‘But surely, Walter,’ cried Mrs Blackett, close to tears. ‘There must have been some terrible fighting … I hear that wounded men are arriving every day at the railway station by the hundreds and if the Japanese have captured Penang …’
‘Percival has too much on his mind, Sylvia, and there’s an end of it,’ said Walter crossly.
‘But you don’t know if you haven’t tried!’
Walter, however, was quite right. General Percival did have a great deal on his mind. After the débâcle at Jitra the British forces had withdrawn behind the Perak River. But there was a snag about the Perak River, for it flowed in the wrong direction from north to south in the direction of the Japanese advance rather than from east to west, across it. Unfortunately for Percival, however, a position any farther north would have been made untenable by that same Japanese unit which had landed at Patani and, by snatching the Ledge, had earlier threatened the communications of the doomed position of Jitra. This force, by continuing to advance parallel to the main Japanese thrust, which was coming down the trunk road, had maintained its threat of turning the right flank of any new defensive line. As the Japanese Army advanced, therefore, so did this menacing shadow beside it.
But why had this second force been allowed to shadow the main force along the trunk road? The reason was that the British commanders had considered that the terrain did not permit such a manoeuvre, omitting from their calculations a certain unmetalled road which they thought unsuitable for mechanized transport (and so it was, though by no means impassable for infantry advancing on foot or on bicycles). This road headed straight in the direction the Japanese wanted to go, towards Kuala Kangsar. The fact was that from the very beginning of the Campaign this force from Patani had supplied the loose thread which was causing the British defences to unravel right down the peninsula.
At last, however, at Kuala Kangsar this particular loose thread came to an end and the British right flank was secured by the solid stitching of Malaya’s mountainous spine. But even now, with the mountains at his elbow, Percival felt another retreat was necessary because, alas, the Japanese could use the Perak River to penetrate any defences established north of Telok Anson. And so, in due course and after a further withdrawal, new defensive positions had been prepared in the region of the border between Perak and Selangor on the Slim River, and also to the north and south of it.
It sometimes happens in a dream that you find, as if by coincidence, that all the fears you have when awake are improbably realized one after another. This dismaying sensation of events having tumbled together not really by accident but in a way specially designed to deprive you of all hope, which normally only takes advantage of a dreamer’s gullibility, for the British commanders had moved out of a nightmare into reality: having at long last escaped from what had been threatening them hitherto, they now found with relentless dream-logic that this apparently secure position on the Slim River was threatened from a completely different direction.
That very circumstance which the Major had feared in the first week of the campaign on hearing that the Prince of Wales and the Repulse had been sunk had materialized. Thanks to their virtually complete control of both sea and air the Japanese were now in a position to land as they pleased on the thinly defended west coast (on the east coast, too, come to that). To make matters worse this fragile military situation had to be contained in some way by the men of the exhausted 11th Division although, as it happened, Percival had at his disposal the fresh troops of the 9th Division on the other side of the mountains on the east coast: their job was the defence of the airfield at Kuantan and the denial of Mersing against possible landings, both tasks rendered pointless in the event by the collapse in the west. It was this same unfortunate 11th Division which had been obliged to wait in the rain at the very start of the campaign three weeks earlier while Brooke-Popham pondered his pre-emptive advance into Siam. Those fresh and confident troops waiting for the signal to advance and give the Japanese a thrashing would have been hard to recognize in the somnambulant men wearily digging themselves in and putting up anti-tank obstacles at the Slim River; even Mrs Blackett’s brother, Charlie, though his stay in Singapore had spared him the first part of the retreat, was looking decidedly the worse for wear as he worked with a company of Punjabis at wiring the road.
Yet if these fighting men were weary, so was General Percival, and he was worried, too. Does it strike you as odd that whatever iniative was planned by Malaya Command invariably turned out to contain a flaw which would cause it to fail? It was beginning to strike Percival as very odd indeed. At times he could see the flaw well in advance but even so … it always happened that he could do nothing about it. He could not find fault with General Heath, though it was true that Heath was ‘Indian Army’ and hence, in Percival’s view, not a great deal could be expected of him. As a matter of fact, it could even be argued that Heath was being miraculously successful in preserving his retreating 111 Indian Corps from being destroyed And so, who was to blame? He could not, in all fairness, blame himself or his staff for the flaw that kept appearing. Very often it was simply the lie of land that caused his plans to go adrift … or perhaps it was the result of that earlier bungling by poor old Brookers. Whatever the reason, the flaw kept on appearing. It was most peculiar. Or worse than peculiar.
On the night of 4 January, worn out by the constant strain and worried by the prospect of an important conference with General Heath and General Gordon Bennett at Segamat on the following day, Percival fell into a deep sleep. Almost immediately, it seemed, he plunged into a confusing dream about some interminable dinner-party at Government House. But it was not now that it was taking place, in the New Year of 1942, for there, opposite, was the decent, blunt, straightforward countenance of old General Dobbie, the GOC. So it must then be 1937 when he had been out here as GSO1 on Dobbie’s staff. At the end of the table he could see the Governor’s handsome, slightly supercilious face: behind the Governor again there was someone standing in the shadows speaking into his ear. Percival knew there was someone there because whoever it was had rested his hand on the back of the Governor’s chair in a familiar sort of way while he was whispering. He could just make out that the hand emerged from the sleeve of a uniform, but belonging to which of the Services he could not say.
Suddenly, and with spirit, he challenged this man in the shadows. After a moment the hand on the Governor’s chair was withdrawn. A period of confusion and darkness followed, of which he could make no sense. Presently he sat up, sweating and suffocating inside the mosquito net. The image of the Governor, gazing at him with a condescending smile, slowly faded. It was still dark.
Percival looked at his watch, took a swallow of water from the glass beside his bed and lay back again. It was very hot. The fan slogging away above him could make little impression on the air inside his mosquito net. He would have liked to tear away the net and sleep in fresh air again, but he could not possibly risk an insect bite that might lead to malaria or dengue fever, not at this stage. ‘I’ll never sleep like this, though,’ he told himself. Yet, despite the heat, he fell asleep again almost immediately and this time he dreamed that he was back at Staff College and he was doing some exam or other on which his whole career in the Army would depend. Wait, he had remembered now what it was. He had to prevent the Japanese from seizing the Naval Base on Singapore Island and they had already got almost as far as Kuala Lumpur. He was no longer at Staff College. He was in Malaya and it was the real thing. He began to sweat and worry again in his sleep.
But towards dawn Percival received a welcome visit. The shades of Clausewitz and Metternich came to his bedside to offer their advice. Presently they were joined by the spirits of Liddell Hart and of Sir Edward Hamley, author of Hamley’s The Operations of War, Explained and Illustrated. These gentlemen considered a number of solutions to the difficulties which faced him. Metternich recommended that everything should be wagered on a rapid strike north to disrupt the Japanese lines of communication, Hamley
spoke vaguely of flanking movements (and also, less pertinently, of cavalry), Clausewitz wanted Percival to withdraw his troops intact to Singapore Island to conserve them until reinforcements could arrive from Europe and America. Ah, that was interesting! Percival listened eagerly to these ghostly advisers and found each more persuasive than the last. But presently their voices grew fainter and they fell to arguing among themselves. All too soon came the tread of the orderly’s heavy boots in the corridor outside.
Conscious again, Percival decided, at his meeting in Segamat with General Heath and General Gordon Bennett, that although in most respects the narrowness of the Slim River position lent itself well to defence, the threat of amphibious landings further down the coast would make it untenable in the long run unless reinforcements could be brought up to cover the coastal area. The Slim River defile, however, provided the last chance of stopping the enemy short of Kuala Lumpur … or indeed, south of it for a considerable distance. For as you went south the knobbly spine of mountains sank back beneath the peninsula’s fair skin, which itself became pleasantly wrinkled with roads. There would be little chance in such favourable terrain of stopping the Japanese in Malacca. And so, if not in Malacca, it would have to be in Johore … if not on Singapore Island itself. In the meantime, the Japanese must be denied the airfield at Kuantan on the east coast, at least until the reinforcements of troops and planes expected in mid-January had arrived. Moreover, if the defence of Johore was to be properly organized, the Japanese must be halted for a time and the capture of Kuala Lumpur postponed. Everything pointed therefore to the critical defensive stand being made at the Slim River. The Japanese must be stopped there or the defence of Johore would be hopeless. That was why the Punjabis and the Argylls had to keep on digging themselves in even after dark on the following nights. Everything would depend on them.
45
As the late afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen over the Mayfair’s increasingly neglected and overgrown compound, two figures could be seen making their way along the well-trodden path towards the Blacketts’ house: one of these was easily recognizable as Matthew, normally dressed, looking somewhat pensive, but who was the other, this individual wearing what looked like a scarlet boiler-suit, a scarlet balaclava helmet from which horns protruded, and carrying a large toasting-fork? This, as it happened, was only the Major who with great reluctance had put on the suit which he had been sent by Blackett and Webb Limited for the dress rehearsal of their jubilee parade. He was now regretting the decision because he felt much too hot: you cannot expect to wear a balaclava helmet and horns in the tropics without discomfort. Besides, he was afraid that he might be the only person who had decided to dress up, and he now regretted having yielded to Walter’s insistence that he should personify Inflation. The Major swiped irritably with his toasting-fork at one of the giant thistles growing beside the tennis court and the air filled with drifting white down.
The Major, however, had a reason for wanting to keep in with Walter. Several of Blackett and Webb’s vans had been set aside for conversion into floats for the jubilee parade and the Major, to whom it had been perfectly clear for some time that the parade would never take place, was anxious that his AFS unit should be able to call on them in an emergency to supplement what scanty transport was available: this amounted to the Lagonda, Mr Wu’s Buick, a motor-cycle belonging to the estate manager and a couple of bicycles.
A site for the building of the floats had been chosen adjacent to the Blacketts’ compound in a yard surrounded by a cluster of dilapidated godowns which at some time in the last century had been used as storage sheds for a nutmeg plantation but for the past many years had been disused, at least, until recently when Walter’s excessive buying of rubber to circumvent the new American regulations had filled all Blackett and Webb’s other godowns to overflowing and obliged these tumbledown buildings, hastily restored, to accommodate some of the surplus. Walter had originally bought the former nutmeg plantation, which still boasted pleasant groves of lofty, evergreen nutmeg trees, in order to cushion his own property from its acquisition by disagreeable neighbours. But now it seemed to him that he could hardly have made a better investment. Where better could he have found to prepare in secret the floats for Blackett and Webb’s triumphant parade?
The Major had been waiting patiently over the past three weeks for the reality of Singapore’s increasingly precarious situation to put paid to Walter’s jubilee parade. At least, he had assumed, work on building the floats would have been abandoned. With a continuing shortage of labour at the docks and with the Forces trying desperately to recruit men to build defences and accommodation that should have been built years ago it was inconceivable that labour should be diverted to something as trivial as Walter’s floats. Yet although the building of them had been considerably delayed he was astonished to find now that work was still continuing; moreover, twice as many men were working on them as before. The explanation was simple: the men in question, Asiatics normally employed as carpenters, painters or welders at the docks, very naturally preferred the comparative safety of this nutmeg grove to working on coastal defences, at the docks, or the Naval Base under the threat of air-raids.
In other respects, however, there were definite signs that reality was making substantial inroads into Walter’s dream. The only Europeans who had decided to attend this dress rehearsal were Monty, even more bizarrely dressed than the Major, and a few of the younger executives of Blackett and Webb who had presumably found it impossible to refuse; none of the latter had seen fit to dress up for the occasion. Less than half of the Chinese who had been summoned to animate the dragons had turned up. Not more than three-quarters of a Chinese brass band was perched on some rusting machinery at one end of the yard, occasionally banging or blowing at their instruments but for the most part watching dubiously as Walter, looking impatient and out of sorts, shouted at his helpers and tried to marshal enough volunteers to get one of the dragons moving. As he saw Matthew and the Major arrive he broke off, however, and came over to them.
‘It’s good of you to come,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it. Most people haven’t, though, and I doubt whether we’re going to be able to do very much with what we have …’ He paused gesturing vigorously. ‘Not there, you ass! Over there with the others! How many times do I have to tell you?’ He sighed with exasperation, stuck his hands in his pockets and surveyed the chaotic scene spread before him. He was perspiring freely, and looked squat, formidable and slightly demented. ‘It’s no use,’ he muttered, more to himself than to the Major and Matthew, ‘what can you do with such people?’
The Major cautiously lifted a finger to scratch one of his horns which was itching. He was a little surprised to find that he felt sorry for Walter. He said nothing, however. Together they set off to inspect the floats, Walter explaining that he had hoped to get the whole parade together and into motion and to take a couple of turns around the swimming pool and back here again to iron out any last minute difficulties. That was now out of the question unless the absentees presented themselves double quick. They passed two floats parked in the shade of a nutmeg tree: on one of them Joan sat, wearing a plumed Roman helmet and a flowing white garment of Grecian appearance which displayed her lovely arms and shoulders to advantage; in her left hand she held a trident, her right hand secured the Britannic shield. She was gazing impassively ahead and when Matthew murmured ‘Hello’ made no reply (perhaps she had not heard him). Kate sat on the other float with her arm around a gigantic cornucopia: she brightened up when she saw Matthew and waved her free hand.
Kate’s cornucopia had a few minutes earlier been the cause of a furious row between Walter and Monty. From out of its gaping mouth there spilled an abundance of everything made of rubber: motor-tyres of all shapes and sizes, bicycle tyres, inner tubes, shoes and wellingtons, rubber gloves, sou’westers, batting gloves, rubber sheets and tiles, shock absorbers, rubber-tipped pencils, cushions, kneeling pads, balloons, elastic bands, belts, braces and a hund
red and one other things, not all of them recognizable. To this magnificent array Monty, as a joke, had attempted to add a packet of contraceptives. As ill luck would have it, Walter had noticed his son chuckling gleefully as he arranged something conspicuously on the very lip of the cornucopia. His display of anger, even to Monty who was accustomed to it, had been frightening. Walter was incensed, not simply that Monty should have done something that might have made the cornucopia look ridiculous, but that he should have paid so little heed to the modesty of his younger sister. Monty had retired, disgraced, and was at present slouching glumly in the shade of another tree.
‘Why don’t you get off your behind and do something to help,’ Walter shouted at him roughly as he passed. Monty stirred uncomfortably but evidently could think of no way in which he could improve on what was being done already, for presently he sank back again. Monty, the Major noticed, like himself had been allotted a rôle in the counter-parade which was to accompany the paradé proper, harassing it symbolically to represent the pitfalls that a thriving business might have to face in its passage over the years; as a matter of fact, the Major was quite looking forward to tormenting plump and cheerful little Kate with his toasting-fork, though he could see no real reason why inflation should carry a toasting-fork at all. Monty’s costume came no closer than the Major’s to suggesting the part that he was to portray: it consisted of an old striped swimming-costume with shoulder straps, striped football socks rolled right up his hairy thighs and a fanged mask which bore a disturbing coincidental resemblance to General Percival: at the moment this mask and an inflated bladder tied to a stick lay on the ground beside him; the final and most frightening touch in Monty’s costume were the awe-inspiring, curved talons which had been grafted on to a pair of batting-gloves for the occasion. Walter had alloted Monty the rôle of Crippling Overheads in the parade and had refused all his requests for a more heroic part.
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