As the months went by Noel and his mates were thoroughly enjoying army life but those with an eye on current affairs reckoned that the good times were about to end. On the other side of the world the war in Europe was moving fast. The Germans had invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, before moving on Russia. In the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt froze all Japanese government assets and demanded that trade with Japan stop immediately.
On 24 July large numbers of Japanese forces entered Indochina. Reports of military manoeuvres and amphibious training sessions – in readiness, it was suggested, for a seaborne assault on the Malay Peninsula – only exacerbated regional concerns.
As Noel put it: ‘Round about September we gathered that the Japs were getting cheeky, overrunning China and moving southwards. So the day came when we were again put into trucks and sent across to the east coast to a place called Mersing.’3
The Mersing area was strategically significant because it offered an enemy with superior naval and air power a short cut to Singapore.
By now there was compelling intelligence that the Japanese had been training in Indochina for an amphibious operation. Mersing would seem the obvious location to put that training into practice. There was also an early warning radar installation on a hill near the mouth of the Mersing River, believed to be the only one of its kind in the Far East and therefore of crucial importance to the Allies.4
The 2/20th Battalion’s job was to fortify the beach and protect the town, which was on the main road from Kota Bharu in the north to Singapore in the south. They went to work with almost manic intensity.
‘As it turned out by the time we had finished we had more barbed wire in Mersing than they had on the coast of Singapore facing the Johore Straits.’5
Further reinforcements arrived in October and November, by which time the 2/19th had moved on from Kluang to Jemaluang, about 18 miles (30 km) west of Mersing. By December 1941 the 22nd Brigade Group was well established in the Mersing and Endau areas, in anticipation of a seaborne assault. On the diplomatic grapevine the word was that pressure was being exerted on Thailand to permit Japanese forces to use its facilities. The news only served to reinforce the view that in the event of war, the Japanese would invade Malaya from the north.
When these fears were confirmed on 8 December, Noel Harrison and the men of what would become Eastforce went into action.
As the Japanese made their way south to Kuantan, Gordon Bennett and his team were forced to accept the likelihood that Mersing and Endau would be used as a back-door approach to Fortress Singapore. With this in mind Noel was sent north as part of a signals post for headquarters at Endau and given an extra stripe for his efforts.
School teacher Jack Mudie, from Queanbeyan, adopted a more basic approach to communications. Also posted to Endau, he thought it wise to appoint a few locals to light a bonfire just under two miles (3 km) up the road when they saw the Japanese coming.
‘We acted as a forward observation post,’ he explained. ‘The idea was to let the rest of the battalion know when we saw the enemy and observe what sort of equipment they’d got. Once we’d sized them up, we’d inflict whatever punishment we could and then retire.’ 6
Henry Dietz, the country boy from Quandialla and member of the 2/20th, found himself on a nearby river with C Company. Much of the waterway had been mined.
‘When the Japs came down the coast we were supposed to explode the mines and blow the enemy to smithereens,’ he recalled.7 At least that was the plan.
The Endau River, with its many tributaries, was also important because it offered means for the enemy to approach in shallow-draught vessels to the road running right across the peninsula from Mersing through Jemaluang, Kluang and Ayer Hitam to Batu Pahat.8
Endau Force, which now comprised men from the 2/20th and 2/19th Battalions as well as the anti-aircraft platoon of the 2/18th, was ready and waiting. The man who would command them in the front line was Major Andrew Robertson, an accountant who had emigrated to Australia with his family from Britain as a child. He would go on to win a reputation as a courageous soldier and a fine leader of men, but tragically would not live to see his wife and two children again back home in Sydney.
By the morning of 14 January, nearly five weeks after the start of the Japanese invasion, there were reports of enemy infiltration north of Endau. A reconnaissance patrol spotted a party of about 30 Japanese crossing the Sungei Pontian, oddly disguised in black coats and khaki shorts.
The following day Endau itself was bombed and machine-gunned. A group of enemy soldiers on bikes was engaged by a platoon led by John Varley, son of the 2/18th’s CO, which had been sent forward for the purpose.9
Back down south at Mersing the Australians, who had been complaining about their lack of firepower, were reassured to see the arrival of 2-inch mortars and anti-tank grenades. But it was too late to make a difference. As Lieutenant Frank Gavan, A Company’s second-in-command, observed after the war in Don Wall’s book Singapore and Beyond: ‘There were insufficient weapons, insufficient ammunition, insufficient written instructions and insufficient time to train a sufficient number of personnel.’
It was not the sort of judgement to inspire confidence but this was not a time for doubt. The 2/20th was there to defend the east coast and stop the Japanese in their tracks regardless of local conditions.
Lieutenant Bart Richardson, the battalion ordinance officer, had been given four Vickers machine guns as he was the only man who had trained on them. He’d grown up with the Vickers since joining the militia in 1936 so he was well versed in how to set up and operate the weapon. Bart was given a squad of men to train for the job but was shocked by the reaction of his superiors when he started having a go at low-flying enemy aircraft:
A Japanese aeroplane would fly over our area and drop a few bombs so he received a shock when our guns fired on him and hit him too. This became a daily routine for a few days until I received word that we were not to fire on the Japanese as we were drawing the crabs, an army way of saying we were drawing attention to us. I really couldn’t believe it as the Japs knew exactly where our defences were … the army works in mysterious ways.
The Japanese at that time were coming over daily, one plane at a time. They’d swoop down very low, drop a few bombs and off they’d go. Well one day the boys opened up on them and gave them an awful fright.10
Dismayed and frustrated, Bart told his men to down arms. If this reflected Allied policy it did not bode well for the future of the campaign.
Endau and Mersing would continue to be attacked from the air in a bid to soften up Allied troops on the ground. The Japanese were about to move further south. Only Eastforce stood in its way, but for how long?
Henry Dietz had seen a few Jap reconnaissance planes flying over Endau looking for trouble but took little notice until a British Tiger Moth appeared on the scene.
‘We tried to wave at him to go back,’ Henry recalled. ‘He was like a sparrow with two big hawks looking down on him. They got him first go and he crash-landed into a clump of trees on the other side of the house we’d been staying in.’11
Rushing outside to help, Henry and his mates were too late to save the pilot and very nearly came close to sacrificing themselves. The two Jap aircraft that had downed the Tiger Moth were on their way back; fortunately they failed to spot the Australians, who by now had taken cover.
It wasn’t until 14 January that Eastforce first came into contact with enemy soldiers, about 12 miles (20 km) north of Endau. New arrivals from the 2/19th ambushed them, resulting in numerous dead and injured. The Japanese did not take long to lick their wounds. Later that same day they retaliated with a vengeance, forcing the Australians, who were well outnumbered, to retreat and seek shelter in a mangrove swamp.
The men of the 2/19th knew they had to move fast to avoid being over-run. Varley, still not 22 and possessing the same steely nature as his father, took it upon himself to swim the fast-flowing Endau River in search of a boat to rescue
his platoon. Heavy rain had turned the waterway into a torrent, forcing Varley to struggle against the current. Finally he found a small craft and towed it to shore, enabling his boys to escape unscathed. It was a commendable act of courage which, quite rightly, earned him the Military Cross.
Meanwhile on the other side of the river Jack Mudie was waiting for a puff of smoke that would signal an imminent enemy approach. One of the other members of his platoon was the first to spot it billowing away on the horizon, but Jack would have to wait a couple of days before putting his plan into action.
Further north Merv Alchin from Temora and two others were on a reconnaissance mission aimed at establishing the enemy’s progress and keeping a close watch on any natives who might be helping them. Evidence was mounting that Malays were working for the other side, leaving messages and signs for the invading force along the way. Merv had volunteered to join Private Keith ‘Donny’ Donaldson, also from C Company, and a mysterious Englishman known as Captain Cope, on the mission, which they knew was fraught with risk.
The plan was to head 36 miles (60 km) up the road as far as Kuantan, which by now was deep inside enemy territory. They got away without being seen for two days but their luck then ran out. While grabbing some food at a Chinese eatery one night, they were tipped off that an enemy soldier was in the area; they had to go. The three raced down to the river where Cope had previously requisitioned a small boat, just in case they needed to make a quick dash to open waters. But the craft had disappeared. Their heavy weaponry prevented them from swimming and when shots were fired in their direction they realised the game was over.
Within minutes they were arrested by a party of Japs and their hands were tethered behind their backs. Merv, Donny and Cope – the British officer who was almost certainly an Allied spy – were not going anywhere. Indeed they viewed their future with even more foreboding when their captors locked Cope’s handcuffs and threw away the key. The message was unambiguous. The Japs had no intention of freeing them. Fortuitously, the two Aussies had their hands bound with rope because their wrists proved too thick to fit in the metal handcuffs. Merv, remembering an old schoolboy trick, deliberately kept his hands apart as the rope was tied, in the hope he might be able to free himself at a later stage.
For a while their captors probed them about troop numbers and defences. They knew that the longer they refused to talk, the greater the likelihood of them staying alive. The group insisted they didn’t know the answers because they had only just been sent to Endau and had no information about what was happening further south at Mersing. Even when one of the Japanese officers made a threatening motion with his sword, sliding it across his neck, the Australians and the Brit refused to be intimidated. But they also knew that their strategy was risky. How much interrogation could a man take before he cracked under the pressure or the Japanese gave up on their prisoners and summarily executed them?
It was a grim outlook, not made any better by their agonising physical state. All three were now suffering from aching and swollen wrists. However, for Merv at least, remembering to place one hand on top of the other and a few centimetres apart was about to pay dividends. In the afternoon as he and the others were enjoying a brief respite, Merv discovered that one of his hands had slipped out of the knotted rope behind his back. He looked around, noting that there was only one guard nearby and he was asleep.
This was his moment. If he did not escape now he never would. Seizing the opportunity Merv brought his hands from behind his back and reached for a steel scrub hook, used by the natives, which was sitting in the corner. It took only a split second for him to raise the guard’s mosquito net and thrust the metal weapon into his right temple.
‘He was on his side and I drove it in fairly well, but I never finished him off because he pushed me to get out of the way.’12
The guard bellowed in pain and threw himself out of bed, screaming for help.
‘He jumped up with blood over his face, pushed me arse over head and raced down the steps screaming out of the hut. I would have done him but for the handle breaking.’ Quick as a flash Merv ‘picked up his rifle and went after him to try and stop him and fell down a well – scrambled out and headed for the scrub’.13
Merv had only seconds to act. If he didn’t move now the rest of the camp would be after him. Realising there was no time to untie his mates, Merv ran for his life through the long jungle grass, dodging the bullets being fired by his pursuers and eventually falling into the wallowing mud of a mangrove swamp. There he lay in a daze for several minutes, savouring his newfound freedom and pondering his next step.
‘It must have been an area where our troops had set up and I went off the track out in the mangroves up to my neck in this wallow and that’s probably what saved me.’14
But how long before the Japanese sent a search party, he wondered. Pulling himself up, Merv had no option but to slide into the dark, warm waters of the Endau River and doggy-paddle to the opposite bank. By now there was no sign of his battalion or any other Allied troops. His only option was to walk to safety.
With the air attacks frequent and merciless on Endau, it was increasingly evident that withdrawal was the only way out, but not before Jack Mudie’s C Company platoon had a final crack at the enemy.
Come 17 January, Japan’s 56 Regiment was rapidly approaching Allied lines and Mudie had one last trick up his sleeve. The idea was to hide on the southern side of the river bank and fire mortars at the enemy as they gathered on the northern side. Just look at the geography, Jack reasoned. Jungle to the west, and swamp and ocean to the east. The Japs would have nowhere to run. And so it was that Mudie’s platoon enjoyed their greatest triumph.
‘When the time came there were about 700 Japs across the river,’ Jack recalled. ‘We could see them shouting and gesticulating. I couldn’t understand their language but the meaning was pretty clear: those at the front of the bank were telling those at the rear that there was a problem and they couldn’t get across. Anyhow, they all ended up packed into this area not much bigger than a football pitch and when I thought the time was right, I gave the order: “Fire.”
‘I instructed one of my blokes to fire a mortar at the front of the group and the other at the back, so they couldn’t get away. Every time we fired you heard the bumph, bumph sound of the mortar hitting its target on the other side. We must have been firing forty mortars a minute. The destruction was indescribable. I don’t think any of the six or seven hundred escaped either death or injury. I had the pleasure of wiping out the whole of that first advance of Japanese.’15
The enemy had definitely met their match in Jack Mudie but elsewhere even the best laid military plans were not going as they should.
A few miles down river Henry Dietz was preparing to blow the mines that had been carefully installed a few months earlier, but when the order came to set them off there was a deafening silence.
‘It appeared they’d been there so long that the water had seeped into the firing mechanism and it had gone rusty.’16
C Company’s positions were dotted around Endau and, despite Mudie’s successful attempts to stall the enemy, the Japanese were getting closer.
Arthur ‘Snowy’ Collins, who had grown up at Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley, was policing the main road into Endau when he first spotted them. They were slim shadowy figures in the distance but Snowy and his four mates soon learned they meant business. All of a sudden the Japs opened fire. With bullets whistling overhead, Snowy decided not to hang around. He and his mates were vastly outnumbered and to remain in position would have meant almost certain death.
‘We just ran like hell,’ he admitted.17
In the bloody confusion of battle it was every man for himself. As Snowy and his mates took off he saw the company cook hit by a bomb.
‘All we found afterwards was his arms and legs,’ he recalled.18
Brigadier Harold Taylor, who commanded the 22nd Infantry Brigade, realised the Japanese were gathering in strength ar
ound Endau and ordered the withdrawal of his men. They had fulfilled their role and they did not want to find themselves outflanked by one of the enemy’s now familiar pincer movements.
With the front line at Endau now abandoned, Eastforce continued to feel the pressure as it moved south. The Japanese were spreading out and the fear was that some Australian units would become encircled.
The focus switched to Mersing and the surrounding area. On 18 January General Sir Lewis ‘Piggy’ Heath, Commander of III Indian Corp, visited Brigadier Taylor at his headquarters to consider the implications of Japan’s rapid advance. With Mersing likely to fall within days, the decision was taken to protect Jemaluang and the road leading south through Kota Tinggi towards Singapore Island. More men would be required to strengthen this strategically important road link. Some would come from the garrison at Bukit Langkap to the west of Mersing, a jungle outpost that was unlikely to survive for much longer anyway.
Under Taylor’s command Eastforce would now comprise the entire 22nd Brigade and all troops and craft in the Mersing–Kahang–Kota Tinggi areas.
The 8th Division’s contribution would be the 2/18th and 2/20th Battalions, the 2/10th Field Regiment, the 2/10th Field Company and the 2/9th Field Ambulance. Two companies of the Johore Military Force and the Johore Volunteer Engineers would also boost numbers.19
Over the next two days Australian patrols reported a gradual enemy approach to Mersing, with the 2/20th’s Battalion area under regular attack from the air. There was frequent enemy contact on the ground, as well.
On 21 January, Bondi boy Lieutenant Frank Ramsbotham, who was leading a patrol near the north bank of the Sungei Mersing, ambushed a group of Japanese and killed several of them. Those who managed to avoid the Australians’ gunfire tried the customary flanking move only to discover they were in the middle of a minefield. Fortunately for them the mines, which had been long immersed in water, failed to explode. Not that it mattered. Ramsbotham and his men mowed them down with machine-gun and artillery fire instead. Later that day another party of Japanese was detected in the same area. This time it was the guns of the 2/10th Field Regiment which neutralised them.
Hero or Deserter? Page 10