Scattered Under the Rising Sun: The Gordon Highlanders in the Far East, 1941–1945

By Stewart Mitchell

The harrowing true story of the Scottish battalion that spent over three years in Japanese captivity during World War II.
 
Posted to Singapore in 1937 with their families, the members of the 2nd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders found themselves fighting bravely when the Japanese invaded Malaya in December 1941. But by mid-February came the surrender of Singapore, and those who were not killed became POWs.
 
After initial incarceration in Singapore, the Gordons were dispersed to work on the famous Thai-Burma railway, in the mines of Taiwan and Japan, and on other slave labor projects. The conditions they existed under defy modern comprehension. Others died trapped in hell-ships torpedoed by allied submarines. Of the thousand men involved initially, over four hundred had died before liberation in summer 1945. Despite their diverse backgrounds, all the men had been bound by close regimental spirit, and all suffered hard labor, starvation, brutality, and tropical diseases. Rank was no protection from death.
 
The author of this history has researched the plight of these extraordinary men, so many of whom never saw their native Scotland again. Despite the grim conditions, he captures the strong collective regimental spirit and the humor and cooperation that saved so many who would otherwise have perished. This is an inspiring tale of courage and survival against appalling odds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781783830367

Stewart Mitchell

Stewart Mitchell became Volunteer Researcher at the Gordons Museum, Aberdeen in 2005 after a career in environmental protection. He lives with his wife at Bridge of Down, Aberdeen.

Book preview

2011.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The inspiration for this book came mainly from two items in the collection of the Gordon Highlanders’ Museum, Aberdeen. The origins of these were very different but together they ‘kick-started’ a journey back in time to search out the individual and collective stories of a gallant group of men. These were the men of the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders. They served their country courageously in battle and then showed tremendous dignity and fortitude in captivity. They toiled under a harsh regime of arduous work, with inadequate food and filthy conditions imposed by a fanatical enemy who showed them no mercy, excusing their lack of any basic humanity on an ancient warrior code of Bushido (The Way of the Warrior). Ironically three of the seven pillars of this code were respect, benevolence and honesty, which were absent in full measure in the Japanese Army’s treatment of their helpless captives.

The first item from the Museum collection was the Nominal Roll of the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders, listing who was present in Singapore before the start of the war in the Pacific on 8 December 1941. This is a contemporary record created within the Battalion administration in Selarang Barracks, Singapore around 1940. It is a handwritten alphabetical list of every officer and enlisted man in the Battalion, together with information on their rank, next of kin, transfers, etc. Whilst all of this basic information on the men involved was the starting point for putting together this story, its most fascinating aspect is the notes added during the battle for Malaya and Singapore, detailing casualties (both wounded and killed in action). Thereafter, while the men of the Battalion were prisoners of war (PoWs) this practice continued, giving details of those who died of disease, etc. and movements to other areas, such as Japan.

The man responsible for compiling and maintaining this was Sergeant Archibald (known as ‘Dick’) Pallant (2867720), illustrated leafing through the book after the war. It is not clear today, after almost seventy years, how Dick Pallant managed to maintain this record. This was, of course, originally an official document being held within the Battalion for administrative purposes but once the capitulation had taken place its status would have changed dramatically. The Japanese were completely against the maintenance of records of any kind, including personal diaries, by their prisoners and the Battalion Nominal Roll would have had to be kept secret. Dick Pallant assumed responsibility for this and hid the document in his bedding and it was a fantastic achievement that he managed to preserve this through his time as a PoW, in both Singapore and Thailand, so that we have this unique document today. Dick Pallant was assisted by Company Sergeant Major Angus Collie (2874524) who also kept records while working on the infamous Thai – Burma Railway and later passed the information on to Dick Pallant, who updated his master record. One possible additional clue to the means whereby the book survived detection by the Japanese came out during a discussion between the author and Angus Cassie (2878447). He indicated that, after the Japanese surrender, in 1945, he was taken by Lieutenant Colonel Stitt to the large War Cemetery at Kanchanaburi where many of the British soldiers were buried. He was instructed to dig at the head or foot of some of the graves. Angus Cassie stated, ‘Colonel Stitt had a diagram and he knew exactly where he wanted to dig and we recovered jars and tins that contained the Battalion’s papers from before the war. These had been buried with the casualties to hide them from the Japanese’. This suggests that a combination of mechanisms were employed to deceive the Japanese and keep track of the men on the Regiment. Dick Pallant’s exceptional conduct during his time as a Far East Prisoner of War was formally recognised when he was mentioned in recognition of ‘gallant and distinguished services’ after the war and the Notice to this effect was published in the London Gazette on 12 September 1946.

The second strand in the conception of this book was, unlike Sergeant Pallant’s Nominal Roll, a completely unofficial personal initiative. This was a scrapbook produced by the labours of Mrs Irene Lees, the wife of Major R. G. Lees who was second-in-command of the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders in Singapore.

Irene Lees was, even before her marriage, steeped in the Regimental traditions. Her father, Sir Harry V. Brooke KBE of Fairley House, Countesswells, Aberdeen, had been a captain in the Gordons during the Boer War and three of her brothers served with the Regiment during The Great War. Two of them were killed and the eldest, Lieutenant J. A. Otho Brooke, was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) for an action in Belgium in October 1914 while serving with the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders. (He was also posthumously promoted to the rank of captain).

Mrs Lees lived in Singapore with her husband and was only evacuated by ship on 12 February 1942, together with the other wives and families of the men. This was only two days before the capitulation of the colony to the Japanese. Once back in Aberdeen she started a support group for the families who had men in Singapore. She created a scrapbook in which she pasted photographs of some of the men, acquired from their relatives, adding newspaper cuttings and comments, etc. From 1943 onwards some PoW postcards were received by the relatives from the men and her Battalion family network facilitated the sharing of information as none was available from official sources. She also recorded the PoW camps the men reported they were being held in, together with the name of each soldier’s next of kin with whom she was in touch, and the man’s eventual fate, e.g. liberated, died or missing at sea. After the war, this scrapbook was presented to the officers and men of the Battalion, who had been Far East prisoners of war and now forms part of the Collection at the Gordon Highlanders’ Museum.

Once the starting point had been established it was then necessary to trawl through the Museum’s collection for further photographs and items donated giving details of the Battalion’s actions and their experiences during captivity. In addition visits were made to the National Archives at Kew, London, to glean information from the Prisoner of War Release Questionnaires. In Aberdeen, the City Library newspaper archive was consulted for material and, in addition, contact was made with the few Gordon Highlanders still alive at the time of writing. Information also came from the families of men who contacted the Gordon Highlanders’ Museum who were curious to know more about their relatives’ time while serving with the Regiment in the Far East.

In March 2010 I travelled to Thailand to see the Thai – Burma Railway for myself and visited Kanyu Cutting, known as Hellfire Pass to the PoWs and the bridge on the River Kwai at Kanchanaburi. Here I also visited the war cemetery where there are 108 Gordon Highlanders buried, re-interred by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission after retrieval from all along the railway up to the border with Burma. (Graves from north of this are located at Thanbyuzayat, Burma, now Myanmar). One of the aims of my project was to obtain a photo of every man who served in the Battalion and became a casualty of the battle for Malaya and Singapore or a PoW. It was a bonus, therefore, to find, lying on the ground next to the grave of Robert Willox (2883815), two laminated sheets, one a photograph of him and the other a short life history. These must have been left by a family member of his only a few weeks before. As I did not have this photograph it was a great find and perhaps ironic that I had travelled several thousands of miles to Thailand to obtain a photograph of a man from Boddam, Peterhead which is only thirty miles from my own home in Aberdeen. In addition, by an amazing coincidence, the home address for Rob Willox was the same farm as that for Jack Rennie, who was not related to him, but also served in the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders but who had left Singapore for service back in Europe in 1939, just as Rob was joining the Gordons in Aberdeen.

With the passage of time and the greater insight afforded by the greater knowledge of the ordeal the men went through, individually and collectively, it became all the more imperative that their remarkable story was told. This follows in the subsequent chapters.

CHAPTER 2

Prelude The Road to Singapore 1934 – 1937

In the first half of the twentieth century, most Regiments in the British Regular Army operated a three Battalion system and the Gordon Highlanders were no different. This comprised a Regimental HQ or ‘Depot’ (Aberdeen in the case of the Gordon Highlanders) and a 1st and 2nd Battalion each of a nominal strength of thirty officers and 930 other ranks, together with some twenty attached specialist trades from other Corps. In addition to these there were the Territorial Army Battalions (TA) for part time soldiers and the Gordon Highlanders had the 4th (Aberdeen City) Battalion, the 5th (Buchan & Formartine) Battalion, the 6th (Banff & Donside) Battalion & the 7th (Deeside) Battalion. At any particular time only one Regular Battalion (1st or 2nd) would serve at ‘home’ (i.e. somewhere in the UK) while the other was overseas (i.e. somewhere in the British Empire).

In 1934 the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders had been stationed in Aldershot for three years while the 1st Battalion were at Peshawar in India. For the 2nd Battalion 1934 was a busy year in ceremonial terms. In February they recovered their drums, which had been left in Ostend in October 1914, just after the Battalion landed and moved to the front at the start of the First World War. Willie Graham, who would go on to command the 2nd Battalion in Singapore was only a young second lieutenant in 1914 and found the transport wagons grossly overloaded, so it was decided to leave the seven drums in the safe keeping of the local police in Ostend. Immediately after the Armistice, in 1918, Willie Graham went back to Ostend to recover the drums but found that the Germans had found them and, on their evacuation of Ostend, had taken them back to Germany as a ‘war trophy’, where they were deposited in the Armoury Museum, Berlin. The Colonel of the Regiment (General Sir Ian Hamilton) made a personal approach to President Hindenburg of Germany, then Head of State in name only as Adolf Hitler had come to power, and requested the return of the drums, to Sir Ian’s great delight President Hindenburg agreed, as a gesture of friendship and reconciliation. Sir Ian travelled to Berlin where they were taken to the ‘Reichswehr Ministerium’ (Defence Ministry) and later recalled how they were shown into a large room where they were met with the sight of the drums decorated with bay leaves and flanked on either side by sentries ‘as motionless as statues’ and with their eyes apparently fixed and switched on half-right and half-left. They were dressed in service kit, steel helmets and rifles with fixed bayonets. Here, General Von Bloomberg (the German War Minister) presented the drums in the presence of some thirty other high ranking officers and dignitaries. In his address he recognised the Gordon Highlanders as one of the most famous regiments of the British Army and recalled how their Colours once flew side by side with those of the Prussian Army at the Battle of Waterloo. He went on to say how pleased he was to fulfil the request for the drums to be returned to their rightful home. After the ceremony, Sir Ian was received in private by the ‘Reichspresident’, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, allowing time for a cordial conversation between these two men, both veterans of the previous bloody conflict between their two nations.

On return to Aldershot, these drums were received with great ceremony and at Farnborough were taken back to Barracks with an escort of two officers, fifty men, the Drummers, Pipers and the Regimental Band. Once back in the Barracks the whole Battalion was drawn up on the Square and, after speeches, the entire Battalion marched past in fours.

These drums were echoes of the First World War, in which the Regiment had been involved from the very beginning incurring 30,000 casualties, of which 440 officers and 8,500 other ranks were killed. One such casualty was the father of James Gordon (2876032), who was now serving with the Gordon Highlanders himself. The Regiment had fought in all the major actions of the Great War and their gallantry was recognised by the award of four Victoria Crosses; fifty-one Distinguished Service Orders; 175 Military Crosses; 193 Distinguished Conduct Medals, and many other decorations. One of those on parade that day was Private Alfred Dick (2875875) and he could have had no thought that a mere five years later (in 1939), would see Britain plunged into another war with Germany and in ten short years (in 1944) he would be fighting for his life in the South China Sea, after suffering more than two years of hell as a slave labourer of the Japanese Empire. Many others with him on parade that day would not live to see the end of 1944 but for most of them Adolf Hitler was not to be their problem.

Later that year, in April, they paraded again for their Majesties, King George V and Queen Mary (who was later to give her name to the great liner which would take a large number of the men home at the end of the next war). However, at this time, in 1934, just sixteen years after the end of the ‘war to end all wars’, another war was still an unthinkable prospect.

The 1st Battalion serving in India were due to come home and consequently the 2nd Battalion were fully aware that they were due an overseas posting. This was to be to Gibraltar and, in the period prior to their departure, the 2nd Battalion was being brought up to full strength by a recruitment campaign. The North East of Scotland is a fertile area and boasts some of the best farmland in Scotland. Consequently, large numbers of men were employed in agriculture. The agricultural tradition at this time was that men were engaged on a particular farm for six months only and at the end of this ‘term’ they would assemble at the local ‘Feein’ Market’ where the farmers would also come to engage, or re-engage, men for the following six months, offering a fixed fee for their labours. These were also great social occasions where friends and relations, who had often been working on farms all over the county, came together to catch up, have a drink and it was, in a sense, a great holiday occasion. Naturally the seasonal nature of farming meant that the work available varied throughout the year, so making this an uncertain means of earning a living. Recruiting sergeants would tour the traditional recruitment area of the Regiment in North East Scotland (Aberdeen City and the Counties of Aberdeenshire, Banff & Kincardine and the Orkney and Shetland Isles), visiting the Feein’ Markets to persuade young men to sign up. This was not particularly difficult at this time as there was a worldwide depression and there was little work. Many of the recruits who were working on farms enjoyed poor wages and conditions with no job security so the army offered a secure haven, where they could sign up for a minimum period of seven years’ guaranteed employment. In addition, for those with a spirit of adventure, the army offered foreign travel, which could be offered as a specific ‘carrot’ at this time as it was known that a foreign posting was a clear possibility. In addition, The Territorial Army (TA) was a popular pastime, where men would meet and socialise in the local Drill Halls, earn a small bounty, and have a regular holiday at the Summer Camp which was a welcome bonus in these hard times. These men of the TA also provided a fertile recruitment ground for the recruiting sergeants. Irrespective of whether they had any Territorial Army (TA) experience or not, these recruits were sent to the Depot at Castlehill Barracks, Aberdeen, to start their five months’ basic training. Once this was completed the men were ready to be posted to their Battalion and many were sent to Aldershot to join the 2nd Battalion to bring it up to full strength.

When the date of their final departure dawned, the 2nd Battalion made an impressive sight as they marched, kilted, to Farnborough Railway Station, to the accompaniment of the Pipes and Drums of the Cameron Highlanders and the Band of the Royal West Kent Regiment. After the short train journey to Southampton, the men and their equipment boarded HMT (Hired Military Transport) Somersetshire.

The Battalion’s married families had already boarded the day before the main body of men arrived. The four-day voyage to Gibraltar was in exceptionally calm conditions, considering the late time of year but, despite this, there was the inevitable problem of many passengers being seasick. However,