Across the Causeway

For a few hours one brilliantly moonlit night last week a strip of granite and concrete, 1,153 yards long and 20 yards wide, was the safety valve of the British Empire. The Battle of Malaya was lost; the Battle of Singapore was about to begin. Between the two battles there lay only the narrow strip connecting Johore and Singapore Island, known as the Causeway.

Britain's spindling Army commander, Lieut. General Arthur Ernest Percival, mindful of the hazard of trying to defend southern Johore with no avenue of escape but the Causeway, had decided to run for it, to get across the Causeway before Japanese bombers blew it up.

Now, in the silver night, the men and their machines were on their way across. Not a single enemy plane was overhead to make things messy. The men were of many nations--Australians, Scottish Highlanders, English regulars, bearded Sikhs, wiry Gurkhas, Malayan militiamen--but they were of one mind. They had their single mind on the question of how to hold this crafty enemy.

As they crossed in a weary parade, troops sandwiching trucks, refugees teetering on lorries crammed with household goods, cameramen looking warlike armed with all their paraphernalia, the men knew that Singapore Island might be just as hard to defend as Malaya had been. They would have one of the advantages that General MacArthur's troops have on Bataan--a relatively small area for their small numbers to defend. They had about three divisions to guard more than 60 miles of the island's circumference against about six Japanese divisions. They knew, from bitter acquaintance, the preponder ance of the Japanese Air Force, and that Singapore Island had only four good fields. They knew how tightly packed are the buildings and docks of the Naval Base right across the Strait from Johore, and therefore what squatting ducks of a target they would make. They knew that the island's thirst would have to be slaked from two secondary rain-catching reservoirs--the kind blasted at Hong Kong.

And they knew that the improvising invaders, having made landings all the way down the Malayan coast, would try night landings on the fringes of Singapore Island.

But as they crossed the Causeway that night they did not know that help had already reached them, that a convoy of troops and planes and guns, miraculously shielded by a sudden storm from 60 attacking Japanese planes, had safely made port at Singapore.

The motley column on the Causeway dwindled off. Finally, with a touch of ceremony such as only the British could devise in such circumstances, the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, who had been the first Britons to meet the Japanese up Thailand way, marched across, the last to leave Malaya. They marched to the defiant skirl of an Argyll bagpipe.

As soon as the last Scot was across, mines which sappers had placed under the Causeway were touched off. Great chunks of the narrow strip jumped into the night sky. Its 510-foot dock and its rolling lift bridge were blown up.

This done, General Percival issued a proclamation to all concerned:

"Any enemy who sets foot in our fortress must be dealt with immediately. . . .

"For nearly two months our troops have fought an enemy on the mainland who had heavy advantages of great air superiority and considerable freedom of movement by sea. Our task has been to impose losses on the enemy and to gain time to enable the forces of the Allies to be concentrated for their struggle in the Far East.

"Today we stand beleaguered. . . ."

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