The Singapore Grip (New York Review Books Classics) by J.G. Farrell

Author:J.G. Farrell [Farrell, J.G.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781590174173
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2010-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

37

‘In human affairs things tend inevitably to go wrong. Things are slightly worse at any given moment than at any preceding moment.’ This proposition, known as the Second Law, its discoverer now had the opportunity of seeing demonstrated on a remarkably generous scale. His vantage point for watching its operation was 111 Corps Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur where a strong smell of incipient disaster hung in the air, like the smoke that hangs in a theatre after the firing of a blank cartridge. Not only, he discovered, had a great deal gone wrong before his arrival but almost every message which now arrived in the Operations room signified that something else had just gone wrong, with the probability of more to follow.

Ehrendorf had arrived at 111 Corps Headquarters shortly after nine o’clock in the morning, very weary after his night in the train. His arrival coincided almost to the minute with a crucial development in the struggle for northern Malaya, for General Murray-Lyon, commander of the 11th Division which had been given the principal rôle in its defence, had just telephoned. Murray-Lyon had been trying to contact General Heath, to request permission to withdraw from the preordained defensive position he had occupied at Jitra. He was afraid that unless he did so the 11th Division might be destroyed. General Heath, however, could not be found: Ehrendorf had not been deceived when in the middle of the night he had seen that illuminated compartment with its little cluster of brightly lit officers around General Heath vanishing into the jungle darkness. Heath had gone to Singapore to confer with General Percival. Ehrendorf also learned on arrival that Japanese bombers had given Penang and Butterworth a pounding on the previous day. Since there were no ack-ack guns on the island it had been defenceless.

‘But what about the RAF at Butterworth?’

‘Partly damaged, partly withdrawn to Singapore,’ he was told.

Somewhat surprisingly in the circumstances Ehrendorf found that he was given a warm welcome by General Heath’s staff. During the lengthy period he had spent in Singapore he had become accustomed to being treated with reserve by the British staff officers he had come across in the course of his duties, even sometimes in recent months with veiled contempt. But now he was warmly shaken by the hand, found a billet and given some breakfast. It was a little time before he realized that this was probably because he was the first American officer to be seen in KL since America had entered the war. The welcome was symbolic. Perhaps, too, since the unfortunate start to the campaign in Malaya a feeling was beginning to take root that the power of the United States might well become necessary if the Japanese were to be contained and subdued in the Pacific. It had been the habit of British officers to scoff at the Japanese Army. Had they not been battling fruitlessly with a rabble of Chinese since 1937, unable to get the upper hand? The military engagements

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.