Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 89

In July 2010, my daughter and I boarded a bus along that 2.5-mile stretch beginning now at Bukit Panjang plaza and ending at a gigantic shopping centre in Bukit Timah. It’s easy to miss the railway bridge, as it can be confused with overhead passes festooned by cascades of tropical purple-flowering plants. In amongst the ugly modern high rises and public buildings are palms, coconut trees, and bushes with a riot of pink blooms. Providing a vital lung for the populated island on the east side of the road is Bukit Timah nature reserve.

Thursday, February 12, 1942. A young child lay dead on a pile of rubble while two women crouched by the body weeping: in the background was a bombed rickshaw, its hood akimbo with broken shafts and buckled wheels. This still is the face of Singapore days before the surrender. Japanese bombers dropped their deadly cargo while men, women and children dived for cover in the monsoon drains as there were insufficient air raid shelters.

Wailing

As soon as a bomb exploded, each victim found himself covered with dust and choked by cordite fumes. It was only when the din stopped and their ears ceased ringing, that they noticed the dead child, sobbing mother, and wailing grandmother by the rickshaw.

Some troops straggled, others deserted; still others went on a rampage of looting. Dozens got tight on gin and whisky. Chinese families, Malays also, trundled their remaining possessions through the streets away from the approaching front line.

At street corners, firemen wrestled with hoses. Down by the river, the rubber stores were alight. The flames, fanned by the breeze, threatened to leap the river and set fire to the houses on the other side. As the government closed down its departments and burned official documents, extravagant rumours abounded.

The broadcasting station and local newspaper were no longer of any help with firm news, as their producers and editors had fled. Even the government broadsheet ceased publication. So, people fooled themselves: an armada would rescue them at the 11th hour. Was this not Singapore? How could the “Gibraltar of the East” fall?

By mid afternoon at Tyersall Barracks, exhausted survivors from the Argylls’ A and D companies, who had been fighting in the racecourse area, confronted another disaster.

The Indian military hospital, a part of which was situated within the Argylls’ barracks area, suffered a direct hit from the Japanese bombers. Many patients and staff were unable to escape from the wooden huts with thatched roofs. Others, too injured to move, needed to be rescued.

The fire burned furiously and although fire services were summoned, the message failed to arrive as the telephone lines were down. Army personnel transferred vehicles and armoured cars and removed ammunition from the guard room, by which time the fire had progressed to the officers’ quarters and mess. By the end of the afternoon, the whole of the camp was a smouldering ruin and everything was destroyed except weapons, ammunition, and equipment.

Pipes, drums, band instruments, and kit had gone up in smoke. All that remained was “the spirit of the regiment,” wrote one officer, and a certain nonchalance displayed by officers like Angus who, on viewing the extent of the damage at Tyersall, announced that he was delighted to see the “ruddy officers’ latrine had burned down” and, what was more, “in fine style.”

Charred

With this spirit, some 50 Argylls and four officers (all that remained at Tyersall of the original battalion of 860 men) re-formed into sections to hear what their colonel expected of them. He asked (not ordered) them to rejoin the battle raging in Reformatory Road in the south-west region of the city.

Abandoning the charred remains of Tyersall, they marched through Argyll Gate but when they were a mile down Holland Road, Angus drew up in a staff car and stuck his head out of the window. “Haven’t you heard?” he bantered. “It’s all been changed!”

Angus alluded to Malaya Command’s most-quoted cliché. He had been sent by Singapore Fortress’s commander, Major General Frank Keith Simmons, to tell the Argylls to halt and await further orders. Archie Paris had argued strongly against his 50 men going back into battle. These troops returned to Tyersall and took up residence in huts unscathed by the fire.

While the officers sipped a whisky and soda and waited for their dinner of cottage pie, a signaller entered the room and handed Colonel Stewart a message from General Wavell. The commanding officer was to evacuate Singapore with two of his most experienced officers and NCOs.

The colonel chose Angus Rose and David Wilson. Sergeant majors Colvin and Bing were his choice of NCOs.

Stewart, Rose, and Wilson bade goodbye, Angus wished them well. “I give you a couple of weeks longer than us,” he said, when he heard that they were making their escape by ship to Java, “before finishing up in the cooler”.

“Old Angus,” wrote Rose in his personal account of the campaign, “might have been seeing us off after a dinner party with the same humorous chuckle, the same quick wit and generosity.”

The summons for these officers to leave Singapore at the 11th hour was a result of Wavell’s plans to let a number of army, navy and air force personnel (including civilians) escape. “Just before the cessation of fighting,” he advised, “opportunity should be given to any determined bodies of men or individuals to try and affect escape by any means possible. They should be armed.”

Secrecy

Men were selected from the Argylls, Sherwood Foresters and other regiments, to offer their fighting expertise to combat the Japanese outside Malaya. Many personnel grabbed a craft and headed for the mouth of a river on the Sumatran east coast. From there, they proceeded overland towards Java or travelled upriver, then across land by lorry or car, finally boarding a train for the last lap of their journey over the Sumatran mountains, until they reached Padang on the west coast, where they boarded a ship for Ceylon or Australia.

The next morning, Friday, February 13, the day Ian Stewart’s group slipped out of Keppel harbour, a total of 1,800 army officers and men of merit were evacuated from Singapore. It was done with secrecy so that the bulk of servicemen would not attempt a last-minute dash for freedom and seize the remaining available vessels. It was also important to keep these plans from the enemy. More tomorrow © 2017 Mary C Gladstone, all rights reserved, courtesy of the author and Firefallmedia; available in hardcover and paperback online and from all booksellers.

“All that remained was ‘the spirit of the regiment,’ wrote one officer, and a certain nonchalance displayed by officers like Angus