A powerful new book, The Malay Experiment: The Colonial Origins and Homegrown Heroism of the Malay Regiment, has been released to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of Malaysia’s most iconic military unit.
Written by military historian Stuart Lloyd — who lived for more than 10 years in Chiang Mai and whose father-in-law was a general in the Royal Thai Army — The Malay Experiment offers the first comprehensive account of the Malay Regiment’s colourful origins and its evolution into one of the nation’s most respected institutions.
“The initial company of 25 local recruits formed up in 1933 to answer the British Army’s question: could Malays form an effective modern fighting force?” explains Lloyd. “The answer was clearly yes, given their impressive performance and desperate last stand against the Japanese in Singapore in 1942.”
Thailand plays a part in the pre-war as well as the post-British surrender periods of the story.
“Units of the 1st Battalion of Malay Regiment were sent north covertly into Siam around the Songkhla and Pattani areas on recce missions to see if a Japanese advance down through Siam could be forestalled, before they even reached Malaya,” explains Lloyd. “The answer was probably ‘yes’ but Operation Matador was never triggered for reasons of bureaucratic bungling and not wanting to incite a diplomatic row with Siam by crossing the border from Malaya. It was a natural pinch point, and could’ve saved the fall of Malaya and Singapore if someone had the balls to green light it.”
Once Singapore fell, there were 85,000 Allied POWs rounded up. A few thousand of these were Indian and Malay troops under the British and British Indian Army.
With the commencement of the Thai-Burma Railroad construction, most of these POWs were pressed into service for the Japanese. “The Allied POWs’ story has been well documented,” says Lloyd, who also wrote ‘The Missing Years: A PoW’s Story from Changi to Hellfire Pass’.
Among the Malay Regiment’s British officers, Commanding Officer Lt-Col Bretherton, Maj Andre, Maj Denaro, Capt Morris, Lt Webber, and medic Lt Young, would end up on the Thai-Burma Death Railway, and survived. Capt Gudgeon would die on the railway in mid-1943. As did Armoured Car specialist Lt TPD Jones, who died of cholera in Songkurai.
“But let’s also not forget those Malay Regiment soldiers who were taken captive during the battle of Malaya … they would nearly all end up as romusha (labourers) working in the most inhuman ghastly conditions,” says Lloyd, highlighting the northern-most camps around Songkurai as the most fetid. “Within a few days of the Japanese surrender, a small party made a complete tour of all labour camps in Thailand, using a train they’d confiscated from the Japanese. One of this party was Capt AN Ross, attached to the Malay Regiment. They found 26,000 Malays were still on the railway, while at least 100,000 were estimated to have perished already.”
In all around 70 per cent of the 250,000 Asian (mainly Malay, Burmese, Indian and Chinese) labourers perished. “And only three of them got a grave with a headstone,” says Lloyd.
Brigadier General Dato’ Arshad Raji (Rtd), former officer of the regiment, offered high praise: “This book impresses me beyond words. Here is a writer driven by passion for the deeds of brave soldiers who laid down their lives, made immense sacrifices and stayed steadfast to their calling. This book is a must-read for all officers of the Malay Regiment.”
The Malay Experiment (ISBN: 978-0-645-328097) Now available at Asia Books 795 baht.
• Paperback: Amazon £14.80
• eBook: Amazon | Kobo (Bahasa Melayu)
• Audiobook: Audible, Apple, audiobooks.com<http://audiobooks.com/>
