War vets to mark 70 years since ‘largest capitulation in British history’ in Singapore

“They went against the grain of the Malayan campaign,” said Mr
Cooper. “Studying the Cambridgeshires allows you to think what might
have been possible if Percival had not surrendered.”

The handsome colonial houses of Adam Park have not changed since 1942, added
Mr Cooper. “You can reconstruct the battle and literally replay it on
the same terrain,” he said.

Sergeant Len “Snowy” Baynes, 93, was celebrating his 23rd birthday
on the day when the invasion began. He recalled how the Cambridgeshires “never
retreated” under constant attack.

“I find it quite impossible to describe my feelings when the order to
surrender came,” he said. “Until then we felt we were holding our
own. We did not think of throwing in the sponge while any of us remained
alive. That was not the British way.”

Mr Baynes remembered how one of his men stood with tears streaming down his
face when the surrender order was given. It was a “bitter shame,”
he said. “I felt as though my bowels had been painlessly removed; my
mind refused to work properly.”

About a quarter of the British soldiers taken prisoner in Singapore did not
survive their captivity. Historians believe that as many as 50,000 Chinese
in Singapore were massacred by Japanese soldiers after the surrender, in an
exercise known as “Sook Ching”, or the “Wipe Out”.

The fall of Singapore was an indelible stain on the reputation of Gen
Percival. But the defeat was not entirely of his making, noted Hew Strachan,
professor of the history of war at Oxford University. Naval and army
commanders never coordinated their plans for the defence of Singapore, while
both services assumed that Japan would be unable to capture the Malay
Peninsula, meaning that any assault on the city would have to come from the
open sea.

“There was, to use a modern term, a lack of joint thinking,” said
Prof Strachan. “The defence of Singapore was geared towards dealing
with an amphibious assault. The weight of the defence was on the southern
side of the island, not the northern side.”

When Japan seized the Malay Peninsula and then attacked Singapore from the
north, the British were caught unprepared. “Percival didn’t do well,
but he’s not the only one who gets the blame,” added Prof Strachan. The
loss of Singapore was a milestone in Britain’s decline as an imperial power
in Asia. “This was a monumental embarrassment in imperial terms,”
said Prof Strachan. “It had profound consequences for the future of the
British Empire.”

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