by Peter Brune
Percival’s infantry reserve was threadbare and the available air support was meagre. Early that morning, in response to Bennett’s request, eight Hurricanes intercepted a force of around 80 enemy aircraft which were engaged in bombing and strafing over the Strait. After a hurried landing and refuelling, a second sortie was flown which resulted in Japanese losses of ‘four destroyed, three probably destroyed and 13 damaged in the two flights’,39 for the loss of one plane. Although there was a desperate war being waged on the north-west coast and in the air, it appears that some personnel to the rear clung to old habits. One of the pilots recalled: ‘We landed by a low-level run into the aerodrome at about 1150, and were rewarded by a severe warning from HQ for low flying during siesta period!’40
As the plight of his Brigade became clearer during the early morning of 9 February, Brigadier Taylor sought to establish a stop-line extending from the northern end of Tengah airfield to the village of Choa Chu Kang, where he might stabilise his front and subsequently stage a counterattack. With communication between himself and Western Area HQ sporadic, it was not until 9.30 am that a liaison officer from Bennett reached him with orders to counterattack and retake Ama Keng village, using Pond’s 2/29th Battalion. Although Taylor, the 2/15th Field Regiment’s Lieutenant-Colonel Wright and Pond went forward to plan that operation, it became impossible to implement when it was discovered that the Japanese were moving east of Tengah airfield. Wigmore has left us with a succinct summation of Taylor’s plight:
. . . his two main problems were now to prevent the Japanese from getting around the airfield towards the Kranji-Jurong area, as yet unmanned; and to protect the right flank of the 44th Indian Brigade. He estimated that the Japanese could have landed twelve battalions. To meet such a situation he had at his disposal some 500 men of his own brigade; Pond’s and Saggers’ battalions; the Jind Battalion and the reserve company of the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion—a force small in comparison, and one comprising units either hastily organized, in process of reorganization, or, in the case of the Jind, trained solely for airfield defence.41
At about 11.00 am Taylor decided to cancel the counterattack and form a westward line running from east of Tengah airfield through the village of Bulim and extending towards the Jurong Road. He sent his Brigade Major to inform both General Bennett and Brigadier Ballentine of his decision. Taylor’s new line was in fact only just forward of the previously selected Jurong Line. We have noted that this line stretched from the lower waters of the River Kranji, southwards to the upper waters of the River Jurong, and therefore offered a shortened front with relatively secure flanks for any defensive operation. However, the point is that the Jurong Line was nothing more than a line on a map. It had not been prepared in any real way for defensive operations.
General Gordon Bennett did not go forward to Taylor nor any part of his front during 9 February. At around 2.30 pm his 8th Division staff suggested that the 22nd and 44th Brigades be withdrawn onto the Jurong Line before dark. Bennett refused. Not long afterwards when communications were restored to 22nd Brigade HQ, Bennett was informed by Taylor that he (Taylor) had ordered his Brigade to fall back to his chosen line running east of Tengah airfield through the village of Bulim and extending towards the Jurong Road. Bennett, according to Taylor, told him ‘that I had acted without orders, that what I had done was quite wrong, and that all I could think of was withdrawing’.42 Bennett was out of touch with Taylor’s plight. Clearly he had two alternatives for effective command. The first was to go forward and communicate directly with Taylor and then issue orders, or to place his trust in him as the local commander on the spot. Having an aggressive attitude is one thing, but a part of the art of war is surely knowing when to instigate a sensible withdrawal, stabilise one’s front and then counterattack if possible. Taylor was not at fault.
On the afternoon of 9 February, Percival further reacted to events in Taylor’s sector by committing the 15th Indian Brigade (Colonel Coates) from the Northern Sector to Bennett’s Western Area. He then ordered Bennett to occupy the roughly five-kilometre-long Jurong Line by withdrawing Ballentine’s 44th Indian Brigade to its southern end and deploying Taylor’s 22nd Brigade and the 12th and 15th Indian Brigades along it. Bennett would now have four brigades under command. Brigadier Taylor was instructed to hold Bulim until 6.00 am on the 10th and then withdraw to the central part of the Jurong Line. Percival further ordered Brigadier Maxwell’s 27th Brigade AIF—where no landings had occurred—to stay put on the Western Area’s vital Causeway Sector.
Brigadier Duncan Maxwell’s 27th Brigade AIF had been deployed along the vital Causeway Sector of General Bennett’s Western Area. The River Kranji—about 1100 metres wide at its mouth on the Johore Strait—formed a natural boundary between Maxwell’s 27th Brigade and Taylor’s 22nd, while a point about 800 metres east of the causeway separated Maxwell’s perimeter from General Heath’s Northern Area. The 27th Brigade, therefore, occupied a perimeter some three and a half kilometres long, which was roughly a quarter of the frontage of Taylor’s coastline.
Maxwell had deployed his 2/26th Battalion running from a point approximately 900 metres north of Mandai village along the River Kranji and stretching eastwards about halfway along the coast towards the causeway. To counter the vast swamp areas within his perimeter, Lieutenant-Colonel Boyes sited his companies on patches of high ground ‘with standing patrols and listening posts forward’,43 and put in train a coordinated plan for mutually supporting machine gun, mortar and artillery fire. The soldiers of the 2/26th were unable to dig trenches as ‘any hole more than six inches deep filled with water’.44 Their only means of protection, therefore, was the building of breastworks ‘constructed of “sandbags” or any other type of suitable material available’.45 Maxwell deployed his 2/30th Battalion at and around the causeway, and stretching back along the main road to link with the 2/26th Battalion. It will be recalled that Lieutenant-Colonel Pond’s 2/29th Battalion had originally been deployed between Mandai village and the Choa Chu Kang Road as the 8th Division reserve. Maxwell placed his Brigade HQ eleven kilometres south of the causeway at the Singapore Dairy Farm (and close to Bennett’s HQ). In view of the fact that Japanese bombing and artillery fire had, and would continue, to disrupt communications, this location was far too remote from his battalions.
Early on the morning of 9 February when news reached 27th Brigade HQ that the Japanese had broken through Taylor’s 22nd Brigade front, Brigadier Maxwell, not for the first time during the campaign, became anxious and thought more about withdrawal than defence. Despite the fact that the River Kranji and its swamps extended nearly five kilometres inland and therefore offered his Brigade a relatively secure left flank, Maxwell became deeply concerned that the Japanese might attack towards the area containing the headwaters of the Kranji and the Choa Chu Kang Road, which could result in his Brigade being cut off. At 11.00 am therefore, he asked Bennett to allow him to withdraw the 2/26th to form a line running from the Woodlands–Kranji Road junction southwards to the twelve-mile peg, about three kilometres north of Bukit Panjang village. Given that the Causeway Sector was vital ground, that the 27th Brigade had not as yet been attacked and that steps were being taken by Percival and Bennett to strengthen the Jurong Line, Bennett rightly refused this request. However, in an effort to assist Maxwell, permission was given to form a 2/26th composite company composed of the newly created fourth platoon of each company. This scratch force was given to D Company to hold an approximately kilometre-long perimeter facing the eastern side of the River Kranji. We now come to an extraordinary train of events.
On the morning of 9 February 1942, Maxwell removed Lieutenant-Colonel Boyes as commander of the 2/26th Battalion. According to the 27th Brigade War Diary, Maxwell visited Taylor’s 22 Brigade HQ at 11.00 am on 6 February to request that Major Oakes—the second-in-command of his old 2/19th Battalion—be released to command the 2/26th Battalion as soon as possible.46 Presumably he had already discussed this matter with Bennett, or alternatively,
was about to. Oakes’s appointment was recorded in the 2/19th War Diary on 7 February.47 Maxwell would claim postwar that, ‘Boyes had not been a satisfactory battalion commander.’48 His assertion has no basis for two reasons. First, Lieutenant-Colonel Boyes’s command of his 2/26th Battalion on the Malay Peninsula cannot be fairly criticised. We have noted that Battalion’s sterling service, which must reflect favourably upon him. Second, there is ample evidence that the 2/26th Battalion held its CO in high regard.49 While Galleghan’s lack of professional respect for Maxwell has been recorded, there is evidence that Boyes also had little admiration for his Brigade Commander. Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur ‘Sapper’ Boyes was a permanent soldier who had experienced exchange duty with a British regiment, had raised and trained his Battalion with zeal and competence, and had led it with distinction. His soon-to-be-recorded fate is tragic.
At around midday, as the volume of enemy artillery fire and bombing of his Causeway Sector increased, Maxwell again asked for permission to withdraw. Wigmore, writing in 1957, and understandably under very close participant scrutiny, apparently decided to take an each way bet on what then occurred: ‘This [Maxwell’s request] appears to have been granted, conditionally upon the withdrawal of the brigade not being commenced before the oil tanks near the Causeway, in the 2/30th’s sector, had been demolished.’50 But after the word ‘demolished’ above, Wigmore added a footnote: ‘General Bennett said after the war that he himself did not give permission for any withdrawal from the Causeway.’51 Given that the very word ‘withdrawal’, let alone its implementation, was an anathema to General Gordon Bennett, and that he had, that very morning, admonished Taylor for rightly withdrawing, it would seem to be a fair assumption that Bennett did not grant Maxwell his second request to withdraw—the second request in the space of but a few hours. After the war, Thyer also denied any prior knowledge of Maxwell’s intent to withdraw and was equally certain that Bennett had not granted permission. In an interview with Wigmore and Kirby in January 1953, the historians recorded that: ‘Thyer said the withdrawal from the Causeway was contrary to Bennett’s character. Whenever withdrawal was suggested Bennett more or less flew off the handle.’52
Barely an hour and a half later, at about 2.00 pm on the 9th, during a conference at his HQ, Maxwell replaced Galleghan with the 2/30th Battalion’s second-in-command, Major George Ramsay. The 27th Brigade War Diary recorded that Galleghan was ‘ordered’ by Maxwell ‘to report to AGH [Advanced General Hospital] for a medical examination’, because he did ‘not consider him fit to carry on his duties due to an ear condition’.53 There is no evidence that Galleghan requested his evacuation. With the former COs of the 2/26th and 2/30th Battalions now gone, Maxwell ordered both battalions to prepare to withdraw from their Causeway Sector perimeters that night. Further, he placed the onerous task of coordinating that two-battalion operation to Oakes, while he, Maxwell, remained at his far distant Brigade HQ—still a full eleven kilometres from the causeway.
In a letter to the Official Historian in March 1954 Galleghan posed an intriguing question: ‘Should a historian raise the question why Maxwell had two COs moved, one to hospital and one relieved of command at such a vital period[?]’54 A historian should. In an interview with Wigmore and Kirby in Adelaide on 19 January 1953, Thyer stated that Maxwell came to the forward 8th Division HQ on 9 February at 9.00 pm.55 Thyer:
He told me (he was very tired) that he was a doctor in civil life and his function was to save life. Maxwell considered that what was going on on Singapore Island after the Japanese landings was senseless slaughter. Maxwell was going back to Percival to urge him to surrender.56
The Official Historians recorded that: ‘Thyer urged him not to do this but to go to Bennett.’ We do not know whether Maxwell actually visited Percival and stated his case.
Pratten (2009) has raised the issue of whether Maxwell’s action in removing Boyes and Galleghan was ‘premeditated’.57 It would seem that it was. Brigadier Maxwell’s choice of Major Roland Oakes as a replacement for Boyes is questionable. Oakes had been left out of battle when his 2/19th Battalion had served at Bakri and during the withdrawal to Parit Sulong. He therefore had had no operational command experience in Malaya, and now, the very morning after the enemy landings on Taylor’s front, Oakes was sent to command a battalion he did not know and on ground and dispositions of which he was unfamiliar. Further, incredibly, Maxwell placed him in overall command of any withdrawal that the two battalions were to undertake—a far from satisfactory command decision, as Oakes knew as much about the 2/30th Battalion and its ground as he did about the 2/26th. It is worth recording that Oakes and Maxwell were old friends from the 2/19th Battalion. In a postwar interview with the Official Historians, Galleghan said: ‘There was no brigade control and Oakes was inefficient. To let him determine when my battalion would go out was a mistake.’58
In appointing Oakes and Ramsay to their commands, Maxwell could undoubtedly count on the loyalty of the former, and the compliance of the latter, since Ramsay was to be under Oakes’s command decision if and when a withdrawal was to occur. The reader might contemplate the reaction(s) of Galleghan and Boyes to a withdrawal from the vital Causeway Sector before an enemy landing had even occurred. Maxwell was removing two forthright, aggressive commanders, and replacing them with two others whose compliance he could count on.
This question becomes even more interesting when we examine a comment made by Brigadier Arthur Blackburn VC in his diary during captivity in Formosa (Taiwan) with Brigadiers Maxwell and Taylor in 1943. Blackburn had told ‘an 8th Division Brigadier’ that he could not fathom how the Japanese had managed to cross the Johore Strait. The ‘Australian Brigadier’ could only have been Taylor or Maxwell, who were both in captivity with Blackburn. The reply astounded him: ‘Look here Arthur, I’ll tell you what happened. I knew it was hopeless so I drew my men back from the beaches and let the Japs through.’59 It would seem that Maxwell was the brigadier in question. If all this was poor enough, as the afternoon of 9 February wore on, the volume of Japanese shelling of the Causeway Sector increased preparatory to General Takumo Nishimura’s Imperial Guards Division’s landings on Maxwell’s front. Obsessed with a withdrawal, Maxwell was about to have a war of his own.
General Yamashita had two prime reasons for mounting landings on the Causeway Sector. The first was the acquisition of the vital main road running straight across the Island from Singapore Town to Woodlands and thence across the causeway to Johore Bahru. Capture that route and dominate the Island. The second was that, while achieving this key first objective, he would also frustrate any British attempt to use troops in this area to assist Taylor’s hard-pressed soldiers across the River Kranji. But those two benefits came with two distinct hazards. The first was the narrow front between the River Kranji and the causeway—around four kilometres of shoreline—which would limit the concentration of his force in the initial wave. Therefore, the Guards Division would not enjoy the same advantage as had the 5th and 18th Divisions landing along Taylor’s massive front. The second problem compounded the first. Not only was the Causeway Sector front relatively narrow, but landing sites along that shore were limited. Along the western 2/26th front lay extensive and therefore slow-to-cross mangroves. The only region where the mangroves lacked depth was in front of Kranji village. On the 2/30th’s eastern side, the defenders would have the advantage of the occupation of the high ground—just behind the road and overlooking the shore. Yamashita opted to attack.
At about 8.30 pm on 9 February 1942, as the 2/26th was engaged in extending its left flank, the enemy barrage stopped and barges carrying the 4th Guards Regiment began to appear. A half an hour later the main Japanese assault landed on the 2/26th Battalion’s perimeter at and around the pier in front of Kranji village. Subsidiary landings were attempted along the Battalion’s swamp shoreline, and others in the 2/30th sector at the Rivers Mandai and Mandai Kechil.
As had occurred on Brigadier Taylor’s 22nd Brigade front the previous night, e
nemy shelling of the sector cut communications, and the lights on the 2/26th front did not operate. Moreover, numerous flares requesting artillery support and machine gun fire were not initially seen. It would be twenty critical minutes before the 2/4th Machine Gunners opened fire. But for all this, the advanced A and B Companies of the 2/26th—the former to the left of the road and facing the pier, and the latter to the right—held their ground. The 2/26th Battalion Unit Diary recorded that:
Hand to hand fighting became general with the forward platoons of both Coys [A and B] . . . Infiltration around the left flank of A Coy forced the forward platoons to withdraw and a line was re-established 300 yds south of the waters edge on the only high ground in the area. Despite casualties that had reduced A Coy to 100 and B Coy to less than 60 the two Coys held firm and no further penetration took place. The enemy persevered by sending barges up the S. [River] Mandai where heavy casualties were inflicted by MGs and Mortars.60
The invaders fared poorly in attempting less concentrated landings on the mudflats on the 2/30th Battalion sector. The Australians were dug in on the high ground just behind the causeway road, and covering access to the streams, their intense fire denied the Japanese any chance of landing barges at or near that vital feature.
Thus, although the 2/26th Battalion had taken significant casualties, the Japanese had failed to pierce the 27th Brigade perimeter to any great extent. But Maxwell was still committed to his withdrawal. When communications were briefly re-established between himself and Oakes at around midnight on 9–10 February, he ordered Oakes to withdraw as soon as the Shell Depot oil tanks—holding about 2 000 000 gallons of fuel—were destroyed. That demolition did not, at first, go according to plan because the truck carrying the equipment and explosives was hit by a shell. However, Lieutenant Watchorn joined his sappers and ‘coolly set the charges within earshot of the enemy’.61 When the tanks exploded at around 4.30 am Oakes led the two battalions out. We now come to more controversy and differing accounts.