The Empire Trilogy (181 page)

‘They're all watching out for their own interests, every man jack of 'em, beginning with the Governor!'

How could the GOC Malaya be expected to defend a country whose civilians devoted their every effort to baulking his initiatives? What had happened to the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force, for instance? You might well ask! Volunteer force indeed! When he had tried to call up part of it for training the civilians had created such a song and dance that the Government had insisted on his abandoning the rest of the training programme. Why? Because a rash of strikes on the plantations had been blamed on the fact that the Europeans were absent … while the truth of the matter was that they were not paying their workers enough. Naturally, he had protested. A waste of time! The Governor had waved some instructions from the Colonial Office in his face: these declared that exemption from training should not be what he (the GOC) considered practicable ‘but what he, the Governor, thought was necessary to keep up tin and rubber production'.

And now, when retreat to the Island had become inevitable (as you were! ‘withdrawal' to the Island), would you believe it? He was up to his tricks again. This time Sir Shenton was declining to intervene with the Chinese Protectorate who were refusing exit permits to Chinese who wanted to leave the Colony. He had done his best to spell it out to the Governor: in a very short time they would find themselves under siege on an island already teeming with refugees. Non-combatants must not only be allowed but
encouraged
to leave, if necessary
made
to leave. But oh no, the Governor would not listen … for him this exit permit business was just another chapter in a story which had begun long before the Japanese had invaded. Sir Shenton Thomas was too august a figure to consider explaining himself to the GOC. But Percival had heard the story anyway from other sources. It seemed that the Chinese community had conceived a violent dislike of two senior officials of the Chinese secretariat: this pair were obsessed by the need to root out Communist infiltrators and even with the Japanese sweeping through Johore the fervour of their anti-Communist mission remained undimmed. It would have been sensible to get rid of these men months ago, to get the Chinese population firmly on the British side, but this the Governor would not do. The dignity of the British Government was at stake. You could not, in his opinion, start giving way to demands from the local population. Well, so much the worse for everyone. Other people had remonstrated with the Governor: Simson, the DGCD, for example, and a number of influential Chinese businessmen. Many Chinese would be on the Japanese death-list if Singapore fell. But it had been to no avail.

Percival had been scraping steadily at his commanding, white-bearded face. Gradually, as the razor advanced and the white beard fell away, the features in the mirror had grown more uncertain: a rather delicate jaw had appeared, followed by a not very strong chin and a mouth not sufficiently assertive for the moustache on its upper lip. Nevertheless, it was the face of a man anxious to do his best. Percival washed it carefully and mopped it, gasping slightly. As he did so the door-handle turned again. ‘Just a minute,' he called. Silence and a vague air of expectation was all that came from the other side of the door. But why, Percival wondered, should Pulford want to use this bathroom when he had one of his own? Perhaps it was simply that he had left his shaving-tackle here. No doubt this rather unimpressive toothbrush was his; Percival inspected with disapproval its splayed and wilting bristles; it looked as if his batman had been cleaning his cap-badge with it.

His eyes moved back to the mirror to study with sympathy his clean-shaven but drawn features. Weariness was becoming a disease of epidemic proportions in Singapore these days and the past week had, perhaps, been the most exhausting in his life, spent in long car journeys back and forth to the front for conferences with his commanders. He had decided, however, that if disaster were not to ensue he must supervise the defence of Johore himself.

Alas, even this, he reflected, scrubbing his prominent teeth with tooth-powder from the round tin by the mirror, had not been enough, for Gordon Bennett had blundered. In Percival's view it was not surprising that he had blundered, given his mentality and erratic behaviour. It was unfortunate that nothing could be done about Bennett without risk of offending the Australian Government. Bennett, moreover, had made a good impression on Wavell who had lately insisted on putting him in charge of the vulnerable west coast in the place of the battered III Corps. Good impression notwithstanding it was Bennett who had left the unfortunate, untrained 45th Indian Brigade to secure his communications on the coast from the Muar River southwards against amphibious attacks that were all too predictable. The Japanese had naturally made short work of encircling the 45th Brigade and all subsequent efforts to rescue them had failed. Indeed, one had to be thankful that in the end it had been possible to withdraw the rest of the force by the trunk road and railway without having a substantial part of it cut off by the Japanese strike from the coast. Percival heaved a sigh. By now it was clear in any case that a retreat to Singapore Island would be inevitable.

There had been moments since the opening of the war in Malaya when Percival had been visited by an exceedingly curious notion. Though he had done his best, as a pragmatic military man, to shrug it off, it had nevertheless returned more and more frequently in the past few days. Now it entered his mind again as he wearily threw his towel over his shoulder and unlocked the bathroom door. ‘Good morning,' he said to Pulford who was hovering dejectedly in the corridor in a pair of pyjamas of Air Force blue. Pulford, too, had a thin face but more deeply lined than his own and with ears that stood out sharply from the side of his head; his moustache, moreover, was distinctly less generous … a mere smudge around the channel beneath his nose, creeping a little way out along his upper lip. Still, his features gave the impression of a decent and dependable sort of man. ‘You need a new toothbrush, old chap,' Percival told him as he continued along the corridor. ‘Do I?' asked Pulford, somewhat taken aback.

This exchange, unfortunately, had not been quite enough to distract Percival's attention from his new train of thought, which could be summarized in one simple question. Had this entire campaign, in which tanks, ships and aeroplanes had taken part and in which thousands of men had already died, been staged or devised by Fate or by some unseen hand simply in order to make a mockery of his own private hopes and ambitions? Percival was not accustomed to think in such terms. He was a practical man. He did not believe in ‘unseen hands'. That sort of thing was balderdash in his view. He still thought so … yet the way in which, time and again, a flaw had appeared in his defences, first on one flank, then on the other … the way in which there always proved to be just one missing element (the aircraft carrier, for instance, which would have prevented the sinking of the
Prince of Wales
and the
Repulse
but which had
gone aground
on the way to Singapore: how often in a man's lifetime does an aircraft carrier go aground that it should do so on the only occasion that he needed it?), a missing element which in due course would bring down a crucial part of the defensive edifice he had been trying to construct, this had begun to have its effect on Percival as it would on any reasonable man.

It was easy, Percival knew, when a fellow got tired for him to get things out of proportion. He was tired. He knew that, admitted it straight out. Still, he was aware of the risk and was determined to be objective. He was only interested in what the evidence had to say. Well, the fact was that all these apparently random acts of fate, all these strokes of bad luck, had now begun (for the man putting his thin legs into shorts wide enough to have accommodated not only the GOC but a member of his staff into the bargain) to appear suspiciously weighted against him. For if you looked at what had happened carefully enough and remained objective, you could see that some hidden hand had been tampering with what one might reasonably expect to have been the normal course of events. It was as if, to speak plainly, on life's ladder some unseen hand had all but sawn through a number of the more important rungs.

The defence of Malaya had been organized before the war on the assumption that the RAF would deal with enemy forces before they had a chance to get ashore. But, in the event, the RAF, suffering from a suspicious lack of planes, had been quite unable to do this. Well, never mind. They were busy elsewhere. Such things do happen. But if, having put your foot on the RAF rung and heard it snap under your weight you thought, well, you still had your other foot on the strike across the Siamese border, here, too, you would have found yourself treading all too firmly on thin air, for the man in charge of that operation had been poor old Brookers, an actor quite improbably cast in the rôle of Commander-in-Chief, Far East.

A commander, as Percival very well knew, cannot always have things his own way. But when
everything
is designed to frustrate him he may well begin to wonder. To be expected to fight against trained men with untrained men, to fight without naval or air support worth mentioning through a sweltering country of apathetic natives and exasperating Europeans whose only aim is to obstruct him, frankly that is too much: he begins to see that he is the victim of some pretty curious circumstances.

Consider for a moment the defence of Johore that he had been trying to organize. When he had been GSO1 to General Dobbie in 1937 fixed defences had been planned for Johore to protect Singapore Island from overland attack. But where were they now that overland attack had developed? They were non-existent. Very well. Consider now Gordon Bennett, the man in command of the Australian Imperial Force in Malaya on whom he had to rely for the defence of Johore (with ‘Piggy' Heath, of course, and his Indians). It was common knowledge that Bennett had been repeatedly passed over for the command of Australian forces sent to the Middle East; he was considered too difficult and erratic. There was no prospect, you might have thought, of such a man (a man of whom both the Australian War Minister and the Chief of the General Staff disapproved) being given command of the Australians in Malaya. So you might have thought. But already the sound of discreet sawing could be heard and presently these two influential men who disapproved of Bennett (the War Minister and the Chief of the General Staff) trod simultaneously on another weakened rung and the plane in which they were both travelling crashed in Canberra. They were replaced by men partial to Gordon Bennett. Aha! Bennett had wasted no time in promoting in turn Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell, an- ‘amateur' militia soldier and peacetime doctor, over the heads of more senior battalion commanders to take command of the 27th Australian Brigade on its way to Malaya. Maxwell, by the way, liked to keep his HQ near to Bennett's in case he should need a spot of assistance. Maxwell, a rank outsider!

Or consider how Johore had been lost: that is to say, as a result of their inability to secure either flank against amphibious landings. The fortunes of war? But this would not have come about if that aircraft carrier had not gone aground in Jamaica and if the
Prince of Wales
and the
Repulse
had not in consequence been lost. But no, let us not be difficult. Let the carrier go aground! Sink the ships! It was a cruel and unexpected blow but never mind, he would bow his head. A commander sometimes had to put up with cruel and unexpected blows. Yes, but what he should not have to put up with is that faint rasp of metal teeth on wood! For if he followed the naval situation a little further back and strained his ears Percival could hear it again, quite clearly, that discreet rasping sound. He was now thinking of the French Far Eastern Fleet and how eager it had been to join the British in Singapore. It would have made all the difference, too, no doubt about it. But beneath the loyalty of Admiral Decoux, that friend and admirer of the British, that most patriotic of men (you might have thought) a sinister little cone of sawdust was beginning to pile up. The only man who could prevent the French fleet joining the British had, by an unfortunate coincidence (rasp! rasp! rasp!), a secret ambition to become Governor-General of Indo-China.

Percival stifled a groan and stood up to draw in the double-pronged buckle of his Sam Browne belt, passing the shoulder-strap beneath the flap on the right shoulder of his shirt; as he did so his groping fingers touched the solid little crown on his shoulder-flap and the sensation brought with it a sharp reminder of his rank and duties. If it was his job to fight not only the Japanese but an unseen hand as well, then so be it. It was his duty to get on with the job and leave the speculation to future historians who, he did not doubt, would not fail to find something fairly fishy about the way events had coincided against him. He glanced at the rectangular face of his wrist-watch. How late it was! No wonder Pulford had been trying to get into the bathroom. On his way down the corridor he glimpsed Pulford through the half-open door of his room in the act of adjusting a sock-suspender around a grey calf.

Breakfast. A cool and succulent slice of papaya, tea and toast. When he had finished he went directly to his office to study the latest situation reports and evaluate the night's events. Then, with the balding, long-nosed, rather grim figure of the Brigadier General Staff, he went through the agenda for the daily meeting of the War Council: he must remember to have a final shot at getting the Governor to do something about exit permits for the Chinese if it were not already too late. Should he not be back from Johore Bahru in time the BGS would have to attend the War Council meeting in his place. Today, 28 January, was going to be another crucial day on the other side of the Causeway.

By 08.40 he was speeding across the island on his way to confer with General Heath at III Corps Headquarters, now located just on the other side of the Causeway in Johore Bahru. As he sat in the back of the car, his face beautifully shaven but expressionless, he swiftly reviewed the plans that had been made by Heath and his staff for the withdrawal of his entire force across the Causeway to Singapore Island. He had hoped until yesterday not to have put this plan into operation, particularly now that the 18th (British) Division was about to arrive. But alas, there was nothing else for it. Were his men to remain in Johore their flanks would still be threatened by amphibious attack, as Singapore Island itself would be, of course. Moreover, communications would depend on the narrow Causeway, all too vulnerable to air attack.