“Today local inhabitants claim the area is haunted and individuals report that they have heard wailing and yelling, particularly at night

Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 82

At 4.30am, just over an hour after the tanks made their first contact, the column halted. Stewart had seen to it that the Punjab’s foremost defended locality (D Company north of milestone 61) was mined. Fierce fighting followed when the Japanese leapt out of trucks and fought Deakin’s Indian soldiers, who destroyed three tanks but no anti-tank artillery was available to exploit the situation.

When the Japanese came under attack and felt threatened, they began to shout and yell, employing a fearsome noise to intimidate the enemy. One moment the night was still but the next, all hell broke loose. Men yelled, automatics fired, engines roared, tins clattered. It was nerve-shattering. Deakin writes: “The din which followed belies description. The tanks were head-to-tail, engines roaring, crews screaming, machine guns spitting tracer, and mortars and cannon firing all out. The platoon astride the cutting threw grenades, and one tank had its track smashed by an anti-tank rifle. The two anti-tank guns fired two rounds, one of which scored a bull, and then retired to the Argylls’ area. One more tank wrecked itself on the mines.”

Haunted

Today local inhabitants claim the area is haunted and individuals report that they have heard wailing and yelling, particularly at night. The Punjabs stalled the enemy until he discovered several loop roads which, before the Public Works Department straightened the thoroughfare, had been part of the main road. Using these loops, now obscured by jungle and tall grass, the Japanese outflanked the defenders.

It is unclear how the invaders knew about these detours. Some claim they were included on Japanese maps but not on the British, which suggests that enemy agents were active in gathering information for some time before the invasion.

Although the Punjabs’ reserve company held back the enemy for an hour, it was encircled at 6.30am, when the Japanese discovered the second disused road loop. In sum, this brave Indian battalion managed to delay their adversary for two hours not only through the support of a couple of minefields, an anti-tank battery and a few anti-tank rifles, but through their determination to fight on until the end of their moral and material resources.

The third battalion to stand in the enemy’s way (the Argylls) was unable to take advantage of the delay. Communications broke down shortly after dawn, so there was nobody to say what was going on. This meant that the gunners could not shore up the trapped tanks in the Punjabs’ sector.

Dispatch riders and field telephones failed to operate for several hours and wireless links rarely existed below brigade level. Deakin rang Brigade HQ to report that the Japanese had penetrated the Hyderabads and pushed back his leading company. But by 5am, when the railway bridge was blown, the telephone wires were cut in the forward area.

Back at Brigade HQ, Stewart knew only that the 5/2 Punjabs’ most forward company had halted the enemy. News of the battle had not reached units further south, including the Argylls. Stewart ordered Deakin to “hang on at all costs”, the Argylls to erect road blocks at Trolak and the 5/14 Punjabs to move forward to milestone 65.

As the Argylls were about to eat their breakfast, they saw the Indian troops streaming towards them. It was 6.30am, before contact was made with Paris at Divisional HQ on 12th Indian Infantry Brigade’s unreliable wireless, by which time the two forward battalions were overrun.

The acting divisional commander sent his principal staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Harrison, to find out what he could. Travelling up to Slim River in his brand new Ford V8, he collided with a tank at Cluny estate.

Fortunately, before Harrison set out, he had sent a message to Brigadier Selby of 28th Indian Infantry Brigade to deploy his troops immediately. The latter also received a visit from an officer from 12th Indian Infantry Brigade (since Angus was Harrison’s counterpart at Brigade HQ, it could have been him) informing him of the bad news.

Ambush

Although Angus was not fighting, he worked in a dangerous place at Brigade HQ, situated 1.75 miles west of Trolak village. At 9.30am, the enemy attacked on the west flank close to Brigade HQ.

For either side, bagging a brigadier and his staff was a feat worth considering; in his undercover activities behind enemy lines on the west coast, Angus Rose ambushed a Japanese brigadier in his car. Staff officers, especially when contacting in person forward companies or carrying orders, were especially vulnerable, as was the case with intelligence officer Gordon Shiach, machine gunned by a tank at Gopeng-Dipang.

Angus was having a very difficult time trying to contact combat troops and Divisional HQ. Much equipment from 11th Division signals was already lost during the retreat.

The only means of communication between Divisional and Brigade HQs was the telegraph line along the railway but this was cut when the railway bridge was blown up over Slim River and it remained out of action during the battle. The alternative was to use dispatch riders on motorbikes but they were often too slow within the swiftness of the battle situation.

By now it was daylight. At 6.30am four medium tanks reached the first roadblock and swept it aside. “Our chaps could do nothing. They just looked helplessly at the passing tanks which were firing hard; a few threw grenades,” reported an officer.

The column proceeded straight down the road and, at 7am, it reached the second roadblock at Trolak, where armoured cars and anti-tank rifles checked it, but not before it knocked out two cars and smashed the roadblock. There were further problems for the Argylls. The sappers failed to reach the Trolak bridge in time to demolish it. A number of Argylls gathered at the bridge, where more enemy tanks and infantry arrived at 9am, and destroyed the remaining armoured cars and carriers.

For two long hours, the Scots fought bravely for the bridge. Finally, as the demolition charges failed and they found no sappers to blow it up, the jocks blockaded the bridge with an armoured car, but the bridge fell intact to the enemy.

In spite of all the tumult, the ever-optimistic Stewart informed Selby, whose HQ farther south was on a gentle slope and promised better wireless reception, that the situation was serious but not critical, and that he would withdraw his brigade at noon.

More tomorrow