The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart [28]
Singapore began to resemble less of a boomtown and more of a frontier town. As reinforcements continued to pour in tensions between the Australians and the Argylls sprang up and regularly spilled over into massive punchups and wild drunken brawls. The Argylls were even known to take their bugler with them to summon reinforcements when the inevitable boozed-up battles broke out.
On 2 December HMS Prince of Wales, the brand-new battleship that was the pride of the British Navy and which a few months earlier had hosted Churchill and Roosevelt’s North Atlantic talks, steamed into Singapore accompanied by the mighty HMS Repulse, a First World War-vintage cruiser. These two naval giants and a handful of destroyers were intended to act as a deterrent against Japanese aggression, in what seemed like a throwback to the era of gunboat diplomacy.
But the Army also had a plan, Tommy revealed. ‘Matador’, he said, swearing me to secrecy, was the codeword that would signal an imminent Japanese invasion. The British, Australians, Indians, Gurkhas and Malayans would launch a pre-emptive strike and turn our beaches into killing fields, forcing the Japanese back into the seas.
At Fort Canning we waited for the inevitable. We waited for Matador, and we waited and waited . . .
Three
Land of Hope and Glory!
One evening Tommy sat down next to me in the mess with a worried look on his face. ‘I think the Japs are coming. Keep it to yourself – the bosses are talking about launching Matador.’
The news was hardly unexpected but having your worst fears confirmed was still pretty grim.
‘I thought they would be coming,’ I said, reading the seriousness etched on Tommy’s face. He was greying at the temples now, the distance between him and his family ageing him more than any number of late-night nappy changes or trips to the park with his young children.
He said, ‘Hopefully we’ll be prepared for them but I doubt it as much as you do. We are going to be in for a rough ride.’
‘Let’s just hope the Nips are as disorganised as we are.’
‘Invaders are always organised,’ he observed glumly, slumping back in his chair.
‘Are you scared, Tommy?’
‘You betcha. You?’
‘You can say that again.’
Britain was on the horns of a dilemma. It wanted to defend Malaya and Singapore but did not want to provoke the Japanese into a war, especially with Britain standing alone against Germany. It was an unenviable position and led to constant dithering and indecision at the top.
Our commander, General Arthur Percival, had an unfortunate appearance and looked like a typical upper-class ‘chinless wonder’. He was nicknamed ‘The Rabbit’ but in fact was a tough and brave soldier who had been heavily decorated in the First World War and had fought in Ireland, where in 1920 the IRA put a price of £1000 on his head. He had also fought in Russia against the Bolsheviks. Percival was fully aware of the Japanese threat and of their likely tactics. Yet Singapore, despite its immense prestige and strategic value, was critically lacking in heavy armour and air power.
I also felt that everything was far too laid-back in Singapore. In one sense it was understandable. Britannia had ruled the waves since the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. And we had defeated the Germans in the 1914 – 18 conflict. Undoubtedly, though, there was an undercurrent of complacency and racial supremacy too. It was inconceivable that the greatest Empire the world had known could be defeated by little yellow men who had poor eyesight and could not see in the dark. All kinds of mumbo-jumbo was repeated in relation to the Japanese and their alleged weaknesses. We were told that they were inferior soldiers and had only ever fought other ‘inadequates’ like the Chinese. We were even told that their pilots were hopeless because they had a poor sense of