Descent into Hell: The fall of Singapore - Pudu and Changi - the Thai Burma railway

by Peter Brune

  These beautiful Cathedral grounds, with their colourful tropical shrubs and well kept lawns are changing in appearance. The lawns are disappearing as graves are dug to lay to rest battle casualties that were too badly wounded to survive—the crosses are quickly growing in number.

  A Bren gun carrier pulls up in a cloud of steam at the entrance to the cathedral. It . . . has a big dent on the driver’s side and a bashed-in headlight, and the radiator is dripping water. It has brought in two badly wounded troops, one with a leg so badly torn it looks like he will lose it, and his mate is suffering from chest and facial wounds. The driver is a tall, thin, sunburnt Australian, his face red and peeling. He’s no more than twenty and the bandage on his arm is red from blood that has seeped through. He’s absolutely buggered and should be in hospital himself. Catching our stares he says, ‘The bloody Japs dropped a shell amongst us about two hours ago and killed three and badly wounded my two mates who I’ve brought in. And they gave me and some others in the area a few cuts.’ He shrugs his shoulders as he fills the radiator and then gets back into the Bren gun carrier and heads back to the front line.

  The ever decreasing perimeter our forces are holding is becoming a shambles. It’s swelling to bursting point by the stream of refugees. Many have arrived some time ago by rail, or by car or truck or even bike. Others are on foot carrying baskets on their shoulders, piled to capacity with everything they can carry. And their children are carrying bundles nearly as big as themselves.

  Mothers show their terrible strain, babies in their arms or on their backs, just able to shuffle along as their toddlers hang onto their clothing. Others are caring for elderly and wounded relations, while all panic at the sounds of the bomb blasts and the rumble of the heavy artillery in action, the screaming of the air raid sirens, and the wailing of the wounded. The dead pile up as the living look for somewhere safe. And where would that be?

  A stream of cars loaded with families, mainly European, is trying to get to the wharves. They find they have to abandon their cars a long way off, adding to the enormous tangle of vehicles that have been dumped in the area. Near the wharves, some have been let run into the sea, others left on the road by their owners before leaving the country where they stand with those of later arrivals hoping to get away on anything that floats. The pile of vehicles ranges from trucks to the most luxurious sedans some of which have been chauffeur driven. The British with their ladies and families, whom most of the population used to have to bow and scrape to, get no right of way. These days it’s everyone for themselves. We have heard all sorts of rewards are being offered by the Europeans to anyone who has anything that looks like it could get them away from Singapore Island.

  The rosary beads are getting a hammering while many believers in other denominations are bending the knee as the black smoke blowing across the island blocks out the sun and gives the area an eerie look that seems to spell doomsday. I feel for the troops who are holding the lines while suffering enormous casualties, their main support being their big hearts. Friday the 13th is drawing to a close, and it’ll be one we remember for the rest of our lives.

  It is Saturday morning, the 14th of February. At St Andrew’s Cathedral an elderly English lady is playing ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ and similar hymns on the mighty Cathedral organ. The sound of the organ is all consuming, playing to a packed congregation—not of orderly rows of occupied pews, but full of doctors, and orderlies, overtired with make-shift gear working like hell attending to the many wounded. Some of the stacked pews do come in handy, as they are used to rest a number of the incoming and post-operative patients. But it is an up hill battle—the gardens are quickly giving way to more fresh earth and crosses.

  Another beautifully spoken prosperous looking English lady is standing near the Cathedral entrance with a couple of Pekinese dogs in her arms, the only worry she seems to have is the noise of the air raid sirens and bomb blasts which are cowering the dogs. She is the wife of a Malayan rubber plantation manager. They have evacuated their two daughters back to England a fair time ago, but she wouldn’t go, and her husband doesn’t know she’s still in Singapore because he’s been fighting with the Malay Volunteers. He gave her instructions to drive to Singapore, dump the car and then get on anything carrying passengers to England or, failing that, to get to India. It would have been easy to get a passage then. But she had decided to stay on with a friend to help the wounded and the never-ending stream of refugee children who get separated from their families in the panic that goes on when shells are bursting close by. The poor things, mostly uneducated, don’t seem to understand what is going on. They just run—it doesn’t matter where just as long as they run. Some finish up getting hurt falling into shell holes or bomb craters, while others get knocked over and trampled on.

  As we pick up more wounded, we hear that Japanese snipers have now infiltrated the perimeter. Are they fifth columnists who have been living and spying in Singapore and have now taken up arms? Rifle fire can be heard from the tops of some city buildings.

  Some of the wounded in the Cathedral are asking what is going on. What can we tell them? Most seem to pin their faith on us receiving air support or being evacuated. What courage these men have. The staunchest of the ‘hopers’ are beginning to wonder what our fate will be as the smell of blocked and busted sewers, decomposing bodies in building rubble and the many fires raging in refuse that could not be disposed of, are causing fear of an outbreak of some serious disease.

  Today, Sunday the 15th of February 1942, the dawn breaks with the sun rising in a ball of fire as it did yesterday, is today, and will tomorrow. The distance to the front lines to load wounded is only a few miles.

  As night approaches the flares and gun fire seem more spasmodic than they have been. The latest battle casualties are very low in morale. Some think we will all be annihilated, others have no idea what will happen. All agree with what one bloke said, ‘They’ve got us buggered.’ For days now we’ve had little sleep, snatching a few hours whenever we can. My mate Nelson Potter and I have been using a truck that has been put out of action on a road alongside St Andrews. Later in the evening I wake up, turn over, and am about to go back to sleep again when I sense something is different. I sit up and rub my eyes. Not a sound. I wake Nelson up.

  We stand up and peer down the road. To confuse things there are a lot of Chinese on the move, heading eastward. We jump down from the truck and run across the Cathedral grounds. Some of our unit and other troops are sitting with heads bowed in their hands. Others are walking about stunned by the news that Singapore has surrendered.

  What can you say in a situation where you stare into space without recognising anything? You have a shocked, choked feeling, your heart is beating like hell pushing blood up into your head until your brain seems as if it will burst. Everything is in a whirl and you just can’t think straight. Hell, let’s get the head down somewhere.

  We wake up on Monday the 16th of February to see men pouring beer and spirits down the drain from the Adelphi Hotel across the road. A lot of the troops still seem too dazed to realise what has happened. Those of us affected this way snap to reality later in the morning when we either see or hear that the Japanese flag has been unfurled at Fort Canning—‘the blazing arsehole’.

  What will they think at home? Will they know the truth about the non-existence of air and naval support, the shortage of essential arms, the fifth columnists in Singapore? Some of us are asking questions, while others are trying to find answers.1

  Driver Joe Nimbs wasn’t the only one trying to make sense out of the fall of Singapore. Historians in Britain and Australia—and Singapore itself—have been asking how and why this disaster occurred for over 70 years.

  PART I

  PRELUDE TO WAR

  . . . the stresses and strains

  Absorbed in building the temple of peace

  They neglect to take into account

  The stesses and strains the edifice may have to bear . . .

 
; Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, 1925

  1

  THE SUN NEVER SETS . . .

  After landing at Singora and Patani in southern Thailand and Kota Bharu in Malaya, the Japanese, in just ten weeks, were able to dominate the seas, command the skies and crush all land resistance, culminating in the surrender of Singapore on 15 February 1942.

  The fall of that city remains the largest military capitulation in the long, proud history of British Arms, and remains a controversial and painful episode in both British and Australian history. The immediate cost was easy to count: over 50 000 British and empire troops surrendered and a significant amount of their equipment was transferred to Japanese hands. But there were also long-term consequences. The prestige of European colonial rule was severely eroded and the cause of Asian nationalism thereby significantly enhanced. In blunt terms, the long-dominant white master had not only been beaten, but totally humiliated by those he considered his cultural and racial inferiors.

  Such massive defeats and consequent humiliations, and the loss of prestigious commercial colonies, are rarely received with measured objectivity and much less with compassion. Scapegoats had to be found, particularly by politicians who endeavoured to absolve themselves of their responsibilities by shifting the focus upon generals; while a number of senior officers in turn attempted to cover up their actions often by adopting a rather flexible attitude to the truth. In the case of the Australians, some of these officers wrote their lines in the compulsory and prolonged detention of Changi, while one, who had escaped back home to Australia, faced the wrath of elements of his army with whom he had been warring for years.

  And then capitulation had its price. The consequence of defeat could not have been imagined by the vanquished. Pudu and Changi prisons and the Thai–Burma Railway would constitute a different fight, a protracted fight to survive, to come home and to start again.

  Much has been written about life in Changi and its subsequent work parties on Singapore Island. But Changi’s overriding significance lies far beyond its university and entertainment programs—and pinching all manner of items from the docks at Keppel Harbour. The real issues have more to do with the black market and the nature of leadership in that jail. The experience of Australians in Pudu Prison in Kuala Lumpur will shed much light on these matters.

  For Australians, the Thai–Burma Railway has become a fourfold legend: there are the stories of ‘Weary’ Dunlop; the mateship and survival techniques of individuals; the brutality of the Japanese and Korean guards; and Hellfire Pass. All are legitimate legends, but the Thai–Burma Railway also teaches us so much more about the very essence of leadership.

  To a very large extent, the chances of survival for a prisoner of war on the Thai–Burma Railway came down to a deadly game of chance. The POWs often endured the monstrous and widespread brutality of the Japanese and Korean guards, and the effects of prolonged slave labour while on a grossly inadequate diet exacerbated the chance of disease. In such circumstances, two people could greatly enhance their chances of survival: their unit’s commanding officer and doctor.

  A brave and efficient commanding officer worked hand-in-hand with his doctor. That CO’s administrative acumen, his courage and sheer guile in managing the limited force or battalion funds—often, incredibly, a substantial portion of it brought from Changi—could mean the difference between life and death for his men. And then there was the black market, both along the River Kwai and in local villages. The barge traffic on the River Kwai brought some supplies of nutritious food, but, above all, supplies of critically important drugs, such as emetine hydrochloride, the miracle saviour for the biggest killer on the Railway: bacillary and amoebic dysentery. There were never anywhere near enough food supplements and fewer drugs, but such resourceful commanders and dedicated doctors could often tip the balance in favour of survival.

  The experiences of three battalions from different forces on the Railway will demonstrate that some officers who shine in battle are lost in the POW experience, while others who make no particular impression in action, come to legendary status amongst their own in the crucible of incarceration. Field Service Regulations and the Geneva Convention were essentially redundant documents on the Railway of Death. There was no handbook for leadership. Sadly, our story will also examine the dire consequences for POWs when they found themselves under the command of docile, indifferent or neglectful senior officers who were quite simply useless in that unique environment.

  Each of the five parts to this story explains another, and helps us to understand the continuum that led to the tragedy of the fall of Singapore, the POW experience in Pudu and Changi, the Thai–Burma Railway, and the postwar political and military aftermath of that crushing defeat. But our story must start at the end of the First World War, where the folly of Versailles, the interwar years of misplaced idealism, disjointed defence policy and neglect conspired to place one of the greatest empires the world has seen on its knees.

  When, on 11 November 1918, an armistice was signed to end the most destructive and costly war in history to that time, the Allies stood in triumph on, and in some cases across, the borders of the once powerful Germany. But that victory masked a number of long-term physical, economic and psychological wounds that the victors had incurred in their 52-month ordeal. France had borne 25 per cent of the Allied killed in its total of over 5.5 million casualties, Britain had suffered around 885 000 dead and about 1.6 million wounded, while Australia had sacrificed around 60 000 killed and approximately 150 000 wounded.1 The cream of a generation had been put to the sword for victory. And despite this heady triumph it was realised, particularly by the French, that within a generation Germany would again be able to muster an army twice the size of the French Army and that it remained the largest homogeneous nation in Europe.

  The economic cost of the war was on a scale never contemplated by any of the participants. Billions of pounds of Britain’s wealth had been strewn across the killing fields of France and Belgium. The victorious but exhausted and mourning masses of the Allied powers demanded that Germany must pay and never rise again. Three mechanisms were employed to this end: the Treaty of Versailles; a form of international government where the perceived power of the many might in future control, by sanctions and collective military might, the aggression of the few; and international disarmament initiatives amongst the world’s great powers.

  On 21 November 1918, the Royal Navy set sail along with two squadrons of American and French ships into the North Sea, for the purpose of intercepting the German High Seas Fleet. From their bases at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven 91 German warships put to sea for the last time. Escorted between two columns of Allied ships, the German fleet was interned at the British naval base at Scapa Flow, while the Allies at Versailles determined their fate.

  Fearful of the future deployment of their ships, the German officers hatched an audacious plan, the scale of which had not been witnessed before, nor seen since. On 21 July 1919, while the British Fleet were on exercises, the Germans scuttled 52 of their ships at Scapa Flow.

  The Treaty of Versailles allowed France to shelter behind the natural barrier of the Rhine. It provided for the virtual dismantling of the German armed forces by the reduction of its army to a mere 100 000 men; it forbade the already dismembered German Navy, much of which was lying on the seabed at Scapa Flow, to possess no more than six battleships, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers and twelve torpedo boats, and no Dreadnought class capital (battle) ships or submarines; and it further prohibited either the army or navy possession of any air forces.2 In addition, a massive series of reparation payments was proposed. Perhaps Field Marshal Foch best summed up the ruthless nature of the treaty when he said: ‘This is not peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.’3

  The League of Nations was created as a part of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. Its covenant contained a number of lofty, ambitious articles. It laid down a process for the peaceful resolution of international disputes by the means of a
n international court; it allowed for the isolation, both politically and economically, of a transgressor by the world community; and critically, it allowed for military intervention by a selection of nominated members against an aggressor, with the costs of such involvement to be shared amongst all members. But arguably its most ambitious aim was disarmament. Article 8 stated that the maintenance of peace would require general armaments only to satisfy national safety and as a contribution to collective peacekeeping. Further, the members of the League undertook to exchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their defence programs and the state of their industries which were adaptable to the pursuit of war.

  Despite these undertakings the immediate postwar years were marked by a resumption of the race for naval dominance. While the British Parliament, which had looked to a reduction of capital ships after the German scuttling at Scapa Flow, now scrapped more than a hundred ships, including the groundbreaking HMS Dreadnought, the United States embarked upon a massive capital ship-building program. By 1921, six battle cruisers and twelve of the largest and most powerful battleships ever conceived were either on the drawing board or under construction, which reflected that nation’s position as the new industrial giant of the world. Once completed, the American fleet would outnumber, outgun and outrun any of the remaining world’s principal naval powers.

  In the Far East, Japan watched this American naval expansion with apprehension. It saw the United States as a serious impediment to its growth in the Asia-Pacific region. Japan now went down the same costly capital shipbuilding path that the United States had taken. And this initiative consumed approximately two-fifths of the Japanese budget.