The Mighty Krait by Ian McPhedran

Author:Ian McPhedran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

12

The Rimau six

During their time in Brisbane celebrating the success of Operation Jaywick, Ivan Lyon approached each man to ask if he would be interested in having another crack at the enemy in Singapore with a second raid.

Five of the Jaywick operatives – Davidson, Page, Falls, Marsh and Huston – agreed to join Lyon and were on the team for Operation Rimau, the second planned surprise attack against Singapore a year later. Of the six, only Marsh had not been chosen to paddle into the harbour during Jaywick. He had been bitterly disappointed to be left behind on the Krait as a reserve canoeist. Of the six original canoeists on Jaywick, only Jones declined Lyon’s offer to return as part of Operation Rimau.

Rimau is the Malay word for ‘tiger’ and Lyon carried a large tiger’s head tattoo on his chest. The mission was sanctioned by his masters at the SOE in London and supported by Australian and American commanders.

Tragically, the six Jaywick men and another 17 Allied operatives on the mission would all be killed in action, die in captivity or be brutally executed in Singapore by the Japanese after a sham trial.

The operation had been compromised on 6 October 1944. Ivan Lyon and Donald Davidson died in action while Andrew ‘Happy’ Huston drowned during their fighting withdrawal. Lyon and Davidson were killed together on 14 October in a skirmish with a superior Japanese force on Soreh Island, to the east of the route they had taken during Jaywick. Fred ‘Boof’ Marsh died from wounds and illness soon after he arrived back in Singapore in December 1944.

Their fates had been sealed when the British submarine HMS Tantalus, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Hugh Mackenzie, deliberately failed to turn up on the agreed date to rescue the men. There is also a large question mark over whether or not United States intelligence intercepts, that might have saved the men, were withheld from British and Australian authorities.

Regardless of what might have been, on 7 July 1945 – just a month before the end of the Pacific War – Bob Page and Walter ‘Poppa’ Falls, with eight other Rimau operatives, were beheaded in cold blood in Singapore, close to the site of a modern-day golf course, by troops from the 7th Area Army Headquarters.

Lyon’s two closest confidants, Donald Davidson and Bob Page, had both had serious reservations about the complexity of the plan for Operation Rimau, which involved a submarine transit from Australia, the capture of a local junk and an insertion into Singapore harbour using largely untested one-man submersible craft called Sleeping Beauties. Neither man was overly keen to participate in the operation, but neither would allow Lyon to go without them.

Twenty-five-year-old Captain Page, who had married his sweetheart, Roma Prowse, at St Andrew’s Church in Canberra following Operation Jaywick, told a friend, ‘Ivan’s crazy, but I can’t let him go on his own; I can’t let him down. But this raid will be my last.’ How right he was.

The executions of Page and Falls were confirmed by military authorities on 18 October 1945.

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