, General Arthur Percival. A World War I veteran who had commanded a battalion and won three decorations, Lieutenant-General Percival was appointed GOC on 16 May 1941. His military pedigree was certainly impressive: he had graduated not only from the Army Staff College but the Naval Staff College. He also had an intimate knowledge of Malaya, after serving there in 1937 as a staff officer and preparing a dummy plan of attack on Singapore from a Japanese perspective.