Bennett preached his own brand of military strategy with almost evangelical fervour. Blessed with a professional certainty that rarely countenanced a change of heart, he believed that victory was only possible by adopting a superior fighting spirit.
‘The only effective way to defend Malaya was to attack and destroy Japanese invaders on ground previously selected and reconnoitred by the troops detailed to protect the country. This demands, of course, an offensive spirit, which was absent in many of the units in Malaya,’ he asserted.3
In the months and years following his dash from Singapore Bennett would become obsessed by tactical superiority. He detailed anything and everything connected to the Malaya campaign and the fall of Singapore in note form, in order for it to be collated and later printed in military training pamphlets.
The first few weeks after his return were a period of particularly intense activity for Bennett. Despite being granted brief leave he continued to write feverishly and took every opportunity to voice his concerns about the defeatist attitude he often came across. He despised talk about the so-called Brisbane Line, whereby Australia would cede the northern part of the country to the Japanese in the event of an invasion; it did little to boost national morale, and Japan’s seemingly inexorable march across South-East Asia and the western Pacific further diminished public confidence in the Allies’ ability to fight back.
It was during this time that Bennett, arguably, took his eye off the ball when it came to his own advancement. Obsessed by the need to record his training notes, which he believed were crucial to Australia’s safety, he neglected to lobby the powers-that-be regarding his own military ambitions.
Rightly or wrongly there was a perception that Bennett had escaped from Singapore to secure the position of Australia’s commander-in-chief. He always denied this, stating in his papers: ‘I can truthfully say that the thought of securing a command in Australia on my return did not once enter my head. Of course the fabricators of the silly story that I should never have left Malaya when I did, could not understand that there are some people who give their service in war without any thought of self-aggrandisement or personal advancement.’ 4
Bennett’s answer to his detractors in later years may or may not have reflected his true feelings, but his old adversary Blamey was never going to take the risk and couldn’t wait to get back to Australia to throw his own hat into the ring for the position. The problem was that he was still in the Middle East and it wasn’t until 7 March that he flew out of Cairo to Cape Town, where he intended to join the Queen Mary, which was en route to Fremantle. Air links between the Middle East and Australia were no longer possible due to the widening conflict across Asia.
To add to the sense of urgency Blamey had received a telegram from Prime Minister Curtin recalling him to Australia, but giving him no indication of his future role. Frustrated beyond belief, Blamey was desperate to outmanoeuvre Bennett – and Lavarack, who was also in the running – for the army’s most senior post. With relations between the three men hardly cordial, the scene was set for a bitter struggle, especially between Blamey and Bennett, whose lifetime enmity was about to reach its climax. If successful, Blamey could take credit for engineering Bennett’s final humiliation. If not, the old war horse’s military career would be over.
But Bennett, for whatever reason, failed to exploit the personal advantage he enjoyed by being on the ground and by the time Blamey sailed into Fremantle the decision had already been made.
A letter handed to Blamey on his arrival informed him that the government proposed to appoint him commander-in-chief of the Australian military forces. Yet a shadow still hovered over Blamey: although he was the highest serving officer in the country, he would effectively be outranked by General Douglas MacArthur, the American five-star general who had just been appointed supreme commander in the South-West Pacific. In other words MacArthur would be in overall charge of the war against the Japanese and Blamey would have to accept playing second fiddle.
As for Bennett, he was appointed acting inspector general of training, a post in which he could make full use of his experience of the Japanese Army’s tactics in Malaya and pass on his own strategies for dealing with them. While clearly disappointed at being overlooked for the top job, he would have taken pleasure from his promotion to the rank of lieutenant-general a month later and his appointment as commander of the 3rd Australian Corps in Western Australia, which had already been attacked by the Japanese. The catastrophic raid by enemy aircraft on Broome on the morning of 3 March, which claimed at least 40 lives and probably many more, had placed Australia’s western seaboard on high alert and 3rd Corps was needed to play a key role in its future defence.
Gordon Bennett took to his new posting with characteristic verve and devotion to duty, using the opportunity to complete two detailed manuals on Japanese tactics which were to form the basis of an official Army Training Memorandum. These booklets, which contained a foreword by General Blamey requesting close scrutiny by all officers, were distributed to American and Australian troops in the South-West Pacific.5
It seemed the head of Australian forces had patched up his differences with his old adversary and recognised the value of Bennett’s contribution to modern training techniques, but this was not to last. Soon Bennett was getting restless again, anxious to play a more challenging role as a commander in the field. While being in charge of the 3rd Corps was initially fulfilling, the fact was that he had been sidelined. At the age of 55 the man who believed his rightful place was commanding an active fighting force had been put out to pasture.
Several unpleasant incidents also occurred in which Bennett’s courage in the field was questioned. They may have upset him though he would never admit it. White feathers were delivered to him in the post and on another occasion a pair of running shoes. Later his portrait, which hung in the Australian War Memorial, was slashed. Bennett believed members of the Staff Corps were responsible for the feathers and after a ‘thorough search’ claimed a high-ranking officer had sent the shoes.6
Later, in his draft memoir, he wrote, ‘The receipt of white feathers did not worry me nor did the receipt of a dirty pair of old running shoes. These were easily traced to their source too close to my most bitter opponent at a certain Army Headquarters for anything but disgust. Such conduct would disgust the angels.’7
Bennett’s relations with the Army Staff Corps continued to deteriorate. Repeated attempts to be moved to a command more in keeping with his experience as a fighting soldier fell on deaf ears. Blamey would not budge, preferring to keep his long-term rival at arm’s length on the other side of the country, where he had little power to influence the way the war was being handled.
The extent to which Bennett was privately seething over his treatment after escaping from Singapore was later revealed in his draft memoir, in which he wrote of the ‘Machiavellian intrigue of the Staff Corps and Blamey at the outset – and both can be grouped together – in their indecent scheming over the command of the AIF.’8
Bennett was equally scathing of the Federal Cabinet for appointing Blamey as head of the Army when they knew about his conduct as Victoria’s chief police commissioner before the war. This was a reference to an attempt to cover up the shooting of a police officer, which led to Blamey’s forced resignation in 1936, and a scandal over the discovery of his police badge in a Melbourne brothel.
Bennett accused the Cabinet of having no understanding of the ‘great importance of selecting a leader in war who could command the respect of the men whom he was to lead’. And for good measure he added: ‘That appointment submitted Australia to an indignity which it will take generations to forget. Had he been a brilliant general of the Monash standard, which he was not, the people could perhaps have overlooked his personal unfitness to command men.’9
These were harsh words which graphically exposed the fear and loathing that existed between Bennett and the military hierarchy, as well as the government. Of course these were sentiments whi
ch were yet to be made public but would, in retrospect, explain why Bennett decided to quit his post in April 1944.
Exasperated by Blamey’s continued refusal to recommend him for operational command, he fired off an angry letter of resignation to the commander-in-chief of the AIF.
‘It is not my desire to fill an administrative post gradually diminishing in importance … I therefore request to be relieved of my command and returned to civil life,’ he wrote.
At a meeting between the two men prior to the resignation, Blamey had told Bennett that he had made a ‘serious mistake’ in escaping from Singapore and because of this he was associated with the failure in Malaya. As a result his appointment to any operational command would be unpopular with the public and at any rate there were other younger officers who now had the experience to take on the Japanese.10
Bennett was furious that his past record, seniority and experience could be so dismissed. In a press statement issued after his resignation was accepted, he insisted he had not wanted to retire from the army while the war was still on, but that he had been ‘victimised’ and ‘frozen out’.11
The nature of Gordon Bennett’s abrupt departure from military life did not go without comment in the newspapers. the Examiner described the decision as regrettable and did not mince words:
General Bennett resigned because he could obtain no assurance that he would ever be granted an operational command. Apparently he felt this could be explained only by antipathy towards him in high places … Has Australia so many proved military leaders that we can allow one of them in the prime of life to go into retirement? …
We know there are those who condemn General Bennett’s action in escaping; they accuse him of deserting his men. But that is a foolish point of view and we hope that the Government has not been weak enough to allow the attitude of itself or of the military chiefs to be influenced by this section.12
By now Bennett was well into the final draft of his book, Why Singapore Fell, which was based partly on his diary at the time and subsequent reflections. When Blamey got to hear of Bennett’s plans to publish his own version of events – and in particular a passage which criticised Australia’s commander-in-chief for not recognising the Japanese threat before the invasion of Malaya – Blamey tried, unsuccessfully, to get it censored. In the end Bennett’s memoir was published in late 1944 and sold out within a few days, such was the level of public fascination with his story.
Even when it was obvious that the end of the war was near, closure was far from Bennett’s mind. Come 1945 he put his hand up to rescue the survivors of the 8th Division. He wanted to supervise the repatriation of Australian POWs, a move that received the overwhelming support of the Returned Services League in New South Wales. But once again the request was turned down, this time on the grounds that he was too senior in rank. It was a job for a brigadier and not a lieutenant-general was the military’s response.
Bennett exploded, telling the newspapers that Blamey was running Australia and not the government.
While the former commander of the 8th Division continued to wage his personal vendetta against his critics in the military, the debate over whether he was a deserter or a legitimate escapee continued. The mood among other ranks was largely supportive of the general, and public opinion also seemed to be on his side. But his enemies within the Staff Corps were still out to get him and in August 1945 even bigger guns were assembled to destroy Bennett’s reputation.
Brigadier ‘Boots’ Callaghan, the division’s artillery commander, whom Bennett had appointed to take over from him after he left Singapore, was among the first of the POWs to return to Australia after being released from Chungking, then provisional capital of the Republic of China.
Among the documents he brought home was a letter from General Percival, which he had written in March 1943 while also in captivity. It was addressed to the secretary of the Military Board in Melbourne and made a serious allegation about Bennett’s decision to escape.
‘I have to report that Major-General H. Gordon Bennett, GOC AIF Malaya, voluntarily and without permission relinquished command of the AIF on February 15 1942 – the date on which capitulation of the British Forces in Malaya took place,’ Percival wrote.13
The letter went on to praise Callaghan for his ‘splendid work in holding the AIF together’ and recommended he be promoted to the rank of major-general.
The opening paragraph went to the very heart of the charge against Bennett – that he escaped without permission. This assumed that Percival had command over the head of the 8th Division, which was not necessarily the case. While Australia was part of the Allied operation in Malaya, in the final analysis Bennett was answerable to Canberra and not to London. At least this was one interpretation of military law, though others begged to differ.
General Blamey could not believe his ears when he heard about Percival’s condemnation of Bennett’s action. It was just the sort of ammunition he needed to further prosecute his old foe and immediately he wrote to Forde, the Army Minister, drawing his attention to the serious allegation that Bennett had effectively deserted his troops.
The Minister replied that he was surprised at the letter’s contents, as he had never heard about any claim that Bennett had deserted his men. Forde asked Blamey to elaborate and, if he was satisfied the allegation could be substantiated, what course of action he proposed to take. It was an offer too good to refuse for the commander-in-chief of the Australian Army, who promptly recommended that an official court of inquiry be held into Bennett’s behaviour in Singapore.
Blamey placed further pressure on Forde in October when, in a note to the minister, he insisted the matter struck at the very core of military discipline and that he had already approached other senior officers to sit on an inquiry:
A great deal of feeling [exists] amongst General Bennett’s previous staff of the 8th Division and other senior officers who were prisoners of war in Malaya. I think it would be deplorable if political considerations should be permitted to interfere with a matter of such serious moment in the discipline of the Australian Army as an investigation into the conduct of one of its General Officers, when such is called into question by his immediate commander.
As the preparations for the court are now in hand, I should be glad if any opposition to its assembly might be withdrawn.14
It seemed there were good grounds for supposing Blamey really was running the country, as Bennett had previously suggested.
Forde had no alternative but to accede to Blamey’s demands and, after consulting Ben Chifley, who had recently taken over as prime minister following the death of John Curtin, agreed that the military court should be held at Victoria Barracks in Sydney from 26–31 October.15
As preparations got underway for the inquiry into Bennett’s escape, troops from the 8th Division were already arriving home by ship. They had spent the past three-and-a-half years in captivity, often under conditions of extreme brutality. More than 1000 Australians died on the Burma-Thai Railway alone.16
Most of the survivors were lucky to be alive given the level of sickness and starvation in the camps and in the light of Japanese plans to execute their prisoners in the event of a US invasion. Only America’s decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved them.
Among the men to have survived that ordeal were Jack Boardman and his lifelong friend Alan Gaudry. The two had been split up as POWs for much of the war and were only reunited on their return to Australia. While overjoyed to be back home, Alan took exception to some of the dockside well-wishers, specifically two soldiers from his unit who had escaped by boat at the fall of Singapore. He made no mention of it in his memoir, but Alan told Jack that he and his mates were singularly unimpressed by the behaviour of the men who got away.
‘When he got into Sydney there were these two deserters to welcome him. Well, Alan and the rest wouldn’t have anything to do with them,’ Jack told me.17
Charles Moses, later to become boss of the ABC,
also got the brush-off when he arrived at Sydney Harbour to greet his fellow officer Captain Adrian Curlewis, who had decided not to escape in 1942. Three-and-a-half years behind barbed wire had clearly left Curlewis with a degree of resentment towards those who had turned their backs on the men of the 8th Division at the fall of Singapore. As Moses spotted Curlewis on the wharf he went forward to offer him a friendly handshake, only to be rebuffed by the latter, who walked straight past him.
‘You bastard,’ muttered Moses. Curlewis probably didn’t know at that stage, but after returning to Australia Moses had gone on to fight in Borneo and New Guinea.
Although the two men later made up, the incident symbolised the depth of feeling that existed between officers over the issue of escape.18
Bart Richardson sailed into Sydney’s Darling Harbour just after breakfast on 4 October. He had been away for exactly four years, eight months and two days. From the deck he spotted two familiar faces. One was his old mate, known as ‘Salvation Army’ Woody, who had been repatriated much against his will before the fall of Singapore. The other was Gordon Bennett.
‘Nobody took much notice of him for, after all, he had deserted his troops after ordering us not to try and escape but did do himself,’ Bart observed.19
Woody greeted his pal as he walked down the gangplank but Bennett was nowhere to be seen.
Strangely the ostracism inflicted upon some perceived deserters was not suffered by all of them. Bennett still had many supporters, including a group of men on the hospital ship Manunda, who draped a banner over the side declaring, ‘We Want Bennett.’ This would have been of some comfort to the 8th Division’s ex-commander, given the opprobrium he had endured at the hands of some of his brother officers in recent years.
Though the sign was confiscated by the authorities at the time, it later found its way into Bennett’s car and remained one of his most prized possessions until his death.20
Hero or Deserter? Page 22