The Japanese first came the day after I had been rousted from sleep by that sensational signal. Early that morning we heard a new engine note in the sky, different from the Hudson and Blenheim bombers which we had grown accustomed to hearing take off from the airfield. In a clear sky, I saw waves of twin-engined planes with rising sun emblems on their wings, three neat waves of nine each, like migrating geese. They passed and repassed over the area where we knew the airfield to be, and dropped bombs that looked so small and black in the distance. The explosions were mingled with the crack and rattle of light machine-guns and cannon as the Sikh company shot up at them, but the bombers calmly and methodically went to and fro over the earth, walking their bombs around in it, then turned and flew away.
In the afternoon we heard our own planes take off one by one, wheel around and head south. In the sunlit silence that followed we thought we heard the sounds of road vehicles through the trees, lorries moving away from us. Major Fennell, our second-in-command, took me and a small group out to the airfield to investigate.
We drove on to the long spacious runway that had been dug and levelled out of the forest. It was empty apart from a few wrecked planes, and so silent that you could hear the birds and the insect sounds from the forest. I walked towards the trees. The huts for accommodation were in there, the radio shacks hidden further back. It was spooky, as though there were rifles pointing at us from the dark under the trees. But the huts were empty, scattered clothes all over the floors, photos of women and children strewn among the vests and jackets. In the radio rooms, the equipment had been wrecked, wires trailing out of smashed panels, the glass of valves crunching under my boots. Out on the runway, there were cold mugs of tea half-full by the aircraft on which mechanics had been working. I picked up a blue flimsy envelope with an Australian postmark. It was unopened.
The place for which we were supposed to sacrifice our lives had simply been abandoned, without explanation. Our headquarters had told us nothing; the local air force commanders had not consulted us before fleeing. We were left on this awful ground with no air cover.
From then on, the probabilities began to look harsh and unfavourable to us. Very late that same evening, an observer on one of the beaches reported that he had seen Japanese landing craft moving towards a village further up the coast. As darkness fell, I transmitted an order from Colonel Jephson to the guns. Within seconds of speaking into the mouthpiece and hearing the squawked acknowledgments from the batteries, I heard the deep flat blast of a howitzer firing, immediately followed by several more. All that night the guns slammed like bolts on a massive door being pushed heavily back and forth. We could see quick flashes occasionally, a patch of rubber trees reversing out of the darkness for a second, but nothing more. I knew the shells would form a shifting pattern, moving across a square of sea and beach like a flail, and that landing craft and soldiers would burst and drown in the geometrical figure drawn on the gunnery officer’s map.
Dawn broke. We had fired over a thousand shells. There had been no response to the night long barrage, and when observers went out they reported that Colonel Jephson had been scourging the empty sea. There were no landing craft.
Later that morning I walked down to the beach. I had been up most of the night, on duty with my signalmen. These beaches were incredibly beautiful; they had coconut and nipah palms, fine clean sand and the warm green of the sea. I stood beneath the trees admiring the way the waves came in. It was so peaceful, standing on a mile of deserted sand with a long line of palms at my back. I felt I was waiting for the Japanese, at that moment, completely alone. Then the loud rumbling started again, a deeper and more distant version of the night’s barrage, like thunder but obviously not thunder, drifting in from the sea. It went on for about an hour.
I had heard the British Empire begin to fall, if I had but known it. Out at sea, just over the horizon from where I stood, the two mightiest, most invincible battleships in the world, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, and their escort destroyers, were being attacked by swarms of Japanese torpedo bombers. They had no air protection; like the land dreadnought of Singapore, like us, they were playing tragic roles in an outdated military drama. Their day was done. I remember myself as I was then, hearing the huge cracks of the explosions as my comrades, the radio men, were trapped at their posts under the bridges of the great ships.
We had seen these ships as our salvation. We lost hope when it was confirmed over the radio that they had both been sunk within a couple of hours off Kuantan. Admiral Phillips had turned his titanic weapons towards us because he also believed that we were being invaded; he too had heard that Japanese troops were storming ashore in our sector: our own panicky observer had helped unwittingly to bring a strategic and historical era to an end. It was absurd. The weak, shortsighted, nightblind Japanese had destroyed our ultimate deterrent. For the first time, we began seriously to consider defeat.
On 10th December we received reinforcements: some armoured cars and the remnants of a Frontier Force Regiment battalion arrived, tough Sikhs who had withdrawn from the north of Malaya; and although we no longer had an airfield at Kuantan, we at least acquired a chaplain, a nice man called Pugh. Percival’s orders to the Frontier Force soldiers and to all the others in the north had been to fight, to ‘impose delay’ on the Japanese, retreat and fight again all the way down the peninsula. We were about to discover that a leapfirogging, fighting retreat is easier to imagine than to carry out.
We had watchers out on the tracks to the north, organized by a civilian from the Malayan Forestry Service who knew the area well. We got reports of mysterious parties coming through the jungle; every day, we expected a fight. There were false alarms, and a permanent screwing up of tension. Two weeks passed like this. We celebrated Christmas, Padre Pugh conducting impressive and well-attended services at our camp and out among the batteries in the forest. We killed a lot of local ducks and ate well.
Our unit’s particular orders were still to stand and fight in defence of the now derelict airfield. We accepted this task stoically, wondering what Percival would say if he could see the jungle reclaiming the landing strip. But two days after Christmas, we were ordered to withdraw immediately and regroup west of the river. A sudden retreat on this scale would cause chaos, our commanders felt, and Brigadier Painter, who was in overall charge of our immediate area, protested vigorously to the major-general above him. The previous orders were reinstated. I dutifully relayed these contradictory messages between my superiors.
While their debate was going on, one of our forward posts phoned in to say that it had been attacked by Japanese troops, and some of our vehicles had been destroyed. We were now in a battle zone without doubt, and the Japanese wished to keep us there. They tried to destroy our ancient ferry by bombing it, but it survived.
The first of my friends to die was Lieutenant Tafify Davies, an artillery officer, a friend since Nowshera. He and two signalmen called Cartwright and Howe drove off on their motorbikes alongside a truck that was delivering some ammunition to a battery. I discovered later that he and Cartwright set off to return on their own. We found Taffy’s body a few hours later on the road beside his wrecked machine, machine-gunned and bayoneted, and stripped of his boots, puttees and equipment. Cartwright’s bike was there, but he had disappeared. Further along the same road, thirty Garhwali troopers lay dead among their burnt out lorries.
Our orders were changed again, for the third time in three days. All guns and vehicles were to be withdrawn across the river.