MAN:
Some of the battles were theoretically fought from the veranda of the Singapore Club. And that in itself, to me, seemed to mark the major sign of the type of lack of reality which was happening in the British administration when the major threat was there. There are other aspects of that situation on those last days which I found to be quite strange, and, indeed, in the context of the problems that they faced, irresponsible. Just as, again, as a sign of that particular attitude was General Percival going to take Holy Communion on the very day which the Japanese came across the Straits. One would think that he might've had a little bit more to do than going off to church with his daughter.
MAN:
From early morning of that day the Japanese commenced firing on the positions of the 18th, 19th and 20th, and the 18th Battalion was in the centre. At one time we were in the slit trench all day because you couldn't get out. The company commander with me said, 'Let's see if we can count,' and we used our watches, and we counted 78 shells in our little area alone, in a minute. So, you can see that the concentration of shellfire was tremendous. And it's a wonder any of us survived at all.
NARRATOR:
The most important defence equipment on the island was the famous naval guns. Contrary to popular opinion, they could be, and were, fired at the mainland. But the majority of their ammunition was armour piercing, which is all but useless in open country. What they needed was high explosives, and they had very little of it. Early on the 9th of January the Japanese attack finally came, where all but Percival had foreseen - on the north-west coast, where searchlights had been rigged to illuminate targets.
MAN:
Towards the darkness they tried to turn on the searchlights. They wouldn't work. The Japanese commenced to come across and our battalion alone received, that night, 15,000 Japanese troops, which landed on our front. So, 900 men didn't have much of a chance against those. And we were pretty badly broken up and pushed around and so on and we fell back just behind Tanga aerodrome.
NARRATOR:
The Australians were overwhelmed, and within 24 hours the Japanese were advancing on the island's centre. The noose was tightening, and exhausted Allied troops were pulling in towards the city. The lack of defence networks and Percival's lack of command made it impossible to face the Japanese with any cohesive effort. Singapore city itself was a shambles, and Bennett was anxious that his troops should not withdraw that far.
MAN:
Well, he was determined not to pull back out of his position at Tanglin Barracks, even if the Japanese got in round him and they were at perimeter. Because he was not going to have his men involved in street fighting in Singapore. And they were in a pretty firm position. The Japanese, I think, could have had very great difficulty in trying to take the Australian position which was centred in Tanglin Barracks.
NARRATOR:
Unbelievably, the Australian Prime Minister, Curtin, had insisted that more troops be sent to Singapore when disaster was already on the cards. Many of the men digging perimeter fortifications had been civilians in Australia only six weeks before. And for them, the chaos must have been overwhelming.
MAN:
Unfortunately, the Japanese had taken the area around the water reservoirs and turned the water off. So that the people of Singapore had no water, they were being bombed and shelled all day, no dead being buried. Everything was chaos. Buildings were smashed, fires were burning. And, generally speaking, it was a real shambles.
NARRATOR:
The entire administration of the island was crumbling. And the military situation had obviously got beyond the powers of General Percival. Charles Moses saw him in these last hours.
CHARLES MOSES:
I only met him once, and I saw him perhaps at his worst. And this was on the Thursday morning at about 7:00. I'd been asked by Brigadier Coates, as he now was, of the 15th Indian Brigade, to go back and give him a message. Well, in fact, he wanted somebody to go back. The only people with him was Brigade Major and me. His liaison officers had already gone forward. And I had my own difficulties getting back, but I finally got to his headquarters, and I saw him at about 7:00 in the morning. I told him what the situation was, that we had no contact with the reinforcement battalion - I was speaking now of the 15th Indian Brigade - no contact with the Australian reinforcement battalion on our left, no contact with the 12th Indian Brigade on our right. And he said to me, something which surprised me immensely. He said, 'What would you do, Moses?' I was shocked. He is a senior general and I'm a junior major. And he looked so helpless, he said, 'What do you think we should do?'
NARRATOR:
What was to be done was clear. By the 15th the situation was hopeless. And despite messages from Churchill insisting that the island fight to the bitter end, Allied commanders could see no purpose in sacrificing the entire civilian population. At 6:00pm General Percival, the man who had foreseen the whole chain of events years before, began negotiations for surrender. Unknown to Percival, the Japanese were at their last gasp - their men exhausted and their supplies all but gone. It was for that reason that Yamashita insisted on unconditional surrender at once. Anything else could destroy him. Percival stalled for time, but there was little he could do. In 70 days the whole peninsula and island had been lost, and the wastefulness of it all must have weighed heavy. Many of the troops would've fought on and many were too tired to care. But for all of them, there was a sensation that somehow they had never been given a chance.
MAN:
It was Kipling, wasn't it, who said, 'And when the thing that couldn't has occurred.' Well, it had occurred. We thought it would never happen, but it had occurred and we were... There's no doubt there was a feeling of relief when the guns and the explosions stopped and it was silent.
MAN:
When they said it's all over, I remember just falling off a chair in a headquarters that I was in and going to sleep. Of course, we didn't realise what was in store for us for the next 3.5 years.