LOST DIVISION

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 114, 16 May 1942, Page 6

LOST DIVISION

SINGAPORE BATTLE

AUSTRALIANS' PART

"It is necessary that we shall all realise that the battle of the island of Singapore was an Australian defeat," says Sir Keith Murdoch, in an article in the Melbourne Herald in which he traces the fighting record, first in Malaya and later in Singapore, of the Bth Division, A.1.F., now "scattered and lost." The division, he said, had many of the best young men of the land. The brigades under Major-General Gordon Bennett had every need supplied. Wonderful equipment came to them, they had model hospital units, first-class artillery, anti-tank guns, and an amplitude of ammunition; they had good food and clothing and mosquito protection. When the Australian brigades were put into their sector in the island of Singapore two battalions, the 18th and the 20th, had had practically no fighting, the 30th had taken the initial shock at Gemas, and lost about 200 men, the 26th was little scathed, and the 19th and 29th had lost some 450 each. Sir Keith Murdoch wrote. Our battle casualties had been in the neighbourhood of 1400. of whom about 600 were missing. We numbered on the island something more than 17,000 men.

Here there were some anxious days of reorganisation and battalions were more or less brought up to strength. The 19th absorbed some 000 reinforcements, and Colonel Anderson, who had by then won his Victoria Cross, put all possible pressure on his tired companies to weld the new with the old. The Line Was Thin The Australians were given the western half of the northern perimeter of the island, and they found a dispiriting position. There was a little wire along the shore and some waist-high trenches and machine-gun posts. Days and nights were passed in digging, wiring and the moving up of searchlights and guns. The line was thin—the 19th held no less than two miles of front in the centre.

But although bombing was constant and there were bursts of heavy shelling—apparently limited by the flow of ammunition to the Japanese -—our casualties during these days were only slight. It was not an encouraging period—demolitions were going on at the naval base, staffs and air force were leaving, and there was the deep stench and blackness of burning oil tanks and huge fires of stores.

But it is undoubtedly true that the dive bombing and the shelling were tco inaccurate to be destructive, and the men went into battle during the fateful night with their numbers in gocd strength—probably about 6000 in the six battalions and machinegun companies, and many more in the artillery lines and various operational units.

Weakened Battalion Struck

The Japanese came in the middle of the night, after a ruse that opened our searchlights, and thus marked them for destruction, straight against the 19th Battalion line. It was in keeping with the skill of their intelligence system, and the simplicity and economy of their tactics, that they found cut where the weakened 19th Battalion was. and concentrated their fury upon it.

Within a few hours the Australian front was broken through, and next morning the Japanese had strong bodies of troops ashore. The resistance was at no point strong enough.

There were instances cf gallant charges, and of lines held with tenacity and single-minded dutifulness, but it is necessary that we should all realise that this battle of the island of Singapore was, alas, an Australian defeat.

The Japanese pressed through our lines to the base of the causeway, and across into the heart of the island, without involving any substantial number of British troops.

The first two days meant the loss of the fortress. It is true, as General Bennett said, that the number of front line men involved ' was strangely small, when one thinks that some 90,000 troops in all must have been on the island.

The expectation seems to have been that the attack would come in the north-east, or even around to the south, where Gordon Highlanders and fresh Singaporian troops were placed. But the island is a huge place, some 20 miles wide, to be defended around its perimeter, and it must be remembered, too, that the great majority of the troops had been through a discouraging, wearying, weakening retreat.

Total Losses, 25,000

No one here can say what our losses in this battle were. But the evidence indicates that our casualties were comparatively light. The figures of wounded and prisoners given over the Japanese radio stations may be taken as fairly accurate, as they conform with the observations of the men who escaped. I believe the number of Australians in captivity in Malaya will be found to be more than 17,000, and when the figures for the islands also can be discovered, there will be a total of at least 22,000 —probably manw hundreds more, for we have these nor thern ventures some 25,000 men.

The Lessons

There are two things in particular the Bth would like to say to us at home. The first is that to beat the Japanese we must estimate them properly, equip and train ourselves for the inevitable tropical warfare lighten our equipment, increase our mobility, organise our army in the most ruthless manner for hard disciplined fighting. This requires an immediate and deep application of ♦wl A SOn f om the experiences of those Australians who have met the Japanese in battle. 1 e The second thing that all the best men who are left would urge upon us is that a great commanding morale must be built througrout our army on the foundations of love of countrv and all its people, of units of faith ™£ Ure ' c'assless,' untainted govlrn or ! discipline. . The lost division has much to tell Australia. It can tell of effort and acquired skill and high belief-it can 1 , hardship and defeat an<? above all. it can tell out of its bftter experience what spirit and strength ar to save the land g One thing it would say undoub ££ , U WQUId tell that we have to be a warrior generation eirrW ourselves completelv for hard and great military campaigns And it would tell us that if we take thl measures in time that they now know are necessary, we can triumph