Second World War, The

by Corrigan, Gordon

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  In Malaya, British forces continued to fall back under relentless Japanese pressure. It was now apparent that the Japanese could operate off roads, that their eyesight was every bit as good as anyone else’s and that they could also operate perfectly well at night. The British were now down to ten serviceable aircraft in north Malaya, while the Japanese disposed of 150 flying from airfields just over the border in Siam. The withdrawal of ground crews from the forward British air bases was a shambles, rapidly taking on the characteristics of a disorganized rout. When the RAF was admonished for failing to destroy fuel and stores, thus handing the enemy a useful bonus, it blew up everything it could not move at RAF Alor Star but failed to tell the army. As Alor Star was behind the British front lines, the loud bangs caused considerable consternation amongst the soldiery, who not unnaturally assumed them to indicate Japanese penetration behind the lines.

  The next attempt to hold northern Malaya was at Jitra, some thirty miles from the Siamese border, when the Indian 11 Division tried to hold a frontage of fourteen miles with only four battalions. If the whole area had been rice paddy, as some of it was, this might, just, have been feasible. But much of it was jungle, where visibility is twenty yards on a good day, and, when on 12 December the Japanese began to work their way round his right flank, the divisional commander, Major-General David Murray-Lyon, asked permission to withdraw, a request denied by Percival. As the day wore on, muddle and confusion reigned. There were reports that a particular battalion had been wiped out, that another battalion had withdrawn without orders, and that the Japanese had encircled the division. All were subsequently found to be false, but panic was beginning to set in amongst inexperienced and barely trained troops and eventually Murray-Lyon received permission to withdraw if he considered it essential – which he did. The withdrawal, to a position fifteen miles back, began at 2200 hours on the night of 12/13 December and was chaotic. Withdrawal, especially at night, is a difficult operation of war in any circumstances, and, for the badly shaken troops trying to move back along the only road in torrential rain with the Japanese snapping at their heels, it was a harrowing experience. Some units got the order to withdraw too late, others never got it at all, and guns and vehicles had to be abandoned when a bridge was blown prematurely. Had it not been for the efforts of two Gurkha battalions as rearguard (the third, 2/1 Gurkha Rifles, was by now reduced to one company, having had to fight its way out of a Japanese encirclement earlier in the day), the whole division might well have been lost. Although at the time the Japanese seemed to be present in overwhelming numbers, we now know that 11 Division was being attacked by just two battalions of infantry and a company of tanks but such was their speed of movement and determination that they gave the impression of far greater strength.

  They tried to hold on to the Sungei Kedah,* the main river in the Sultanate of Kedah, but, once the Japanese closed up to the river, it was obvious that this could not be held and the division withdrew another twenty miles, to Gurun, on the night of 13/14 December. Here the positions had not been prepared for defence, and, as soon as the exhausted troops arrived, they had to set to with pick and shovel to try to entrench before the Japanese fell upon them. Sure enough, at first light on 14 December, Japanese infantry supported by tanks and mortars appeared. The tanks were a surprise as it was hoped that the bridge demolitions and cratering of the road would hold them up for several days, but the British had again failed to take into account the ability of the Japanese Army’s engineers to be well forward to effect speedy repair of roads and throw bridges across rivers. Here the division should have taken charge of sixteen Marmon-Herrington armoured cars, recently arrived in Singapore and sent up by road. Sadly, not only had the cars arrived without mounts for the machine-guns, but their drivers, having never seen such vehicles before, and having to travel against the stream of retreating columns, had managed to write off most of them on the way up, and only three actually appeared.

  On the night of 15/16 December, the division withdrew again, this time south of the next river line, the Sungei Muda. The rapid withdrawals brought problems both diplomatic and military. The Sultan of Perlis, the northernmost of the Malay states adjacent to the border with Siam, pointed out angrily that his treaty of accession to the British federation stipulated that British troops would always be available to defend his sultanate – they had gone: when were they coming back? Meanwhile, the withdrawals exposed the island of Penang, off the west coast, to Japanese attack. Penang had valuable port facilities and stores depots, and the defence plan for Malaya included the detachment of two battalions and anti-aircraft guns to defend it. There could now be no question of depleting the already seriously under-strength 11 Division by detaching men or guns, and, when Penang was subject to air raids from 16 December onwards, it was decided to evacuate the existing modest garrison, patients from the hospital and all European residents. Those stores that could not be removed must be destroyed. Asian residents would not be evacuated – there was insufficient transport, Singapore was overcrowded already and they must take their chances with the Japanese. It was unfortunate that the destruction of stores and installations did not include the broadcasting station, which was used by the Japanese for the rest of the war to disseminate anti-British propaganda, nor the civilian shipping, deserted by its crews, which came in very useful for Japanese coastal work thereafter.

  The withdrawal continued, with Heath, the corps commander, and both his divisional commanders urging that a clean break must be made, rather than moving back in short bounds and never being able to shake the pursuers off. The troops were by now not much more than automatons, unable to get any sleep during the day, snatching a few minutes’ rest where they could or in the back of vehicles as they withdrew, only to have to get digging as soon as they reached their new position.By 20 December the Japanese had repaired the British north Malayan airfields and were using them, Zero fighters and Mitsubishi bombers roamed the skies almost at will and on 23 December the airfield at Kuala Lumpur, after several Japanese air raids, was evacuated. The Public Works Department was ordered to arrange for defensive positions and anti-tank ditches to be dug which the troops could withdraw to, but the officials of that organization were either unable to muster sufficient labour, or were incapable of organizing it. General Percival was well aware of the problems of III Corps, but his priority was the security of the naval base – Singapore – and, as Japanese naval supremacy meant that a landing there could be attempted at any time, he dared not despatch any of the Singapore garrison to reinforce the troops farther north. Reinforcements from the UK, the Middle East, India and Australia had been asked for, and were on the way, but all available aircraft had to be retained in Singapore to ensure the safe arrival of the convoys. Percival had to keep the Japanese as far away from Singapore as possible and that meant III Corps, for all its problems, had to delay them for as long as they could. On Christmas Day seven RAF bombers arrived from Egypt – it should have been eighteen, but all the rest had crashed or gone unserviceable on the way.

  The British next attempted to hold the Japanese along the Slim River and once again lack of coordination during the withdrawal meant that, by the time the rearguard Gurkha battalion got to the river, most of the bridges had been blown. Then, Gurkhas were not good swimmers* (there are very few places to learn to swim in the mountains of Nepal) and a number of men were drowned trying to get across. The troops had now withdrawn 180 miles in three weeks and 11 Division at least was in little state for any further fighting. The action on the Slim River was a disaster, and when the Japanese took the last remaining bridge on 7 January 1942, there was no alternative for the British but to withdraw once more into Johore, the southernmost of the Malay states and the last opportunity to keep the Japanese away from Singapore. By now 11 Division was militarily ineffective: 4/19 Hyderabad Regiment was down to three officers and 110 men; 5/2 Punjab to one officer and eighty men; 2 Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to four officers and ninety men.55
Of the three Gurkha battalions, the most effective units in the corps, 2/1 Gurkha Rifles had ceased to exist and 2/2 Gurkha Rifles and 2/9 Gurkha Rifles amounted to about one battalion between them.

  On 11 January the Japanese entered Kuala Lumpur, capturing vast stocks of stores that the British had been unable to destroy in time, and by 13 January all the British troops that could get away were in Johore, a state with a more developed road system than the rest of the country and hence more difficult to defend against a fast-moving enemy. The defence of Johore was largely in the hands of the Australian 8 Division, commanded by Major-General Gordon Bennett. This division had been well trained and was reasonably fresh, but it was to little avail. They did succeed in killing a considerable number of Japanese in local actions and ambushes as they slowly withdrew into Johore, but, with Japanese reinforcements landing along the coast and rapidly depleting British air power, there was little that they could do to stem the tide. Command changes had been put in place and reinforcements were now beginning to arrive, however. On 23 December, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, lately Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London and previously Chief of Staff to Lord Gort in the Battle of France, took over from Air Marshal Brooke-Popham as Commander-in-Chief Far East and, on 3 January, 45 Indian Infantry Brigade arrived, unblooded, full of recruits who were barely trained and short of officers and NCOs. The brigade’s existence was to be but a short one. Air reinforcements trickled in, mainly of obsolete bombers, but at last, on 13 January, fifty-one crated Hurricane fighters arrived, and were hastily unboxed, assembled and dispersed for airworthiness tests. There were only twenty-four pilots with them, but it was hoped that the British now had something that could seriously inconvenience the Japanese. Alas, it was not to be. The Hurricanes were more than a match for the Zeros above 20,000 feet, but at lower levels they lacked the manoeuvrability of the latter and in any case there were not enough of them. In the same convoy came 53 Brigade of the British 18 Division, one anti-tank and two anti-aircraft regiments.

  Meanwhile, the attempted defence along the Rivers Maur and Segamat was falling apart and, on 3 January, 45 Brigade and an Australian battalion were surrounded and cut off. Attempts to rescue them, not always pressed with the determination that they might have been, were unsuccessful and the brigade commander, having had all equipment and weapons not man-portable destroyed, ordered his men to break out in groups. Only 500 Australians and 400 Indians managed to do so, and the brigade commander and all three of the Indian battalion commanding officers were killed. Air raids on Singapore were now increasing, civilian labourers were refusing to work in areas under attack and the Chiefs of Staff in London, who had little knowledge of the Far East and few of whose staff had ever been there, were sending increasingly unrealistic instructions to Wavell and to Percival as to how the defence should be conducted. How Wavell kept his temper when reminded by London that road and railway bridges on the approaches to Singapore should be demolished, and how Percival kept a civil tongue in his head when London reminded him not to allow valuable stores to fall into Japanese hands, can only be marvelled at.

  On 22 January a convoy with 44 Indian Infantry Brigade and 7,000 individual reinforcements for the Indian units in country arrived, but as the latter were almost all recruits who had completed only the scantiest of basic training, they could not be despatched to their battalions immediately and had instead to be held in Singapore for continuation training. They were at least disciplined and amenable, which was not the case with the 1,900 Australian individual reinforcements who arrived on 24 January; the latter had not even completed basic training (some had not been given any weapon training) and had no concept of military discipline. This was at least partly compensated for by the arrival in the same convoy of a well-trained and competent Australian machine-gun battalion. As it was considered that the collapsing defence of Johore was not conducive to the deployment of this battalion, it was set to digging defensive positions on the north coast of Singapore. Then on 27 January came another disaster when the Commander 9th Indian Division, Major-General Arthur Barstow, was killed in a Japanese ambush and one of his brigades, 22, was surrounded, cut off, ran out of ammunition, failed in an attempt to break out and had to surrender.

  By now it was absolutely clear to everyone, except perhaps to Churchill in London, who was still breathing fire and brimstone and advocating fierce resistance and scorched earth in Johore, that the mainland could not be held, and so Percival, with Wavell’s and Pownall’s concurrence, ordered a withdrawal to Singapore. The troops fell back via a series of stop lines, and on the night of 31 January 1942 the rearguard crossed from Johore into Singapore and the Sappers and Miners* blew up the causeway. As it was 1,200 yards in length and thirty yards wide, this was a considerable demolition problem, but a bridge was demolished, a lock destroyed and another twenty-yard gap created. The last chapter in the dismal story of the defence of the Malayan peninsula was about to begin.

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  It was never the intention to defend Britain’s two colonies and one protectorate on the north Borneo coast and there was only one regular battalion in the whole island, 2/15 Punjab, whose job was to destroy oil installations in Miri, in north Sarawak near the border with Brunei, and then to withdraw to defend the airstrip in Kuching, also in Sarawak but 300 miles south-west along the coast. The Punjabis dealt with Miri on 14 December 1941, and, when the Japanese landed there that night and at Labuan on 1 January, the battalion had gone and the invaders faced no opposition, as the local forces had been ordered to maintain internal security only – anything else would have been suicidal. On 8 January the Japanese were in Jessleton (now Kota Kinabalu) and when they reached Sandakan, the capital of British North Borneo on the 19th, the governor surrendered. Having declined the Japanese offer to continue to administer the colony under their supervision, he and his staff were interned.

  On 23 December a Japanese convoy was spotted heading for Kuching, and as bombing of airfields in Dutch Borneo had made the strip at Kuching irrelevant, the Punjabis cratered its runway and prepared to hold the Japanese up for as long as possible. Now began one of the very few examples of really professional soldiering displayed in the whole sorry saga of the loss of South-East Asia. The Punjabis inflicted considerable casualties on the Japanese landing parties and then, when it became apparent that the town of Kuching could not be held, they withdrew into Dutch Borneo. Two companies were cut off in the process but, although surrounded, the four British officers, eight Viceroy Commissioned Officers and 220 Indian Other Ranks fought on.* One platoon succeeded in breaking out and rejoining the battalion; the rest were never seen again. By 30 December the remains of the battalion had reached the Dutch airfield of Sinkawang, on the north-west corner of Borneo, and on 31 December they received an air drop of rations and ammunition from Singapore and prepared to defend the airfield with the existing Dutch garrison. Bad weather held up the Japanese but on 26 January they attacked and again the battalion withdrew. Again the rearguard, of two platoons this time, was surrounded and, of two officers and seventy men, only three got away. The rest were either killed or, when they had fired their last round and surrendered, executed on the spot by the Japanese, who were furious that the sepoys had killed or wounded over 400 of their comrades. Eventually, after an epic march of 500 miles along tracks through largely unexplored jungle, what was left of the battalion reached Sampit, on the south coast, only to have to lay down their arms when the Netherland East Indies surrendered on 8 March.

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  In Hong Kong, General Maltby placed his most experienced battalions, 2/14 Punjab and 5/7 Rajput, respectively in defence along the north-west and north-east coastlines of Hong Kong Island, while the willing but inexperienced and as yet unblooded Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Rifles of Canada took post on the south-west and south-east sides. The Middlesex manned machine-guns in pill boxes all along the coastline. The Royal Scots were supposedly in reserve on the Peak, but, although they had suffered only a handful
of deaths in the fighting on the mainland,* they were now a busted flush from whom little could be expected. On the morning of 13 December a launch flying a white flag put off from Kowloon, and landed at the Star Ferry landing stage on the Island. In it was a Japanese staff officer with a letter from Lieutenant-General Takashi Sakai, commanding Twenty-Third Army, inviting the garrison to surrender on pain of artillery and aerial bombardment. The offer was refused and the bombardment duly began. Fires were started and casualties amongst the civilian population were inevitable. Although the Chinese were generally stoical, enemy fifth columnists were active, as were robbers in the air-raid shelters. To counter these, the governor formed an unholy alliance with the Triads, illegal criminal gangs who were nevertheless loyal to and generally controlled by Chiang Kai-shek’s regime in Chungking. On 15 December the defenders beat off a Japanese attempt to cross the harbour, and a second offer to surrender, brought by two Japanese officers in launches, was refused. Maltby and the governor concluded that the repeated offer was motivated by a Japanese wish to secure a quick victory before they were attacked in the rear by Chinese Nationalist forces – constantly promised by the one-legged Admiral Chan commanding the Chinese liaison team in Hong Kong, but they not only failed to attack but made no effort to do so.

  By 18 December conditions on the island were critical. Bombing and shelling had collapsed buildings in Central District, roads were blocked by fleeing civilians and a pall of heavy black smoke hung over the whole coastline from North Point to Lei U Mun as oil-storage tanks burned. That night, under cover of heavy artillery fire, the Japanese effected landings on the north-east corner of the island, getting through the wire which had been cut by Chinese collaborators and falling upon the Rajputs, all of whose officers, British and Indian, were killed or wounded. The Rajputs fell back, although a mixed force of wounded Middlesex soldiers and members of the part-time HKVDC held out in the power station until well into the afternoon of 19 December. Over the next few days the Japanese landed more and more troops, and, although the defenders did their best – especially the two Canadian battalions – it was just a matter of time before the outnumbered British would have to concede defeat. Once the Japanese managed to cut the defence of the Island in half, the British could not recover the ground lost, despite repeated counter-attacks, including those by the Royal Scots, who had recovered their courage and hung on grimly to a shrinking perimeter west of Wanchai Gap. By Christmas Day only the area west of Wanchai and the Stanley and West Bay peninsulas were still in British hands, although isolated small groups were fighting on elsewhere, and the commanding officer of the Royal Rifles of Canada was adamant that his men could do no more. That officer’s views applied to the whole garrison: under constant artillery and aerial attack, with little rest, dwindling ammunition, few guns still capable of action, scanty rations and mounting casualties, it was now obvious that the much anticipated Nationalist Chinese relief force was not coming (in fact, it had not started) and there was no hope left.