1941, Thursday 21 August;
It wasn’t just the temperature that got to him, it was the humidity too, and the hut they were in was no help whatsoever. And he was desperately tired, having had little sleep since the exercise had started. He’d been able to have a quick wash and put a fresh clean shirt, an hour ago, for this meeting, but now he was wet in it. The dark circles under each arm had nearly joined up with the big vee on his chest, and he was sure most of his back looked just as bad. A bead of sweat dripped off his brow, and plopped onto the map.
And it didn’t improve what he saw on the map, a mess, quite frankly. After just over three days of exercises, the brigade had completely lost all cohesion. He’d been given the week, Monday to Friday, for his 15th Indian Brigade to defend against an advance over 25 odd miles along the Malacca-Segamat Road, made by the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, acting as the enemy. It should have been a piece of cake, road blocks deployed in echelon, easily able to reinforce each along the road. He had Mount Ophir on his left, providing a solid impenetrable barrier, and a lot of thick virgin jungle on his right.
But the Argyll & Sutherland’s, with their young new CO, Lt Col Rose, had seemed unperturbed by it all, aggressively executing a series of flanking manoeuvres around the road blocks, even coming down from the mountainside, and they were good.
Early on it had been ruled he’d lost a company of Punjab’s to a clever ambush as they moved forward to reinforce the company holding the road block in front of them. Then the Punjab Battalion HQ had been captured, and the rest of the battalion had to retreat through the jungle. A day later and they had shredded, according to those smug Australian umpires, two companies of the Leicestershire to another Highlanders ambush.
But it wasn’t just the loss of nearly a quarter of his force to ambushes that worried him. Both the Leicester’s and the Punjab’s had struggled to retreat once they were cut off. Companies quickly broke down into platoons and then sections in the jungle, and got lost. Once battle was joined, control by brigade was impossible, and by battalion nearly so, requiring company and platoon leaders to make the decisions to attack, hold or retreat.
And yesterday, when he’d tried to play them at their own game, and counter attacked with their own jungle flanking manoeuvre, he’d lost communications with half of Tester's 2/9 Jat's, the attacking force, for most of the day, and indeed they still couldn’t find one platoon, the jungle had just swallowed them up.
He looked up, fearing his career was over, and waited for the outcome. Murray-Lyon, his 11th Indian Divisional commander stood next to him, also awaiting the decision. The face before him was sweating like his, its moustache looked damp, and the dark bags under the eyes suggested he wasn’t sleeping too well either.
“I’m afraid Kenneth, old boy, your brigade would have been effectively destroyed if the exercise was to have been played out. But if it’s any consolation to you, other than 12th Indian, I don’t think any Indian Brigade would have fared better. That will be all for now Brigadier Garrett, we’ll have a more in-depth review at the end of the exercise, you may return to your brigade”. “Thank you, Sir,”, Garrett saluted, turned and almost shuffled out of the room, looking totally exhausted.
General Godwin-Austen looked up at Murray-Lyon “David, I know you’re going to say Stewart and his Australian umpires were biased, they did what I asked of them, made it difficult for him, but my god man, what a frightful mess. And whats really frightening is I meant what I said, neither the 6th or 35th brigades would have done any better, nor any of the brigades from Bustling Bills 9th Division either.
“It’s very clear to me David, the longer the exercise had been run the more apparent it was that you had to fight for the road, off the road. Without the necessary jungle skills enabling them to manoeuvre off road, they were all sitting ducks on it. And without company and platoon leaders being able to make the right independent decisions they couldn’t leave it. Clearly, we are a long way off from where I want us to be. The small unit training will continue, but we must introduce more field craft and orientation work down at a lower level of command. Let’s get the rest of the Brigade back into camp, here at Jementah by tonight, and let them all rest for tomorrow.”
So, it really was true what Godwin-Austen had heard about how the Argyll’s had destroyed Simmons Singapore garrison in a similar exercise back in January. And a positive outcome of it all had been the construction of this large training camp near Segamat, run by the man who had led the Argylls, thanks in no small part for Percival. Well, he, Austen-Godwin, was going to take full advantage of the gift, and do his best to get any many units through here, as quickly as he could.
He turned to one of the other two officers, a Colonel, in the room. “Ian, can you plan company size jungle marches, for both Saturday and Sunday, one day up Mount Ophir, and a day to night in the virgin jungle, for the entire Brigade, including all Battalion and Brigade HQ staff. And we will repeat this exercise again on Tuesday, for four days”. He then turned to the last officer, a Lt Col, “Angus, your battalion has done you proud, first thing tomorrow morning I’ll have you all trucked over to Segamat, a train will be waiting to take you back to Port Dickson, and by Monday Deakin’s 5/2 Punjab Regt, will have arrived, replacing you, to play the enemy again”
