by Peter Brune
The second sector in the defence of the Slim River crossings was allotted to Brigadier Selby’s 28th Brigade. This sector stretched from the Slim River railway station around eleven kilometres eastward to the Slim River bridge. In an effort to provide 28th Brigade with a much-needed break, General Paris, after having had dispositions on the railway and road near Slim village and in the Cluny Rubber Estate reconnoitred, rested the Brigade in the village, with orders for a speedy occupation of their perimeters when needed. Selby’s HQ was situated on the eastern edge of Slim village.
Infantry support for Brigadier Stewart’s 12th Brigade Trolak sector was provided by one squadron of the 3rd Cavalry (located in the Tilau Rubber Estate) and the 5/14th Punjab, while further support consisted of the 137th Field Regiment, the 3rd Field Company and one troop of the 215th Anti-Tank Battery. The support for the Slim River sector consisted of the 155th Field Regiment, the 23rd Field Company and one troop of the 215th Anti-Tank Battery.
By the morning of 5 January 1942, after two days’ strenuous work, these formations and dispositions were in place at the Slim River and the 15th Brigade had been disposed at the rear of Tanjong Malim.
At face value, the 11th Indian Division dispositions appeared sound. The road and railway ran through a narrow corridor and were a mere few hundred metres apart; the ground to the west of Trolak was essentially kilometres of marshy jungle; to the east lay dense jungle rising to, and onto, the mountain barrier; unlike a number of earlier engagements, the defence was in considerable depth; and the dispositions in the second, or rearward, Slim River sector were well-placed to counter Japanese attempts at encirclement.
But three absolutely critical factors for disaster lay dormant at Slim River: tank defence, communication and the physical condition and morale of the defenders.
Any fair examination of the 11th Division’s potential for adequate tank defence comes back again to the employment—or lack of employment—of the Chief Engineer, Brigadier Simson. In late November 1941, Simson had discovered that War Office pamphlets on defence methods against tanks were still lying, in unopened bundles, in the General Staff cupboards where they must have been for several months, if not years. Simson had hurriedly produced a condensed pamphlet for distribution to all commanders. Given its timing—the pamphlet was not ready until 6 December 1941—it is quite understandable that this information was never digested by them. But as we have observed, Simson could have, and should have, been placed in complete charge of the construction of the fortifications along the Trunk Road.
In his book, Singapore: Too Little, Too Late, Simson revealed that he had correctly anticipated the use by the enemy of medium and light tanks. He advocated the placing of obstacles to stop tanks and thus render them vulnerable to close-range fire. He recommended the building of drainage ditches along roads to discourage the tanks from leaving them and thus evading established gun sites. He favoured the use of field guns against enemy tanks when anti-tank guns were in short supply.
Almost all of the necessary elements for anti-tank defence at Slim River were absent, because of an understandable lack of training and imagination. Local commanders and Public Works Department officials were poor substitutes for a Chief Engineer and his expert staff. Brigadier Simson has left us with a cutting summary, which not only addresses the anti-tank issue, but also the ongoing difficulty of bridge demolition:
Had the Engineers from Command Headquarters been allowed to prepare anti-tank obstacles, mine chambers, etc., for the really effective demolition of major bridges, in peace or early war time—as had been often suggested—it seems certain that much of the pressure on units of the Third Indian Corps, as also their resulting casualties, could have been materially reduced during the retreat. In fact it is probably not too strong a criticism to say that Malaya provides a good example of how the Army’s engineer arm should not be used—nearly always too little and far too late, when they were used at all.1
The second critical problem confronting the defenders at Slim River was how to maintain effective communication. The 108 radio set, used mainly at the company and battalion level, had been a major disappointment in closed country. Weighing around 11 kilograms, the set was cumbersome to carry on the signaller’s back, and required a line of sight—rarely available in Malaya—for reliable transmission. The radio used at the brigade and division level was far bigger and required a truck for its use and storage. It was vulnerable to air attack and also proved unreliable. The chief methods of communication at battalion and brigade level were signal cable, despatch riders and, where possible, the local civilian telephone facilities. The need for defence in depth along roads and in general perimeters, therefore, compounded these communication problems.
The third factor was the physical condition and morale of the defenders. Colonel Deakin, the CO of the 5/2nd Punjab, noticed the condition of his men just prior to the action at Slim River:
The battalion was dead tired; most of all the Commanders, whose responsibilities prevented them from snatching even a little fitful sleep. The battalion had withdrawn 176 miles in three weeks and had had only three days rest. It had suffered 250 casualties of which a high proportion had been killed. The spirit of the men was low and the battalion had lost 50 per cent of its fighting efficiency. During the 5th January, I found a most lethargic lot of men who seemed to want to do nothing but sit in slit trenches.2
It was all very fine, therefore, for General Percival to advocate that the 11th Indian Division should ‘take every opportunity of imposing delay by attacking the enemy’s flanks and rear’, but given Deakin’s assessment of his men—in the front line of the Trolak sector—those soldiers were in questionable physical and mental condition to defend a given locality, let alone attack the enemy.
The first attack by the Japanese at Slim River was inauspicious. Preceded by a mortar barrage during the late afternoon of 5 January, two companies of infantry came onto the Hyderabads via the railway. The Indians held their fire until the enemy were almost onto their wire, with the result that the attack was quickly broken up, and some 60 Japanese were left dead or dying near that obstacle, for little loss to the Indians. The next day was unusually quiet apart from minor patrol activity. General Paris decided to leave his still tired and worn 28th Brigade in their rest positions at the village, with the idea of positioning them in their Slim River sector at around midday on the 7th. It would prove a fateful decision.
Alan Warren has recorded that late on 6 December, an Asian refugee arrived in the 12th Brigade’s perimeter with information. He ‘claimed that he had seen a column of “iron land-ships” at Sungkai’,3 about thirteen kilometres north of Trolak, and that the blown bridge there had been repaired. Alan Warren:
Stewart concluded that the vehicles were only lorries. As Stewart would not permit Deakin’s Punjabis to damage the road in their area, Deakin ordered his sepoys to lay anti-tank mines on the Trunk Road in a narrow cutting. Old loop roads in the Punjabis’ sector were left open for the Hyderabads’ vehicles.4
Two points above are of critical importance. First, Stewart’s assumption that the ‘iron land ships’ were lorries would seem wishful thinking. In fact, it was an assumption he could not really afford to make. The second revelation is the fact that there were three loop roads in the Punjab perimeter. Small loop roads were used to minimise or straighten out bends on roads, particularly for convenience near rubber plantations, with the result that while such old sections of road were disused and partly grown over, they were in fact accessible—particularly by tanks. The first was about 650 metres south of the 60-mile peg, the second just north of peg 61 and the last at about peg 62. It is hard to credit that a military engineer of the seniority and standard of Brigadier Simson would have left three loop roads within the prime defensive perimeter ‘uncovered’ by concrete obstacles, mines or anti-tank guns.
The forestalled frontal movement along the railway on 5 January against the Hyderabads had caused Colonel Ando to change his plan for his 42nd Re
giment’s capture of Trolak on the night of the 6/7th. He now decided to stage an attack down the Trunk Road with tank support in unison with an outflanking movement through the jungle. But his tank commander convinced him to allow a tank thrust down the main road, arguing that if this failed, his original plan could still be implemented without affecting his timetable. The Japanese attack was to constitute what Colonel Tsuji would later call a ‘thoroughly consolidated fighting force’.5 And it was. The column was headed by a tank company, closely followed by an infantry company and engineers. Behind them came a concentrated column of tanks and infantry in lorries. This magnificently balanced and potent Japanese force was, by its very composition, set to exploit the three weaknesses that have previously been discussed.
Supported by an artillery barrage from guns near the railway and on the east of the road, and assisted by ‘brilliant moonlight’,6 the Japanese attacked straight down the Trunk Road at around 3.30 am on 7 January. Concentrated artillery and tank fire enabled a rapid clearing of the Hyderabads’ first roadblock and a consequent overunning of their forward company. The Japanese now used the first loop road to create utter confusion and a consequent withdrawal of the Hyderabads along the railway.
While this mayhem was in train the tank column pushed on. At around 4.30 am its leading tank reached a cutting near the 61-mile peg at the front of the Punjabis’ perimeter and struck a mine. While the enemy initially lost three tanks, and close quarter fighting broke out, they now employed the loop roads to encircle the defenders and destroy or scatter them. Barely 800 metres further along the road, the tanks and infantry easily repeated their success by overrunning the next Punjab position, which possessed no anti-tank defences. Within a further hour the advance had travelled a further 750 metres before it was temporarily halted by an anti-tank mine in front of the Punjabis’ reserve company. For the young Indians, exhausted, dispirited and attempting to defend their perimeters with such poor support, the experience must have been terrifying. Kirby has quoted Colonel Deakin’s vivid description of their plight:
The din . . . baffles description. The tanks were head to tail, engines roaring, crews screaming, machine-guns spitting tracer, and mortars and cannon firing all out. The platoon astride the cutting threw grenades, and one tank had its track smashed by an anti-tank rifle. The two anti-tank guns fired two rounds, one of which scored a bull, and then retired to the Argylls area. One more tank wrecked itself on the mines.7
Although they incurred heavy casualties, the Punjabis’ reserve company and headquarters gamely inflicted an hour’s delay upon the Japanese column. At this time, however, another undefended loop road came into play. When the Japanese discovered it, they promptly surrounded the Punjabis and by around 6.30 am—with daylight looming—moved on. The survivors of this party made their way back towards the Slim River bridge, with intelligence gained the hard way: they had counted 30 tanks and, amidst the din described by Lieutenant-Colonel Deakin, identified the sound of further tanks to the rear. Now, when such information was critical to the erection of further anti-tank obstacles down the Trunk Road, the poor communications of the perimeter came tragically into play. The local telephone system had been cut by the enemy. Brigadier Stewart, trying to make sense of these rapidly unfolding events, guessed that while the Japanese had pushed through the Hyderabads, they had been stopped by the foremost Punjab company. To stabilise his perimeter, he now ordered the reserve 5/14th Punjab to deploy at the brigade check position at the 65-mile peg, the Argylls to hurriedly construct roadblocks covering Trolak, and, critically, he ordered Deakin to hold his position regardless of whether the enemy broke through.
The Argylls quickly placed two roadblocks within their rearward 12th Brigade perimeter: the first on the Trunk Road at the northern edge of the Klapa Bali Rubber Estate (the extreme northern edge of their perimeter); and the second at its southern extremity, just forward of Trolak. At approximately 6.30 am, and now in full daylight, four medium tanks smashed through the first obstacle and within a half-an-hour ran into the second. Here they were stopped for a short time by the Argylls’ armoured cars and anti-tank rifles. This was a brave action but a futile one. The two armoured cars which contested the advance were very quickly, and understandably, knocked out, and the anti-tank rifles proved worthless.
We now come to another recurring 11th Indian Division, and indeed III Corps, failure: the consistent inability to blow bridges promptly. Although the Trolak bridge had been wired for demolition, all went astray. Brigadier Stewart would later record that:
But the demolition, the cause for which the sacrifice was made, failed. No sappers were to be found, and the wires had been cut by retreating traffic. Captain Turner, the able leader of the carriers, and armoured cars, gallantly pushed one of the knocked-out armoured cars on to the bridge under the continuous fire of the tanks. But it sufficed for only a few minutes’ delay. The tanks came up, pushed it cautiously aside, and continued down the road.8
The repeated, inept performance in demolition of bridges by both divisional and brigade engineers must have infuriated Brigader Simson. The fault should not be attributed to the former, but to the complete failure by General Percival to employ the expertise at hand. And it would seem that the lessons were not recent, but had been learnt during the First World War and implemented in British Field Service Regulations as early as 1922. Simson would later write that mine chambers should have been built for future use and further: ‘. . . small demolition squads should actually live in dugouts at those bridges . . .’9 The notion that local engineers might lay a charge and then remain at the desired bridge to ensure its successful demolition would seem a basic one.
The Argylls were now capable of doing nothing other than watch a stream of enemy tanks file past them. When further Japanese tanks arrived at the Trolak bridge, all that could be accomplished by the by-passed right forward Argyll company, and its overrun road remnant, was to destroy their remaining armoured cars and carriers, and set off through the jungle in an attempt to reach the Slim River bridge before the enemy.
The 12th Brigade and 11th Division’s primitive communications caused their commanders to be virtually out of touch with tragic events. For his part, at 6.30 am, General Paris was informed that ‘there had been some sort of breakthrough’, when in fact two of his battalions had been overrun. He reacted to this news by ordering Brigadier Selby to immediately occupy his positions in the Slim River sector. Even Stewart, whose HQ was on a side road in the Tilau Rubber Estate, remained ill informed. He told Selby that he thought the situation was serious rather than critical, which must have given the latter a false sense of security. Stewart now only had contact with his company on the Estate Road and a remnant of the Hyderabads. At 9.00 am, he ordered both to delay any further Japanese movement down the Estate Road, and began a 12th Brigade HQ withdrawal to Slim village. The Argylls and Hyderabads who had been cut off were all later either annihilated or captured—and the wounded were slaughtered by the Japanese.
The audacious Japanese tank commander, with further bridge objectives in mind, continued his rapid advance forward of Trolak without his infantry support. At about 7.30 am, while the 5/14th Punjabis were moving along the Trunk Road to occupy their checkpoint at the 65-mile peg, they were surprised—understandably so, given they were nearly five kilometres short of their objective—by the enemy tank advance guard. Moving in company line of column, the front company was hit and scattered, the following severely mauled and left with only twenty unwounded soldiers, and the remaining two quickly melted into the rubber to eventually occupy a point on the road. They too fell foul of supporting tanks and infantry. So fast and concentrated was the Japanese vanguard that it quickly encountered the 28th Brigade troop of anti-tank guns—a rare commodity at Slim River—and proceeded to overrun it before it could deploy for action.
Paris’s decision to allow his 28th Brigade to bivouack in Slim village to rest now came home to haunt him. At around 8.00 am, the 2/9th Gurhkas were only just beginni
ng to occupy their perimeter just out of Slim village when the enemy tanks swept past them. About five minutes later, and moving in a column of companies down the Trunk Road towards their Cluny Rubber Estate perimeter, the 2/1st Gurkhas were taken completely by surprise when they, too, were confronted by the leading tanks. Understandably, they were completely overrun and scattered. Two batteries of the 137th Field Regiment were next. Deployed beside the road in the Cluny Estate, they were given a short but comprehensive spraying of both cannon and machine gun fire, before the enemy’s urgent dash to the Slim River bridge continued. When the bridge was reached at about 8.40 am, the Japanese had only to contend with one troop of light anti-aircraft Bofors guns which, despite the fact that they fired at a mere 100 metres, did no damage. The soldiers manning these guns, unprotected by infantry, were soon scattered; and the tanks, leaving one of their number to guard their prize, soon made off. They made a further three kilometres before being confronted by the 155th Field Regiment, which was proceeding north to its task of support for the 28th Brigade.
It should be conceded that any support unit which encounters an advanced enemy tank column about 30 kilometres from what it considers to be the front line will be somewhat horrified by the experience. Kirby has recorded that: