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By Root 1353 0

for the umpire’s whistle to signal ceasefire and hopes that when the moment comes his military dispositions will be such as to receive approval.” The British defence of Malaya was hampered by Percival’s limitations, poor communications, and the familiar institutional weakness of the British Army. Some units resorted to communication by bugle call when radio failed and field telephone lines were cut. The Japanese could exploit almost absolute command of sea and air. When Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita’s forces met stubborn resistance at Kampar, in central Malaya, he simply launched a new amphibious landing to outflank the defenders. The British were confounded by bold Japanese use of tanks, against which the defenders lacked even Molotov cocktails. Yamashita’s three divisions, though heavily outnumbered, displayed an aggression and energy of which their opponents were bereft. Their commander penned a poem:

               On the day the sun shines with the moon

               The arrow leaves the bow

               It carries my spirit towards the enemy

               With me are a hundred million souls

               My people of the East

               On this day when the moon shines

               And the sun also shines.

Churchill asserted that the Japanese army was expert in jungle warfare. Yamashita’s three divisions had indeed gained combat experience in China, but their men entered jungle for the first time when they landed in Malaya. In China, they had used horses for transport, but now bicycles were substituted—6,000 were issued to each division, in addition to 500 motor vehicles. In the intense heat the bikes suffered frequent punctures, and two-man repair teams attached to each company mended an average of twenty tyres a day. Infantrymen meeting resistance on roads merely sought a bypass, humping their machines across rivers and through jungle, pedalling up to twenty hours a day, carrying a sixty-pound pack behind their saddles. Even old Lt. Col. Yosuke Yokoyama, commanding an engineer regiment, rode a bicycle. Short, chunky, dripping with sweat, he followed close behind the leading infantry inspecting British demolitions and directing bridge repairs, effected by raiding local sawmills for lumber. The Japanese referred to the huge ration dumps they captured, and exploited for their own units, as “Churchill supplies.”

“The Jitra line was penetrated in about fifteen hours by barely five hundred men,” Col. Manasonbu Tsuji wrote contemptuously. In that action, he reported Japanese casualties of only twenty-seven killed and eighty-three wounded. “The enemy retreated leaving behind as souvenirs about fifty field guns, fifty heavy machine-guns, three hundred trucks and armoured cars, and provisions for a division for three months. Over 3,000 men surrendered having thrown away their arms in panic and taken refuge in the jungle … The majority of these were Indian soldiers.”

Some such units crumbled swiftly, especially when their British officers fell, as many did. The reputation of the Indian Army suffered severely in Malaya, where the lack of motivation of many of its mercenaries was laid bare. The Japanese used “jitter” tactics to formidable effect, panicking defenders into retreat and sometimes headlong flight by noisy demonstrations behind their front. The huge wartime expansion of the Indian Army had resulted in some British officers being deployed with only six months training in place of the usual thirty, and unable to speak Urdu, thus incapable of communicating with their men. The cultural chasm between foes was exposed when British troops surrendered. They expected the mercy customarily offered by European armies, even those of the Nazis; instead, they were stunned to see their captors killing casualties incapable of walking, often also unwounded men and civilians. The teenage daughter of a Chinese teacher who brought food to an Argyll officer in his jungle hiding place one day left a note in English for him about the Japanese: “They took my father and cut off his head. I will continue to feed