Click here to go back the the main Armed Forces page



An extract taken from the book:
'The Man Behind the Bridge - Colonel Toosey and the River Kwai'

with the kind permission of the author Professor Peter N. Davies

…………………………………………………………………………………….

Letter to The Times of Friday 10th October from H. E. I. Phillips
of the 18th Infantry Division on the misuse of the
18th Division in the battle for Singapore

Letters to the Editor

FALL OF SINGAPORE

FATE OF 18th INFANTRY DIVISION

Sir, - Copies of The Times take some weeks to reach me, and for this reason I have only just read the letters by your various contributors on the fall of Singapore. I hasten to add my own comments.

I was a member of the 18th Infantry Division. Originally destined for the Near East, it was diverted to India from South Africa in December,1941. One brigade was immediately detached and proceeded direct to Singapore, arriving in mid-January; the remainder, having spent three weeks in India, arrived there at the end of the same month. The fortress fell a fortnight later, and the division, the first to leave England on the new establishment of 1941, had been prodigally thrown to the winds.

The division had been trained for mobile warfare against Germans and Italians. It knew nothing about the jungle or about the Japanese. In the short time after the change of destination it was not possible to obtain any authentic information about the Malayan terrain; nor were there any pamphlets available to show how a Japanese soldier was dressed, armed, and equipped, or to tell how he was accustomed to fight. Notwithstanding this all units of the division were committed to action immediately upon arrival, which in the circumstances was only to be expected.

But even then the division was not permitted to fight as a division. Already one brigade had en detached, and this was followed by the arbitrary creation of artificial "forces constituted of units and sub-units drawn from its other formations. Thus battalions were divorced from brigades, and companies from battalions. Unnecessary difficulties of administration were created and the chain of command disrupted.

It is, of course, easy for those who have to do the fighting to criticise those who do the planning, but there seems in these circumstances to be some justification. We of the 18th Division wanted to know then, and still want to know now, who gave the order, and why, that a division untrained for Far Eastern warfare be sent to retrieve a situation which by the time of its arrival and, indeed, for some time before, could only be deemed irretrievable in view of the overwhelming superiority of the Japanese on land, and especially in the air.

We wished also to know what justification there was for the ruthless tearing apart of units and sub-units. These seemed to us matters of strategy, perhaps even of politics. We knew our own tactical faults, and they seemed light in comparison. Not even General Percival's long-awaited dispatch can really give us the answer, although it should make interesting reading if only in view of the remarkable delay between its preparation and publication. Mistakes have to be made in war, and it cannot detract from the glory of our war leaders if these mistakes have to be divulged.

It seems that the misapplication of the 18th Division was one such mistake, and it was a tragic mistake resulting in the subsequent death in captivity of more than one-third of the division's strength. If there was an error of judgement it should be publicly acknowledged; so much at least is due to the memory of those who died, and particularly of our gallant commander, General Beckwith-Smith..

There was no way of white-washing the fall of Singapore because there was no subsequent evacuation to glorify the military defeat, as there had been at Dunkirk. It was an unredeemed disaster. But this was no fault of the individual Imperial soldier, who fought as heroically and as dutifully there as in any other theatre of war. I speak only for the 18th Division, which was flung in when all was lost. There are others, no doubt, representing those who fought a running fight the whole way down the Malay peninsula, who may be tempted to add their voices to mine, and agree that some public statement should be made, perhaps a Commission of Inquiry appointed, to throw more light on the current of events contingent upon so important and so tragic an event in our military history.

I am, &c.

H.E. I PHILLIPS

Top of page