The serial: Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 75

C Company suffered 50% casualties and rejoined the battalion “absolutely exhausted and sleeping on their feet” after the battle of Titi Karangan.

However, the Argylls dealt the first blow to Japanese invincibility. The Japanese soldier stuck rigidly to a plan and, if rattled, became disorientated: fierce, noisy bayonet charges unnerved him. After their first battle, Stewart decided that anyone coming on to the Argyll lines in native dress would be shot. Locals, they assumed, would go away and not come into contact. But this was wishful thinking. The Japanese often co-opted locals at gun or bayonet point into doing things for them.

It’s claimed that British Imperial forces, comprising British, Indian and Australian divisions, were of greater number than the Japanese. This may have been the case when allied troops took their last stand against the enemy on Singapore Island but not on the mainland. The Japanese vastly outnumbered the British and Indian troops, and not until the fighting reached the south of Malaya were Australian troops deployed. Vital area When 12th Brigade moved north on December 14, Lieutenant General Heath could spare only one company to defend the vital area north of Grik. While the bulk of the brigade (the Argylls and Punjabs) positioned themselves at Baling, on the afternoon of the 13th, Captain Bobby Kennard with 62 officers and men from Argylls’ C Company, proceeded up the narrow road north, to staunch an avalanche of three battalions from 42nd Japanese Infantry Regiment advancing south.

Popular memory is often uncomplimentary about the British Imperial forces’ performance during the Malayan campaign, the opinion being that neither the British soldier, nor the Indian nor Australian, was a match for the fierce Japanese fighters.

People forget about the David and Goliath-like contest of Bobby Kennard and his Argylls’ C Company who, on a 25-mile stretch of single-track road, delayed a force many times its own number. The road was vital; the Japanese wished to seize it as it led to Perak State’s royal capital, Kuala Kangsar. If they succeeded, they’d be able to control the junction of the main north-south trunk road and sever supply lines to the British forces in north-west Malaya.

Fortunately for C Company, on account of the heavy rain and poor road surface, the Japanese were forced to abandon their tanks. Kennard’s men were unlucky when it came to enemy aircraft which attacked them. Starting their retreat in a truck that ran into a monsoon ditch and got stuck, the men disabled it and made off in an old Chinese lorry.

With this vehicle, the company fought down the Kroh-Grik road, running ambushes on steep hills and narrow bends. Numbering only 35 now, Kennard’s company ambushed the enemy by positioning seven men 100 yards apart.

Each group went into action for 10 minutes, at which point it advanced to its next position. This leapfrogging of seven men here and seven there, went on for a day and a night. C Company suffered 50% casualties and rejoined the battalion ‘absolutely exhausted and sleeping on their feet’ after the battle of Titi Karangan. Sobering It was a sobering lesson to the Argylls on the swiftness of the Japanese advance but it was a great achievement. They had stopped the enemy from advancing west into South Kedah and Province Wellesley, so avoiding the 11th Division being cut off in retreat.

“For four days,” wrote Colonel Stewart in his history of the Argylls, “this company with gallant assistance of some volunteers, delayed the advance of at least three enemy battalions until the remainder of our regiment was moved to that particular front to back them up. They did their job and did it very well.”

In 1943, while Duncan Fergusson from C Company was a prisoner of war, a Japanese officer who had fought with 42nd Infantry Regiment, asked him how many men ambushed their regiment on the KrohGrik road. Fergusson scratched in the sand with a stick the number 35. The Japanese officer angrily added two zeroes to the figure.

Following Titi Karangan, the Argylls repeated their success in six major battles at Sumpitan, Lenggong, Kota Tampan, Chemor, Gopeng-Dipang and Telok Anson. In these, the Argylls and other battalions like the Leicesters took on Japanese regimental groups of close to 6,000 men. Fighting the battle for the road, they bought precious time for the retreating 3rd Indian Corps and inflicted, on a numerically superior enemy, casualties that far exceeded their own.

Writing some years later, Lieutenant General Percival praised the troops of the Malayan campaign. “All ranks courageously faced a situation which was prejudiced from the outset through lack of resources to complete the magnitude of the task”.

Japanese domination of the air was total, and the brigade under regular attack from enemy aircraft. Not once did the battalion see any allied aircraft. In the latter part of 1941, British commitment elsewhere stopped the government from bolstering the Royal Air Force in Malaya, whose total stock was 141 serviceable aircraft, the best of which were 42 Brewster Buffalo fighters. In comparison to the Navy ‘O’ fighter, its Japanese counterpart, the Buffalo was slow and flew no higher than 10,000 feet. Intensity On December 17, Heath ordered 12th Indian Infantry Brigade to Kuala Kangsar to staunch the enemy’s farther advance down the Grik Road. In the small hours, behind the rear of the 2nd Argylls, the 5/2 Punjabs withdrew from their Pekaka position; three hours later they reached Merbau Pulas.

But the Japanese tried to rush the bridge before the sappers were able to blow it. Deakin complained that his men retired “without due cause” and had to be forced back. Reports of the battle and the intensity of the enemy’s assault suggest that there had indeed been enough cause to retire. “The enemy were in the swamps, up trees and, on both sides of the road, and there was Tommy gun fire coming from the village,” wrote Deakin, who wondered if fifth columnists were responsible for the shooting.

In the northern state of Kedah, there was considerable opposition to British rule and disaffected Malays were hostile. Fifth columnist stories were rife; a Malay was shot for hanging a red sarong out to dry and it was rumoured that one antiBritish faction could be distinguished by its black clothes. So that intelligence officers could interview suspected fifth columnists, battalions employed interpreters, as few officers or men in the forces spoke Chinese or any local language. More tomorrow