World Battlefronts: Jippo for the Jap?

Suddenly at midweek, Singapore burst into cheers. The British Malayan Command at last threw the Australians into battle. Flippant as ever, the Aussies moved up to the line, through columns of haggard retiring Britons and Indians, in busses marked’ “Tokyo or Bust” and “Nippon Express.”

The Aussies were to test in blood a British gamble. Sometime ago the British Command had recognized that it could not hold north Malaya. Its troops were outnumbered four-to-one (or more), out-planed, outgunned, later out-tanked. There were some 1,000 miles of coast to defend, a half-score coastal inlets that invited Japanese flanking.

The British made a decision which was dictated by necessity; to yield almost all Malaya, saving the Australians for a compact shield of men just north of Singapore. This would stretch Japanese communications through hundreds of miles of Commando-infested jungle, shorten British communications and coastline to the defensible limits of the troops in hand.

The Hope. The execution of the decision began with disgrace. At Penang, the British left behind them almost undamaged port facilities and public utilities, tin and rubber stockpiles, 15 crated Spitfires at wharfside.

As the retreat went on the British learned to destroy bridges, roads, stockpiles. Commandos were sown thicker behind enemy lines. But the main body still retreated. At some points troops withdrew as much as 50 miles a day in good order.

British patience was strained. The London Daily Express called the civilian and military defenders of Malaya “a pack of whiskey-swilling planters and military birds of passage.” The only answer: The Aussies had not yet begun to fight.

As last week opened, the fall of Kuala Lumpur was announced coincident with the establishment of a new line 170 miles north of Singapore. Then that line crumbled. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Japanese bombers in 50-to 125-plane batches pounded the city of Singapore. A drenching tropical rain poured down. There was only one island of hope in the dampness: the Aussies were moving up to fight.

The Men. The Australian troops in Malaya were like Australian troops anywhere. They had little understanding of the strictly English meaning of the word discipline; but neither were they familiar with the meaning of fear. When they arrived at Singapore, they pitched pennies to the dignitaries waiting on the dock. Ashore they shouted, drank, swore, rousted Singapore’s residents out of their sleep. When they went into the jungle to train, they groused—but they trained hard and hungered to fight.

They numbered about a division. Some of the men arrived just before Malaya was attacked and these green men, many of whom were used to Australia’s dry brushland, had to be accustomed to Malaya’s dripping tangle; this may have been a factor in the decision to hold them back.

Their leader, a sun-bitten, hard-faced Australian named Henry Gordon Bennett, who will have to move his men fast, moved fast as a man. At 16, after attending a small suburban Melbourne school, Henry Gordon Bennett went to work as an office boy in an insurance firm. At 19 he joined the militia reserve. At 26 he was a colonel. At 28 he went to France to fight in World War I. At 29 he was a Brigadier. Before World War II, as a businessman-reservist, he wrote a sharp series of articles attacking the Australian General Staff for not letting militia reservists have high commands. Now he has a high command on which the fate of Australia may depend.

Sending his troops into action last week, Major General Bennett told them: “Our job is not only to delay the Jap, but also to destroy him.” His Aussies rushed right out and destroyed 20 enemy tanks, ten armored cars.

The Essential. But as the week ended, it seemed that General Bennett would be hard put to keep his promises, his men to hold their ground. Where his line rested in the jungle was a secret. But the Japanese announced that they had already cracked it, forced the British to admit that they had driven across the Muar River only 100 miles north of Singapore. Furthermore the Japanese, by cutting across the narrow gooseneck above Malaya into Burma, dampened the Aussies’ hopes that the Jap rear might be harassed.

It might be that there was one more withdrawal left in the British bag of tricks, even now that the Aussies had begun to fight. But beyond that there could be no more: in the last 50 miles north of the island are the water reservoirs of the city. These have to be held. Hong Kong eventually fell for lack of water. Either the Aussies must give the Jap his jippo above those reservoirs, or Singapore would catch the Japanese for hell.