‘I saw a movement in one of the big trees and a Jap [sniper] strapped to a branch. While keeping another big tree between me and the Jap, I was just about to pull the trigger when there was a burst of machine gun fire from from Lt. Harrison that hit the Jap. We just left him there and went on with our mission.’18
The Allies were up against a formidable foe. With the so-called Kranji–Jurong line lost, the 2/20th Battalion was on the move again.
Around the same time X Battalion was formed, which comprised companies within the three 22nd Brigade units and was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Boyes, former CO of the 2/26th.
Bennett had got wind of a successful attack by the Indians, who had the Japanese on the run. Or so it was rumoured. On the basis of this flimsy military intelligence the 2/20th was ordered forward.
It was night as Captain Rod Richardson and his contingent made their way through the pitch black darkness. What they found along the way did not inspire them with confidence. Many of the Indians who were earlier reported to have launched a successful assault on the Japs were lying dead by the roadside.
X Battalion and its sundry units were practically on their knees by now and so the decision was taken to make camp.
Henry Dietz had loosened his belt and was settling down to a few hours of shut-eye when the night sky turned into day. The nearby fuel tanks had exploded, setting fire to factories and other buildings in the vicinity. Henry was only just beginning to take in the magnitude of the blast when a new and deadlier threat appeared. It came in the form of the Japanese 18th Division, who were about to launch a bloody assault on the camp.
The orgy of blood-letting that followed was so savage in its intensity that the men of X Battalion were completely overwhelmed. Some Australians were bayoneted as they woke up, while others were killed by small arms fire or grenades. Those who were able to do so rose from their blankets and engaged enemy troops in hand-to-hand fighting in a vain bid to defend themselves. The screams of shock and pain would never be forgotten by the survivors of that terrible night. The camp site was a slaughterhouse. Of the 200 diggers who’d made camp there, most would be dead or seriously wounded by dawn.
It seemed every attempt by the Allied forces to resist the invaders and fight back was to end in failure. But where to go? Singapore city was becoming increasingly isolated and safe havens were few and far between.
Lieutenant Harry Woods of the 2/20th found himself in what he believed was the relatively secure Reformatory Road. Right when they thought they were home and dry, Harry and his platoon were confronted by a large unit of Japanese, who immediately started shooting. With no shelter to protect him, he was shot in the thigh and shoulder.
‘Both bullets missed the bones fortunately so I could still walk reasonably well. But I lost quite a lot of blood,’ he said.19
He might not be able to run but Harry Woods had no intention of being captured either. Somehow he managed to hitch a lift on the pillion seat of a passing despatch rider who, after avoiding a hail of machine-gun fire from a Japanese fighter plane, was able to deliver the 24-year-old officer safely into the hands of a British medical orderly.
It was an extraordinarily lucky escape for Harry Woods but nothing compared with the near miracle that was to follow three days later. It happened after the young lieutenant was sent to Alexandra Military Hospital for further treatment. As he lay in bed recovering in a top-floor ward, a party of renegade Japanese soldiers arrived downstairs intent on violence. In one of the worst atrocities of World War II, hundreds of innocent nurses, doctors, patients and civilians were slaughtered as the troops ran riot. Despite pointing to the red cross on their uniforms and pleading for their lives, most were stabbed to death by bayonet. No one received any mercy, not even a patient about to undergo surgery on the operating table.
Because Harry Woods was upstairs, amazingly, he avoided the carnage. Another military patient, who could walk, went down to find out was happening, only to be executed on the spot a few minutes later. For whatever reason, the Japanese never made it to the top floor. The screams and the horror of that day left an indelible impression on Harry’s mind, burdening him until it was diminished in later life by a failing memory. All he could visualise of the scene was a sea of blood and family photographs and rosary beads dumped at random across the grounds of the Alexandra Hospital. For some, a black and white snap of a loved one or a crucifix on a chain had provided the only solace in those dying moments.
These were testing times and the future looked even worse. The 2/13th Australian General Hospital Battalion, which had been formed in Melbourne about six months earlier, was under intense pressure. Originally staffed by 18 officers and 44 nurses, most of its patients were victims of the AIF’s battles in Johore. Now with the fighting getting closer by the hour, St Patrick’s Boys School, which had been converted into a 700-bed hospital, was made into a large-scale casualty clearing station.
How the medical staff went about their work as bombs continued to rain down on them was a miracle in itself. The building, which sat on Singapore’s largely exposed south coast, sustained hits to both its kitchen and a ward. At night the hospital was placed under a complete black-out and as the number of casualties increased, it soon became apparent that the hospital did not have the accommodation or facilities to nurse them. Many patients had no choice but to lie outside on the lawns as they awaited treatment.20
The 2/13th Australian General Hospital Battalion, whose love and care for the injured often exceeded what was expected of them, would have to be evacuated soon or risk falling into the hands of an enemy who had little respect for women, even those who might save lives. In view of the gravity of the situation the decision was made to evacuate the 2/13th’s nursing sisters on three ships about to leave Singapore. The final contingent boarded the Vyner Brooke on 12 February.21
The British-registered vessel, which had been requisitioned by the Royal Navy for use as an armed trader, was usually equipped to carry 12 passengers but on that fateful day nearly 200 women and children were on board, including 65 Australian nurses. Among them was a nursing sister by the name of Vivian Bullwinkel, whose remarkable story of survival is firmly etched in the annals of the 8th Division’s history.
After the Vyner Brooke was sunk by enemy aircraft, most of the passengers and crew made it safely to Banka Island, which had already been occupied by the Japanese. They would be shown no mercy. Twenty-two Australian nurses and one British woman civilian were ordered to wade into the sea, where they were mown down in a hail of gunfire by Japanese troops who were standing on the beach with loaded rifles. Only Vivian Bullwinkel lived to reveal this monstrous act of butchery.
Miraculously a bullet passed straight through her body without damaging her internal organs. Feigning death until the Japanese left, she hid for 12 days before being recaptured and allowed to live.
Out of the 65 Australians who left on the Vyner Brooke, 12 were killed during the attack by Japanese aircraft or drowned when the ship sank. Apart from those mown down in the water, the rest became internees or died as prisoners of war.22
Back on Singapore, Percival and Bennett were facing the inevitability of defeat, but they would not give up without a fight. A decision was made to establish a final defensive line around Singapore’s urban centre. Bennett ordered all AIF personnel – ‘no matter what duties they were engaged on’ – to move into an area at Tanglin Barracks, about three miles (5 km) to the northwest of the city. This was to be the focus of the 8th Division’s last stand ‘where, if necessary, every man must be prepared to die,’ Bennett declared.23
Some of the men were already close to collapse, among them Brigadier Taylor, who had been without sleep for some days and was overcome by fatigue. Relations between him and Bennett were now so fractious that the 8th Division’s commander decided to relieve Taylor of his command. The brigadier had already asked the 2/18th’s Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Varley to take temporary command of the 22nd Brigade and Bennett decided to mak
e it permanent. Taylor’s condition was so bad that he was driven to hospital by his brigade major.24
General Percival had moved his advance HQ back from Sime Road to Fort Canning, the military stronghold known as the Battlebox. Entered through a door set in the side of a hill in Fort Canning Park, the wartime bunker was to be the nerve centre of Allied military operations during the final few days of the crisis.
Up to 500 staff crowded into the underground complex, which had 29 rooms and very little in the way of ventilation. With no airconditioning one can only imagine the stifling heat they were forced to endure as they fielded phone calls, deciphered encrypted signals and plotted the enemy’s inexorable progress.
Only those with the strictest security clearance were allowed to enter the Battlebox. Even those who worked at Fort Canning were ignorant of the inner workings of the maze of tunnels and chambers that lay some 10 feet below ground level. This was Percival’s kingdom, where the dying days of Britain’s Far East empire would draw to a humiliating conclusion.
While all this was going on, chaos reigned in the surrounding countryside and on the roads and footpaths, which had become a battleground. Unlike today, Singapore was still rural then, with smallholdings and native villages dotting much of the landscape. As Allied troops tried to make their way back to base, many found the route cut off by the enemy. Dodging stray gunfire and forced to shelter from the continuous aerial bombardment, it was every man for himself.
The confusion of those last few days was probably best described by Major Charles Moses, one of Bennett’s staff officers. In Frank Legg’s account of the fall of Singapore, he quotes extensively from Moses’s diary. In the early hours of 11 February the major found himself alone with his Webley automatic, crawling through deep scrub, with Japs everywhere.
‘I began to feel I would never get through and I railed in my heart against the fate that let me live through the three ambushes up near Layang Layang two weeks before, only to be killed in this blackness alone,’ he wrote.
‘Why couldn’t I have been killed cleanly that day instead of being saved up to be tortured like this? I prayed for a bullet through the head or heart – that would snuff me out like a candle. Yet behind it all was something which told me I was not meant to be killed like that.’
He stumbled into a Chinese cemetery and after about 330 yards (300 m) glimpsed the first light of dawn and the eerie outline of a deserted Reformatory Road. Now he was only a few hundred yards from Bukit Timah Road. There were British troops in the distance and the sound of Japanese machine-gun fire. Suddenly he spotted one of his own men, a Bren gun carrier, who took him to Malaya Command HQ.
Breathing a deep sigh of relief, Moses walked into General Percival’s office and told him what he knew.
‘What do you think we should do, Major?’ Britain’s GOC enquired.25
It was a very good question. If Percival didn’t know the answer, what hope had the rest of them?
Chapter 11
SINGAPORE CRUMBLES – THE GETAWAY BEGINS
For the men caught up in the mayhem that was enveloping Singapore, the memory of those final few days before surrender has become a kaleidoscope of random images.
Arthur ‘Bluey’ Kennedy knew the Malaya campaign was reaching a climax and inexplicably felt a moment of exhilaration.
As a member of the 2/15th Field Regiment he’d been guarding the northern sector just east of the causeway along with the 2/30th.
‘I was too busy with the guns to worry about the Japanese. I was number two gun and there was an attack on the front of us and I had to go towards the west.’1
If Bluey was frightened he wasn’t showing it. He was almost enjoying the moment and had to remind himself that all this was for real.
‘You’re here to fight a war, not play games,’ he recalled his sergeant major bellowing. ‘His training stood me in good stead.’2
Then came the order to pull out. He rolled his 25-pounder cannon into a ditch and took off.
‘There I was standing with machine-gun bullets flying all about me, so I shot through along the road and jumped into a drain.’
What happened next took him completely by surprise.
‘Suddenly I came face to face with a yellow-looking man who looked like a Jap with a rifle in his hand pointing at me.’
For a moment Arthur Kennedy thought his time was up, until he discovered to his relief that the man with the gun was actually Chinese.
‘It was a ticklish moment,’ he told me.3
Arthur, who had become separated from his unit, found himself tagging along with a convoy on the main thoroughfare from the causeway to Singapore town.
‘At this time the enemy was working towards the west and continuing to attack the Indian troops. The Australian infantry had been outflanked and in some cases overwhelmed. It could not be expected that the three battalions could hold a front of around five miles [8 km].’ 4
The gunfire came from all directions. The Japanese seemed to be everywhere.
‘After firing a number of rounds we came under fire from heavy machine guns.’5
It was too dangerous to continue so they were told to move back to Bukit Timah village and await further orders. The next morning Bluey and his mates were on the move again, this time to the racecourse a few miles away.
Although nowhere was safe, strangely there was an air of normality to the area, reinforced by the sight of several Australian jockeys who invited them into their homes for a cup of tea and a shower. Only the distant wail of air raid sirens reminded those who might have momentarily forgotten that there was actually a war on.
After his wash and brush-up, Arthur took a truck to a nearby ordnance depot to pick up some ammunition. Someone else drove it back, and Kennedy got behind the wheel of a two-seater Packard that just happened to be parked nearby. Along the way he stopped off for a haircut – as you do when death might be only seconds away.
‘During the operation an air raid sounded but I was able to persuade the Chinese barber to stay and finish it. He was so nervous that I decided not to have him shave me.’ 6
The day was to get even more bizarre as the Australians moved further towards the city. Despite the bombardment of the past weeks many palatial homes remained intact inside, even if they were silent and empty.
‘We entered one and walked around. The house was full of beautiful furniture and valuable ornaments. It looked as if the owner would return at any minute and order us out.’7
Bluey Kennedy and his mates made themselves a meal in the well-stocked kitchen. As they tucked in an air raid siren sounded, followed by a heavy explosion which made a massive hole in the kitchen floor.
‘Fortunately no-one was hurt and we continued on with the meal,’ Arthur recalled, as if it happened all the time.8
Then it was on to the Orchard Road vicinity, now the glittering retail heart of Singapore but then a sedate residential area inhabited by wealthy Chinese. The troop took up position in a row of front gardens opposite the Goodwood Park Hotel, a smart colonial-style building that continues to operate today.
A suspected fifth columnist opened fire on them from the hotel’s tower, which offered a commanding view over the city, but a few shots in return put a stop to that.
Best to take shelter, they reasoned, in one of the many Chinese homes, which they duly did and they were stunned by the luxury. Bluey had seen nothing like this in the western suburbs of Sydney where he grew up. It was a standard of living far removed from the experience of most of the diggers gathered there that day.
‘In one room there was an entire wall of built-in wardrobes filled with clothing and shoes. We took a number of frocks as they were suitable for pulling through the gun barrels. In another room there was a small safe which it was decided to open. The safe was tipped over on its face and the back cut out with an axe.’9
Disappointingly there was only a small amount of money and some jewellery inside, which was of little interest to them.
From t
he Orchard Road area they were moved to the Tanglin Barracks, where the guns were prepared for action. In the distance enemy troops could be clearly seen to the west and Japanese flags appeared to be just within firing range.
Yet the Allies’ weaponry remained silent. Permission to fire could not be obtained because of concern about the enemy’s response. Was the 8th Division in the same war? Hadn’t it spent the last few days shooting and shelling the Japanese? So why the change in strategy?
‘Permission to fire could not be obtained and no-one in close proximity was very happy for us to do so. They were worried about any action by the enemy to silence the guns,’ Bluey explained. ‘This had always been a problem with the use of artillery in limited space. Everyone was happy to use the cover we could supply as long as we were some miles away.’10
The reasoning was that if the Japanese were able to pinpoint the guns, Bluey’s troop would likely be attacked by mortars. And so it happened, even without the 2/15th Field Regiment firing a shot in anger. Somehow the Japs had got a bearing on them and blitzed the compound with divebombers and mortars.
‘We were unlucky enough to have a shell explode on a gun killing an officer and injuring a number of the gunners. We received the orders to leave the guns and take cover in slit trenches.’11
Bluey stayed the night in a trench with an Indian officer who spent all his time moaning about his disorganised troops and the fact that he didn’t even have a batman. Even the British refused to salute him, he complained, though he didn’t expect the Australians to do so ‘as they didn’t appear to salute their own officers’.12
Such were the differing attitudes between the Allied fighting forces that day: the Indians were worried about being addressed with due etiquette; the British didn’t seem to want to shoot in case the enemy returned fire and the Australians didn’t give a damn about saluting as long as they could get on with the job.
Hero or Deserter? Page 15