The serial: Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 80

On New Year’s Day 1942, before they departed from Kampar, the personnel of 12th Indian Infantry Brigade felt the heat when Stewart called a conference for staff and commanding officers to discuss whether Trolak, a few miles north of Slim River, was a strong defensive position. While the brigadier and brigade-major thought it was, the battalion commanding officers were unhappy and not keen on the positions allocated their troops. Slim River was crucial for the British.

When Percival and Heath visited the brigade on December 31, they informed Stewart and his staff that British troops must hold on to ground north of Kuala Lumpur and protect the airstrips of Malaya’s capital and at Port Swettenham until January 16 when ground (the British 18th Division) and air reinforcements were expected to arrive.

Although Slim River had natural strengths as a defensive position, the problem for 11th Division was that the Japanese, now arriving in numbers on Malaya’s west coast, might make a landing between Kuala Selangor and Port Swettenham. From here, they could advance towards Kuala Lumpur, south of Slim River, and block the British line of retreat. Advance As 12th and 28th Indian Infantry Brigades took up their positions in the Slim River area in the early hours of January 4, 12th Indian Infantry Brigade appointed 3rd, 6th and 15th Brigades to cover them, after which these troops advanced to the mouth of the Selangor River.

Meanwhile, Heath sent Indian and volunteer groups to guard the coast at Kuala Selangor, a move which helped scotch a Japanese landing on January 2.

Most senior officers believed the Slim River area was an excellent position. Thick jungle and high mountains covered the east side while on the west was more jungle, behind which lay a dangerous swamp that extended as far as the coast.

The ground was an excellent anti-tank obstacle as a narrow corridor 20 to 30 miles long ran from Sungkei to Rawang. Stewart claimed this natural feature “was designed to force the enemy into defiles on the road and railway, thus allowing economy of troops on our part, and a concentration of targets for our powerful artillery; in the case of the rear battalion, it was to take advantage of the good lateral communication to meet any wide encircling move through the jungle, as soon as it should emerge”.

Nevertheless the area needed two separate forces to defend it: the first, at Trolak in the north, where the road and railway ran parallel and close to each other, and the second at Slim River as the road looped east for about five miles and did not rejoin the railway until it reached Tanjong Malim 10 miles south.

If there was any hope of the enemy desisting from its air strikes, it was soon dashed. The Japanese Zero and Oscar fighters ruled the skies, “bombing and machine-gunning the Indian troops all the time”.

The day the brigade arrived at Trolak, the Japanese bombed and machine-gunned Tanjong Malim, where Paris set up his Divisional HQ, and destroyed several vehicles on convoy duty. ‘Depressed’ The following day at Trolak, enemy aircraft bombed and machine-gunned the jungle bordering the road and railway even when there were no visible targets.

There were few casualties, but the attacks had a demoralising effect on the soldiers, as Deakin confirms: “I found a most lethargic lot of men who seemed to want to do nothing but sit in slit trenches.

“They said they could not sleep because of the continued enemy air attacks. In fact, they were thoroughly depressed. There was no movement on the road, and the deadly ground silence emphasised by the blanketing effect of the jungle was getting on the men’s nerves.

“The airmen could not see the troops but knew they were there and continually attacked the road and railway areas in which the defences were sited.”

On January 5 the troops prepared their defences but, to avoid attack from the air, they worked at night.

“However,” wrote Deakin, “the battalion was dead tired, most of all the commanders whose responsibilities prevented them from snatching even a fitful sleep. They had withdrawn 176 miles in three weeks and had had only three days’ rest.

“The battalion had suffered 250 casualties of which a high proportion had been killed. The spirit of the men was low, and the battalion had lost 50% of its fighting efficiency.”

That afternoon, a large group of Japanese advanced down the railway line towards the Hyderabad’s Ahir Company, which held its fire and then inflicted 150 casualties on the enemy.

Here, for the first time during the campaign, Angus is mentioned in Major General S. Woodburn Kirby’s The War Against Japan, Volume 1, not by name but by rank. The Hyderabads’ left forward company grew nervous, which prompted their commander to request permission to withdraw. As Stewart was absent from Brigade HQ, Angus, as chief-of-staff, granted the company their request.

However, when Stewart returned he reversed Angus’s decision.

By the morning of the 6th, the brigade had made ready their defences including the erection of wire and tank obstacles. Ships? Later that day, some Tamils on their way south reported that they had seen at Sungkei, eight miles north, a column of “iron land-ships”.

The ever-optimistic Stewart believed they were lorries. The 11th Division’s two northernmost brigades took up delaying positions; Stewart’s 12th at Trolak to the north, and Selby’s 28th in the south at Kampong Slim and along the river as far as Slim River Bridge.

Stewart positioned his three battalions in the following order along the seven-and-a-half mile sector: 4/19 Hyderabads, the lead battalion, at milestone 60; 5/2 Punjabs behind them at milestones 61 and 62; and the Argylls to the rear in a rubber plantation along an estate road at right angles to the trunk road, less than a mile north of Trolak bridge.

The Hyderabads’ sector was 3.5 miles long. A Company went astride the railway, C Company astride the road and B Company to the rear on a track between the railway and the road.

The Hyderabads were weak. The young, undertrained troops were unsettled by their long retreat.

Their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Wilson-Haffenden, had been wounded in an air attack on the 3rd, and their rifle companies now numbered only three. On the plus side, they had antitank guns, concrete blocks, barbed wire and had dug slit trenches.