by Peter Brune
. . . the battalions varied widely in quality, condition, and equipment. Only one of the Indian battalions was up to numerical strength, three (in the 44th Brigade) had recently arrived in a semi-trained condition, nine had been hastily reorganized with a large intake of raw recruits, and four were being re-formed but were far from being fit for action. Six of the United Kingdom battalions (in the 54th and 55th Brigades of the 18th Division) had only just landed . . . and the other seven battalions were under-manned. Of the Australian battalions, three had drawn heavily upon the recently-arrived, practically-untrained recruits. The Malay battalions had not been in action, and the Straits Settlements Volunteers were only sketchily trained. Further, losses on the mainland had resulted in a general shortage of equipment. The experiences of the troops had affected their morale in varying degree. The general effect was bad.24
From an Australian perspective, the problem of reinforcements was much more serious than ‘recently-arrived, practically untrained troops’. The battle at Bakri and the subsequent withdrawal of Anderson’s column to Parit Sulong had virtually gutted the 2/19th and 2/29th Battalions. Wigmore has claimed that the 2/19th received 370 reinforcements, while the Battalion Unit Diary and its Unit History put the figure at 630—100 from the General Base Depot and 530 from the recently arrived ‘untrained’ reinforcements.25 The 2/29th received around 500. One reinforcement officer posted to the 2/29th recalled that when some married men were refused as reinforcements, ‘they filled up the platoon with men out of Bendigo jail’.26 The same officer also noted that many had just entered training camp, that a significant number later attempted to jump ship at Fremantle, and that such disillusionment continued on the way to Singapore with ‘a bit of physical violence aboard . . . with officers and so on’.27
The problem was not confined to the other ranks. Some of the nineteen reinforcement officers were also of poor quality. One ‘new’ platoon commander had to be taught by a few of his ‘veterans’ not to order his troops to run off towards bushes during an air raid, but to simply hit the ground. After having seen numerous Indians running around under an artillery barrage forward of Bakri only a few weeks before—with horrendous results—such behaviour did not inspire the men’s confidence in a number of officers. Any battalion which receives a new CO, second-in-command, three new company commanders and about 480 virtually untrained and often disgruntled troops will struggle in battle. And to compound this state of affairs, the 2/29th also had to cope with a severe lack of specialists in its HQ Company. Corporal Jim Kennedy, Signals 2/29th Battalion: ‘. . . and these reinforcements didn’t have a clue about signals . . . or anything. They got them in the mortar platoon, they got them in the carrier platoon, and the transport . . . you had to make up the numbers and that’s what they made them up with.’28
The 2/29th Battalion was deployed in the Causeway Sector as 8th Division reserve. Given its just mentioned problems of training, leadership and specialist expertise, the chances of it being able to assume a mobile reserve role were slim.
In an effort to augment his meagre reserve General Bennett raised two additional battalions. On 3 February, he promoted Major Robertson (2/20th Battalion) to command a Special Reserve Battalion which consisted of ‘surplus Army Service Corps and ordnance men and 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion reinforcements’.29 The quality of this unit can be imagined—the Army Service Corps were known as ‘the Galloping Grocers’.30 Two days later Bennett raised ‘X’ Battalion, also manned by ‘spare men and reinforcements’.31
The Australians complained to Malaya Command concerning the allotment of artillery rounds. The daily expenditure of ammunition was restricted to twelve rounds for each 25-pounder gun, 29 per 4.5-inch howitzer, and 25 for each eighteen-pounder gun.32 Colonel Thyer, Bennett’s GSO1, would later record that:
Representations were made to HQ Malaya Command that these allotments were inadequate. However, the instructions were repeated and further restrictions imposed to the extent that the allotment only applied to guns actually fired during the 24 hour period, allotments were not transferable from gun to gun within a regiment and were not cumulative. A ‘silent’ policy which provided that guns were not to fire from their main positions except in the event of an attack, meant that the daily expenditure of ammunition on the front of any sector was again drastically reduced.33
The employment of the artillery support for the defence of the north shore would prove a controversial one, particularly in light of the fact that General Yamashita’s 25th Army actually possessed less artillery than Malaya Command. Further, those guns were restricted to 1000 rounds per field gun and 500 for each heavy gun—less than Singapore’s stocks.34
With the resources at his disposal, General Percival’s plan for the defence of Singapore Island was severely flawed. In effect, he sought to cover all contingencies and in the end covered none. Wavell would later tell General Brooke that the defence of Singapore required a leader who was a ‘really vigorous, ruthless personality . . .’ and that he had sought one ‘but could not see him’.35 What would this ‘vigorous, ruthless personality’ have done?
First he would not have needed Wavell to repeatedly order him to fortify the north shore of Singapore Island. We have discussed the complete and utter failure by Percival to employ the Chief Engineer during the fighting in Malaya. There can be no excuse for Simson not having been rapidly employed on the north shore of Singapore Island from late December 1941 onwards. Any defensive locality needs depth, secure flanks, a mobile reserve, and critically, a forward killing ground. The geography of the Island presented the commander with relatively secure flanks (the eastern and western coastline) and the Johore Strait was a natural killing ground. The Chief Engineer had proposed ‘underwater obstacles, mines, petrol fire traps, anchored but floating barbed wire, and methods of illuminating the water at night’.36 Simson has recorded that the necessary barbed wire and mines were available, and there was no shortage of abandoned petrol supplies at the naval base or airfields. To provide depth to the defences, he had advocated mutually supporting wired trenches, switch lines and pillboxes. We have already discussed the labour supply problems on the Malay Peninsula and the Island. The complete incompetence in marshalling, prioritising and supervising that labour is best illustrated by Colonel Thyer’s description of events on the Jurong Line as late as February 1942:
. . . it was ascertained that a plan for the construction of a series of defence works on this line had been produced and a contract had been let to a Chinese contractor. Work was proceeding in a leisurely peacetime manner. Some difficulties were being encountered in providing the coolies with meals, but the greatest problem was to keep them at work. At the first sight of a group of enemy aircraft, the gangs would disperse, some returned hours later, some not at all.37
A really ‘ruthless, vigorous’ commander would not have ‘tendered’ work to contractors—he would have quite simply declared martial law and press-ganged a labour supply; he would not have tolerated work at ‘a leisurely’ pace; he would not have endured difficulties with meal supplies, and his orders for the military supervision of labour would have been totally unforgiving.
The second critical question was the numerical paucity of defenders across the north coast—particularly Taylor’s 22nd Brigade front—and the threadbare reserve. Warren (2002) has provided us with the simple answer: Percival was ‘unwilling to take a risk in any sector . . .’38 Wavell’s ‘vigorous’ commander would have denuded his southern area of at least its British battalions (the Loyals, the Manchesters and the Gordons) and used them to strengthen his north coast and reserve. Further, as the Manchesters were a machine gun battalion, their firepower across the Johore Strait killing ground might have proved invaluable. Whilst splitting formations is always undesirable, Percival had done it repeatedly during the Malayan Campaign. Although ABDA Command Intelligence had discovered a Japanese convoy en route to the Anambas Islands on 4 February, and Percival had worried whether it might be eventually heading for Sing
apore, intelligence soon correctly ascertained that this convoy was Sumatra bound. There are always calculated risks involved in high command decisions, but the ‘ruthless, vigorous’ commander takes them. Malaya Command’s only chance to induce a prolonged siege relied on its ability to inflict telling casualties on the enemy as he formed up to attack, then as he crossed the Johore Strait killing ground and, finally, to be able to withdraw to strong defensive positions in depth. Percival had a capable chief engineer and yet again had failed to employ him.
‘Cometh the hour cometh the man.’ The hour had long been predicted and had now come—but a ‘really vigorous, ruthless personality’ had not.
Before the war the Japanese had identified the north-west coast of Singapore as the best landing site. They had done so for three reasons. The first was that the mangrove-covered western coastline concealed the rubber estate and river assembly areas for troops, landing craft and artillery. Second, the Johore Strait was at its narrowest along this western side and therefore diminished the British killing ground and, hopefully, as a consequence, heavy Japanese casualties in its crossing. Third, the Japanese believed that Malaya Command would use the Jurong Line as its prime defensive locality and, because of the multitude of rivers and mangroves in the area, it would only man the northwest coast with small outposts.
General Yamashita allowed a mere week for his concentration of men and material for the attack upon Singapore. He planned that his 18th and 5th Divisions were to concentrate at the River Skudai and commit sixteen of their battalions to the main attack with a further five in reserve. This highly trained, aggressive and well-led striking force was to be faced by Brigadier Taylor’s 22nd Brigade AIF, hopelessly dispersed and, in the case of the 2/19th Battalion, way below its former fighting proficiency. Yamashita deployed his Guards Division to the east of the causeway at the River Tebrau, where it was to stage a feint, to be followed by a secondary attack. The feint involved the occupation of the island of Pulau Ubin, constant vehicle activity in the area and concentrated artillery fire upon Heath’s east coast positions. This ruse would have fortified Percival’s conviction that the attack was to be staged on the north-east coast.
On 4 February 1942, the Japanese began artillery barrages upon the Island. Any chance Malaya Command had of contesting the enemy build-up was hampered by a decided lack of decent intelligence and the stringent rationing of the defenders’ artillery ammunition. But on the night of 6 February, two patrols departed from Brigadier Taylor’s west coast sector. The first was undertaken by the 2/19th’s Lieutenant Dal Ottley, Sergeant Dempsey and Corporal Donnelly of B Company, who left at around 10.30 pm in a canoe, each armed only with a revolver and six rounds, one tin of bully beef and biscuits, and wearing sandshoes. Ottley’s mission was ambitious, and in essence required him to reconnoitre from Kampong (village) Bahru, which lay directly across from the 2/19th perimeter, inland and then travel eastwards as far as the River Malayu. This stretch of the mainland coast covered the region opposite the 2/19th and 2/18th perimeters. In the process, his eastward inland recce was to involve a passage through four large estates to ascertain any enemy assembly areas and numbers of landing craft.39 At about the same time, Lieutenant Homer and four men of the 2/20th Battalion also paddled across the Strait and performed the same task as Ottley from the River Malayu eastwards to the River Skudai, thereby completing the stretch of coast opposite Taylor’s Brigade.40
The results of the two patrols were impressive. Ottley reported large concentrations of enemy troops in three of the estates, provided map references of numerous gun emplacements, but saw only a few landing craft on the River Malayu. Homer’s patrol likewise reported heavy rubber estate troop concentrations, gun emplacements, but, as Ottley had found, ‘only moderate boat concentrations’.41 It would seem that the two patrols’ information was slowly absorbed and hardly acted upon. The 8th Division Diary records that it received 22nd Brigade’s report at 11.50 pm on 7 February,42 whilst Kirby claimed that Malaya Command did not receive this intelligence until 3.30 pm on the 8th43—nearly sixteen hours later. Warren (2002) has claimed that the intelligence ‘was not adjudged to be of any special significance’,44 and quotes Thyer as stating postwar that: ‘It did not, however, enter anybody’s head to order harassing fire.’45 Yet in his own report on operations Thyer wrote that:
The gist of these reports [Ottley’s and Homer’s] were passed by 22 Bde to Western Area and by 2/15 Fd Regt to the CRA [Commander Royal Artillery]. The latter ordered the regiment to put down fire in the areas indicated. Later the CO 2/15 Regt reported back that the targets had been engaged to the satisfaction of 22 Bde.46
In the event, the response to the intelligence gathered by the two patrols would seem to have been poor—and no effort was made to tighten the pathetically thin 22nd Brigade defensive line. Within 24 hours, Lieutenant Ottley, the members of his patrol and Lieutenant Homer were killed in action. At around 10.00 am on 8 February 1942, the Japanese began a concentrated shelling of the 22nd Brigade’s perimeter, which did not ease until 6.00 pm. The defenders might have expected that lull to have been followed by comparative quiet, but the Japanese launched a further barrage after sunset, the intensity of which was far greater than its predecessor. The invasion of Singapore was just hours away.
20
‘I DREW MY MEN BACK . . .’
We have noted that in order to defend Singapore’s north-west coast, Brigadier Taylor was forced to deploy each of his three 22nd Brigade battalions across a front approximately 4.8 kilometres wide, each with a platoon from the 4th Machine Gun Battalion in support. The 2/20th Battalion (Lieutenant-Colonel Assheton) was placed between the Rivers Kranji and Sarimbun with a company of Dalforce on its right flank; the 2/18th Battalion (Lieutenant-Colonel Varley) was deployed between the Rivers Sarimbun and Murai; and the 2/19th (Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson) was sited from the River Murai to the River Berih. Taylor’s 22nd Brigade HQ was well placed just south of Ama Keng village.
General Yamashita chose the coastline between Cape Buloh and Cape Murai for his landings on the north-west coast. That he adhered to the principle of ‘concentration of force’ is an understatement. On his left flank, he planned to attack Lieutenant-Colonel Assheton’s 2/20th Battalion with almost all of the nine battalions of his 5th Division. Of those nine battalions, six were to land around the River Sarimbun area. Yamashita ordered his 18th Division to land on the 2/18th and 2/19th fronts with a three-battalion left flank, and a four-battalion right flank attack.
It will be remembered that while Lieutenant Ottley’s 2/19th and Lieutenant Homer’s 2/20th recce patrols had identified numerous enemy assembly points and gun emplacements in the area opposite 22nd Brigade’s coastline, they had not found extensive landing craft concentrations. In an effort to avoid detection, their likely landing points and therefore exposure to artillery fire, the Japanese 5th and 18th Divisions did not move their landing craft to the coast until 24 hours before the assault. Around 300 vessels, which consisted of motor launches, collapsible boats and pontoons, were to carry four waves of troops across the Strait. Lionel Wigmore:
The collapsible boats, constructed of plywood with rubber joints and built in two sections, were capable of being assembled by one man in two minutes. Propelled by a 30 horsepower 2-cylinder outboard motor, each could carry twelve fully-equipped troops with a four man crew; linked together in threes they were capable of carrying field artillery pieces. Two types of pontoons were used. One, similar to but heavier in construction than the collapsible boats, was linked together in threes to carry heavy vehicles and tanks up to 16 tons. The other type, of steel construction, was commonly used for bridge building, but could also be used as a landing craft.1
General Yamashita’s two initial objectives were the Tengah airfield on the morning of 9 February, to be followed by a line extending south from Hill Panjang.
From a Japanese perspective the landings would be most vulnerable during the first critical hours. The initial problem was for the firs
t wave—around 3500 to 4000 troops—to cross the Johore Strait killing ground in sufficient strength to establish a beachhead. Australian artillery fire upon their assembly points was the second difficulty. If that embarkation was disrupted by an accurate and intense shelling, the Japanese might expect significant casualties and a disruption to their schedule, which might well prejudice their beachhead concentration. But once established in strength before daylight, Yamashita would be in a position to stage a rapid advance through sparse defences to his initial Tengah airfield objective. A consequent build-up of tanks, artillery and vehicles, supported by his long-established air superiority, would surely see Singapore fall, and fall relatively quickly.
We now come to a tragic train of events. The potential for the Australians to contest the enemy crossing of the Johore Strait killing ground is the first issue. That defence hinged on three factors: the ability to provide obstacles on the Strait; the capability to illuminate the Strait so as to enfilade it with telling machine gun fire; and the artillery potential to disrupt the succeeding waves of invaders at their assembly and landing points.
The failure to utilise the Chief Engineer’s expertise and available resources has been discussed. However, in a last-ditch effort to assist the north-west shore defences, Brigadier Simson had sent barrels of petrol to be used on the mangrove coastline and at river and creek mouths, which could be set off electronically or by tracer fire. In addition, he had sent ‘underwater obstacles, floating logs with barbed wire and car headlamps to illuminate the shore . . .’2. When Malaya Command discovered Simson’s initiative, orders were given for the transfer of those commodities to the north-east coast where they were ‘only partially installed’.3 Ever the masters of knee-jerk, belated and piecemeal response, Malaya Command, ‘at the last moment’,4 ordered them moved back to Taylor’s sector. In the end, those measures were successfully employed in neither sector.