[BITList] The loss of Singapore

[John Feltham]

Some of you may not know of this story either.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Stanley_Vaughan_Heenan








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Percival,  Arthur Ernest  (1887-1966), army officer, was born on 26 December 1887 at Aspenden Lodge, Aspenden, near Buntingford, north Hertfordshire, the younger of the two sons of Alfred Reginald Percival, from a well-known Northamptonshire family, land agent of the Hamels Park estate, and his wife, Edith, nee Miller (c.1857-1941), from a Lancashire cotton family. From 1897 to 1901 he and his brother attended the private Bengeo School, Hertford. In 1901 they went to Rugby School, where they were in School House on the classical side. Percival excelled neither at school work-'not a good classic'  (Kinvig, 5)-nor at games, but gained a higher school certificate. He was colour sergeant in the volunteer rifle corps. He left school in 1906 and in 1907 became a clerk in a City of London firm, Naylor, Benzon & Co., iron ore dealers, of Abchurch Lane. He ran cross-country, played games, and was a member of the Youngsbury rifle club and a skilled shot. But for the First World War he would not have become a professional soldier. 

Early military career

After the outbreak of war Percival enlisted in the Inns of Court officer training corps. After training, in September 1914 he received a temporary commission as second lieutenant, and was appointed to the new 7th (service) battalion, the Bedfordshire regiment, in Kitchener's volunteer 'New Army'. In December he was promoted lieutenant. In February 1915 his battalion was transferred to 54 brigade, 18th (Eastern) division, the latter commanded by Major-General Ivor Maxse (1862-1958), an old Rugbeian and an exceptional military trainer and commander. Percival remained with the same regiment, brigade, and division throughout the war. In July 1915 the 7th Bedfords went to France, and from August they served on the western front. They suffered heavy casualties on the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916. Percival survived unscathed and was awarded an MC for his 'fine leadership and determination under heavy shell and machine gun fire ... with absolute disregard of danger'  (Kinvig, 30). In September 1916, during the attack on the Schwaben redoubt, he was wounded by shell fragments, then hospitalized in England. In October, while in hospital, he was gazetted a regular army captain in the Essex regiment, though he continued to serve with the Bedfords. During the German offensive in March 1918 the Bedfords were forced to retreat, but they successfully counter-attacked at Baboeuf. Percival was awarded the DSO (September 1918) and the Croix de Guerre. In May he was temporary acting brigade commander, 54 brigade. In that month the 7th were incorporated into the 2nd battalion and Percival became its commander. In 1918 he was described as 'a slim, soft-spoken young man ... with a proven reputation for bravery and organisation powers'  (ibid., 47). At the end of the war his brigade commander reported that Percival was 'an excellent and most efficient officer, beloved by his officers, NCOs and men ... a very brave and gallant officer ... exceptionally gifted'  (ibid., 48). He was lucky to have survived: of his officer training corps intake nearly a third died in the war. 

In 1919 and 1920 Percival served as major and second-in-command of the 46th Royal Fusiliers in Brigadier-General Edmund Ironside's north Russian relief force, part of the allied anti-Bolshevik intervention in the former Russian empire. For his role in the successful August 1919 Gorodok operation, south-east of Archangel, he was awarded a bar to his DSO (January 1920). From 1920 to 1922 he served on counter-insurgency operations in co. Cork with the 1st battalion, the Essex regiment, surviving attempts to murder him. In 1921 he was awarded an OBE. In 1923-4 he attended the Staff College, Camberley, where he was taught by J. F. C. Fuller and played cricket and tennis. Ironside, the commandant, considered him 'an officer of exceptional ability and intelligence'  (Kinvig, 92) and recommended him for accelerated promotion. In 1923 he was promoted major in the Cheshire regiment. From 1925 to 1929 he served as staff officer with the Nigerian regiment in Northern Nigeria. On home leave he married at Holy Trinity Church, West Brompton, London, on 27 July 1927, Margaret Elizabeth (Betty) MacGregor Greer (1897/8-1953), daughter of Thomas MacGregor Greer, a linen merchant, of Tullylagan Manor, Tyrone, Northern Ireland. They had one daughter, Dorinda Margery, later Lady Dunleath, and one son, James, later an officer in the Cheshire regiment. 

After a brief period as a company commander in the 2nd Cheshires in England, Percival in 1930 attended the course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. In 1931-2 he was an instructor (general staff officer, 2nd grade) at the Staff College under Major-General John Dill, whom he liked and admired. Dill was impressed by Percival-'the best officer I have met for a long time'  (Kinvig, 95)-became his patron, and for the next decade advanced his career. From 1932 to 1934 Percival commanded the 2nd battalion, the Cheshire regiment, in Malta. He attended the 1935 course at the Imperial Defence College. 

Malaya, with its rubber and tin exports and the Singapore naval base-intermittently constructed since 1923-was most important to the British empire. To defend Malaya and other British imperial interests in the Far East and the Pacific against Japanese aggression, the 'Singapore strategy', flexible offensive and defensive plans, envisaged sending a large balanced fleet to Singapore. The scenario of a Japanese invasion of Malaya and attack on Singapore from the north was studied by British officers, including Percival, at the Staff College and the Imperial Defence College. Promoted colonel, Percival was, through Dill's influence, from 1936 to 1938 general staff officer, Malaya, effectively chief of staff to Major-General William Dobbie, GOC Malaya (1935-9). Percival travelled extensively and found the defence situation unsatisfactory, with inter-service disagreement and the civil authorities unco-operative. He was aware of Japanese espionage and amphibious capability, and warned against their trying to 'burgle Malaya by the back door'  (Kinvig, 106), using bases in Siam. In 1937, with Dobbie's approval, he wrote an appreciation warning of Japanese use of Siam and Kelantan, emphasizing the importance of defending northern Malaya, and the need for air, sea, and land reinforcements; he submitted a copy to the War Office. 

From 1938 to 1939 Percival was brigadier-general staff (BGS), home command, at Aldershot under Dill, GOC-in-C home command, training for war. After its outbreak Dill commanded the 1st corps of the British expeditionary force (BEF) in France, with Percival his BGS, during the 'phoney war'. In February 1940 Percival was appointed to command the 43rd Wessex division in England. He was briefly an assistant chief of Imperial General Staff at the War Office, and from 1940 to 1941 GOC 44th (Home Counties) division. 

Malayan tragedy, 1941-1942

In May 1941 Percival, selected by Dill over several more senior officers, was appointed GOC Malaya with the acting rank of lieutenant-general. He was a brave, hard-working, and outstanding staff officer, but he had a reputation as a 'staff wallah': from 1932 to 1941 he had spent nine years as a staff officer and less than a year as commander of a formation. He had had no combat experience since 1922, and no experience of higher command in war. Moreover, as the Malayan campaign showed, he lacked drive, aggression, ruthlessness, robustness, decisiveness, leadership, and the ability to inspire his troops. He was unwilling to take calculated risks and acted more as a staff officer than a commander. Duff Cooper told Churchill Pervical was no leader. Pownall thought him 'an uninspiring leader and rather gloomy'  (Simpson, 269). Gordon Bennett thought him 'weak and hesitant though brainy'  (ibid., 263). Ian Morrison, a journalist, wrote that he was 'a completely negative person, with no vigour, no colour, and no conviction'  (ibid., 270). He was modest and self-effacing. Moreover, his appearance was unimpressive and uninspiring: 'a tall thin person, whose most conspicuous characteristics were two protruding rabbit teeth'  (ibid., 269). An army veteran later stated, 'He just didn't look the part'  (Elphick, 161). 

Percival arrived at Singapore in May 1941. He knew that the Japanese might attack northern Malaya and thence Singapore, and the relative status of his command in British grand strategy. Yet he lacked vision, thoroughness, and flexible forward and contingency planning and preparation in the event of possible reverses. He requested reinforcements, including tanks, for which both his two predecessors had also asked. He ordered training based on the orthodox UK syllabus, not for local conditions, and failed to ensure that formations trained well: most did not. Before and during the campaign he failed, despite advice, to implement sufficiently early and on a sufficient scale, fixed defences on the mainland and Singapore Island. Nor did he order stay-behind guerrilla units of local Europeans and Chinese-who loathed the Japanese for their invasion of China and the atrocities they committed there-to attack the Japanese line of communication and rear. He also failed to ensure efficient destruction of abandoned airfields, military supplies, and other resources. Moreover, he failed to inspire his troops and to instil in them an ethos of competence and confidence. 

As commander against the Japanese invasion Percival had a most difficult, arguably impossible, task. By 1940 the Singapore strategy had vanished, with no main fleet to send. Churchill's government gave priority to the Near East and Russia. The RAF in Malaya was understrength, with largely obsolete aircraft. The Hurricanes sent were too few and too late. There was no radar outside Singapore Island. Moreover, the RAF was betrayed by a traitor, Captain Patrick Heenan (1910-1941). The pre-war defences on Singapore Island, the misnamed 'Fortress Singapore', were against seaborne attack. Though it was a later myth that the heavy guns all pointed the wrong way, they had largely armour-piercing shells. Percival was subordinate to Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham (commander-in-chief Far East command) and to Wavell (the supreme commander of the American-British-Dutch-Australian command), and part of a cumbrous, top-heavy, civil-military command structure, lacked control over the unco-operative civil authorities, and had limited but undefined authority over the Australian Imperial Force. His staff was inadequate and some of his subordinates incompetent and querulous. His command was heterogeneous and polyglot, many units had only recently arrived, and both radio and telephone communications were inadequate. Though a few units-notably the Gurkhas and the 2nd battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders-were good, many of Percival's troops were raw, insufficiently trained, and inexperienced. Many Indian units had been 'milked' of experienced officers and NCOs, and some sepoys had never seen a tank. Percival lacked tanks and sufficient anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. Moreover, British disadvantages were exacerbated by an almost incredible sequence of bungling and mischance. These included the Automedon episode-in 1940 crucial British data on the defence of Malaya, conveyed in the merchant ship Automedon, was captured by Germans and passed to the Japanese-and the destruction of force Z. The claim, later much repeated, that the British forces outnumbered the Japanese, was arguably irrelevant. The Japanese had decisive air, naval, tank, and intelligence superiority. 

Percival saw his mission as defending the Singapore naval base and therefore all of Malaya, including the scattered RAF airfields. He chose to deploy by the beaches to repel invasion rather than concentrate inland for a counter-offensive, so his inadequate forces were widely dispersed. Assuming that the Japanese would attack from Thailand (Siam), Percival and Brooke-Popham planned a pre-emptive move thither, operation Matador. In August 1941 Brigadier Ivan Simson arrived in Singapore as chief engineer, Malaya command. He was efficient, energetic, and up to date on fixed defences, having worked on the UK anti-invasion defences. He proposed a system of defensive positions to complement mobile troops. Percival and his staff rejected it, alleging that it would harm the troops' morale and offensive spirit. The British government and Brooke-Popham delayed Matador until too late to start. The Japanese attacked Malaya from 8 December 1941. The RAF, obsolete and outnumbered, failed to inflict the promised losses (up to 40 per cent) on the invaders, but themselves suffered heavy losses. On 10 December force Z was destroyed. The Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Yamashita Tomoyuki (in 1946 hanged as a war criminal for atrocities in the Philippines), largely combat-experienced, with air superiority and over 200 tanks, repeatedly outfought the British forces tactically, using mobility, infiltration, and outflanking, driving them south and capturing airfields, supplies, and boats. Some British units fought well and had local successes, but repeatedly the failures of pre-war training, planning, and preparation showed. Japanese tactics were not countered, bridges not blown, airfields not cratered, and abandoned supplies and transport were not destroyed. Percival, leaving battles to subordinate field commanders, attempted to plan strategy and to respond to the fluid situation of defeats and withdrawals. Reinforcements continued to reach Singapore: not tanks, but raw, inexperienced, and unacclimatized troops. Percival tried to fight a lengthy delaying action in Perak, but unsuccessfully. He made avoidable mistakes and what were, with hindsight, wrong decisions. He dispersed his troops instead of concentrating against the main enemy thrust, enabling the Japanese to defeat the British piecemeal. He failed to construct defences in Johore and to counter-attack there when the Japanese were at the end of a long line of communications and running short of ammunition. 

Surrender of Singapore

On 31 January 1942 the British retreated onto Singapore Island. Despite its designation, Singapore was not a fortress with all-round fortifications. In December Simson had made a comprehensive proposal for improving defences. Percival rejected this, claiming that 'defences are bad for morale-for both troops and civilians'  (Murfett and others, 221). Unwilling to take a calculated risk, he dispersed his troops to defend the entire coastline, over-garrisoning the south, which already had fixed heavy artillery, and failing to concentrate on the vulnerable north. Against evidence and advice, he assumed that the Japanese would attack from the north-east, not the north-west. Belatedly he changed his mind, but the damage was done. On 8 February the Japanese invaded Singapore Island. The defence was bungled and Percival decided against a general counter-attack. An RAF officer who saw him on 13 February described him as 'in such a state of dither. He appeared utterly broken'  (Allen, 7). Wavell reported low morale among the defenders and their 'inferiority complex which bold and skilful Japanese tactics and their command of the air have caused'  (Gilbert, Road to Victory, 54). With the situation further deteriorating, on the morning of Sunday 15 February 1942 Percival convened the decisive conference at Fort Canning. He and his subordinates agreed that a counter-attack would fail and that they should surrender. They were influenced by shortages of ammunition and other supplies, by belief that the water supply was about to collapse (an assumption later questioned), and by the massive desertion, notably of Australians, still an emotive and contentious issue, which for political reasons the British official history glossed over. Yet the desertion itself was 'the terrible end-result of many other factors'  (Elphick, 364). With plummeting morale too few troops were still willing to fight. Possibly, but for this, a counter-attack might have succeeded: 'Percival and his staff cannot escape a large share of the blame'  (Murfett and others, 359). In his last cable to Wavell, reporting the surrender decision, Percival wrote 'All ranks have done their best'  (Churchill, 94), a claim that historians have subsequently rejected. Later that day, in an event stage-managed, filmed, and photographed by the Japanese for their propaganda, Percival and three officers, one carrying a union flag and one a white flag, marched to the Ford factory at Bukit Timah. There Percival negotiated with Yamashita and agreed to almost unconditional surrender. He later claimed, 'There was not much chance of bargaining, but I did what I could'  (Percival, 292). It was, Churchill wrote, 'the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history'  (Churchill, 81). It was followed by years of immense suffering and mortality among the prisoners of war, 10,000 of whom died in captivity. It was followed also by the Japanese massacre of Singapore Chinese, possibly over 50,000, 'ethnic cleansing ... appalling genocide'  (Murfett and others, 249-50). After the surrender some soldiers bitterly blamed Percival, but others claimed that he was the scapegoat. 

Prisoner of war and the post-war period, 1942-1966

Maltreated and malnourished, Percival was held prisoner at Changi, then in Taiwan and Manchuria. After the Japanese surrender, he was freed by American and Russian troops in August 1945. At MacArthur's invitation in September he attended the Japanese surrender ceremony on board USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, and was placed immediately behind MacArthur. He also attended Yamashita's surrender at Manila. He flew back to England in September, and at the War Office wrote his Malaya dispatch. As a result of pressure from the Air Ministry and the Colonial Office it was modified, delayed, and not published until early 1948: 'something of a damp squib'  (Kinvig, 242), it was suspected of being a cover-up. In 1946 Percival was retired with the honorary rank of lieutenant-general, but not with the knighthood customary for one of his rank. In 1949 he published The War in Malaya, a restrained and not entirely accurate account, favourably reviewed by J. F. C. Fuller. In it he exaggerated Japanese numbers, alleged that pre-war British soldiers had been 'pampered' and softened, and attributed the defeat to 'the lack of readiness in the British Commonwealth for war ... failure to prepare for war'  (Percival, 306), and to Japanese sea, air, and tank superiority. He read the draft of Major-General S. Woodburn Kirby's official history and disputed parts of it. After his release in 1945 he was shocked to learn of the barbaric Japanese treatment of prisoners of war: the mortality of prisoners of the Japanese was 27 per cent, compared to 4 per cent among those captured by the Germans. He became the active president of the Far East Prisoners of War Association (FEPOW), was instrumental in obtaining some, if very inadequate, compensation for ex-POWs from frozen Japanese assets, and became chairman of the FEPOW Welfare Trust. Expressing widely felt anger by former POWs at the film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), he helped to secure a screen statement that it was fiction. Percival resided at Bullards, Widford, Ware, Hertfordshire. He was deputy lieutenant of Hertfordshire (1951), president of the Hertfordshire Red Cross, and from 1950 to 1955 colonel of the Cheshire regiment. He died on 31 January 1966 at King Edward VII's Hospital for Officers, Beaumont House, Beaumont Street, Westminster, and was buried in Hertfordshire. 

Honourable, brave, combat-experienced, and a highly regarded army high flyer, Percival ultimately failed. He became internationally known and will be remembered as the general who surrendered at Singapore; the photograph of him marching to surrender was one of the best-known images from the war, repeatedly reproduced. He was not included in the Dictionary of National Biography. His friend Sir John Smyth VC wrote a eulogistic authorized biography, Percival and the Tragedy of Singapore (1971), emphasizing his qualities, especially his courage, and Clifford Kinvig wrote a fuller, sympathetic biography, Scapegoat: General Percival of Singapore (1996). There has also been a succession of books on the Malayan campaign and the fall of Singapore. A psychologist, Norman Dixon, in his controversial On the Psychology of Military Incompetence (1976), argued that military incompetence derived from psychological flaws, including 'ego-weakness', fear of failure, and authoritarianism. He cited Percival, alleging his passivity and rigidity, and claimed that Percival's dislike of 'effeminate' fixed defences resulted from unconscious doubts about his masculinity. Military historians were unconvinced. Nevertheless, most consider that in Malaya, although the odds were heavily against him, Percival was partly responsible for the speed of the British defeat, and should have done better.

Roger T. Stearn 

Sources  C. Kinvig, Scapegoat: General Percival of Singapore (1996) + A. E. Percival, The war in Malaya (1949) + J. Smyth, Percival and the tragedy of Singapore (1971) + The Times (2 Feb 1966) + WWW, 1961-1970 + O'M. Creagh and E. M. Humphris, The distinguished service order, 1886-1923 [1923]; repr. (1978) + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert. + Kelly, Handbk (1939) + M. H. Murfett and others, Between two oceans: a military history of Singapore from first settlement to final British withdrawal (1999) + W. D. McIntyre, The rise and fall of the Singapore naval base, 1919-1942 (1979) + S. W. Kirby, Singapore: the chain of disaster (1971) + L. Allen, Singapore, 1941-1942 (1977) + M. Shennan, Out in the midday sun: the British in Malaya, 1880-1960 (2000) + N. Dixon, On the psychology of military incompetence (1994) + P. Elphick, Singapore, the pregnable fortress: a study in deception, discord and desertion (1995) + K. Simpson, 'Percival: Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival', Churchill's generals, ed. J. Keegan (1999), 256-76 + P. Elphick and M. Smith, Odd man out: the story of the Singapore traitor (1994) + M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, 6: Finest hour, 1939-1941 (1983) + M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, 7: Road to victory, 1941-1945 (1986) + C. M. Bell, 'The 'Singapore strategy' and the deterrence of Japan: Winston Churchill, the admiralty and the dispatch of Force Z', EngHR, 116 (2001), 604-34 + W. S. Churchill, The Second World War, 4 (1951) + B. Bond, British military policy between the two world wars (1980) + B. Bond, The pursuit of victory: from Napoleon to Saddam Hussein (1996) + CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1966) + A. Warren, Singapore 1942: Britain's greatest defeat (2002)
Archives IWM, papers FILM IWM FVA, film of the 1942 surrender
Likenesses  drawing, 1941, repro. in Kinvig, Scapegoat · photograph, 1942, IWM [see illus.] · group portrait, photograph, 1945 (Japanese surrender), Hult. Arch. · W. Stoneman, photograph, 1949, NPG · photograph, 1950, repro. in Kinvig, Scapegoat
Wealth at death  £102,515: probate, 18 March 1966, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




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