When your number is up: A sole Australian lost in the Malay Regiment
By Stuart Lloyd, an Australian author who has lived in Asia for 25 years. He has published 20 books, including five on WWII.
Malay Regiment Mortar Crew (Reflections at Bukit Chandu Museum, Singapore)
Manly — on Sydney’s north side — boasts one of the most beautiful surf beaches in all of Australia. And it was here, in Reddall St, that Sydney James Law enjoyed his active, seemingly carefree childhood with his brother and sister. Given a moment’s spare time he was down at the North Steyne Surf Lifesaving Club battling the huge waves in a surfboat.
Sadly, though, he was not able to save his own life when war visited the Asia Pacific. But we’ll get to that in a moment …
Meantime, Jim — as Law was generally known to all — was off to prestigious Sydney Grammar School. (His alma mater’s records oddly have his name spelled as both Sydney and Sidney.) Here his sporty side came to the fore and he was a key member of hockey and rugby teams. He also played rugby for the surf club’s team, for good measure, and was later instrumental in founding the Manly Hockey Club.
Presumably he had a leaning towards maths, too, because after finishing school in 1930 he went off and studied accountancy, then joined the venerable firm of Flack & Flack (run by Edwin Flack, an Olympian who competed in no less than the 800-metres, 1500-metres, marathon, and tennis doubles).
But Jim was attracted to opportunities further afield in the tin mining industry. Malaya was in the mid-1930s producing around 40 per cent of the world’s tin output. The Kinta Valley area of Perak, in northwestern Malaya, was particularly rich and productive and it was here that the firm of Austral-Malay Tin Mine Co had been carrying out its pioneering bucket dredging work for nearly 30 years.
Lt Sydney Law (middle row, 1st left) graduating from OCTU training, Singapore, December, 1941. He would be dead two months later. Photo courtesy Jonathan Moffatt.
Jim sailed off to work in Malaya, a move which would seal his fate. With Malaya so rich in tin and rubber (Malaya produced about 60 per cent of the world’s output of the latter commodity, too), it was firmly in the sights of the expansionist Japanese, who sorely needed both resources for their ongoing war efforts in China.
The rumour mill was working as hard as the tin miners. The Japanese would attack Malaya and Singapore, was the growing word on the street. Expats like Jim Law felt they should do the right thing and sign up to do their bit.
In Jim’s case, he joined the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force (FMSVF) who had a base in nearby Taiping. This was a local auxiliary military force formed in 1902 to support the British regular army in Malaya (such as it was: mostly seconded British Indian Army units, and the fledgling Malay Regiment which came into being in 1935).
As the threat level raised, potential officers were sent off to attend the Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU) in Singapore. This was a three month program which gave them leadership and tactical skills. Just as he finished in December 1941, Japan entered the war, and WW2 in the Asia Pacific theatre kicked off.
2nd Lt Sydney Law, 222064, was added to the British Army’s General List. This was a pool of unassigned officers. Within five days of war breaking out, Law was seconded to C Company of the 1st Battalion, Malay Regiment. The regiment was in the process of making a name for itself, with officers such as Lt-Col Toby Andre in charge of 1st Battalion and Maj George Denaro as his 2 I/c. But Law was the sole Australian in the whole regiment. One can only imagine how that might’ve exacerbated the feelings of loneliness going into war. Strange places. Strange faces. Strange accents.
1st Battalion turned out to be a short straw of sorts, because they scrapped all the way down the west coast of Malaya since the opening salvos at Jitra, as part of the 11th Indian Division.
But they — along with all Allied forces — were pushed south by the Japanese onto Singapore.
And this is where the heat got turned up to ‘max’. Because of Gen Percival’s falling for the Japanese feint to the east, the forces deployed on Singapore’s west coast — predominantly Australian, Indian, and Malay regiments — faced the full brunt of the Japanese three-divisional onslaught.
Law with his Malay Regiment men were pushed back from the Jurong-Kranji Line till eventually they were assigned to defend the Pasir Panjang Ridge. This was a prominent and strategic gateway to the military installations in the west coast/ Alexandra area. And Singapore City lay just beyond that.
The Aussie 2/18 was to one flank, in action around the area of Holland Village and Reformatory Road. But chaos was king. Aussies, Brits, Malays, Indians and Japanese patrols literally stumbled upon each other in the burning grass and thickly wooded slopes of those hills.
As the ‘Guns of February’ from both sides crescendoed in those hills, artillery and mortar shells apparently landed with the same rapidity as tropical rainfall. It was a shit storm.
The Manly War Memorial, on which Law’s name was only added in 1951. Photo Australian War Memorials Register.
On Thursday, February 12, 1942 mortars thudded into the Malay Regiment’s 1st Battalion positions near Pasir Panjang Village. Here, 27-year-old Lt Jim Law was tragically killed in action, just three days short of the end of the Battle for Singapore.
A small note in the Sydney Morning Herald on May 7, 1942, recorded his death in battle.
The Malay Regiment 1st Battalion went on to make a legacy-defining last stand on Bukit Chandu, adjacent, but were ultimately vanquished and nearly decimated. Their homegrown heroics are celebrated at the Reflections at Bukit Chandu museum on the hill where they fought so desperately.
Lt-Col Andre was singled out not only for his signature calm demeanour amid some of the fiercest fighting of the entire Malaya campaign, but also because — upon surrender — he ordered his local Malay men to remove their uniforms and disappear into the local population, thereby escaping further retribution from the Japanese. (This was partially successful, as the many refused to remove their uniforms in a show of solidarity with their British masters; a beautiful but misguided sense of loyalty which led to the summary execution by the Japanese of those stubborn few. The Japanese also tracked down some Malay Regiment local officers and men who’d made it safely home to their villages in Malaya, and punished them.)
But the battle did not end there. Post-war Lt Jim Law's name was added to the Singapore Memorial Wall, but not recorded on The Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, because he’d signed up under the British Forces (being an expat in Malaya at the time). It was only after vociferous advocating by the North Steyne Surf Lifesaving Club that his name was added to the Manly War Memorial(the suburb where he was raised).
The surf club’s president stated that Lt Law’s father was “inarticulate with emotion” when he heard in 1951 — a full six years after the war — that his son’s name would be recorded on the Manly Memorial.
It seems wrong that someone who signed up in good faith to fight for king and country could be so overlooked by their own country. Especially by the AWM. But since publication of the book ‘The Malay Experiment’ has shone a spotlight on his plight, there has been a push from some in military-interest Facebook groups to help further his cause, and apparently the name of Lt Sydney James ‘Jim’ Law has now been added to the list of veterans to be reviewed and re-considered for the AWM Roll of Honour.
Let’s hope that gets up on the right side of the ledger, for Jim’s sake.
Source:
‘The Malay Experiment: The Colonial Origins and Homegrown Heroism of the Malay Regiment’ by Stuart Lloyd, ISBN: 978-0645328097. Available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.
Northern Beaches Council website/ Manly Library Local Studies
Sydney Grammar School ‘Old Sidneyan’ alumni office.
Sydney Morning Herald on May 7, 1942
