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To Singapore
Everyone who was old enough can remember Neville Chamberlain's broadcast on the morning of 3 September 1939, when he announced that we were at war with Germany. I was then an undergraduate at Cambridge, about to begin my third year. Term hadn't started. I was at my family home in Shoeburyness, Essex, where my father was an army chaplain.
Within a few minutes of the broadcast the air-raid sirens started sounding. We hadn't expected hostilities to begin as quickly as that, but grabbing the cardboard boxes containing gas masks, we trooped off to a nearby air-raid shelter, and sat there, feeling rather foolish, until the 'all clear' went about half an hour later. The false alarm was caused, it seemed, by a perfectly innocent plane flying up the Thames estuary. As everyone knows now, nothing serious happened in Western Europe for the next seven months.
My own generation, brought up in the shadow of the First World War, had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that there must never be such a war again. Pacifist tendencies were strong in my circles at Cambridge, though not in my own family, and here we were embarking on another war that threatened to be worse than the last. The Germans had invaded Poland, with the Soviet Union coming in from the east to divide its territory.
The die was cast. There was no doubt in my mind. I should get into the war as soon as possible. Looking back now, I cannot really think why; except it was the ethos of the moment. A year before, during the Munich crisis. I had been influenced by the Ghandian theory of non-violent resistance. But I had come to see this, when used as a political weapon, as in itself a form of violence. So I was ready to go to war. I even started to learn Polish, with a view to helping our new allies, but soon gave up. There was no question of carrying on at Cambridge. I enlisted as a private in the Suffolk Regiment. I was sent home to await call-up, not in the event to the Suffolks, but to the Worcestershires. I was one in a group of fifteen or so potential officers. The winter was severe. We spent part of it in tents.
We were to have trained as officers after preliminary training. But the war did not develop as anticipated. There were no large casualties needing replacement. The two sides sat facing each other in France. Officer training was slowed down. I did not go off with the first batch. I did achieve the rank of Acting Unpaid Lance-Corporal. I think I was prouder of my one stripe than any other promotion I ever gained.
In May 1940 I was sent for officer training at Blenheim Barracks, Aldershot. Because of the debacle in France we actually spent most of the time as receptionists in camps for troops coming out of Dunkirk, then in digging and manning defences against a German invasion. We were very keen and took everything most seriously. Any gave fault could result in being taken off officer training. On exercises we took it in turns to command platoons or sections. A friend of mine, thus commanding his platoon on a night exercise, had misgivings about It. I cockily assured him that I would see that things would be all right if he made me platoon runner. After about an hour I realised that I was hopelessly lost and was wondering what on earth to do. A single rifle shot rang out quite nearby. It was a live round, such as we always carried in case of a real surprise attack, and not one of the blanks we were supposed to use. A few minutes later a whistle blew, calling the exercise off. The opposing platoon commander had committed suicide.
In spite or such untoward events, we were eventually commissioned in September 1940. at the height of the Battle of Britain. One option was to volunteer for the Indian Army, then being rapidly built up for an active role. I knew nothing much about India. But Pam, a girl friend in undergraduate days, was the daughter of a Karachi dentist. She had gone back, and I was sufficiently enamoured to want to follow. Not a good reason.
The bursar of my school had been in the Indian Army, and I consulted him. We had all heard of the Gurkhas but his advice was that a tall fellow like me should not go to a regiment of small men. Instead, he advised 'the Punjab Regiment.' They had tall men. He did not explain that there were six different Punjab Regiments.
My father was now in Dorking, having been evacuated from France, and was now Senior Chaplain with the Seventh Armoured Division, later of Middle East fame. My mother and he were living with the local vicar. He had two beautiful daughters. but on leave there, my thoughts were , for Pam.
In October 1940, I was ordered to Liverpool for the voyage to Bombay. Rather cheerfully I said good-bye to my mother. Only after I was on board did I realise that she had said farewell in the strong belief that she would never see me again. I cried, I really did.
My father's driver took me to London, where I caught the train to Liverpool. There I met other officers, and we had a night, under a bombing attack, at the Exchange Hotel. Next day we sailed in a convoy of twenty-five ships, escorted by a frigate and two corvettes. Our ship was an old Ellerman liner, the City of Exeter, not yet converted as a troopship. The first class was full of young officers like me, and the steerage of Royal Army Ordnance Corps sergeants.
The next morning we were summoned, by whom we did not know, to attend a meeting on deck. We were addressed by an elderly lieutenant with World War One medals, certainly not the officer commanding the troops.
'It has come to our notice,' he said, 'that when some of you came on board yesterday you shook hands with your Goanese stewards. You must understand that these are the same as Indians, and India is a country held down by machine guns. There must be no fraternisation of this kind.'
This made quite a profound impression on us.
The second day out, two of our ships were hit in an attack by a lone German bomber. The wounded were ferried across to us, also the Convoy Commodore, standing quite still in a dead calm sea. The rest of the convoy steamed on ahead. That was the last we saw of the convoy. Shortly afterwards a frightful Atlantic gale blew up and we were all scattered. At length we entered a harbour that someone recognised as Freetown, Sierra Leone, but we did not go ashore. We then sailed on, enjoying an Equator crossing ceremony for the first time. But of course it, was a military secret, exactly when we crossed it.
We had a couple of days in Cape Town, and then another short stay in Durban. Ashore we were able to enjoy the bright lights of a city after over a year of blackout in England. The major issue was relations between Afrikaaners and South Africans of English origin, and the extent to which South Africa should participate in the war. Some of us were very well looked after. In Cape Town we went out on our second night, determined to have a good time. We had got no further than having a few beers when one of us came back to say he had found a girl with a car who was looking for company. We piled into the car and were driven off to something equivalent to a YMCA, where we were sobered up with coffee and provided with charming dancing partners, who in due course saw us safely back to our ship. They were mostly from Afrikaaner families.
From Durban I got as far as Pietermaritzburg, and saw something of the Zulu country. I kept a diary; it now seems remarkable that I hardly made any comment on the condition of black Africans, but did make notes about the problems of the Indian population.
After Durban we did a further solitary run to Bombay, with rumours of surface raiders on the way.
In Bombay I was assigned to the Training Centre of the 16th Punjab Regiment at Sialkot. I travelled north with one other officer.
It took us over a day to get to Lahore. I had never before seen so much flat country in all my life. We were wearing our tropical uniforms, as prescribed in London, and were to feel cold. We stayed the night at Falletti 's hotel in Lahore, and took another train next day to Sialkot. Before we got there, the Himalayas began to appear as a slim, rose-coloured fringe, high above the horizon. I had rarely seen such a wonderful sight.
I was met at the station and taken to the Regimental Centre. I found I was put in a training company of five hundred recruits. The five months I spent there gave me an insight into the pre-war Indian Army. They had hardly begun to realise that there was now a war on. It was a very good life, getting up and going on parade at 6.30; breakfast in the mess; company office; heavy tiffin and siesta; parade (in mufti) in the afternoon; and mess in the evening. This agreeable existence did much to influence my whole view of India.
I eagerly wrote to Pam at the last address known to me in Karachi. After a long delay I had a reply. She had married, of all things, a regular officer in the 16th Punjab Regiment. I think I then volunteered for the parachute regiment, but nothing came of that.
I was assigned to the second battalion in north Malaya. This was not really to my liking. At that time, the real military action was in the Middle East, where another of our battalions was covering itself with glory. Malaya seemed a backwater, just training, trying to turn completely raw recruits in soldiers.
In April another officer (who had a car) and I went on leave to Kashmir, where we had an excellent time on a houseboat. One evening we got back to find a telegram waiting, recalling us immediately to the regimental centre. The Banihal Pass, on the way back to camp, was closed at night, but we set out by car just the same. It was not long before we understood why the pass was closed at night. Huge flocks of sheep and goats were being driven along the road, and as soon as they encountered a car's headlights they would start jumping over the precipice. We had a slow and troublesome journey back to Sialkot.
Two days later we started off with a large detachment of reinforcements for Malaya. The train journey to Madras took six days. I managed to see my uncle Tony on the way, at Dornakal in Madras State. We then took ship for Penang, where we were put into a mixed reinforcement camp. After a brief stay we went on to join the battalion, then quartered in a rubber estate at Arau in Perlis, not far from the Thai frontier. Like the rest of the regiment, the battalion was half Punjabi Moslem, a quarter Sikh, and a quarter Doga. This was a regular battalion, with plenty of North West Frontier experience, but nothing much else in either the First World War or the Second. It had been badly 'milked' of officers and NCOs to form new battalions. It had already been joined by several reserve officers, who had been resident in India since the beginning of the war, as replacements for the regulars. I was the first 'Emergency Commissioned' replacement to come from England, and was probably viewed with much misgivings. But when the first bombs began to fall on Alor Star airfield some miles away, I was the only person in the battalion who had ever heard an air attack.
We came under the command of a very good Irish C.O, Jimmy Larkin. The second-in-command. Major Emsden Lambert, was an old boy of my school. I was put in charge of Headquarter Company, and then made Battalion Quartermaster. In the British Army this was a job for an 'old sweat' promoted ranker, but in the Indian Army it was something to be filled by a junior officer, with the help of good Indian NCO clerks.
While peace lasted in that part of the world, we lived a fairly comfortable existence on our rubber estate. However, we had to undergo some very hard training. Route marches were particularly disagreeable in the Malayan climate. The standard distance was fifteen miles, with officers forbidden to take a drink of water, and certainly not to fall out. We would arrive back at the mess completely dehydrated, to swill down gallons of nimbu-pani, fresh lemon in some water with plenty of salt. Every now and then we were allowed to Penang for weekends. Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. The British were no longer alone in the war. But then Japan occupied Indo-China. The likelihood of action had greatly increased.
Would we have to defend Malaya against an invading Japanese army? I don 't think we took this very seriously at first. We prepared some sort of defences around the nearby town of Jitra. I, as one of the most junior officers, was made responsible for a large part of them. I was told to go to the defence area and map the local terrain, then prepare plans for defensive positions, involving the demolition of villages and the cutting down of rubber trees to provide fields of fire. It gave me a great sense of importance. I took the job very seriously and prepared some quite elaborate sketches.
The Malay villagers seemed uninterested in what we intended to do. Perhaps they just did not believe that it would happen.
I had one untoward incident. One afternoon I was surveying a wood near one of the villages. A very beautiful young Malay girl came down the path without seeing me. She went on to a stream. and in full view began to undress and wash. I watched from among the trees, utterly entranced, but quite unable to move. I had never seen such a thing in my life. After a few minutes she got dressed again and headed back to the village. I wanted to get away as soon as possible, and started before she was quite out of sight. Crossing some muddy-looking grass, my feet suddenly slipped from under me and I went crashing down. The Malay girl stopped in alarm, and turning round saw a British officer up to his waist in a cesspit.
I had some difficulty in getting myself cleaned up. Back at the camp I gave my finished work to the second-in-command. He put it aside with hardly a word. No defences were built there. When the attack eventually came we did not try to hold it in that place.
*******
So much has been written about the fall of Singapore. Another personal view is unlikely to add much. It was one of the worst military defeats that Britain ever suffered, and for me one of the most critical periods in my life.
Everyone has heard of the 'guns facing the wrong way', but that is not quite the truth. Most of the big coastal guns on Singapore Island were able to fire towards the mainland. But armour-piercing shells, intended to resist attack from the sea, were not very effective against an advancing land force. They exploded fifty feet underground.
Moreover, those of us on the Thai frontier, or in Hong Kong, were at the far end of a very much overextended military chain. The Singapore naval base had been built as our bastion in the Far East. But in a European, Mediterranean and Atlantic war, there were no spare ships to send there. The next step in military thinking was to build a network of airfields on the Malayan mainland to defend the base. But no aircraft could be spared either. The next stage was to build up land forces, largely from the Indian Army, to protect the air bases. That is where I came in. We were far from being a well-equipped and well-trained force. Those who came after us, right up to the fall of Singapore, were even less well prepared.
The events that overtook my own battalion were typical of what happened. We had two roles. We had to keep very quiet about the first, which would have been to invade Thailand, and secure the southern ports of Singora and Patani against the Japanese. That operation was abandoned, just as we were being briefed on it, soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbour and Singapore. Our second role was to hold defensive positions inside Malaya. I have tried to study the official war histories. Try as I may I cannot reconcile their account with my own experiences. I well understand what is meant by 'the fog of war'.
Our own position was on the extreme left, situated chiefly in mangrove swamps, with no real roads. As battalion quartermaster I had to supply the companies on the coast by going south by road and then north along the coast by boat. This is what I was doing when the Japanese attacked. Someone made a mistake. A bridge was blown prematurely near Jitra, cutting off the troops on the coast, and half our transport. I arrived back on the main road to find the other half streaming past me towards the south, without any orders at all. By the time we had got things together again we had to move back once more. Whatever remained of the two companies on the left never caught up.
And that is how things went on from there. The loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse off the east coast of Malaya was a terrible blow to morale. Our brigade headquarters was overrun, and I lost several of my friends. Eventually 6 and 15 Brigades were combined, and the remnants of our battalion joined up with what remained of the 3/16 Punjab Regiment, which had also been in the area.
I shall not try to give details of the campaign in the next two months. Looking back on it now, I was rather like a sleepwalker crossing a busy motorway without getting knocked down. Supplies had usually to be got through at night. I never had more than a couple of hours' sleep as we moved back continually. We were rarely able to put up much of a fight as each successive position was infiltrated or outflanked, Guar Champerdak, Kampar, Ipoh, Sulim River, and so on. It all seemed to pass in a dream, or rather nightmare.
15 Brigade lost its staff captain. I was moved temporarily into the job with no real qualifications. The Brigade was scattered in a battle at Batu Pahat in south-west Johore. I was at the rear at Ayer Hitam when the crunch came, and finding the lines of communication to the brigade cut, took my transport back to Singapore, which I reached on 30 January. The brigadier was lost and the brigade major sick. With the remnants of brigade headquarters I was ordered to take over new positions on the north coast of Singapore, and to go and find a senior battalion commander to take over the brigade. Our new position turned out to be part of the much vaunted Singapore naval base.
Given the strategic situation, our fate in Malaya was sealed when the Japanese came into the war. Singapore was another matter. Its loss, if inevitable, need not have happened in the way it did. The Japanese force was a quarter the size of the defenders. Water supply and air cover were problems, but a better defence could have been made. But due to the utter disbelief of those in power that an enemy could ever come anywhere near Singapore, no appropriate provision was made. One incredible gap in the logic has never been explained. There were half a million Chinese in Singapore, not to mention other Asian peoples. No coherent policy existed for Singapore or for any organised co-operation with these Chinese. On 22 December, Duff Cooper. the cabinet representative in Singapore, issued a pompous communiqué; the 'civilian population' had been successfully evacuated from Penang. What he meant was the European population. If you ever want to fix a date on the downfall of the British Empire, that would be it.
Not surprisingly. I was replaced as brigade staff captain. The officer commanding the 16th Punjab Regiment was furious with me. He claimed I had sent two hundred reinforcements to a map reference offshore in the Johore Straits. I don't think I was quite as inefficient as that, but more seriously he said I had imposed very raw recruits on him. These had just arrived from India, and had been demoralised by the other remnants of the battalion. I had gone by the book, and thought I was helping him. I'm afraid that was the state of affairs we were in.
I was sent back to the Reinforcement Camp, being organised as a fighting unit. Having lost my job as Staff Captain, I had removed two of the three black pips on my shoulder strap. The sweat-stained marks were still visible. The commanding officer was looking for officers for his makeshift units. I said I was a second lieutenant.
'Oh no, you're not!' he said, pointing to the shoulder straps. I found myself in charge of a very mixed company guarding part of the north-east coastline. So I remained an acting captain, confirmed long afterwards.
The Japanese did not land on that side of the island. The whole process of getting cut off, falling back, and taking up new positions began again. I don't think that I had yet seen the enemy, let alone shot at anyone. But we had suffered a lot from their shells, mortars and bombing. The latter impressed us particularly. A formation of 27 planes would release their bombs at the same time. It was frightening to be near the centre of a target, with bombs whistling and roaring down from all directions, and creating a thunderous earthquake all around.
The day we surrendered, 15 February, found us in Raffles Square, with only the sea behind us, but waiting to go forward again. That evening the guns fell silent.
Hundreds of soldiers were making a getaway in small boats — larger vessels had long since departed or been sunk. There was much discussion, what to do. Most of those with Asian troops felt we should not leave them to escape on our own.
So that was how I became a prisoner of war with about a hundred thousand others.
I was then a very junior and uninformed participant in these events. Official papers released in 1993 bear out what I have said about some of the British leaders. Duff Cooper was at odds with the Governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, on the question of evacuating British families from the war zones of Penang and North Malaya. Thomas saw the effect this had on Asian morale, while Duff Cooper could only see the need to save British lives.
Other revelations have come from Australian sources, where there were strong feelings about the British use of the Australian expeditionary force. The then Prime Minister, Menzies, stopped at Singapore during his perilous flying boat visit to England in 1941. He flew on 'angrily determined to trounce British turpitude' for failure to provide adequate defence. His views were strongly influenced by meeting Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief — not among those taken prisoner. Menzies records in his diary that Brooke-Popham was 'boyishly pleased that Winston's farewell exhortation to him had contained more than a hint of forlorn hope: ('Hold to the last, my boy, God bless you. If your grand- father had not broken his neck playing polo at Poona, he would have been proud of you this day!'). (See Allan Martin, 'An Australian Prime Minister: R.G. Menzies 1941', in Ireland, England and Australia: Essays in Honour of Oliver MacDonagh, Australian National University Press/Cork University Press, 1990.)
No one from Churchill downwards comes out of this with any credit at all. Sir Andrew Gilchrist, who was then at the British Embassy in Bangkok, makes revelations about the early phase of the campaign which provide a damning indictment of all concerned. It gives no comfort to those of us who were then just south of the Thai border, waiting in the rain to be told what to do. Even our commanders had only a slight idea of our government's confused plans.
There were many courageous acts. Our Carrier Platoon commander won the Military Cross. Sir Andrew comments 'At one time or another those beaten troops must have fought quite well. How else could they have inflicted 9,656 casualties on the Japanese, 3506 of them fatal.'
In a footnote, a chance disclosure is of some interest to us former POWs on the Burma Railway:
I regret to have to admit the views I gave Brooke-Popham [the British commander] on the traversability of the difficult and undeveloped area of Thailand lying towards Burnta were proved in the event to be decidedly unrealistic. I knew the Thai country, but I did not know the Japanese soldier. (Malaya 1941: The Fall of a Fighting Empire, 1992, Sir Andrew Gilchrist.)
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