Authors: Chris Brown
Battle Story (5 page)
Although III Corps was theoretically organised as a combat formation, in practice it was really more a loose collection of battalions scattered across the country. There had been very little in the way of brigade-level training, even less at divisional level and virtually none at corps level. Signals equipment was poor and in short supply, and the failure to conduct regular and challenging exercises meant that the signals staff had had no opportunity to develop techniques and practices. For the same reason, staff work was generally of a poor standard throughout the campaign, though there were some very creditable exceptions. There were plenty of excuses for these deficiencies – shortage of equipment and funds, the continual drain of key personnel to replace losses in the Middle East campaigns – but the single greatest barrier was that few people believed that the Japanese would attack and many of those who thought they might were far too confident that the enemy could be defeated quickly and easily. Shortages certainly were a real challenge, but, in all, Percival and Heath were responsible for doing everything they could to ensure that their troops were fit and ready for battle.
Inadequate training and preparation was not simply a question of failures at a senior level – though commanders should certainly have been making sure that the individual units were being properly prepared – but few of the infantry battalions were really in a condition to fight. Although there were several regular infantry battalions in Malaya Command, only one, 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, had been put through an appropriate training programme. The colonel, Ian Stewart, had adopted a rigorous regime as soon as his battalion arrived in Malaya from India early in 1941. As well as conducting regular exercises and rout marches to ensure fitness and proficiency, he had located some armoured cars in store in Singapore and had had them made ready for combat. Stewart’s actions were seen as eccentric by many, but when the fighting started the Argylls proved to the most useful unit in the entire command. As Wavell put it:
11. Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in training.
If all units in Malaya had been led with the same foresight and imagination that Brigadier Stewart showed with the training of his battalion, the story of the campaign might have been different. It was the realisation of this that led me to order Brigadier Stewart’s return to India to impart his knowledge and ideas to units preparing for the return match with the Japanese.
Major General Woodburn Kirby,
The War Against Japan
,
HMSO, 1957
The price of being prepared for fighting in Malaya was that the Argylls would be called upon repeatedly to deal with crises and paid a heavy price in casualties, so much so that they would eventually have to have their numbers made up with Royal Marines from the
Repulse
and
Prince of Wales
, and would acquire the nickname ‘Plymouth Argyles’ on account of the name of the football team and the marines’ long association with that town.
Although there were several British battalions, the majority of the infantry were either Indian or Australian. The Indian battalions came from two sources: either battalions of the Indian Army proper or units ‘on loan’ from independent Indian States Forces (ISF). When the war started in 1939 the Indian Army was subjected to a massive programme of expansion, which had been far too rapid to allow for proper training. Most of the officers were young British men, recently recruited and many not yet really competent in the languages of their soldiers. This was a major issue since, because of the very rapid expansion of the Indian Army, it had not been possible to ensure that units were composed of men from a single cultural background and it was not uncommon for two or three languages to be used in just one battalion.
In general, these newly raised units had not attained the high standards of the 4th and 5th Indian Divisions fighting in the desert or that would reach Burma, where by 1944 the majority of the infantry in the Fourteenth Army would be either Indian or African. By December 1941 some of the Indian battalions had been in Malaya for a long time, but few had been properly trained. Like the British battalions, this was, to some extent, a product of having to send trained officers, VCOs (Viceroy Commissioned Officers) and NCOs as replacements for the units in the Middle East, a process known as ‘milking’. Some Indian officers had received only very rudimentary training before being posted to their units and some senior NCOs had been commissioned despite not really being suitable material.
V
ICEROY
C
OMMISSIONED
O
FFICER
VCOs were officers in the Indian Army. They were junior in rank and status to king’s commissioned officers, but superior to warrant officers. At the start of the war most commissioned officers in Indian regiments were British, though the proportion of Indian-born officers was rising steadily. Almost all VCOs were men with long records of exemplary service and provided a vital cultural and linguistic link to ensure an effective relationship between the officers and the ORs (other ranks). There were three grades of VCO in infantry battalions: jemadars, subedars and subedar-majors.
There were also acute shortages of particular items, notably mortars, light machine guns and Bren carriers. The infantry units were not alone in this. The officer shortage was made worse by the fact that many Indian officers of the pre-war regular army infantry units had been posted to newly raised artillery and armoured units training in India or North Africa. Tropical uniforms were available in adequate quantities, though the standard-issue British Army boots and thick socks can hardly have been comfortable. Almost all troops were issued with steel helmets, but considerable numbers wore general Service caps, regimental bonnets or old- fashioned ‘solar topis’. British and Australian troops were issued with the same pattern of webbing as their comrades elsewhere and Indian troops with the similar ‘India pattern’ variant.
Many Indian Army units had no time to become acclimatised. For most of the men, Malaya was a very different environment from home and this was not always appreciated by British or Australian officers, some of whom rather assumed that all Asian populations grew up in much the same sort of climate. Some Indian units had almost no training at all. The men were recruited, put on ships and transported to Malaya on the assumption that there would be time to train them once they were ‘in-country’. Overall, the remarkable thing is that so many Indian units performed as well as they did
in the Malayan campaign, and it is hardly surprising that many thousands chose to join the India National Army (INA).
Gordon Bennett
Born at Melbourne in 1887, Bennett served courageously and with distinction in the First World War. He fought at Gallipoli and in France, and acquired a CB, CMG and DSO, rising to the rank of brigadier at the age of 29. After the First World War he worked in textiles and as an accountant before becoming a senior local government official and the President of the Associated Chambers of Manufactures of Australia in 1933. He was appointed major general in the Australian Reserve forces in 1930. He was a fierce critic of Australian defence policy in general and published several articles attacking both the policies and the personnel of the Australian Army in 1937. Partly on account of those articles and partly because it was widely believed that he was not a suitable person to have a command that would involve co-operation with senior British officers, he was not appointed to a command in the Australian force in North Africa – he was just as critical of the British hierarchy as he was of his Australian superiors.
Constantly at odds with his colleagues, subordinates and superiors, Bennett was extremely critical of regular officers, but was appointed to command Australian 8th Division and posted to Singapore in February 1942. In this role he was adamant that his force should be kept intact rather than being split up to support other formations as needed. Unlike his superior, Percival, Bennett chose to abandon his post and escaped to Australia. Although he received a warm welcome from his political superiors, his actions were not appreciated in the Australian Army and by 1943 his career was effectively over; by mid-1944 he had been moved on to the reserve list. He published a book,
Why Singapore Fell
, which was highly critical of all of his colleagues.
The Malay Regiment and the various local volunteer units were, naturally, better used to the climate, but they were few in number and, like the rest of Malaya Command, were bedevilled by shortages or obsolescent equipment. Local recruitment did not extend to the large Chinese population until the very end of the campaign, when the battle was already lost.
Pre-war Australia had several reserve forces divisions that were expanded rapidly on the outbreak of war in 1939. Few of the officers, even at brigade and battalion commander level, were professional soldiers. Most 8th Division troops volunteered after the fall of France in June 1940 and had, therefore, been in uniform for more than a year at the beginning of the Malayan campaign.
The Australian policy of giving troops their basic training at home, rather than continuing the process once they arrived overseas, meant that the troops were trained for and in the location to which they were posted. In general this was a sensible policy since it did lead to good standards overall, but it meant that replacements joining the division in the later stages of the battle had not been either fully trained or acclimatised. An infantry division is designed to act as a team, and 8th Division never received its third brigade. Furthermore, though there was a policy that Australian forces should always act as clearly defined entities, operational requirements and questionable policies forced the two brigades to operate separately, thus arguably compromising organisation in battle. There had been relatively little brigade- or divisional-level training to integrate the units properly, so it is unclear how much difference dividing the formation really made once the campaign was underway, but it clearly did not help. Equally, there had been no serious corps-level training at all with the formations of Malaya Command, so none of the divisional or brigade headquarters were fully competent to run battles.
The situation was not helped by the divisional commander, Gordon Bennett. Bennett had served in the First World War,
commanding a battalion and later a brigade with some skill, and had served as commander of a militia division before the war. His success in the Great War perhaps helped to encourage his total confidence in his own abilities in 1941–42.
His lack of belief in his fellow commanders – though not entirely misplaced – undermined confidence in Percival and Heath throughout Malaya Command. Abrasive and over-confident, he managed to alienate most of his brigade and battalion commanders, especially the regulars, since he was strongly prejudiced in favour of reserve officers like himself. Bennett held strong views about the nature of operations required, but was not adept at ensuring they were actually mounted. He had no confidence in Percival at all and was willing to go behind his commander’s back or over his head to avoid doing anything he did not want to do.
