CO129-590-25 Accounts of events leading up to surrender and subsequent treatment of prisoners- etc 23-4-1942 - 28-9-1943 — Page 198

17.

a certainty there were upwards of twenty thousand of them

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actually on the island. The real disaster was the loss, in a

matter of hours, of the strong Kowloon line which might have

been expected to hold for a month. It was pierced, and pierced

with dumbfoundering speed, at its very strongest point by men

wearing sand shoes who moved through the darkness as silently as

shadows and seemed to conjure up from nowhere as many mortars

and as much ammunition as they required. Up till then, our

soldiers had seemed confident: for some days after that they

lost morale and then, for the last hopeless period, they fought

magnificently. The complete Japanese command of the air,

unchallenged and devastating, depressed everyone. Our troops

seemed slow. A Japanese major after the surrender exulted that

he and his men could hear the British moving in the dark three

miles off, and he put that down to their heavy boots and weighty

equipment which he pridefully contrasted with his own lightly

armed and lightly-shod men. Our younger officers lamented that

we did not concentrate on holding the hill-tops, the prime lesson

(they said) of all mountain warfare in India. We hadn't nearly

enough artillery or mortars, and fifth column signallers weighted

the scales even more heavily against our men. Without air

reconnaisance, our guns fought blind in many places in the hilly

districts. Our pill-boxes (apparently previously "pin-pointed")

seemed very easy to knock out. I heard some officers complain

that all our prepared defences showed too much above the ground.

The Japanese were effectively led and they were bold and enter-

prising /