• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 989 0

A young Chinese, Lee Kuan Yew, claims to have responded: “That is the end of the British Empire.” For fifty-five days, the Japanese had maintained a daily average advance of twelve miles, fighting ninety-five engagements and repairing 250 bridges. They were now almost out of ammunition, and Percival’s remaining 70,000 combatants were more than double Yamashita’s strength. But the British general made the cardinal error of dispersing his strength to defend Singapore’s seventy-two miles of coastline. Morale was wretchedly low, and fell further as engineers began demolitions in the naval dockyard. Belated efforts were made to evacuate dependents to the Dutch East Indies. More than 5,000 people sailed amid scenes of chaos, panic and sometimes violence at the dockside, as military deserters sought to force a passage. Barely 1,500 of the refugees eventually reached the safety of India or Australia. Almost every ship approaching or leaving Singapore faced an ordeal by Japanese air attack. A Northumberland Fusilier described the experience of running the gauntlet on a transport under fire: “It was as if you were locked inside a tin can which people were beating with sticks.”

Yamashita’s forces began landing on Singapore Island in darkness on 8 February, employing a makeshift armada of 150 boats which carried 4,000 men in the first wave, followed by the rest of two divisions. The British mounted no searchlights, and their artillery scarcely troubled the assault troops. Shellfire quickly severed most phone communications in forward areas, and heavy rain left sodden defenders huddled in their trenches. The Japanese pushed rapidly forward, while demoralised Australian units fell back. As it became plain that Singapore would be lost, the commanding officer of the naval base, Rear Adm. Jack Spooner, wrote bitterly: “The present state of affairs was started by the AIF [Australian Imperial Forces] who just turned tail, became a rabble, and let the Japs walk in unopposed.”

A disconsolate Maj. Gen. Gordon Bennett, commanding the 8th Australian Division, told one of his officers: “I don’t think the men want to fight.” He himself anyway did not, catching a plane which took him home in twelve days. And if the Australians performed poorly, so did British units, reflecting a collapse of will throughout Percival’s command. Capt. Norman Thorpe, a Derbyshire Territorial serving in the Sherwood Foresters, described his curious sense of detachment from the catastrophe unfolding around him: “I myself only feel mildly excited and hardly feel it concerns me.” When Thorpe led a counterattack, he found that only a handful of his men followed him forward; the little party’s advance was soon crushed. The commanding officer of an Australian unit spoke of fugitives from the forward positions who were “quite out of control and stated they had had enough.” The Japanese were no more merciful to those who quit than to those who resisted. Corp. Tominosuke Tsuchikane described his bewilderment at encountering enemies who hoped to save themselves by mere inertia: “Having lost their nerve, some soldiers were simply cowering in terror, squatting down and avoiding hand-to-hand combat in a wait-and-see position. They, too, were bayoneted or shot without mercy.”

Churchill dispatched a histrionic signal to Wavell, the newly appointed Allied supreme commander, urging a last-ditch resistance in Singapore: “There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs … Commanders and senior officers should die with their troops. The honour of the British Empire and of the British Army is at stake. I rely on you to show no weakness or mercy in any form. With the Russians fighting as they are and the Americans so stubborn at Luzon the whole reputation of our country and our race is involved.”

Churchill’s message is important, in emphasising the contrast between rival combatants’ conduct of the war. He demanded from Singapore’s garrison no more and no less grit and will for sacrifice than Germans,