by Peter Brune
On 31 October 1945, the court found that Bennett had not had Percival’s permission to leave Singapore; that he did not have POW status when he left; that he had given an order that all AIF personnel were to remain in the final AIF perimeter; and that he was therefore not justified in escaping from Singapore.
The military court of inquiry into Major-General Gordon Bennett’s escape from Singapore was nothing more than a ‘kangaroo court’ contrived by Blamey. And yet Lodge cheaply dismisses Bennett’s right to a fair and unbiased trial by stating that:
Although there is little doubt that Stantke was to some degree prejudiced against Bennett, there is equally little doubt that, upon the evidence, any other three general officers of the Australian army would have reached the same conclusions as did Morshead, Wootten and Stantke.22
On the basis of the evidence Lodge cites, Stantke’s prejudice against Bennett ‘to some degree’ is a gross understatement, and the notion that any defendant in any court should be subjected to a prejudiced tribunal constitutes nothing less than a miscarriage of justice. Further, Lodge’s claim that ‘any other three general officers of the Australian army would have reached the same conclusions’ is little more than biased conjecture.
Blamey passed on the court’s findings to Frank Forde, the Minister for the Army, with the observation that under normal circumstances, Bennett would now be charged with desertion and face a General Court Martial. He added that should the government determine not to allow a Court Martial, that Bennett should be either retired from the army, or face a Royal Commission. Predictably, Blamey suggested the former option.
However, there were other Australians who deplored Bennett’s treatment: ten members of parliament including Menzies (a staunch Blamey supporter); the Victorian, New South Wales and Western Australian branches of the RSL; the 8th Division Association; and Bennett’s old First AIF 6th Battalion Association. All supported a Royal Commission.
On 17 November 1945, the government appointed Justice George Ligertwood, a judge of the South Australian Supreme Court, to preside over a Royal Commission into Bennett’s escape. Adelaide barrister Mark Clisby, in his book Guilty or Innocent? The Gordon Bennett Case:
Five issues had to be addressed: whether Bennett had relinquished his command; whether he had permission to do so; whether he was at any material time a POW; whether he had a duty to remain with the forces under his command; and whether he was justified in relinquishing his command and leaving Singapore. Mr W. R. Dovey KC, and Mr R. Chambers were appointed as counsel assisting the commissioner, and Mr B. Clancy KC, and Mr F. C. Stephen appeared on behalf of General Gordon Bennett. Twenty-three witnesses were examined and 25 exhibits of evidence were tendered. The transcripts of evidence covered 580 foolscap pages. All nine witnesses who gave evidence at the Military Court gave evidence again. Of the 14 new witnesses, Bennett himself was the most important. He was examined and cross-examined under oath in the witness box for two full days.23
While the Royal Commission found Bennett guilty on all five counts, it also stated that he had believed that the cease-fire had been the point at which he had become a POW; that he believed he had done all he could for his men and would, in any case, be segregated from them after internment; that his escape had been ‘a hazardous enterprise and involved no reflection upon General Bennett’s personal courage’; that Bennett did ‘bring back valuable information to Australia which was used in the training of the A.I.F. in jungle warfare’; and, finally, that his escape was inspired by patriotism and ‘the belief that he was acting in the best interests of his country’.24
Two further points are of interest. In 1948, Mr T. P. Fry wrote an article which took issue with Ligertwood’s findings. Amongst a number of points raised, Fry maintained that as a consequence of his charter, Bennett had ‘been made directly responsible to the Australian Government and not to General Percival’ as to the AIF soldiers under his command, and with respect to ‘his own actions as commander of it [the AIF]’. According to Fry, therefore, Percival ‘had no lawful authority to sanction or prohibit General Bennett proceeding to Australia to report to the Minister’.25 Fry also claimed that Ligertwood had not denied that all of the officers and ORs of the AIF were ‘ordinarily under a national duty, both legal and moral in its nature, to escape at the earliest possible moment should they be taken prisoners of war’.26
Amidst the mountain of evidence and the terms of reference of both the military court of inquiry and the Ligertwood Royal Commission, surely Mark Clisby has identified the salient point:
. . . the crucial issue in the Gordon Bennett case is the issue of the time of the surrender. Related to that are the issues of the time when Gordon Bennett became a prisoner of war, as well as the issue of the duty of a soldier when he no longer has the capacity to resist [the italics are Clisby’s].27
After observing that the military court of inquiry stated that the surrender of Singapore occurred in four phases—the cease-fire at 8.30 pm on 15 February; the initial ‘official’ contact with the Japanese at the AIF perimeter at 10.00 am the following day; the beginning of the AIF move to Changi on the 17th; and the completion of that movement on the 20th—Clisby quite rightly asserts with some frustration that: ‘. . . incredibly, it could not determine when the actual surrender took place!’28 On the other hand, Ligertwood ruled that the surrender had occurred only when the last of the AIF were in Changi, and therefore Bennett had left before the surrender.29 Clisby has maintained that, legally, the surrender took place at 8.30 pm on 15 February 1942. His evidence is impressive. He points out that while Lodge identified the time of the surrender as dawn on the 16th, the AIF had ‘already handed in their ammunition and had begun stockpiling their weapons’; that the Japanese had already moved into the AIF perimeter and had begun issuing orders and ‘removing various items of equipment’; and that the ‘Australians had no capacity, either physically or legally, to resist after 8.30 pm’.30 This last point is crucial. Percival and Yamashita had agreed that a cease-fire would commence at that time and Percival had signed the instrument of surrender at 6.10 pm. Thus, while Clisby cites the time of surrender at 8.30 pm, it is the contention of this work that the surrender of Singapore occurred at 6.10 pm on 15 February 1942. In other words, from the moment of the formal surrender, or at the very least, when the resulting cease-fire occurred at 8.30 pm, surely the surrender had occurred.
In conclusion, the war correspondent Ian Morrison made a succinct point:
Intellectually, I think it was the right decision. He fought until the capitulation, and, when the capitulation had gone into effect, he made good his escape, like many other men . . .
And yet I confess I have that sentimental, emotional feeling that a commanding officer should stay with his men through thick and thin, through the victories and through the defeats. I remain open-minded on the question. The view one takes of his escape depends largely on the extent to which one is emotionally or intellectually inclined.31
In the end neither the Chifley Government or the army took any action against Bennett. The government initially declined to pay his £1500 costs, but after the 8th Division Association announced that it would raise that sum, the government paid up. In a letter to Kent Hughes on 14 March 1946, Bennett stated that: ‘Morally I won the fight, I think. Legally the decision was all hooey.’32
The British and Australian Official Histories are of considerable interest, as few historians have been placed under such close scrutiny both during their research and after publication. Major-General Woodburn Kirby was selected to write the British Official History. The resulting book, The War Against Japan, Volume 1, The Loss of Singapore (1957), was a scholarly effort which painstakingly traced the roots of the fall of Singapore back to the failed fiscal and strategic decisions of the interwar period, and then presented a detailed campaign analysis. It is uncertain what constraints Kirby wrote under, either self-imposed or external, but his The Chain of Disaster (1971) was certainly a far more forthright work, and, sig
nificantly, included an examination of both Percival and Simmons’s failure to use the expertise of Brigadier Simson, the Chief Engineer.
Lionel Wigmore was chosen to write the fourth volume of the Australian Official History Army Series (The Japanese Thrust). The general editor was Gavin Long. He corresponded with and interviewed a comprehensive number of the participants and gained access to numerous diaries and documents during his research and the writing of his volume. Three other sources—one made available and two denied him—are of great interest. It is at this juncture that a familiar character re-enters our story.
In May 1951, Prime Minister Robert Menzies promoted the member for the federal seat of Chisholm, the Honourable Wilfred Kent Hughes, to the portfolio of Minister for the Interior and Works and Housing.
It will be remembered that Colonel Kent Hughes had been the AA&QMG, 8th Division AIF, at the time of the fall of Singapore. The Australian War Memorial and therefore the Official Histories were the political responsibility of the Minister for the Interior.
The first of the three historical sources of interest is the Report on Operations of 8th Australian Division Australian Imperial Force in Malaya, compiled by Colonel Thyer ‘from the narrative prepared by Colonel C H Kappe’, which Wigmore had a copy of. The fate of the second is fascinating. Just before the fall of Singapore, Kent Hughes had passed a personal diary—which dealt with the period between the arrival of the 8th Division in Singapore and the beginning of hostilities—to Captain John Blanche, who had been ordered to return to Australia. Kent Hughes ordered Blanche to deposit the diary and other papers at Army HQ Melbourne. The third source of interest are the cables sent by General Gordon Bennett before and during the campaign to General Sturdee, Chief of the General Staff.
It is the contention of this work that Kappe’s narrative of the campaign in Thyer’s document is invaluable to the historian; however, where Thyer analyses command decisions—particularly concerning Bennett—it is heavily biased. One merely needs to look at Thyer’s muddled last six paragraphs of his introduction to see a man who was no fair judge of the decisions and actions of not only Bennett, but of a number of Australian senior commanders during the campaign as well.
General BENNETT left Singapore after the surrender and I was very displeased with the manner of his departure. Then for three and a half years, I was forced into the company of men who shared my views. It is very probable that these circumstances may have given me a bias against General BENNETT which is reflected in the criticisms and opinions.
In the case of Brigadier TAYLOR, this officer at all times displayed an antipathy towards Major-General CALLAGHAN. This resulted in a prolonged antagonism during the period of captivity when they were thrown closely together. I throughout this period, was the buffer between the two; but my responsibilities as G.S.O.1 of the Division made my sympathies lean towards General CALLAGHAN. I was therefore constantly critical of Brigadier TAYLOR during the period when any animosity would be aggravated.
Regarding Brigadier MAXWELL, this officer had a constant sympathy towards Brigadier TAYLOR. He consequently developed an animosity towards General CALLAGHAN which was felt by me. In the end, there was therefore much the same reaction between Brigadier MAXWELL and me, as existed between Brigadier TAYLOR and me, although the personal relationships between the three were quite friendly.
In preparing the report, I have been conscious of these reactions and have endeavoured to counter them and to approach the subject dispassionately. I have also tried to minimize any feelings by allowing time to mellow them.
In short, the report has been prepared by a subordinate and somewhat biased officer who is conscious of his defects.
These remarks do not apply to the pure narrative which is the work of Colonel KAPPE.33
Thyer made a number of extraordinary statements in his last chapter that surely prejudice the integrity of his report. We have examined the relationship between Bennett and Malaya Command, and the difficulties he faced in implementing the terms of his charter. We have also noted that similar difficulties were experienced by Blamey in the Middle East. Thyer stated that: ‘. . . Major-General Bennett was incapable of subordinating himself to Malaya Command or of cooperating wholeheartedly with other commanders’.34 He noted that ‘from discussions in captivity’ with the likes of Percival, Heath, Key and Simmons, that the relations ‘were more strained than the above statement would indicate’.35 And yet, in his very next paragraph, he acknowledged that ‘his [Bennett’s] attitude may have been entirely impersonal and that he was at all times battling for the rights and entity of the A.I.F. That may be perfectly true, but the result was the same . . .’36 The ‘result’ may well have been the same, but Thyer’s second paragraph immediately answered his very general charge in the preceding statement.
But Thyer saved some of his more ill-informed and vague comments for the troops. The Australians, he claimed, fought reasonably well in Malaya, but:
. . . the A.I.F. did not measure up to the task required of it in a heartbreaking withdrawal. Ultimately, the morale deteriorated, and in the last stages only 2/3 at most of those fit to fight were manning the final perimeter.
It is known that the units in Libya and Greece behaved in a similar manner in parallel circumstances. There can be only one explanation for this and it is submitted that the Australian, in the early stages of a war, lacks military virtue.37
The reader is left to contemplate Thyer’s long-distance comments concerning the ‘military virtue’ of the AIF in Libya and Greece; the lack of ‘military virtue’ of 2/19th and 2/29th Battalions—and the 4th Anti-Tank Regiment and 2/15th Field Regiment—at Bakri; and the performance of the 2/30th at Gemas. With regards to the British, Thyer simply stated that ‘the above remarks apply equally to the British troops in Malaya’.38 Once again, the comment is a sweeping generalisation, one to which commanders such as Stewart and his Argylls might legitimately have taken exception.
The circulation of Thyer’s report is of interest. While the number of copies printed is unclear, fifteen were stored at Army HQ. Wigmore and the War Memorial were given copies, Thyer and Kappe obviously had copies, Kent Hughes possessed one, but Bennett did not. On 5 January 1951, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, General Hopkins, gave permission for the Australian War Memorial to send a copy of the report to the British Official Historian.39
As draft chapters of Wigmore’s Japanese Thrust became available, Kent Hughes became concerned about Wigmore’s seeming predominant use of Brigadier Taylor’s diary and Thyer’s report. In short, he considered Wigmore’s early drafts biased. But much of his angst was directed at what he saw as the calculated destruction by Staff Corps officers of two critical historical sources that provided another perspective. The plain and simple truth is that Army HQ destroyed Kent Hughes’s diary and the cables sent by Bennett to Sturdee. The Minister for the Interior now began a determined effort to achieve what he considered to be a balanced history.
In February 1952, General Rowell (now Chief of the General Staff ) wrote to the Minister for the Army and made three points. First, he distanced himself—and the Army—from Thyer’s report, stating that it was ‘in no sense an Army Headquarters document’ and that it did not ‘purport to represent the opinion of Army Headquarters’.40 But Rowell did defend the report’s writers, after a blunt plea by Kent Hughes that another search for his diary should be undertaken:
I can not close this minute without recording a feeling of disgust at the immoderate language in which Mr. Kent Hughes’ letter is written. It is well known that there were many schisms in the AIF in Malaya and many clashes of personality. But both Colonel Thyer and Brigadier Kappe, in addition to being R.M.C. [Duntroon] graduates, are men of honour and of the highest personal integrity. What they have written is purely a personal account, but we can be certain that they both have the sincere conviction that it is a true story.41
In the same letter, Rowell claimed that ‘no trace’ of Kent Hughes’s diary could be found,
‘nor is there any record of it having been received’. If Army HQ had no record of Kent Hughes’s diary being received, Kent Hughes did. In a letter to Rowell on 10 August 1953 he stated that:
I have in my possession a copy of letter No. 7665 written by the Military Board (Adjutant-General) 19th May 1942, which reads as follows:—
‘Forwarded herein is the private diary of the above mentioned named Officer who has been reported as missing in Malaya . . .
The diary is to be held in safe custody as portion of the effects of this officer.’
The letter was addressed to the O.C. 3 MD Records Office, and signed by an indecipherable Captain for Officer i/c 2nd Echelon.42
In the same letter, Kent Hughes pointed out that Blanche had recently returned from London and had told him that he (Blanche) had handed the diary to none other than Major-General Stantke and Rowell at Victoria Barracks. When asked by Rowell to comment on Kent Hughes’s letter, Stantke replied on 1 September 1953 that he ‘could give no information as to where the diary of Kent Hughes is or where it was last seen’. He denied taking Blanche to Rowell and ‘had no knowledge of the material’ in the diary.43
The Minister for the Interior proved to be a tenacious adversary. A sample of his considerable correspondence is illuminating. In a letter to Gavin Long on 12 June 1953, he stated that:
One of the main troubles with the 8th Division was that the G.O.C. never had the loyalty of many of the professional soldiers on his staff. This is perhaps a bit too controversial and a bit too hot even for a war historian to hold. The reason why I am somewhat emphatic on this point is that the true story was told in a day-to-day diary kept by the D.A.Q.M.G. in Malaya [Kent Hughes], sent off before the capitulation and handed in by Captain Blanche at Victoria Barracks for safe keeping. Nobody has ever seen it from that day to this and I do not have to guess far for the reason. It was in a book desk diary form, fully bound, and could not possibly have been lost by accident. The only thing I can conclude is that it was destroyed by design.44