SINGAPORE BURNING: HEROISM AND SURRENDER IN WORLD WAR II

"The fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, after Lieutenant-General Percival's surrender, led to over 100,000 British, Australian and Indian troops falling into the hands of the Japanese. The Japanese had promised that there would be no Dunkirk in Singapore, and its fall led to imprisonment, torture and death for thousands of Allied men and women." "Only eight days after the first Japanese soldiers had set foot in northern Malaya, Britain's newly appointed Chief of Staff admitted that there was little hope of saving Singapore. Yet seven weeks later, after British troops had withdrawn from the Malayan peninsula, Singapore was still being reinforced. As 16,000 new men arrived, some of them Dunkirk veterans, they discovered that Singapore was burning. The soldiers disembarked against the flow of evacuees - civilians and 'non-essential' military personnel - and a handful of drunken deserters prepared to shoot their way aboard a ship home." "Soon all that would be left of British Malaya would be Singapore city itself, and that would rapidly crumble into anarchy and massacre under the relentless Japanese advance." "Using much new material from British, Australian, Indian and Japanese sources, Colin Smith has woven together the full and terrifying story of the fall of Singapore and its aftermath. Here, alongside cowardice and incompetence are forgotten acts of enormous heroism; treachery yet heart-rending loyalty; compassion as well as brutality from the bravest and most capricious enemy the British ever had to face."--BOOK JACKET.