Percival v Yamashita

Percival and the campaign in Malaya and Singapore 1941-2

The campaign in Malaya which ended with the Japanese capture of Singapore on 15 February 1942 was a context amongst others between two commanders, Generals Yamashita and Percival. I’ll be taking a group to Malaysia and Singapore in March 2025 with The Cultural Experience and have been preparing an analysis of both men and the circumstances in which they found themselves in 1941. If you want to learn more, do have a look at my The Generals, published in 2008.

This post is a follow on from a previous one looking at General Yamashita, commander of the IJA’s 25th Army.

Who on the British side was to blame for the loss of Singapore? Yamashita blamed the senior soldier responsible, 53-year old Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, General Officer Commanding (GOC) Malaya. Wavell, C-in-C India, agreed, believing that Percival ‘had the knowledge but not the personality to carry through a tough fight.’

Wavell’s arrival on his fleeting visit to Singapore – Percival’s third boss in as many weeks – provided a difficult new dynamic for the over-stretched GOC Malaya. In early 1942, Wavell had new and extensive responsibilities in the ABDA Command, a piece of foolish impracticality dreamt up by Roosevelt and Churchill at the Arcadia Conference in Washington as an attempt to coordinate the command of the disparate Allied armies, navies and air forces across an impossibly large area of Asia and the south-west Pacific. The distance between his left (New Delhi) and his right (Lembang, in Java) was about 2,000 miles, with Rangoon lying approximately midway between the two.

Wavell’s personality and predilections made him an uncomprehending superior. His ignorance of Asia and the Japanese in particular was profound; he was set in his ways, scornful of the capabilities of non-European soldiers, and tired. Crucially, Wavell’s innate prejudice against Asiatic armies led him to make no effort to comprehend Japanese military strategy or Japan’s military strengths. He never thought Japan would invade. Wavell subscribed to the view that as the Japanese had been held in a form of stalemate for over four years by rag tag Chinese armies, they could not be much good. To make matters worse, on arrival in Singapore he demonstrated a dangerous ignorance of the limitations of Percival’s forces.

Wavell had arrived in Singapore already prejudiced against Percival. His attitude had been undoubtedly informed by a somewhat tendentious brief written for the Prime Minister by his former Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, in December 1941, in which, amongst a host of other carefully crafted character assassinations, Cooper depicted Percival as a weak, schoolmasterly type of general, entirely unsuited to the pressures of the Malayan cauldron. Cooper had been despatched by Churchill to Singapore as Minister of State in September 1941, there to advise the Prime Minister on the preparations the colony was making for war. The first of his two reports, in neither of which he interviewed Percival, came to the same conclusions that the poorly informed colonial government had already arrived at: the Japanese would not risk war with the United States. It was a foolish report based on assumptions that Percival had not been given the opportunity to put right, namely that the recent mobilisation of Japanese forces in Manchuria together with the onset of the north-eastern monsoon made an invasion of Malaya or Singapore extremely unlikely.

If he had interviewed the GOC, Cooper would have learned of the profound weakness in civil preparations for war, the lack of tanks or effective anti-tank guns for the Army, and the training to use them; of intelligence about Japanese intentions; of the qualitative differences between British and Japanese aircraft; of training, communications and inter-service co-operation. He would have also identified naval weaknesses and a plethora of associated confusions and deficiencies. Instead, when in mid-December, Churchill asked Cooper to explain why, in the absence of any previous warning from him about the weaknesses of the forces in Malaya, the Japanese should be making such striking gains, Cooper fell back on an age-old deceit: he blamed the commanders.

Percival had arrived in Malaya in May 1941 with a sound military reputation. He had been a protégé of the CIGS, Sir John Dill, who recognised in his calm, objective professionalism a rare analytical talent. He had been a Corps Chief-of-Staff in the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940, and a Divisional Commander in England following the withdrawal from Dunkirk. Quiet and measured in his approach, he was not a fire-eater.

He was not merely a staff officer, however, as some have imagined in that pejorative description of the shiny-booted desk-warrior, but an experienced operational soldier. He was bright and perceptive, although not articulate or inspirational, and it was these latter characteristics that conspired to tarnish his reputation amongst those who did not know him well. He was fully committed to the principle of joint working with the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.

In many respects it was an inspired appointment, as arguably he knew more about the problems of defending Malaya and Singapore than most others. Percival had spent a productive period in Singapore on the staff in 1936 and 1937. At the time he had concluded that a clear threat existed to Malaya and Singapore from the Japanese. He judged that the most likely means of invasion would be by way of amphibious landings far to the north on the beaches at Singora and Patani in neutral Thailand. If Singapore were to be defended, he reasoned, it would need to be done by aircraft and troops based in northern Malaya, rather than in the south, in Johore.

These conclusions, although supported wholeheartedly by the GOC at the time, Major General William Dobbie, who shared a frustration with Percival at the unwillingness of the colonial authorities to take seriously issues of defence, were regarded by the colonial government in Singapore to be ‘alarmist’. Most policy makers believed that Malaya provided an impenetrable barrier to an invader, which would protect the island city from attack from the north. The jungle, in this analysis, would provide the walls that Singapore lacked. The authorities as a whole under-estimated the Japanese, and exaggerated the difficulties faced by an attack in invading Malaya.

Physically, perhaps, Percival did not look like a general. Slight of build and with the characteristic stoop of the very tall, he had an unfortunate set of buck-teeth that were compounded by a personal reticence – even shyness – that contrasted sharply with the more boisterous leadership styles of his more forceful contemporaries: Brooke Popham, Lieutenant General ‘Piggy’ Heath (Commander of Percival’s III Indian Corps) and Major General Gordon Bennett (Commander of the Australian Imperial Force).

It is true that he sought intelligent, well-informed consensus rather than to enforce his will. Percival was not, however, surrounded by supportive subordinates, and his headquarter staff was far too small for what was required of it. Percival lacked an ability to press his views on others by the strength of his personality. Instead, he relied for the loyalty of his subordinates on the strength of his logic.

On his arrival in 1941 he was faced with circumstances that Duff Cooper had entirely failed to recognise: that Malaya and Singapore were afflicted by deep-rooted and insurmountable challenges to effective command, and that the military prerequisites for success were absent.

The first problem was that Singapore, as the Japanese knew well, was not a fortress. In fact, when separated from Malaya, it was indefensible. Huge quantities of money – £60,000,000 – had been spent in the 1920s and 1930s building a massive Naval Base which was designed to support and sustain a Royal Navy battle fleet that would be despatched to the region in the event of hostilities. The Naval Base was never meant to defend Singapore itself, but to be a safe harbour from which the fleet could be sent across the length and breadth of the eastern oceans in defence of British interests. Singapore would need to be defended by other means. But the popular perception, buoyed up by years of propaganda, had it that Singapore was a veritable Maltese fortress, standing strong and resolute amidst a sea of enemies. Churchill, who never once visited Singapore, had never been disabused of this notion. He remained remarkably ignorant of the true state of Singapore’s defences, and of the reasons for Percival’s insistence that Singapore be protected by a security screen in northern Malaya.

A second problem lay in the failure to replace the old peacetime command structures in Singapore with ones that were fit to withstand the demands of war. The region was entirely unprepared for war despite the many indications in the previous twelve months of Japanese ambitions. There was widespread ignorance about the Japanese, together with political inertia in Singapore and a cultural apathy towards anything that might upset the calm routines of commercial and colonial life. Malaya and Singapore were rich jewels in the Empire’s crown, and colonial administrations tended to be hostile to those who threatened the status quo by planning for, or talking about, war. Commercial interests were paramount and protected by the colonial government despite the warnings of those who saw the extent of the colony’s vulnerability. The long-standing antipathy to issues of defence was not something that could be eliminated overnight.

Likewise, there was no single authority in Singapore responsible for the war effort. The Governor, Shenton Thomas, reported to the Foreign Office in London. The respective Commanders-in-Chief did so to their own departments (Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry), also in London. While all were members of a locally constituted Defence Committee of which Thomas was the head, the Governor was an ostrich, and the worst possible person to oversee the preparations for war. He was slow to see the urgency of the situation, overly conscious of the needs of commerce, and failed to grasp single mindedly all the issues of defence at a stage early enough to be able to introduce changes that could make a difference to the security of his colony.

For his part, Percival was merely the chief soldier, competing to have his voice heard above the noise of less well-informed civilian administrators and the divergent views of a wide range of commentators. His situation was complicated by the fact that the task of the Army was merely to guard the Naval Base at Singapore. He reported to the C-in-C Far East, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke Popham, himself a recent arrival (November 1940). Despite his title, ‘Brookham’ was C-in-C only of the Army and the RAF: the RN had their own boss, Admiral Layton, C-in-C China Station. There was no joint military commander.

Percival had an uphill battle to persuade his military superiors and the Singapore political elite to take seriously the threat from Japan. Although Percival got on well with him, and he was far from the ‘Colonel Blimp’ of caricature, Brooke Popham never fully appreciated the true extent of Japan’s military power. In any case, ‘Brookham’ was replaced briefly in January by Pownall, before responsibility transferred to Wavell, in India.

Percival was handicapped by the fact that he was both the Army Commander and the GOC Malaya, responsible for all things to do with the defence of Malaya and Singapore, the supply and maintenance of the Army and the provision of policy and advice to the Government. He was not allowed to concentrate on one or the other, with the result that he could not focus his undoubted intellect and energies on either satisfactorily. To complicate matters, Percival’s own staff never amounted to more than four officers and once battle was enjoined he quickly became exhausted. There was simply too much for one man to do. Percival found himself pulled between the battle, and oversight of Generals Heath and Bennett on the one hand, and the management of his GOC responsibilities back in Singapore. In the final busy weeks of the campaign in January and February 1942 he found himself driving each day to Johore to oversee the campaign in Malaya, and returning each afternoon or evening to Singapore, there to carry out his duties as GOC.

The third problem was that sufficient military resources had never been made available to meet the needs of the defence of the region. The Army had a weak peacetime garrison entirely unstructured and unprepared for war. Of aircraft, there were too few, and of capital ships, there were none. The newly completed Naval Base on the north side of Singapore Island was envisaged in the context of a two-fleet Royal Navy: one for home waters and one as a global fire brigade. By the late 1930s, however, naval disarmament meant that Great Britain no longer had the capacity to fight on two sea fronts simultaneously. Percival, for one, had never believed that a fleet would be available to be despatched when it was required, nor indeed would get there in time to make a difference.

Singapore’s defence was undone from the outset by the assumption that the fleet would arrive, and by the failure to provide Malaya and Singapore with the resources – especially the 336 front-line aircraft that London had agreed were necessary – to repel a Japanese attack. There was never an intention to starve Malaya and Singapore of the resources she needed to defend herself, although London always believed that Singapore consistently over-egged the problem and the threat.

The eventual absence of the resources that made the strategy possible, and conversely made it impossible without them, was the direct consequence of Churchill’s decision to transfer these scarce resources to the Soviet Union instead. Churchill’s rationale was unimpeachable – real war, even in support of a newly acquired ally like the Soviet Union, took precedence over potential war against the Japanese – but it resulted in the dangerous weakening of Malaya. In other words, with Germany rampant in Europe and the Mediterranean the key task was to pour whatever resources Great Britain could find into fighting the monster at hand, rather than preparing for the one that might or might not be preparing to strike.

When Percival arrived to take command of the Army in Malaya in May 1941, the air fleet comprised a mere eighty-eight obsolete machines, although by the time of the invasion it had risen to 158, virtually all of which were hopelessly outdated. The sole fighter defence available, the slow, heavy and hard-to-manoeuvre Brewster Buffaloes, were no match for the Japanese Navy Zeros.

Percival was further hampered by a lack of preparation in his own forces. The fundamental weakness in the Army lay in the lack of experience and training of the troops – British, Australian, Malay and Indian – who found themselves defending Malaya and Singapore in late 1941 and early 1942. Most were green, partly trained teenagers. Precious few had any idea of operating in close, jungle country or had prepared for the rigours of engaging in combat with a determined, experienced and ruthless opponent. The standard of training was generally very low, and even in those professional, long-service units of regular soldiers (Percival had six regular British battalions and two Australian) few had spent time rehearsing for the sort of fighting they were to face against the Japanese.

There had been little if no formation training, so that battalions in brigades had rarely trained together, and rarely with their attendant artillery and engineers. Little consideration had been given to training headquarters and staffs to manage the desperate pressures of command on a fractured battlefield where little was certain about the enemy, where telephone and radio communications had broken down, and where commanders had been cut off from their troops. A range of basic tactical errors were made repeatedly by units, such as failing to cover obstacles with fire. Difficult operations of war, such as withdrawals, had never been practised.

These inherent weaknesses were exacerbated by the need to ‘milk’ battalions of experienced men to form new units with the rapid expansion of the Indian Army. The resulting effect was the continuing and debilitating inexperience of battalions expected to confront, stop, and turn back Yamashita’s well-trained legions, all of which were high on the adrenalin of victory. Five of Percival’s battalions were in fact Indian State Force units – largely ceremonial soldiers not part of the Indian Army but loaned to it for the war by their Maharajahs. None stood the test of battle well, one murdering their British commanding officer before fleeing in the attack on Kota Bahru.

The almost universal attitude was that the Japanese would be a poor enemy, and warnings to the contrary were consistently ignored. It was simply inconceivable to most Europeans in Malaya and Singapore that the Japanese Army represented a real threat to European troops in a stand-up fight. Racism bred ignorance. Most Europeans in the Far East, before the events of late 1941 and early 1942, regarded the Japanese to be ‘second-rate soldiers – short sighted, bad shots, afraid of the dark, so short-legged that they could not easily walk over rough ground and whose almond-shaped eyes could not see through bomb sights…’.

Fierce pre-war rivalry between Army, navy and Air Force did not help. With each service determined to preserve its prerogatives opportunities for joint understanding were limited. Constant and undignified bickering caused a serious lack of trust between the three services such that the principle of joint working was a distant dream in 1941 and1942. As a result, Army, Navy and Air Forces were fated to fight their own battles when the Japanese attacked.

Percival arrived on 15 May 1941 bristling with ideas and energy. He sought immediately to institute a new training programme, issuing directives encouraging unit commanders to take the initiative in individual and sub-unit training, and to do so in the jungle, and against a Japanese enemy. But these instructions had to penetrate the thick defences of the culture of peacetime soldiering, the inexperience of British Empire soldiery in the swiftness of modern warfare, a general incomprehension regarding the martial qualities of the Japanese soldier, the dangerous lack of resources (ammunition, grenades, barbed wire, mines, armoured vehicles and tanks) and the lack of any form of doctrine that enabled the battlefield coordination of air and land forces. Training had also to take place alongside other preparations for war, such as the construction of fixed defences. In fact, no time was found for formation training, nor were the troops at a sufficient level of skill to undertake advanced inter-unit training.

The prospect of a Japanese landing in Thailand led to the formulation of a strategy in 1941 for the defence of Singapore that was based on defending northern Malaya. Air bases could provide the platform to launch counteraction against amphibious invasion. In the concept for battle that developed in 1940 and 1941 the Army necessarily had to play second fiddle in the first phase of fighting to both the RAF and the Royal Navy as the latter attacked any invasion fleet from sea and air. A programme of airfield construction was begun. The RAF assured Brooke Popham that their aircraft could sink up to forty per cent of any armada, complementing surface action by the Royal Navy sallying out of Singapore.

The ‘northern’ strategy was a sensible one. Through it, an invader could be kept far away from Singapore, which by itself was difficult if not impossible to defend, and to allow for the combined inflow of vital reinforcements by sea. Militarily it presented Percival with a range of problems. The four airfields constructed for the RAF in northern Malaya required close protection by Percival’s infantry. There were not enough troops available for this task and the widely dispersed nature of the airfields meant that these scarce infantry battalions (amounting, in fact, to half of Percival’s strength) could not mutually support each other, nor indeed could they be concentrated quickly in an emergency to fend off or counterattack a Japanese thrust wherever it might develop.

The assumption was made – wrongly – that the airfields were crucial to the defence of northern Malaya, whereas it was their denial to the enemy that was key. The airfields were not adequately protected by effective anti-aircraft weapons, they came under a different command structure from that of their accompanying infantry forces, while the aircraft they were designed to service did not even exist in 1941. No one seemed to have given any thought to the fact that these airfields were of vital interest to the Japanese, and that without the aircraft designed to use them, they were of considerably less interest to Percival. Because the promised aircraft had not arrived by December 1941, Percival was forced in some cases to defend well-stocked but empty airfields. Thus within days of the Japanese invasion a number of well-built and well-provisioned airfields fell quickly into the hands of the enemy, which they were able to use to good effect during the rest of the campaign in Malaya, and against Singapore.

To make matters worse there was virtually no joint working between Army and Air Force in 1941. The RAF evacuated the crucial airfield at Alor Star in December, around which parts of the ill-fated 11 Indian Division were deployed to defend, without even telling their Army colleagues, and the same fate was suffered by Brigadier Key’s Indian troops at Kota Bahru.

The major part of Percival’s army was III Corps, comprising 9 and 11 Indian Divisions and commanded by the Indian Army’s Lieutenant General Sir Lewis (‘Piggy’) Heath. 9 Indian Division was based on Alor Star in the north whilst 11 Indian Division was split between Kuantan and Kota Bahru on the east coast. In addition the Australian Imperial Force, commanded by the part-time soldier and full-time egotist, Major General Gordon Bennett, comprised merely a single brigade (22 Brigade) of 8 Australian Division, and was in reserve in the Malacca area. Its second brigade (27 Brigade) arrived in August 1941. Percival also had three unbrigaded battalions in northern Malaya together with some Indian state troops for airfield defence. He had no tanks. In Singapore, Major General Keith Simmonds had artillery and fortress troops with three brigades of field troops.

The key to the success of the northern strategy was not defensive passivity, but offensive action. If the Japanese were to launch an attack on the Kra Isthmus, the best way repel them would be to occupy the beaches before they landed. Accordingly, Brooke Popham agreed a plan, labelled Operation Matador, to pre-empt Japanese landings in Thailand. Percival inherited this plan on his arrival. It envisaged a rapid advance by 11 Indian Division to secure the beaches at Patani and Singora in Thailand, and the neighbouring airfields in the Kra Isthmus, and to defend these against Japanese amphibious assault.

Matador’s full value would only be achieved if launched pre-emptively, but the prospect of this made London nervous. Matador would constitute an act of war against Thailand unless Thailand were first induced to invite British entry, and its self-evident political sensitivity (not least because it might provide Japan with the casus belli with which to invade Thailand herself, on the grounds of protecting Thailand from British aggression) led London to retain for itself responsibility for launching the operation. Churchill did not want precipitate action by Great Britain to alienate the United States, whose support he had been carefully grooming for months.

This was a serious mistake, as it separated by too great a distance the decision-maker from the locale of the decision. Churchill never fully appreciated that Matador provided the best chance to defend Singapore. As it was, the slowness in making decisions at this distance made this arrangement difficult. It was assumed that locally there would be sufficient warning of a Japanese attack to launch Matador. There was an additional tactical problem caused by Matador. If this scheme were to be launched, the deployment into Thailand of 11 Indian Division would leave a large hole in the Kedah defences which Percival had no available reserve to fill. The airfield at Alor Star in Kedah was a key element in the defences of northern Malaya and required defending. The nearby town of Jitra, with its nexus of road, river and rail links, was the obvious but by no means ideal position for the defence of the area. 11 Indian Division, pressed up against the border with Thailand, could not undertake both Matador and the defence of the Jitra position. It could, however, prepare for either eventuality. In the event, its failure to prepare adequate defences at Jitra led to the division’s rapid demise once the fighting began.

Matador was a good plan, and would have had every chance of success, if it had been accompanied by the same military decisiveness and political will that had attended the wars in Iraq, Syria and Iran some months earlier. On 4 December London delegated authority for Matador to Brooke Popham but accompanied this authority with the warning from Churchill that the operation could only be initiated with the greatest care and the absolute certainty of Japanese intentions.

However, although caution was important, absolute certainty was something that could only be achieved after the Japanese had landed, or at the very earliest whilst their invasion fleet was standing offshore, which somewhat annulled the rationale for pre-emption. As a consequence Matador was undone from the outset. The first sightings of the invasion fleet were made by Australian Hudson reconnaissance aircraft on 6 December, and although Percival put Heath on immediate readiness to launch Matador, Brooke Popham took counsel of his fears and did not give the order to send 11 Indian Division – which was prepared, trucked-up and ready to go – to seize the landing beaches and airfields before Yamashita got there first.

When confirmation finally came that the Japanese were landing not just at Singora and Patani, but also at Kota Bahru on Malaya’s north-eastern coast, it was far too late to execute the plan. Heath’s troops were left confused, unsure of what was required of them, and as a consequence became quickly dispirited. Had these beaches been defended, it is certain that in the deep monsoon swell Yamashita’s troops would have suffered the same degree of casualties as Kota Bahru. It could even have led to Yamashita’s defeat.

Matador was undone by Brooke Popham’s inability to act decisively in the greatest single drama of his life. Heath was furious that the decision had not been made earlier. It had never occurred to him that Matador would not be authorised on time, and in this careless assumption he failed to prepare adequate fall-back measures, such as trench-digging in Kedah, should the Japanese break through. Fatally, there were no rehearsals, no exercises to prepare the troops for dealing with tanks, infiltration, navigation off-roads, and counterattacks in heavily forested terrain. Inexplicably, however, he blamed Percival rather than Brooke Popham for the mistake and his faith in Percival’s generalship was irretrievably damaged by these events. He began increasingly to display his antagonism towards Percival openly.

Heath’s falling-out with Percival highlighted the weakness of the selection process for high command. Percival had been appointed in London, Heath had been appointed by New Delhi and Bennett had been appointed by Canberra. All three were as different in approach, temperament, background and experience as was possible to find. They did not know each other, nor had they ever trained together. Crucially, Percival had no choice in their appointment. Heath had spent his career in field soldiering in the Indian Army. A brave and experienced soldier, he had turned down the opportunity to attend Staff College in order to remain with his regiment. Consequently, he was poorly prepared to appreciate the political dimension to the formulation and execution of military strategy, viewing the complicated nuances of political decision-making through the clouded lens of the regimental mess. Percival believed that he suffered from the inferiority complex that occasionally showed itself in officers of the Indian Army.

For his part, Gordon Bennett was a difficult subordinate. Abrasive, arrogant and ambitious, he nevertheless had a distinguished record from the First World War. The problem was that he was a militia officer, and perhaps because he was not one of them (though in truth wanted to be), he despised the professional, staff-trained officers of the regular Australian Army. His self-evident willingness to get stuck into the Japanese in the early days of the campaign was not matched by the necessary degree of technical competence that would enable him to fight a fast, modern, subtle, mobile war. Simplistic in his views and often caustic in his expression of them, Bennett was slow to understand Percival’s difficulties, but quick to criticise. He despised Heath, and it is safe to assume that the feeling was mutual. His personality was authoritarian. He could not brook dissent, nor even accept the views of subordinates to be in any way as valid as his own. The quality of a man’s ideas, to Bennett, was determined by his rank and as a consequence he despised Percival’s quiet, consensual approach to decision making.

It is clear from his self-exonerating account of the campaign, published in 1944 before any of his colleagues were freed from Japanese captivity and could defend themselves (Bennett had himself escaped, leaving his men to their fate), that he considered Percival to be weak and insufficiently aggressive. During the campaign, Bennett did what he could to undermine Percival’s position. The command triumvirate in Malaya Command was, as a result, a disaster and unravelled quickly under the pressure of the Japanese onslaught.

The boldness, speed and persistence of the Japanese attack into northern Malaya, exacerbated by the disorganised withdrawals of the first few days of fighting, came as a profound surprise to the British and Indian defenders, and resulted in the loss of equipment and a rapid collapse of morale. The withdrawals by III Corps from Jitra and Gurun in the second week of December unwittingly handed the initiative to Yamashita. Heath discovered on 14 December just how far Major General Murray-Lyon had withdrawn his 11 Indian Division and used this unauthorised fait accompli to urge Percival to sanction a further withdrawal 100 miles south to the Perak River. Percival refused. The war would not be won, Singapore and the Naval Base defended, and Yamashita defeated, by relentless withdrawal. The problem at this stage, however, was that withdrawal was the only tactic available to Heath if he wanted to avoid being cut off by Japanese infiltration around and beyond his position. The only tactical solution in the British manuals to the threat of encirclement was to withdraw. The idea of standing firm, and of using the encircled position as a base to counterattack the enemy movements around them was a tactic that required well-trained and confident troops, as well as effective re-supply, and would not be perfected by the British until early 1944.

Percival failed to establish a forward headquarters in northern Malaya, whence he could direct the campaign. As a result he was never close enough to Heath to make his influence felt. Communications in Malaya were too poor and the distances too extreme for him even to hope to command the battle in Kedah from Singapore. No one had practised what to do when things went wrong. Instead, when the fighting began, because the troops found themselves in situations they did not expect and for which they were not trained, withdrawal was too often regarded to be the answer to their problems. Continuous withdrawals have a habit of inducing in weary soldiers the psychosis of defeat, however. It is difficult to reverse. Even trained soldiers can quickly lose any interest in offensive action. Withdrawals are the most difficult operation of war and are made all the more difficult when combined with exhausted troops, weak leadership, imprecise orders, torrential rain, darkness and a relentlessly determined enemy. With the hotchpotch of half-trained conscripts in late 1941 and early 1942, it should have been clear that command and control would be difficult, if not impossible, to retain.

In Malaya, once the mental momentum of a withdrawal had been generated, let alone its physical tempo, it was extremely difficult to stop, and to reinvigorate tired troops with the offensive mentality. The fault with the lack of preparation was Percival’s as much as anybody’s. On only the second day of fighting, before even Jitra had been lost, Heath had urged a withdrawal of Brigadier Key’s 8 Indian Brigade, which had fought well on the beaches of Kota Bahru, 100 miles back to Kuala Lipis. Percival was surprised by this request, as by it Heath demonstrated that he did not comprehend the strategic rationale for the defence of Singapore. Any weakening or withdrawal, of the type Heath urged, from Kota Bahru to Kuala Lipis, would allow Japanese aircraft to operate 200 miles closer to Singapore than they would otherwise be.

Percival needed his northern defences to remain firm for as long as the resources he had been promised by London – troops, aircraft and equipment – took to reach Singapore. He was certain, therefore, that the ‘northern’ strategy was the correct one. Accordingly, he refused Heath’s request. Heath, fighting soldier that he was, could see none of these strategic imperatives, and castigated Percival for insisting on a strategy that he himself did not fully comprehend. Had Percival allowed Heath the opportunity to concentrate his entire Corps on Malaya’s west coast at the Perak River, it is possible that Yamashita’s Kirimomi Sakusen could have been halted, perhaps at the Slim River. But it would, at the same time, have dangerously exposed the east coast to the threat of further Japanese landings. Given that the Japanese had already landed on the north-east coast and were already undertaking sea-based operations on the west coast in support of the land advance, they had already demonstrated a dangerous penchant for exploiting the eastern littoral. Percival would have been damned as an incompetent commander if he had ignored it.

The loss of Force Z on 10 December removed at a stroke any chance the defenders of Malaya/Singapore had of attacking the sea lanes of communication that were crucial to sustaining Yamashita’s plan. This loss also opened up the possibility of Japanese landing further down the eastern coast of Malaya at Endau or Mersing. Percival was ultimately proven correct in his caution, as Yamashita did land a substantial force at Endau on January 26. In the circumstances, Percival had no choice but to maintain strong forces on the eastern seaboard, despite the clamour from Heath to allow for the concentration of his corps. In this matter, trying to cover too many serious options with insufficient resources, Percival clearly had far fewer troops than he needed.

Percival was left, in these desperate circumstances, with attempting to carry out a plan that, without air power or sea power, or adequate land forces, made III Corps the only force between Thailand and the Australian Imperial Force far to the south in Johore. Once the rot had set in, and the constant withdrawals begun, it is clear that events took control not just of Percival, but also of Heath and the whole of III Corps. The greatest tactical failure across Malaya Command was to believe that withdrawal was an end in itself. It was not. Withdrawal was a poor strategy, particularly when it had not been rehearsed. A better device would have been to counterattack at every opportunity, at company, battalion and even brigade level. But in the harsh reality of battle, with the initiative constantly in Japanese hands, the focus in commander’s minds – Percival’s included – was to ‘stabilise’ defensive positions. Insufficient effort was made to consider the efficacy of the counterattack and to gain the initiative by offensive action.

When it became clear that Yamashita’s point of main effort was to be the west coast, Percival agreed to Heath’s request to withdraw his 8 Brigade from Kelantan, an operation that was in fact successfully completed.

London had finally begun to appreciate the precariousness of Malaya’s position, although it was yet to be seen whether Malaya’s pre-war weakness would be rectified by the last-minute inflow of troops, especially when even those that were well-trained (pitifully few) had no chance to acclimatise either to the conditions or to the nature of the Japanese enemy or the shock of joining a losing battle.

The overwhelming Japanese advantage in the air and their ability to concentrate attacks against the northern airfields had a dramatic and detrimental effect on British air strength and critically undermined the long-term prognosis for the defence of both Malaya and Singapore at the earliest stage. Of the 110 aircraft on the first day of action, only fifty remained at the end of the first day. With the overwhelming Japanese air superiority in the north Percival reluctantly that the aircraft there were a wasting asset and would be better employed providing air cover to the sea convoys bring the much-needed reinforcements into Singapore.

The withdrawal of most of what limited air cover remained became another one of Heath’s accusations against Percival. Whilst the lack of air cover by the RAF added a bitter and one-sided dimension to the fighting, Heath seemed not to comprehend that Percival did not possess the sort of divine authority required to conjure up, from thin air, aircraft that simply did not exist in the British inventory – at least not on the Malayan side of Suez - and that it was the Air Officer Commanding’s reluctant decision to husband these rare resources for the battle to protect the strategic reinforcements arriving by ship into Singapore harbour.

On 27 December 11 Indian Division (Murray-Lyon had been replaced by Brigadier Paris) had withdrawn over the Perak River to a series of defensive positions between Kampar at the northern end and Tanjong Malim village some sixty miles further south, with intermediate positions at Slim River between. The natural strength of the Kampar position, however, was not enough to prevent its being overcome, in part by a Japanese threat to its rear following Japanese landings along the coast, and on 2 January Paris felt compelled to withdraw further back to the Slim River.

On 4 January Percival reluctantly agreed to conduct an ordered withdrawal to a new defence line in Johore, running from Muar on the west coast through to Mersing on the east coast. The states of Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Malacca would have to be given up without a fight, something that only days before had been politically inconceivable. Percival’s plan was to place the Australians on the left of the Johore Line, and III Corps on the right, each responsible for their own lines of communication back to the rear, and Singapore.

The policy of a controlled withdrawal was a mistake. Every effort should have been made to hold lines where it had been demonstrated that the Japanese advance could have been held, such as at Kampar, whilst simultaneously counterattacking the Japanese advance. It was clear to many that precipitate withdrawals had been made in the face of small numbers of Japanese attackers, and the fear of encirclement, which resulted in the destruction or loss of vast quantities of supplies and equipment, had become entirely irrational.

There was no good tactical reason for the withdrawal from Kampar, for example, except to conform to the strategic requirement to retire. The infiltration of a Japanese unit through the jungle to the rear of the Kampar position was not a decisive factor in its abandonment and should have been countered by aggressive action. But it is also clear that Yamashita had got well within Percival’s decision-making cycle: the Japanese thought faster than the ponderous British, and everything Percival or Heath attempted to do was quickly unravelled because Yamashita or his divisional commanders had pre-empted these moves.

With the collapse of the Slim River position on 7 January 1942 Percival’s plan for a carefully staged and closely controlled withdrawal lay in tatters. Unfortunately for him, Wavell arrived that day in Singapore to gain a firsthand view of the situation.

A flight to Kuala Lumpur on 8 January at the end of the Kampar and Slim battles to meet the exhausted command team of III Corps made him not sympathetic to their plight, but scathing. He also had the opportunity to meet the vociferous Gordon Bennett, whose energy and ideas (he had not yet encountered the Japanese in battle), impressed him. Wavell’s poor assessment of Percival was countered by a spontaneous and ultimately ill-considered appreciation of Bennett. To Percival’s amazement Wavell summoned him to his temporary headquarters and ordered him, without explanation, to implement a new plan. In despair, Percival recognised this plan to be the one that Bennett had been badgering Percival to adopt for some days.

Four days previously Percival had rejected Bennett’s proposal, which gave the Australians responsibility for the whole of the Johore front. Over the duration of a short meeting Bennett persuaded Wavell that his ideas were better than those of Percival. Wavell backed Bennett. For some reason Wavell believed that on the basis of a single day’s briefing by Duff Cooper in Singapore (to which Percival had not been invited), a single day’s trip (by air) to Kuala Lumpur, and a briefing by a disgruntled Australian commander, that he was able sufficiently to comprehend the detail of a complex situation and bring order out of chaos. Wavell’s view of the correctness of his judgement and the veracity of his strategic comprehension was unswervingly certain, but as equally wrong. It also served substantially to undermine Percival’s authority with Bennett and Heath. Bennett talked an extremely good story, especially to the press, and his loquaciousness contrasted starkly with Percival’s natural reticence. ‘Gordon Bennett and his Australians in good heart and will handle enemy roughly, I am sure,’ Wavell reported to Churchill on 14 January.

Wavell then flew off to his new HQ in Batavia. It had in fact been a dangerous visit. The Japanese were far better than Wavell was ever prepared to admit, Bennett far less able than he professed, and his troops on the whole unprepared and poorly trained for the task facing them. What is more, Wavell’s visit had not exposed him to the crisis of morale in III Indian Corps that was leading to wholesale surrenders of Indian troops, which was a desperate concern for Percival and Heath. Likewise, the Royal Navy could not hinder the operations of Yamashita’s tiny though adventurous ‘little ships’ and there were too few aircraft left to make anything more than a dent in Yamashita’s overwhelmingly strong 3^rd Air Group.

The reinforcements Percival had called for in December began, at last, to arrive on 3 January 1942. A huge effort was made to protect the incoming convoys, and the euphoria caused by the arrival of new British brigades, artillery and crated Hurricanes, was not unexpected. It was, nevertheless, entirely misplaced. The troops, after many weeks at sea, and expecting to go to the Middle East, were out of condition and unprepared either for the climate or the terrain, or indeed for the unique requirements of fighting the battle-hardened Japanese. The Hurricanes too, found themselves no match for the Japanese Zeros, to the disappointment of those, like Percival, who had expected much of these valiant workhorses of the Battle of Britain. The truth was the convoys that steamed into Singapore through January, at great risk to themselves and their cargoes, were too little and far too late.

As the days followed the defeat at the Slim River, Percival’s fears about what would happen to Singapore itself, were the ‘northern’ defensive strategy to fail, were amply demonstrated, as Japanese aircraft, based on newly captured British airfields, ranged south, virtually unopposed. In accordance with Wavell’s revised plan, which Percival dutifully began to put into place immediately, Bennett now commanded the entire front line from Muar on the east coast to the west coast.

There were early, significant battlefield successes for this new defence zone. An Australian ambush at Gemas, although poorly executed (artillery fire was unable to be called in), nevertheless caused serious casualties amongst the Japanese vanguard, killing hundreds. This ill-founded euphoria led Bennett to believe that the tide had turned. It had not. The Japanese kept up the pressure at Gemas, rebuilding the destroyed bridge and attacking with tanks only hours after the initial setback, whilst simultaneously applying pressure on their right flank at Muar, an area now defended by the recently arrived but hopelessly prepared and dangerously weak 45 Indian Brigade, reinforced by other weak Indian and Australian elements.

The Imperial Guards Division had no great difficulty in cutting off the Muar defences and defeating them comprehensively, in part by the use of Yamashita’s flotilla of small boats and had blocked 45 Brigade’s withdrawal route south by 18 January. Everything Percival was able to throw into strengthening the defences in the region between Muar and Batu Pahat proved unable to deal decisively with Japanese infiltration. Although it had held up the Japanese advance for a week, the Muar battle effectively destroyed the 4,500-strong brigade, only some 900 escaping through the jungle to safety.

Wavell visited Singapore again on 20 January, and after discussions Percival drafted a secret order instructing Bennett and Heath that the decisive battle for Singapore had to be fought in Johore. Only as a last resort was the army to withdraw into Singapore, and at that only on Percival’s order. Percival still hoped that the final defence line, some 90 miles between Batu Pahat on the west coast and Mersing on the east coast, would hold for long enough to enable the reinforcements due any day at Singapore docks to arrive – 3,500 Australian troops, together with 44 Indian Brigade and the 15,000 strong British 18 Division – and make the decisive impact needed.

For many of the troops on the ground, however, these aspirations seemed optimistic, given the nature of the withdrawals to date, the Japanese success in breaking down every defensive position they had found so far, the frustrating impotence of British Empire troops against tanks, and the demoralising Japanese superiority in the air. Only four days later, on 24 January the brigade commander in Batu Pahat sought Percival’s permission to withdraw from Johore altogether, the Japanese having already established road blocks between him and Singapore. At the same time, on the vulnerable east coast, Yamashita prepared to launch a small but destabilising amphibious assault into the flank of Percival’s position. What counter attacks could be made by ancient Vickers Vildebeest torpedo bombers in the air, and two old destroyers from the sea, were parried with ease by the Japanese, who landed troops at Endau and immediately engaged the Australian defenders at Mersing. While the defenders in the east managed to disengage cleanly, those from Batu Pahat did not.

The Japanese penchant for hanging on to the coat tails of withdrawing defenders worked once again to break up the luckless 53 Brigade, survivors being taken off by a hastily gathered sea flotilla sent from Singapore. Harrying relentlessly, Yamashita pushed hard against the remaining British defenders, 9 Indian Division, precipitating the break-up of the division and the final withdrawal of Percival’s shattered army across the Straits of Johore, thus sealing the fate of Singapore.

Many soldiers – British, Indian and Australian – exhausted after the long fight down the peninsula, were aghast to find in January and February 1942 that they were not retreating behind the comforting embrasures of a Maginot Line, but into a defenceless and porous city. Percival has been criticised for resisting the building of fixed defences in Singapore, for no stronger reason than that it would be bad for morale. The primary complainant has been Brigadier Ivan Simson, Percival’s chief engineer, who pleaded with his chief on Boxing Day 1941 to begin the construction of fixed defences to defend Singapore from the north. Simson’s criticism forms the basis of Professor Norman Dixon’s critique of Percival’s generalship in The Psychology of Military Incompetence, as well as forming a dramatic backdrop to Noel Barber’s Sinister Twilight. There are strong grounds, however, for challenging Simson’s view of Percival’s attitude to this most vexed of subjects.

By December, Percival recognised that fixed defences would only play a minor role in defending against the extreme mobility and tactical flexibility of Yamashita’s army. What they could not overcome, they bypassed. Expending scarce labour resources in digging trenches and building fortifications in Singapore whilst the battle was raging in northern Malaya was, this late in the day, futile. Singapore, as a small island, could be broached at any point: Yamashita had already demonstrated his ability to infiltrate through and around well-defended positions, and cut in behind them with seaborne landings, supported throughout by overwhelming frontal pressure, from land and air.

A diversion of effort at this stage into the construction of fixed defences would have been monumentally futile. If a Maginot line was required it should have been constructed years before, not when the Japanese were knocking at the gates. All of Percival’s efforts needed to be concentrated on fighting the Japanese and defeating them in the encounter battles far to the north of Singapore, and it was certain that spending time digging defensive works and pouring concrete at this late stage was a waste of time. There was simply not the time or resources, even if it were practical, to turn Singapore into a fortress with a wall to complement the Johore moat. As it was, all of the strategic sites on Singapore Island, including the great Naval base itself, the water supply reservoirs, airfields and supply dumps were within the range of artillery fired from Johore, and would not be protected by any amount of fortification.

If the troops he had at his disposal were unable to prevent the rapid subjugation of the whole of Malaya, fixed defences would have added little of substance to Percival’s ability adequately to defend Singapore. As it was, his fast-diminishing source of local labour, whose full exploitation was prevented by bureaucratic impediments, was needed to keep the airfields and docks operational and maintain essential works such as sewerage and water to the town.

In fact, Percival did not neglect the tactical use of defences such as obstacles and minefields in support of brigade defensive positions and gave Simmons clear instructions on the preparation of this type of fortification. Some 3,500 concrete cylinders were built, although commanders on the ground failed subsequently to use these decisively to block arterial routes through Johore. Defensive works were, in fact, planned by Percival as part of an anticipated slower and more deliberate campaign, but as it happened he never had the chance to put these plans into action.

Percival was now faced with organising the remnants of his army for defence. He had some 90,000 troops on Singapore Island, but the number able to provide a disciplined capability in formed units was far less than this. The final reinforcements arrived in early February. None of these could do much to improve Percival’s position, being for the most part untrained or unprepared and in some cases ill-disciplined.

Units and formations were hurriedly reformed and many of the raw replacements recently arrived by sea were absorbed into tired units as battle casualty replacements. Bennett’s Australians, together with an Indian brigade, held the west of the island, and Heath’s III Corps, the east. Percival had, at the end of January, believed that the Japanese assault, when it fell, would fall in the west, against the Australians. However, the following week it is clear that he believed that Yamashita would attack in the east. It was a difficult judgement to make. He was insufficiently strong to cover all the possible approaches across a 70-mile stretch of the Johore Strait and decided to combine defensive positions at likely crossing areas with mobile reserves to counter-attack where breakthroughs looked likely.

It was in this area that Yamashita worked hard to confuse Percival and largely succeeded. When Yamashita unleashed his opening artillery barrage on 5 February, it was into the eastern area. These attacks were increased on 7 February and the occupation of the island of Pulau Ubin that evening by elements of Nishimura’s division seemed to confirm Percival’s judgement that the attack would come in the east. Late on the 8^th, however, Yamashita unleashed his three divisions across the Straits, two of them (5 and 18) into the arms of Bennett’s brigades in the west. Percival had been deceived, but in the end it mattered little: the weak Australian and Indian brigades on the left pulled back precipitately. The final strikes were made against the invaders by the fast-dwindling stock of Hurricanes on the morning of 9 February, before the surviving six aircraft – from a total of 122 Brewster Buffaloes and 45 Hawker Hurricanes deployed during the campaign – were withdrawn to the relative safety of Sumatra.

Wavell arrived for his last visit on 10 February amidst the pall of smoke from the burning oil tanks and saw for himself the unravelling of the island’s defence. One of his staff recalled: ‘We had already passed groups of Australian troops streaming towards the harbour, shouting that the fighting was over and that they were clearing out.’ The truth was that all but a very few – including Bennett himself, who somehow managed to get away by boat – had nowhere to go but towards the prospect of Japanese imprisonment. Throughout the day the situation became more difficult, with fierce fighting intermingled with the less than pleasant sights of some troops giving up completely, defying their officers, and resorting to looting on the streets of Singapore.

The intensity of the Japanese bombardment, the uncertainty, the breakdown in communications across the front, and the huge palls of oily smoke drifting over the island were enough to sap the morale of the sternest troops. For those who were green, or out-of-sorts following a long sea journey, or exhausted and frustrated after weeks of a difficult fighting withdrawal over some 450 miles, it was especially galling to be party to the obvious collapse of a once proud colony in the face of a seemingly unstoppable enemy. It was hard for even the most disciplined of troops, in these circumstances, to stand firm.

In any case, in a flurry of recriminatory panic, Churchill, Alan Brooke and Wavell participated in a piece of embarrassing theatre that showed none of the highest British commanders in a particularly favourable light. On 10 February Churchill sent a message to Wavell in which he insisted:

There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs… Commanders and senior officers should die with their troops. The honour of the British Empire and of the British Army is at stake.

How convenient that the Army and its commanders could die, so that they – rather than politicians or policy – could be held to blame for what Churchill was later memorably to describe as ‘the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.’ Wavell compounded Churchill’s error by issuing an equally accusatory order of his own, handing it in silence to the unfortunate Percival.

It was clear to whom Wavell attached responsibility for the whole debacle. This grotesque unfairness was borne by Percival in habitual silence, unwilling to blame anyone but himself. But as his biographer notes: ‘At this critical juncture in the disastrous campaign, Percival had every right to feel badly let down by commanders above and below him.’ On his departure that day Wavell suffered a heavy fall which hospitalised him for several days.

In the days that followed the situation grew progressively worse. Percival refused to contemplate surrender when fight remained, although it was clear in these final days that both Bennett and Heath, together with a number of their brigadiers, believed it time to throw in the towel. Percival refused. Knowing what we now know of Yamashita’s supply situation, the paucity and exhaustion of his troops, and his last desperate gamble to bluff Percival into thinking that he was stronger and more munificently supplied than was really the case, it is clear that Percival was right and his insubordinate subordinates were wrong.

A few more days of determined and aggressive resistance might very well have turned the entire situation against the Japanese, as Yamashita so clearly understood, and feared. But it was also apparent that Percival’s most senior commanders no longer had the heart to continue the fight. It is also clear that while many soldiers fought on stout-heartedly, many more did not, and sought sanctuary where they could find it away from the relentless squeeze Yamashita was placing on the island.

Percival’s concern at this stage was not to throw away the city needlessly, as a result of the unfounded fears of frightened men. His inclination, therefore, was to fight on for as long as possible. However, it was now apparent that the Japanese had control of the huge stocks of food in the centre of the island: in any case, the town, swollen by refugees and soldiery, could not sustain itself without access to water, now in Japanese hands. The town, like the island, was not constructed or prepared for defence and a prolongation of the battle would merely place the innocent masses further in harm’s way.

In the face of the resistance of his own commanders to the idea of holding out, Percival asked Wavell by telegram on 12 February for permission to cease resistance at the opportune time. Wavell refused but privately accepted in a note to Churchill that resistance in Singapore was ‘not likely to be very prolonged.’ Churchill, regretting perhaps the unreasonableness of his previous instructions, authorised Wavell to instruct Percival to surrender when the situation demanded it. The bloody sacrifice of many hundreds of thousands of civilians, cooped up in Singapore town, was perhaps much more than the honour of the Empire demanded.

The end came on the afternoon of Sunday 15 February, four days after the national Kigensetsu anniversary, which had been Yamashita’s first objective. Wavell continued to urge resistance but nevertheless allowed Percival the liberty to surrender when the GOC believed that fighting on would achieve nothing more than unnecessary bloodshed. Percival responded immediately: ‘Owing to losses from enemy action water petrol fuel and ammunition practically finished. Unable therefore to continue the fight any longer.’ In the late afternoon Percival, with members of his staff, then made the humiliating walk, under the gaze and cameras of the exultant Japanese, to the Ford factory at Bukit Timah.

In The Generals I analyze Percival’s generalship in more detail. Feel free to pick up a copy wherever you buy your books.