“The Jocks were in very high spirits,” wrote Angus Rose, “and were spoiling for a fight.”

Shortly afterwards, they sighted the main Japanese convoy (20 transports) and signalled back to base. BrookePopham hesitated in putting into motion Operation Matador by ordering troops into Thailand.

The transports could, after all, be a ploy by the Japanese to induce the Allies to attack. Meanwhile, the enemy transports split up, one heading for Kota Bahru and the others for Singora, Patani and farther north in Thailand.

For some time 12th Indian Infantry Brigade was positioned in reserve south of Kuala Lumpur, but during the last week of peace, the Argylls and the 5/2 Punjabs spent an intense period of training on the south-west coast, first at Seremban, then at Port Dickson.

The Argylls trained on firing ranges and on Saturday November 29 were put on second degree of readiness. That evening Angus Rose and his wife, Alison, who had returned from Penang in September, held a party in Singapore.

After a buffet supper in their house, the party-goers danced at the Tanglin Club. With the elegant female guests and handsome officers, they contrived to create an atmosphere reminiscent of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, but updated to 1930s tropics dress. “It was the last evening on which we danced and gallivanted together,” wrote Angus Rose in his memoir.

Little surprise

When the Japanese invaded Malaya on the night of December 7, Angus was with his brigade at Port Dickson on the southwest coast of the peninsula. The brigade staff learned of the landing when, shortly after 1.15am on the 8th, a motorcycle dispatch rider arrived with an order for the battalions to man their positions.

The news was far from unexpected: two days earlier the brigade had been put on ‘Action Alert’ when Japanese ships were seen approaching the Thai coast. There was little surprise that an attack would come from the north-east.

As early as 1937, when Lieutenant General Percival was stationed in Singapore as General Staff Officer 1, he predicted the Japanese would land at Patani or Singora in southern Thailand, and Kota Bahru in north-east Malaya.

However, it was not until France fell in mid-1940 that Malaya’s fate was sealed, as Japan could now use nearby French Indo-China as a base for its troops.

Even more serious for Britain was the secret pact made between Japan and a hitherto neutral Siam (now Thailand). Prime Minister Pibul Songgram, although appearing pro-British, ignored Churchill’s appeal to forbid Japan permission to land its 5th Infantry Division at Patani and Singora.

Percival knew that Japan was planning an assault on Malaya, but had no idea it was so imminent. Invading British, American and Dutch territories simultaneously seemed inconceivable. The assault on Kota Bahru on the night of December 7 was timed to coincide with the bombing of Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, only it happened an hour earlier.

When the news of the attack reached Sir Shenton Thomas, he reputedly said to one of Percival’s staff: “Well, I suppose you’ll shove the little men off.”

Responsibility

Angus’s brigade, 12th Indian Infantry, with its three principal battalions, were to shoulder most of the responsibility of shoving the Japanese out of Malaya. As a highly-trained, jungle-savvy mobile reserve, used when extra force was needed, the brigade was tested to its limits during the ensuing two and a half months. Angus served continuously throughout the campaign.

For 70 consecutive days he was heavily involved, sometimes in the front line while many colleagues were killed, lost in the jungle or taken prisoner.

Within hours of landing on the beaches of Kota Bahru, Japanese troops made inroads into northern Malaya, their objective was to seize the main northsouth trunk road in the west.

From two directions, additional Japanese divisions surged over the Thai border: the first from the west where they engaged with the 11th Indian Division led by Major General David Murray-Lyon at Asun and Jitra.

The other, after landing at Patani on the Kra isthmus, a sliver of land that separates Thailand from Malaya, advanced south farther inland, and crossed the border north of Kroh, and began its assault on the narrow, remote road to Grik.

There was even a third division which headed south from Bangkok. For the 11th Indian Division, “shoving off the little men” proved harder than anticipated. They needed backup; 12th Indian Infantry Brigade came to their rescue and blocked the main road on the west coast, which ran from the north to the Straits of Johore, a stone’s throw from Singapore.

The grimness of the situation for the British Imperial forces intensified when in the early hours of December 10, HMS Prince of Wales and the cruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by the Japanese off the east coast of Malaya.

“Blown clean away at one fell swoop was one of the main pillars on which our sense of security rested,” wrote Ian Morrison, a correspondent for The Times newspaper.

On that day, 12th Indian Infantry Brigade was ordered north. The Argylls travelled by train to Jerantut in the Central Highlands of Pahang where a Japanese landing at Kuantan was expected. “The Jocks were in very high spirits,” wrote Angus Rose, “and were spoiling for a fight.”

Discipline

The occasion remained firmly in the memory of the then Lieutenant Gordon Smith when he wrote his memoirs in 1995: “I vividly remember the train journey and how unreal the situation seemed, and the thoughts that went through my mind as they did, I’m sure, through the minds of all of us... at least we all had confidence in our state of physical fitness and training.”

While some soldiers relate the experience of battle with sport, I compare it to the discipline of the theatre. Militarists describe armed conflict as ‘the theatre of war’: facing an enemy is not unlike the occasion when an actor confronts an audience.

Adjutants, ADCs or brigade-majors, assisting commanders, are termed understudies. To realise their objective in battle or on stage, both soldier and player undergo exhaustive drilling or strict training in performance techniques.

Each, assisted by weapon or prop, has solely his body and mind as a means of achieving his end, whether in hand-to-hand fighting, driving a tank, operating a machine gun or in moving an audience.