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Sailing to Singapore and Disaster
Although Australia was taking the war seriously during the last months of 1939 and all through 1940, not even the most far-sighted people really anticipated war coming to our shores.
When the first Australian troops embarked on the Queen Mary on February 3, 1941, and learned that their destination was Malaya, they, at least, realised that war was not solely the affair of Europe and Africa.
And in spite of the bombing of Darwin, Japanese submarines in Sydney Harbour, and the Battle of the Coral Sea, one feels that returning P.O.W.’s of the 8th Division, and the small number of 6th and 7th Division troops that were caught in Java, are the only ones in Australia today who vividly realise what humiliation and suffering was spared Australia by the fact that no Japanese troops marched on our soil.
Back at last from Malaya, and walking in carefree Australian Cities and towns, one is sure that the people will never know what they have been saved from, and, please Cod, the experience of the Phillipines, Malaya, and the Netherlands Indies during 1942-5 will never be Australia’s in the years ahead.
With that first brigade (the 22nd) of Australians destined for Malaya there were three priests – Fathers Con. Sexton (2/20 Bn.), of Rose Bay, and St. Benedict’s parishes; Bernard Quirk, O.R.M. (2/4 C.C.S.), of Waverley; and Harry Smith, S.M. (10th A.G.H.), of St. Patrick’s Church Hill.
On Good Friday morning of 1941, Father Brendan John Rodgers, O.F.M., sailed from Sydney with the 2/2 Convalescent Depot. In July of the same year Fathers “Mick” Dolan and “Paddy” Walsh, both of Rockhampton Diocese, were on their way with the 27th Brigade. The 13th A.G.H., to which I was attached as Chaplain, followed from Sydney on August 29.
Father O’Donovan, O.F.M. (Waverley) joined us in December, and the last priest to join us was Father Corry, O.P., who came over on the Aquitania with the 2/4 M.G.Bn., which was just in time to take part in the last week’s fighting on Singapore Island.
In early 1943, after 12 months in Changi Prison Camp, we had a fleeting visit from Father Kennedy, M.S.C., who was taken prisoner in Timor, and was passing through Singapore to the Thailand-Burma Railway affair. We never saw, but frequently heard news of, Father Tom Elliott, who had been taken prisoner in Java with 6th Division troops.
The 13th A.G.H. was hurriedly formed in Melbourne, and embarked for Malaya within eight days of formation. Maybe, there was a Japanese “scare” at the time, but, however that may be, we found on arrival at Singapore that the social life was undisturbed, and that hospital units were the last things wanted in that gay Eastern city. The staff and accommodation of the 10th A.C.H. at Malacca were easily able to cope with the routine sickness amongst Australian troops. Consequently, for two months after our arrival, we were barracked at St.Patrick’s College, and our days were pleasantly filled with a little work, a little play, and, for those who were interested in the problems of the teeming millions of the East, fascinating excursions into Singapore’s squalid Chinatown.
But these pleasant days soon came to an end, and in November we were posted to our first operational station. We left the comfortable conditions of St. Patrick’s, with its beautiful grounds and private beach, and crossed the causeway to the State of Johore, on the peninsula of Malaya. On the fringes of the jungle we found our new “home”. It was a very large modern mental hospital. The former occupants had vacated one half of this building, but as soon as the war commenced we were forced to take more and more of the wards, until all the former patients were herded into one small corner of the establishment.
During the first weeks here life was that of a military hospital in any peaceful-part of Australia. But soon a change took place. Without a declaration of war, Japan had loosed its powerful war machine against unsuspecting Pearl Harbour, and unprepared Singapore. What happened between December 8, 1941, and February 15, 1942, is, bit by bit, becoming general knowledge, and some day the full story will be given to the world in official history.
The loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse shocked us beyond all description. In the first hours of war the Japanese fleet air arm, with their “crazy old planes of bamboo” had inflicted perhaps the greatest humiliation on the Royal Navy in its long and glorious history. They had done in a matter of hours what veteran aces of the German Luftwaffe had failed to do in a year of ceaseless fighting. We knew well enough now that our enemy was efficient, determined and fanatically courageous.
Soon the British and Indian land forces were thrown into confusion and retreat by superior forces in men and armament. When some British staff officer announced to the world that we would fight “every inch down the mainland”, it did not convey to us a picture of British grimness and courage in face of overwhelming force, but merely that we were inevitably committed to a policy of retreat before the picked Imperial Guards of the Emperor of Japan.
And retreat we did. Soon it was the turn of the A.I.F. We tried to boost the local morale by claiming that one Australian was the equal of ten Japanese troops. Indeed, even without these rather boastful statements, the confidence of the local people in the courage and fighting qualities of the A.I.F. was astonishing. They literally thought that the moment the Australians went into action the tide of battle would turn.
Each of us will, for his own particular reasons, recall that night when we received our first Battle casualties.
I was reminded, as one is so often reminded in war time that, the world, after all, is a very small place, indeed. The men were those of the 2/30 Bn. who had been wounded in the initial encounter or Australian and Japanese troops at Gemas, on the mainland of Malaya.
In the early hours of the morning, the ambulances drove in, and the weary, wounded men were literally taken into the arms of our efficient, indefatigable and heroic nurses and medical orderlies, who soon had them bathed and “pyjamaed” and between clean, linen sheets, or else waiting in the resuscitation ward for immediate operation.
While doctors, nurses and orderlies were going about their work, the Chaplains were expected to dodge in and out, and do their job without causing delay or inconvenience to the doctors and their assistants.
At the same time they were expected to help in any way they could with the hospital duties.
In war time the names of all one’s friends and even casual acquaintances seem to crowd into one’s mind, and as soon as one hears or sees a name on an identification card one immediately tries to place that person. On this night, as usual, I was doing a first hurried round of the wounded to give the Last Sacraments to the urgent cases. I stooped over one prone figure on a stretcher, and read his identification papers – Brennan, 2/30 Bn.- R.C. That must be the name of scores or Diggers, but somehow feeling that my question would be answered in the affirmative, I whispered in this Digger’s ear: Come from Blacktown?”
“Yes.
“Go to Christian Brothers’, Lewisham?”
“Yes.”
We had only been together through five ears of schooling at the Christian Brothers’ High School, Lewisham; sat side by side in class; travelled trains together, got into the same mischief together. So those “first” Last Sacraments have vivid memories for me. As it happened, they were not really the Last Sacraments, for we patched up Digger Brennan, and sent him to Australia on the last hospital ship to leave Singapore before capitulation in 1942.
But in those days one had little time for reminiscences of school days. The Japanese had prepared and planned for this campaign and because of our unpreparedness they were soon calling the tune.
They quickly penetrated into the A.I.F. defensive position. Soon the 10th A.G.H. at Malacca was forced to prepare for evacuation and re-establishment on Singapore Island. They sent their patients to us, but we had no sooner absorbed the huge influx of patients from Malacca than it was our turn to evacuate, and we providentially returned to St. Patrick’s College in Singapore, where we remained until the capitulation.
The, days before the fighting ended will never be forgotten by the man and women staffing the 10th and 13th Hospitals.
Ambulances bringing, battle casualties formed an unending procession. Frantic efforts were being made to get the nurses away from the island......
Catholic medical personnel were always of great help to the hospital priests; but this can also be said for all medical staff of whatever creed during those days when the battle casualties were coming in.
On one occasion I had done one of those hurried emergency rounds, and was about to go to some other part of the hospital, when Matron Drummond drew my attention to one man who, she said, was a Catholic. I thought I knew my Catholics, so I checked the casualty lists, and found that he was not a Catholic.
However, Matron insisted, and based her assertion on the fact that the man had a Rosary round his neck. That settled all argument. The man was unconscious, so he was given Conditional Absolution and Extreme Unction.
Some time later he regained consciousness for a few moments, and on being questioned, in a whisper replied that he was not a Catholic, but his wife was, and had given him the Rosary before sailing from Australia.
When asked about his own affairs, he said he would like to become a Catholic before he died. That “operation” was only a matter of minutes, and although he gave us many anxious moments during 15 months of convalescence, he eventually did get well, and came home with other survivors of the “Lost Division.”
The short, fierce battle for Malaya and Singapore Island, the key to the Pacific, soon came to an end with British, Indian and Australian troops beaten to their knees in humiliation and defeat.
But they were not disgraced, and not demoralised, as was to be proved over and over again during the three-and-a-half years under the heel of a barbarous and pagan conqueror.
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