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Mr Paul Keating has done as much as anybody to revive Australian interest in the tragic events is south east Asia in 1941-42, when the Japanese swept all before them. While Mr Keating makes some astonishing observations, he rightly emphasises that the Fall of Singapore is one of the crucial events in Australia's history and that perhaps it deserves, for a very different reason, to stand alongside Gallipoli in public memory.
The Malaya campaign and the Fall of Singapore were almost Gallipoli turned upside down. The Malaya campaign, like that of Gallipoli, was fought on a narrow peninsula; but this time the Australians were amongst the defenders rather than the attackers. Whereas in 1915 the Australians had begun with severe disadvantages, having to land on dangerous beaches, in contrast in 1941 they and their allies began with some strong advantages. Alas, in the end they were defeated. Moreover they were captured and humiliated by the Japanese. It was a more tragic episode than Gallipoli, and therefore not so eagerly remembered. And yet it offers lessons.
Bravery is to be admired, but without the right weapons and without support in the air, bravery is not enough in modern warfare. Sometimes it can be like the carrying of buckets to the beach in the hope of halting the incoming surf. In Malaya and Singapore the Australians and their allies had inappropriate weapons. They were decidedly inferior in the all-important air power.
And why were they inadequately armed? Partly because they had been ill-equipped as an indirect result of decisions made by the parliament at home. Mr Keating does not realize that Labour and its strong isolationist strand was, before the war, apathetic to defence preparations. The Australians in the Malay peninsula were also let down by a big section of Australian opinion which, in the years preceding the outbreak of war, did not wish to spend adequately on armaments. The Anzac soldiers had been safely evacuated from Gallipoli, but there could be no evacuation from Singapore because the Japanese, unlike the Turks, commanded the sea and the air as well.
This is a story of some of the men who were victims of the Malaya campaign but who, each in his own way, triumphed. Colin Finkemeyer has skillfully assembled the stories set down by individual members of the 4th Anti-Tank Regiment.
We read of the Numurkah Mob enlisting after the wheat crop was sown on their northern Victorian farms. We read of the early experiences in the war and the sights and sounds and smells of captivity, including "the awful smell of the ulcer ward", the death marches, the hunger, the fun and banter, the gambling and the scrounging. We see Johnny Gray dying of malaria at Hellfire Pass, his eyes bright with defiance: "I'm going home to Numurkah to die of old age." We hear Dick Mountford recalling how the Japanese distributed pineapple juice so that toasts could be drunk because, according to their boasts, they were about to capture Australia. The "thought of the Japs being so close to taking Australia really worried me". writes Mountford.
They served their country, under acute difficulties. Their stories are typical of the thousands of other stories that will never be told. Their courage, their ordeal, and why they had to face it, should not be forgotten.
GEOFFREY BLAINEY
May 1994
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