The Man Who Took the Rap: Sir Robert Brooke-Popham and the Fall of Singapore by Dye Peter

Author:Dye, Peter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

18

STRENGTHENING MALAYA’S DEFENSES

1941

Brooke-Popham lost little time in moving Malaya to a war footing, starting with a two-day desk-based exercise designed to shake down the headquarters and test the existing defense plans. Several significant lessons were identified including “mistakes that hopefully wouldn’t be made when the fighting started.”1 The first big exercise took place from 6 to 11 March 1941. He felt that it went off quite well and had “served to bring home to some of the civilians here that war may entail discomfort, even to Malaya. They’ve introduced a petrol ration at last and every day one sees anonymous letters to the newspapers protesting against it, when the minimum is 17 gallons a month.”2 There were continuing frustrations, however, over the failure to mobilize the civil population, or at least to prepare seriously for war. There was no equivalent to the KWEO that had produced detailed lists of volunteers, addresses, resources, and skills—well before war broke out. “The standard here is all too low and they fail to realize even now, how incompetent they are.”3 The civil defense preparations in Singapore did receive some praise, but only in comparison to the poor progress achieved in the Philippines.4 Duff Cooper would later defend the attitude of the civilian population, but the reality was that life in Singapore (at least among the white population) continued largely unchanged.5 Wavell, who visited Singapore in November 1941, described the atmosphere as completely unwarlike and far from being at a war pitch, although he said the same about the peacetime leisureliness found in Delhi.6 An important outcome of the exercise was the decision to create a shared operations room at Sime Road to allow the Air and Army staffs to work alongside each other.7

The most significant proposal in the October 1940 tactical appreciation, endorsed by the subsequent defense conference, was the need for an advance into southern Thailand to deny the Japanese a base for conducting ground and air attacks against British lines of communication.8 Brooke-Popham was determined to develop this idea, although he recognized that it would infringe on Thailand’s sovereignty.9 British relations with Thailand (previously Siam) were dominated by Sir Josiah Crosby, who had lived in the country for thirteen years and served as ambassador from 1934 to 1942.10 Brooke-Popham had several meetings with Crosby and, although he respected the minister, he found him “a queer, lonely character.”11 Crosby’s intimate knowledge and personal contacts (including military officers, politicians, and members of the royal family) meant that his views carried considerable weight with the Foreign and Colonial Offices, although Brooke-Popham worried that, in a rapidly changing situation, “he [Crosby] was too much inclined to rely on his former knowledge of the Thais and the former friendship of the Thai ministers for him.”12 During Crosby’s long service in Bangkok he was active in sustaining British influence, while resisting the growing power of Japan—a task complicated by Thailand’s military factions, weak democracy, unequal treaties, and a general belief that British power was declining.13 As an independent

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