Podcasts about brigades

It is the return of Batroc and this time... he's bringing the dreaded Porcupine and the unstoppable Whirlwind! And what's going on with the Hulk?!? Cap gives a memorable speech. Plus... vocabulary pet peeves, Speed Racer, the character that Rick commissioned John Romita Jr. he's never sketched before, and... how many times can Bob say smoking jacket?!?Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/L7tZ3gvjVysLove the show? Help support with a one-time donation or become a member and get cool perks! https://buymeacoffee.com/capcomicfansConnect with Rick & Bob and fellow Cap fans at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/captainamericacomicbookfans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Please subscribe, rate and review! Here are FREE and FAST ways you can support the show: https://tinyurl.com/y6kyu9nhEmail questions to CapComicFans@gmail.comOur home page is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://captainamericacomicbookfans.com⁠

Présentée par Seb.ADX en invité de l'émission 109 du mois de septembre. Très content de vous présenter une interview de ce groupe essentiel pour la scène française, avec un excellent nouvel album 13eme choc qui vient tout juste de sortir !En deuxième partie d'émission, comme d'habitude l'actualité métal avec les sorties récentes : ANGRA, DEEP PURPLE, EDU FALASCHI, EVANESCENCE, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH, FLOTSAM & JETSAM, GOROD, HEADLINE, ICONIC, MASTODON, PERIPHERY, PROTEST THE HERO, THE DEAD DAISIES, THUNDERMOTHER et VANDEN PLAS.

Last time we spoke about the collapse of Johore. Trapped at Parit Sulong with 150 severely wounded, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Anderson's Australians fought through Japanese roadblocks in a desperate bayonet charge singing "Waltzing Matilda." Unable to breach the bridge, Anderson was forced to abandon the injured, believing they'd receive decent treatment. Instead, they faced the Parit Sulong Massacre—tortured, executed, and incinerated by Nishimura's Imperial Guards. Few survived. Simultaneously, Endau fell after a costly RAF daylight raid. Brigadier Challen's brigade at Batu Pahat retreated through chaos, eventually evacuating by sampan. Most devastatingly, Brigadier Painter's 22nd Indian Brigade vanished into the jungle—a severed telephone line between brigades allowed Japanese infiltration, cutting them off completely. General Barstow died attempting to warn Painter. Only 63 of Painter's 2,000 men reached Singapore. The collapse of Johore was complete. The fortress awaited.   #221 The Malayan Campaign Part 3: The Fall of Singapore Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. On January 31st, the last defenders—the 2nd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders—crossed the Causeway bridge into Singapore. The island was now under siege, though the military spokesman forbade use of the word "siege" to avoid demoralizing the population. Newspapers were permitted only "besieged," though the true situation was unmistakable to Winston Churchill, who had sent Wavell an unequivocal message two weeks prior: "I want to make it absolutely clear that I expect every inch of ground to be defended, every scrap of material or defenses to be blown to pieces to prevent capture by the enemy and no question of surrender to be entertained until after protracted fighting in the ruins of singapore city." This was Götterdämmerung in miniature—a fight to the bitter end. Wavell relayed Churchill's orders to Percival, who now faced two massive challenges: repelling a Japanese invasion of Singapore's northern coast while protecting the central island with its population and infrastructure. Following Churchill's directives, Percival ordered the destruction of the naval base in utmost secrecy. In a speech to his troops, Percival declared: "Our task has been both to impose losses on the enemy and to gain time to enable the forces of the Allies to be concentrated for this struggle in the Far East. Today we stand beleaguered in our island fortress. Our task is to hold this fortress until help can come – as assuredly it will come. This we are determined to do." Yamashita feared the British might use oil tanks in the naval base to ignite the Straits of Johore, creating a fiery barrier against his amphibious assault. He ordered his artillery and air force to bombard and bomb the tanks, creating a massive cloud of black smoke that enveloped the entire island. While Yamashita prevented the catastrophe he dreaded, the burning oil proved a double-edged sword—the smog made it extremely difficult for Japanese aircraft to locate targets and for artillery to maintain accuracy, wasting significant ammunition. Yamashita had positioned 200 artillery pieces and mortars within range, while Percival commanded 226 guns, including 29 large garrison guns and three massive 15-inch naval guns capable of rotating 360 degrees. However, the ammunition was armor-piercing, designed for ships rather than land targets. To conserve shells, Percival limited harassing fire to 20 rounds per gun daily. Yamashita envisioned firing 1,000 rounds from each gun to soften defenses. His heaviest artillery comprised 105mm guns firing 68-pound shells, but most were Krupp 1890 model 75mm guns firing lighter 11-pound shells compared to British 25-pounders. Yamashita faced an artillery shortfall. More critical was troop disparity: Yamashita had approximately 30,000 men for the assault, while Percival commanded nearly 90,000—though Percival believed the Japanese force was far larger. Singapore's 72-mile coastline meant defending everywhere simultaneously. Though the main thrust would obviously target the northern shore, Percival stationed units like the Manchesters—a regular machine gun battalion from Palestine—in southern pillboxes, never having fired in anger. Having been repeatedly outflanked during the Malayan campaign, Percival feared Yamashita might combine a northern attack with simultaneous southern amphibious landings or airborne drops. He preferred thin coverage across the entire coastline, drawing reserves only to address the most apparent threat. The logical invasion point was west of the Causeway, where the Straits narrowed to 600-2,000 yards and the Skudai River estuary provided concealment for small boats. Wavell believed this and recommended positioning the 18th Division—the freshest troops—there. But deployment decisions belonged to field commanders. Percival established two defensive lines: the Jurong Line, running from the Kranji River south to the Jurong River along the western side, and the Serangoon Line, extending from the Serangoon River southward on the eastern side. Both were mapped but entirely unprepared. The northern shore was similarly unfortified. Four defensive areas were designated: the Southern Area (from the Jurong River around to Changi) under Major-General Keith Simmons; the Northern Area (from Changi to Woodlands) defended by the 18th Division under Merton Beckwith Smith and the 11th Indian Division under Lewis Heath; the Western Area (from Woodlands westward) defended by the 8th Australian Division under Bennett and the semi-trained 44th Indian Brigade; and a Reserve Area centered on Bukit Timah and Paya Lebar, commanded by Brigadier Paris with the undermanned 12th and 15th Indian Brigades. Believing the western Causeway crossing too obvious, Percival decided the main landings would occur to the east. Unfortunately, he was wrong. Percival relied on secret sampan patrols to gather intelligence. Patrols east of the Causeway discovered Japanese equipment on Ubin Island in the strait, and artillery fire on the eastern sector seemed to confirm his suspicion of a northeastern invasion. However, two Australian patrols also reported significant Japanese troop concentrations in the western sector with large concentrations of enemy forces—but found very few landing craft on the Malaya River. Percival dismissed this intelligence as inconsequential, convinced the main attack would come northeast rather than northwest. The patrols had failed to locate where Yamashita had hidden his boats. Anyone understanding Japan should have anticipated that Yamashita would assault Singapore by February 11th—Kigensetsu, Shinto's most significant holiday celebrating Emperor Jimmu Tenno's birth. Yamashita was convinced Singapore lay within his grasp and knew how pleased his superiors would be with a conquest by that date. He had conquered all Malaya in just 55 days, suffering fewer than 2,000 deaths and under 3,000 wounded. His forces had advanced 700 miles, repaired over 250 bridges, killed an estimated 5,000 defenders, and captured 8,000, including senior officers like Painter and Challen. Soon Singapore would become a vast prison camp as the Imperial Japanese Navy tightened its blockade. Yet speed was essential; Yamashita's forces were needed for operations against Sumatra, Java, New Guinea, and many Pacific locations. The longer he delayed, the better prepared the 90,000-strong British force would become. Delay risked allowing the defenders to engage him decisively in the Straits of Johore. Yamashita promised Tokyo an attack within a week. Zero hour was set shortly after sunset on February 7th. Two divisional commanders requested an additional 24 hours to prepare, and Yamashita granted it without hesitation. He understood that if they needed more time, they needed it. Throughout February 7th, 52 guns supporting Nishimura's Imperial Guards Division bombarded the East Anglians near Changi, positioned where massive 15-inch guns stood. Under darkness, an Imperial Guards battalion boarded noisy-engined boats heading for Ubin Island. To their astonishment, the noise didn't alert defenders—the island lay undefended. Percival had decided against stationing troops there due to insufficient manpower, allowing only twice-daily patrols by the 4th Norfolks, who accidentally shot one another in the dark during one patrol. The unopposed capture raised Yamashita's concerns; this feint was designed to divert attention from the western sector, where he planned his full-scale assault. Had his deception failed? Were Percival's main forces hiding in the west? Yet there was consolation: British artillery was targeting the eastern side, not the western sector where Yamashita had positioned significant artillery. The concentrated eastern bombardment reinforced Percival's conviction that the Japanese would invade the northeast. Yamashita had successfully deceived his opponent. The trap was set. On February 8th at 10 a.m., the Japanese bombardment unleashed chaos along the entire northern coast. Over 88,000 shells rained down in 15 hours, destroying telephone lines and isolating forward units. By 7 p.m., the assault focused almost exclusively on the western shore. At 8:30, as the bombardment diminished, the men of D Company, 20th Battalion heard boat engines previously drowned out by the barrage. Yamashita's fleet—50 steel-hulled landing crafts and up to 300 collapsible assault boats—surged from the Skudai River, fanning across the straits as approximately 4,000 of his best troops made their first wave. Colonel Nicol of the 20th Battalion fired the first shots at roughly 300 yards. The forward defenders—about 3,000 Australian infantry exhausted from 15 hours of bombardment—faced Brigadier Harold Taylor's 22nd Brigade positioned across approximately 14.6 km of shoreline. Taylor's force was critically undermanned, with communication failures and minimal water obstacles leaving them devastatingly vulnerable. Yamashita had targeted Taylor's line at its weakest point—what the Germans called Schwerpunkt. Two critical failures compounded the disaster. Major Peacock's searchlight crews, meant to illuminate the landing craft, never received orders to activate. Commander Taylor mistakenly believed the generator was damaged; in reality, the lights simply never came on. Without illumination, artillery couldn't engage effectively. The forward infantry used 3-inch mortars and Vickers guns as landing craft made landfall on small islands like Sarimbun, 400 yards offshore, where Japanese troops established mortars and machine guns to return fire. Among the first ashore was Private Kiyoichi Yamamoto, who suffered severe shrapnel wounds to his stomach, chest, and right hand from a mortar explosion. Despite his injuries, he pressed through the darkness to the beach, reportedly collapsing and dying after helping comrades ashore while shouting "Tenno heika Banzai!" When retrieved, his right lung protruded through his shattered rib cage, his uniform nearly entirely drenched in blood. Taylor's Australians inflicted considerable casualties on the first waves. When Sergeant Arai Mitsuo of the 18th Division jumped from his boat at about 1 a.m. with the second wave, "a cold hand stroked his ankle." He found nine corpses floating in a line, heads upward. "A chill ran down Arai's spine. Were they shot while crossing, and then washed up, or after they had landed? But reflections be hanged! Quick! Cut off a wrist or a finger of each dead man. Chop, chop, chop. Into a box, there's no time to bury them. Just a quick prayer. Rest in peace. Then forward! He must fire the green 'success' rocket: Regimental Command has landed—the sign for 18th Division General Mutaguchi Renya to embark on the third wave across the straits." After four hours, Taylor's 22nd Brigade was overwhelmed. Though artillery eventually provided defensive fire, only 8 of 30 25-pounders were operational. Gun crews remained unaware of the situation until dispatch riders arrived with vague orders to "bring down fire everywhere." The absence of searchlights rendered fire inaccurate and chaotic. Yamashita's Schwerpunkt had worked perfectly. Machine gunner Ochi Harumi of the 5th noted, "For the defending Australians, it was kill or retreat; for the Japanese, it was kill or be killed." He observed that a rearguard armed with Thompsons attempted to slow them, but they moved like "rapid dogs" pursuing the Australians into the bush. Japanese officers carried compasses and instructions to disperse upon landing, heading south or southeast to regroup at the damaged Tengah airfield, situated between the coast and swamps. Both Taylor's forces and the Japanese converged there. Corporal Clarence Spackman and his men, armed with bayonets, encountered a Japanese group including an officer wielding a katana. Spackman charged, seized the sword, and engaged in brutal melee combat, killing several Japanese soldiers. Like many units, his company attempted to establish defensive positions, slowing the Japanese throughout the night. By February 9th, Taylor's brigade had descended into chaos. Men were caked in mud from swamp crossings, many having lost weapons while attempting to reform defensive lines north of Tengah. Bennett sent reinforcements, but the situation deteriorated. Some units reached the village of Bukit Timah on Singapore's outskirts. Duncan, commanding the 27th Infantry Brigade, made unusual personnel changes within hours: Lt Colonel Albert Boyes was succeeded by Lt Colonel Richard Oakes, and Black Jack Galleghan was replaced by Major Ramsay—Duncan disliked Galleghan, who had partially lost his hearing from a near-miss bomb blast. Duncan's forward units covered two miles between the causeway and Kranji River. With the Japanese bridgehead entirely west of the Kranji, Duncan repositioned away from the shoreline toward the river to confront invaders. He then defied Bennett's orders, instructing his men to destroy 2 million gallons of motor fuel at the Woodlands depot before withdrawing. This maneuver shifted his forces from a west-east axis to north-south, ensuring control over the Bukit Timah road for potential retreat into Singapore proper if the enemy gained the upper hand. Nishimura's Imperial Guards Division seethed after their diversionary role on Ubin Island. The humiliation proved unbearable, and his complaints convinced Yamashita to authorize an assault on the causeway itself. Given its narrow width, Nishimura committed only one battalion for the first wave. At 8:30 PM, boats ferried the 4th Guards Regiment across, but they faced identical obstacles to the Western landings—failed field telephones and inoperative searchlights. Around the Kranji River, Oakes' men mounted determined resistance, holding back the Guards. By morning, once communications resumed, Duncan learned his forces risked encirclement from Japanese crossings further south. He ordered immediate withdrawal after destroying the fuel tanks. At 4 AM, they ignited the depot. The Mandai Kechil blazed as the British successfully set portions of the sea ablaze. Corporal Tsuchikane Tominosuke, caught in the conflagration, recounted the nightmare: "Fire lashed out over the mangrove and set it ablaze. It spread quickly, feeding on oil poured into the straits. Mother! Mother! A voice could be heard moaning. It was a picture of hell—'Abiyokan,' Buddhism's worst of all hells. I stumbled along the edge of the beach, my gun felt slippery in my hands. Fire in all directions threatened to engulf me. Where to go? It seemed impossible to advance or retreat! Then I stumbled across Corporal Nemeto who said, 'We'll burn to death just standing here—let's attack!' Shouting out to the battalion and platoons, we advanced. One, then two comrades joined; soon we were five black figures looking all alike, with only the whites of our eyes glinting in the darkness. We were covered in heavy black oil." Nishimura learned that the Kobayashi regiment had last been seen swimming through flames. Many soldiers, covered in oil, returned to Johore. Convinced his division had been wronged, Nishimura raged that Yamashita had "recklessly forced a passage without adequate preparation, resulting in unnecessary casualties." Why did his guards face the toughest beach while the 5th and 18th divisions enjoyed relative ease? He suspected deliberate mockery of his "chocolate soldier" force. When he confronted Yamashita at his Johore headquarters, he discovered the commander had already crossed to his new HQ at north Tengah with Tsuji. Yamashita and Tsuji were having breakfast with dry bread when Nishimura's aide reported. Yamashita dismissed the account as panic from a few fleeing men. The guards division, he declared, could "do as it pleases in this battle," leaving victory to the 5th and 18th divisions alone. Despite this rebuff, the Imperial Guards pressed through the Abiyokan—the burning hell—seeking revenge. Tsuchikane engaged in grenade duels and led bayonet charges. After bayoneting an opponent, he observed defenders "having lost their nerve, with some soldiers cowering in terror, squatting down and avoiding hand-to-hand combat in a wait-and-see position. They, too, were bayoneted or shot without mercy." While the Guards fought, Wavell completed his final flight back to Singapore from Java HQ, arriving as the RAF evacuated. He went directly to Bennett's headquarters with Percival, the three generals barely escaping a Japanese air raid. Bennett revealed that Duncan had disobeyed orders and withdrawn, opening the floodgates for Yamashita to advance on Bukit Timah and the city. Bennett pledged to mount a counterattack within hours and seal the gaps. Before Wavell's early morning departure, he dined with Percival and Air Vice Marshal Pulford. Just as the meal began, a telegram from Churchill arrived: "There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs. The 18th Division has its chance to make its name in history. Commanders and senior officers should die with their troops. The honour of the British Empire and of the British Army is at stake. I rely on you to show no weakness or mercy in any form. With the Russians fighting as they are and the Americans so stubborn at Luzon, the whole reputation of our country and our race is involved." Wavell added his own message for the troops: "The Chinese, with an almost complete lack of modern equipment, have held the greater part of their country against the full strength of the Japanese… It will be disgraceful if we yield our boasted Fortress of Singapore to inferior enemy forces… I look to you and to your men to fight to the end and to prove that the fighting spirit that won our Empire still exists to enable us to defend it." Percival issued his own directive: "It will be a lasting disgrace if we are defeated by an army of clever gangsters many times inferior in numbers… The spirit of aggression and determination to stick it out must be inculcated in all ranks. There must be no further withdrawals without orders. There are too many fighting men in the back areas. Every available man who is not doing essential work must be used to stop the invader." By 9 PM, Bennett's formations were positioned for a major counterattack at dawn. At Bukit Panjang, Brigadier Paris was settling in for dinner when a Japanese tankette appeared at his gates. Defenders mistook it for a Bren gun carrier; sentries grabbed revolvers and fired. The vehicle retreated. It was later discovered that Yamashita had transported armor across the straits using makeshift pontoons—three rafts lashed together. Over thirty T-95s had landed in the area Duncan vacated, now positioned three miles down the road in Bukit Timah. Alarmed, Paris sent Brigadier Major Angus MacDonald to establish a blockade, anticipating another night assault like Slim River. With no time for proper fortifications, the battalion—oriented westward toward friendly territory—could only park vehicles across the road. As men placed anti-tank mines, a T-95 silhouette appeared. The Japanese took twenty minutes to breach the obstacles, losing one tank to a mine. Boys anti-tank rifles blazed; two tanks exploded. The remaining armor halted. It was February 10th, the eve of Kigensetsu, the 2602nd anniversary of the Japanese Empire. On Kigensetsu morning, around 9 AM, Japanese aircraft dropped something unprecedented: eighteen-inch tubes adorned with colored ribbons containing Yamashita's surrender ultimatum to Percival, written in English: "Your Excellency, I, the High Command of the Nippon Army based on the spirit of Japanese chivalry, have the honour of presenting this note to Your Excellency advising you to surrender the whole force in Malaya… Many fierce fights have been fought by your gallant men and officers to the honour of British warriorship. But the development of the general war situation has already sealed the fate of Singapore… I expect that Your Excellency accepting my advice will give up this meaningless and desperate resistance and promptly order the entire front to cease hostilities… If on the contrary Your Excellency should neglect my advice and the present resistance be continued, I shall be obliged, though reluctantly from humanitarian considerations, to order my army to make annihilating attacks on Singapore… (signed) Tomoyuki Yamashita" By February 13th, Bennett's counterattack to reclaim the Kranji-Jurong line had largely failed. Australian, British, and Indian forces were retreating across the island, some in full rout. Bennett told Captain Frank Gaven of the 20th Battalion, "I don't think the men want to fight," to which Gaven replied: "The men are very tired; their rations have been irregular and insufficient. They have been in constant contact with the enemy and feel they have been let down. I feel that way too." When Wavell reported to Churchill on the situation, he admitted: "The Japanese, using their usual infiltration tactics, are advancing more swiftly than they should in the west of the island… The morale of some troops is low, and none is as high as I would like… Everything possible is being done to foster a more offensive spirit and an optimistic outlook." Percival, hampered by poor intelligence that grossly overestimated Japanese strength, attempted to reorganize his defenses. He created the Tom Force under Lionel Thomas to recapture Bukit Timah village and hill, which the Japanese had occupied that morning. Though composed largely of inexperienced soldiers, Tom Force made progress where most other disorganized units failed. However, they were halted at Bukit Timah by heavy bombardment from Japanese bombers that had shifted focus from Keppel Harbor. The 15-inch Johore batteries were firing on the invaders in the Bukit Timah area, but nearly all 250 rounds were armor-piercing shells—devastating to ships but ineffective against ground targets. Had they been high-explosive rounds, they might have decimated the enemy. Tsuji, driving through Bukit Panjang crossroads, experienced the terror firsthand: "…the blast jarred our spines. The flash seared my eyes, and I was thrown into the roadside ditch… one discharge – two discharges… I had no experience of such heavy projectiles, which tore holes in the ground 15 or 16 metres in diameter and 4 or 5 metres deep… Crouching like a crab inside the earthen pipe I imagined what would happen if a shell fell on me… I had landed on the island with the intention of dying but unconsciously I drew myself further into the pipe." With Tom Force's attack repelled, Percival consolidated his forces into a 28-square-mile perimeter stretching from Keppel Harbor to Kallang Airfield—an area containing approximately 1 million civilians and up to 90,000 military personnel. The loss of Bukit Timah made it impossible to include the island's two reservoirs. He retained only control of MacRitchie's southeastern shore and its underground pipes. By dawn on February 13th, morale was collapsing. Desertions were widespread, and soldiers had lost the will to fight. On February 14th, at 1 PM, the Changi Fire Command was ordered to prepare three 15-inch guns for demolition by 6:30 PM. The guns fired around 194 shells, using 80% of their ammunition before detonation charges destroyed them at 6:45 PM. All remaining ships began final evacuation. Out of approximately 5,000 people boarding 44 ships, around 40 vessels were sunk. Only 1,250 reached India or Australia. Many ships were targeted by Japanese aircraft and heavy shellfire in the Bangka Straits, though some fortunate survivors were rescued by select IJN vessels that permitted surrender. The worst horror came at Alexandra Hospital on Saturday, February 14th. Gunner Anckorn, severely injured and amputated, had received significant morphine. When Japanese soldiers entered, he spoke to the patient beside him: "aren't they Japanese soldiers?" When told yes, he asked what they were doing. "He said they're taking people on the front lawn and killing them… The next time I woke up the Japanese were back in the ward, going from bed to bed with fixed bayonets. As they came up my line of beds, I thought to myself I'm going to be dead in thirty seconds… I said out loud to myself two things: 'I'll never be twenty-four'. The other one was, 'Poor Mum'. They got close to my bed for my turn of bayoneting… I put my head under the pillow and when I came up for air they'd gone and there were four people left alive in the ward." Some theorize the Japanese mistook his blood-soaked hand and empty pillow for a corpse already bayoneted. The atrocity claimed 320 men and 1 woman, with 90 members of the Royal Australian Medical Corps killed while protecting their 800 patients. Meanwhile, Bennett gathered remaining Australian troops into a comprehensive defensive position, while many lingered around the docks seeking escape. Recognizing the dire situation, Bennett messaged Army HQ in Melbourne: "If the enemy enters the city behind us, we will take appropriate action to prevent unnecessary sacrifices." To the north, the 18th Division under Major General Beckwith-Smith fought intense house-to-house combat. The 1st Cambridgeshires identified a Japanese encampment on Peirce Reservoir's northwestern shore where enemy soldiers were swimming and performing calisthenics. They deployed a dozen Bren guns and 2-inch mortars, opening fire from 400 yards away with devastating effect. On February 15th, Percival received Wavell's telegram granting him discretion to surrender: "Time gained and damage to the enemy are of vital importance… When you are fully satisfied that this is no longer possible I give you discretion to cease resistance… Whatever happens I thank you and all your troops for your gallant efforts of last few days." Percival convened a commanders' conference at 9:30 AM. Only Beckwith-Smith was absent, reporting significant enemy infiltration along his 17,000-yard front. The 4th Suffolks and Foresters had been overwhelmed by Japanese tanks. Chief Engineer Brigadier Simson warned that Singapore City would run out of water within a day. Bennett and Heath had been advocating surrender for days. Suddenly, Bennett suggested a joint attack to reclaim Bukit Timah, but his proposal met with silence. A Japanese flag was raised from the Cathay Building for ten minutes—signaling Percival's agreement. He would meet Yamashita at the Ford Factory. Yamashita's forces were critically depleted: only 18 tanks remained, infantry were limited to 100 rounds each, and fuel supplies had run dry. Men survived on two bowls of rice daily. Percival arrived at 4:30 PM carrying a white flag himself. Inside the factory, photographers and reporters clamored. Yamashita appeared and declared: "The Japanese Army will consider nothing but surrender." Yamashita knew the British outnumbered him 3-to-1 and feared the British would discover this numerical inferiority, forcing disastrous street fighting. Percival stalled: "I fear we shall be unable to submit our final reply before 10:30 PM." Yamashita erupted: "Reply to us only whether our terms are acceptable or not, things must be settled swiftly. We are prepared to resume firing." When Percival continued stalling, Yamashita exploded: "Unless you do surrender, we will have to carry out our night attack as scheduled!" Percival requested: "Cannot the Japanese army remain in its present position? We can resume negotiations tomorrow at 5:30 AM?" "Nani!" Yamashita burst. "I want the hostilities to cease tonight and I want to remind you there can be no arguments." Percival stammered: "We shall discontinue firing by 8:30 PM. Had we better remain in our present positions tonight?" Yamashita grew suspicious of Percival's vagueness: "You have agreed to the terms but you have not yet made yourself clear as to whether you agree to surrender or not." Percival could not speak—facing history's worst moment for Britain. He cleared his throat and nodded. Yamashita shook his finger: "There's no need for all this talk. It is a simple question and I want a simple answer—yes or no! Surrender or fight!" "Yes," Percival said. "I have a request to make. Will the Imperial Army protect the women and children and British civilians?" "We shall see to it. Please sign this truce agreement." It was the greatest land victory in Japanese history. Yamashita took Malaya and Singapore for 3,506 killed and 6,150 wounded. Percival's casualties were approximately 7,500 killed and 10,000 wounded. About 120,000 prisoners were taken. During the Singapore Island campaign alone, Yamashita lost 1,713 killed and 2,772 wounded—nearly as many as the entire Malayan campaign. Yamashita later boasted about his greatest deception: "My attack on Singapore was a bluff—a bluff that worked. I had 30,000 men and was outnumbered more than three to one. I knew that if I had to fight for long for Singapore, I would be beaten. That is why the surrender had to be at once. I was very frightened all the time that the British would discover our numerical weakness and lack of supplies and force me into disastrous street fighting." On paper he was outnumbered 3-to-1, but his three first-class homogeneous divisions possessed air and naval superiority—advantages incomparable to Percival's heterogeneous, disorganized force. Had the British continued resisting, Yamashita would merely have waited for reinforcements and supplies. Winston Churchill called Singapore's fall "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history." His personal physician, Lord Moran, wrote: "The fall of Singapore on February 15 stupefied the Prime Minister. How came 100,000 men (half of them of our own race) to hold up their hands to inferior numbers of Japanese?… The surrender of the fortress stunned him. He felt it was a disgrace. It left a scar on his mind. One evening, months later, when he was sitting in his bathroom enveloped in a towel, he stopped drying himself and gloomily surveyed the floor: 'I cannot get over Singapore,' he said sadly."   But Singapore's fall meant far more to the Chinese population than simple military defeat. For them, the island's capture represented not just the loss of a fortress, but the arrival of an occupying force whose intentions toward the Chinese had already been made brutally clear across Malaya. Dalforce, the Chinese volunteer force hastily formed weeks earlier, had fought fiercely across the island during the campaign, sustaining heavy casualties in a desperate struggle alongside British and Commonwealth forces. Some members had managed to escape into the jungle; others would face a far darker fate than conventional prisoner-of-war detention. The Japanese military leadership had long regarded the Chinese population as potentially the greatest source of resistance to their territorial expansion throughout Asia-Pacific. The Second Sino-Japanese War, raging since 1937, had created deep mutual antagonism—Chinese communities across Southeast Asia had raised funds for Chinese nationalist forces and demonstrated unmistakable anti-Japanese sentiment. What awaited the Chinese of Singapore after the British surrender was not occupation in the conventional sense, but systematic persecution rooted in ideological vendetta. On February 18, 1942—just three days after the British surrender—the occupying Japanese military initiated an operation that would become one of World War II's lesser-known but devastating atrocities. The Kempeitai, the Imperial Japanese Army's secret police, began mass arrests and executions of Singapore's Chinese population. The operation was code-named "Sook Ching," a Chinese term meaning "purge through cleansing." The Japanese themselves referred to it as Kakyo Shukusei—"purging of Overseas Chinese." The massacre was systematic and premeditated. Japanese military planners had decided well before the invasion that the Chinese population of Singapore and Malaya required elimination or severe subjugation. According to captured Japanese records and postwar testimony, an order had been issued by senior staff officers on Yamashita's operations staff to kill 50,000 Chinese—approximately 20 percent of the total population. The purge was officially planned to last only two days, but it would be extended repeatedly until early March, consuming thousands of lives. The mechanism of the massacre was coldly bureaucratic. The Japanese established "screening centres" throughout Singapore where Chinese males aged 18 to 50 were required to report for "inspection." The Kempeitai, commanded by Major Masayuki Oishi from headquarters at the YMCA Building on Stamford Road, divided Singapore into sectors and administered the process with 200 regular Kempeitai officers and approximately 1,000 auxiliaries—many of them young conscripts from rural areas with no interrogation training or judicial framework to guide their decisions. In theory, the screening was meant to identify "anti-Japanese elements"—communists, volunteers who had fought with Allied forces, businessmen who had financed resistance to Japan's invasion of China, and organized crime members. The reality was far more brutal and arbitrary. At some screening centers, interrogators singled out men with glasses, assuming educated men posed a threat. Others were selected based on tattoos, considered a sign of triad membership. Hooded informants—often questionable in their knowledge—pointed fingers at supposed troublemakers. At one notorious center, all Chinese males who happened to walk through a particular entrance were simply loaded into trucks to be shot, while those who used another pathway were released. The system was designed less to identify genuine resistance threats and more to terrorize the Chinese community through indiscriminate slaughter. Those who "passed" the screening received a stamp or certificate marked "examined," allowing them to leave. Those who "failed" were separated, marked with triangular stamps indicating their death sentence, and packed into trucks. They were transported to remote killing sites around the island: Changi Beach, Punggol Point, Katong, Tanah Merah, Sentosa (then called Pulau Belakang Mati), and numerous other coastal areas. At these beaches and isolated locations, the condemned were executed by firing squads, bayoneted by soldiers, or simply shot and left to be washed into the sea. The scale was staggering. On February 20, 1942, 66 Chinese males were lined up at Changi Beach and shot. On February 28, approximately 300 to 400 Chinese were executed at Punggol Point by Kempeitai firing squads. At Tanah Merah Beach, 242 victims from the Jalan Besar screening center were massacred. At Katong, 20 trenches were dug to bury bodies. Some victims were transported from the docks at Tanjong Pagar and executed at sea, their bullet-riddled bodies later washing ashore on Sentosa, where surrendered British gunners awaiting internment were forced to bury them. The massacre extended throughout the island and into Malaya. At Kota Tinggi in Johor, 2,000 were killed on February 28. At Joo Loong Loong in Negeri Sembilan, an entire village of 1,474 Chinese was systematically exterminated by Major Yokokoji Kyomi and his troops on March 18. Across the southern states of Malaya, estimated to be as many as 25,000 Chinese were killed through similar indiscriminate mass executions. The bodies piled into mass graves, often remaining hidden until decades later when construction or farming uncovered them. In the immediate aftermath, families of victims had no opportunity to recover remains or conduct proper funerary rites according to Chinese tradition. The death toll remains contested. Japan's postwar government claimed no more than 6,000 had been killed. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first Prime Minister, who himself narrowly escaped selection for execution during the screening process, stated the verifiable death toll was approximately 70,000, including Malaya. Historians examining mass grave discoveries and survivor testimony estimate the true figure at 25,000 to 50,000 in Singapore itself, with another 20,000 across Malaya. The variety of estimates stems partly from the Japanese destruction of all documentation related to the screening process and the indiscriminate nature of the killings—many victims were never recorded, their disappearances simply adding to the chaos of the occupation's early days. The psychological impact on Singapore's Chinese community was devastating. Survivors emerged from the screening process traumatized, many bearing visible marks of their passage through the system. Women and children, though theoretically not targeted, were sometimes sent for inspection as well, and some were victimized during the process. Entire families were separated, with some members executed while others survived by chance. The massacre destroyed the illusion that Singapore's position as a British fortress had provided security or protection. The rapid fall of Singapore and the subsequent slaughter of the Chinese population crystallized a profound realization among the local population: the colonial masters could not protect them, and their status as second-class inhabitants of their own territory had become abundantly clear. In the years after the war, perpetrators of the Sook Ching were identified and tried. Seven Japanese officers—Takuma Nishimura, Saburo Kawamura, Masayuki Oishi, Yoshitaka Yokata, Tomotatsu Jo, Satoru Onishi, and Haruji Hisamatsu—were charged in 1947. Kawamura and Oishi received death sentences and were hanged on June 26, 1947. However, the mastermind behind the operation—Major Masanobu Tsuji, Yamashita's Chief of Planning and Operations who personally planned and coordinated the massacre—escaped after the war, fled to China, and later became a politician in Japan before disappearing in Laos in 1961, presumably killed. The massacre's legacy became a catalyst for political awakening in Singapore. The British failure to demand reparations specifically for the Chinese, Malay, and Indian communities killed during the occupation (only securing compensation for European victims) became a point of bitter contention. It demonstrated to Singaporean Chinese that the colonial government did not truly represent their interests. When Singapore gained self-governance in 1959, waves of anti-Japanese sentiment emerged, with the Chinese community demanding official apologies and reparations. Not until 1966, after independence, did Japan agree to provide S$50 million in compensation—though notably refusing to make an official apology or accept legal responsibility for the massacre. The Japanese government classified the payment as a "gesture of atonement" rather than formal reparations, a linguistic evasion that did little to ease the lingering trauma. Mass graves were accidentally discovered in 1962 at Siglap, an area locals had called the "Valley of Tears." Exhumation work continued through the 1960s, with nearly 100 graves uncovered. In 1963, Singapore erected the Civilian War Memorial at Beach Road—a 67.4-meter monument consisting of four pillars symbolizing Singapore's four major ethnic groups. Beneath it lies a tomb containing remains of Sook Ching victims recovered from 1962 to 1966. The massacre sites at Changi Beach, Katong, Punggol Point, Tanah Merah, and Sentosa were designated as heritage sites in 1992 with commemorative plaques. Yet the numerical vagueness surrounding the death toll—a direct consequence of Japan's refusal to acknowledge full responsibility or conduct a proper investigation—remains a source of historical frustration and continuing emotional weight for the descendants of victims. The Sook Ching Massacre had an immediate and profound effect on organized Chinese resistance. Many Dalforce members who had escaped into the jungle were now hunted relentlessly by occupying forces. Some retreated further inland, eventually linking with the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), the communist guerrilla force that had been organizing in Malaya. The massacre transformed what might have been localized resistance into a unified determination to survive and eventually drive out the occupiers. The brutality inflicted upon the Chinese population—ostensibly targeted at "anti-Japanese elements" but indiscriminate in practice—radicalized entire communities and gave the nascent guerrilla movements both moral justification and a steady stream of desperate recruits willing to fight. The very mechanism designed to crush Chinese resistance had, ironically, forged the conditions for sustained and effective guerrilla warfare throughout the occupation's three-and-a-half years.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.   Singapore fell on February 15, 1942, when Percival surrendered to Yamashita—who had bluffed with inferior numbers and dwindling supplies. Three days later, the Sook Ching Massacre began: the Kempeitai systematically slaughtered 25,000 to 50,000 Chinese civilians across Singapore and Malaya through "screening centers" and mass executions at beaches, eliminating perceived anti-Japanese resistance.      

durée : 00:15:45 - Les Matins de France Culture - par : Guillaume Erner - Élevé à Eilat, loin de Tel Aviv et Jérusalem, Gadi Eisenkot appartient à cet Israël séfarade longtemps regardé de haut par les élites ashkénazes et par l'armée. Homme encore discret, il débute sa carrière dans l'armée israélienne et gravit petit à petit les échelons. - équipe : Jean Brossier, Victoria Géraut-Velmont, Félicie Faugère, Marianne Dubar, Angelico Gaymard, Bahia Bricaud - invités : Myriam Shermer Journaliste spécialiste de la politique israélienne, David Khalfa Codirecteur de l'Observatoire de l'Afrique du Nord et du Moyen-Orient et spécialiste du Proche-Orient à la fondation Jean Jaurès Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

durée : 00:15:45 - Affaires étrangères - Élevé à Eilat, loin de Tel Aviv et Jérusalem, Gadi Eisenkot appartient à cet Israël séfarade longtemps regardé de haut par les élites ashkénazes et par l'armée. Homme encore discret, il débute sa carrière dans l'armée israélienne et gravit petit à petit les échelons. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

The Iron Brigade battles through M.A.D.A.M.'s latest trap, defeating a bizarre group of villains standing in their way. Just when victory seems within reach, the team discovers they have walked straight into another deadly challenge. A massive labyrinth shifts around them, separating the Brigade and leaving each member to face the dangers alone. Now isolated inside the ever-changing maze, each hero must confront new, life-threatening trials with no guarantee they'll find their teammates again. As the walls close in and the danger escalates, one question remains: Will the Iron Brigade escape the maze, or will they die trying? Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1628612284256101/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lmgpodnetwork?igsh=YTBtMm1kd3k3a3N3   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheLMGPodcast   Hosts: Jordan Mitchell

Last time we spoke about the beginning of the Malayan Campaign. In December 1941, Japan invaded British Malaya, aiming to cripple Allied power. Despite British defenses, General Yamashita's battle-hardened 25th Army overwhelmed them. The British fumbled early, failing to strike Japanese beachheads, while the sinking of Force Z left Malaya without naval protection. At Jitra, the absence of tanks proved devastating for the Indian defenders. Yamashita employed blitzkrieg tactics, using tanks and bicycles to exploit the terrain. The British, spread thin and under-resourced, retreated south, facing constant attacks and encirclements. The evacuation of Penang further demoralized the Allies, with locals turning against their colonial rulers.   #220 The Malayan Campaign Part 2: The Collapse of Johore Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   While British forces retreated southward in disarray, a different response was taking shape within the local Chinese population. Ethnic Chinese volunteers, motivated by decades of Japanese aggression in Asia and the brutality of Japan's ongoing war in China, began organizing into military formations to resist where the British colonial administration was failing. These volunteers lacked the resources of official forces, but they possessed something the dwindling British garrisons did not: deep roots in Malayan territory and an existential stake in defeating the Japanese. As British commanders abandoned town after town, Chinese resistance fighters prepared to stay and fight.   Despite acts of heroism, such as at Kampar, the Japanese advanced relentlessly. The defenders prepared a new line of defense at Trolak, five miles north of Slim River. Reinforcements arrived, and the 45th Brigade was dispatched to repel the enemy's advance on Kuala Selangor. General Paris established a new defensive line at the Slim River, approximately 50 miles north of Kuala Lumpur. Though the river presented a significant anti-tank obstacle with its consistent 200-yard width, insufficient troop numbers prevented complete coverage. The next delaying action was staged at Trolak, a narrow point 9 miles north of the river. Paris positioned Lieutenant Colonel Ian Stewart's depleted 12th Brigade in the forward constricted area, the 28th Brigade to cover the road and railway, and the 15th Brigade in reserve at Tanjong Malim. This represented a defense-in-depth strategy. Stewart deployed his battalions strategically, but the forward commander, Lieutenant Colonel Wilson Haffenden, was wounded in an air attack shortly after taking position. Japanese fighters exploited the predictable concentration of defenders along the narrow road, attacking with impunity against limited anti-aircraft defenses. The forward battalion's role was to serve as a tripwire, alerting the brigade to large-scale attacks and delaying the Japanese advance. A critical weakness was the inadequate deployment of artillery. Only eight 25-pounder guns were positioned forward, while over sixteen were kept further back for safer withdrawal across the river. The forward defenses also lacked mines and anti-tank guns, though these were available to the supporting battalion. By this point, the campaign had drained morale—troops were exhausted, underfed, unwashed, and sleep-deprived from constant movement, aerial attacks, and minimal time for proper defensive construction. A Tamil laborer reported seeing at least 80 "tanks" in a nearby village. British officers dismissed the report, mistakenly assuming he confused trucks for tanks. The men remained unaware of the imminent danger. The Japanese initiated minor probes along the railway that morning, repelled by artillery fire with approximately 60 enemy dead. The remainder of the day was quiet. Stewart requested 48 hours' rest for his exhausted men. Paris agreed and sent divisional reserves to positions south of Trolak. Ninety minutes after they arrived, the Japanese attacked. Major Hajime Shimada commanded approximately 30 Type 95 tanks and 10 light tanks, plus trucks carrying infantry. After setbacks at Kampar, Shimada convinced his superiors to permit a night armored assault—uncommon in World War II but calculated as a worthwhile risk given the narrow defensive front where artillery could devastate his concentrated force. At 3 a.m. on January 7th, heavy rain fell. Defenders in foxholes along the jungle road heard gunfire at dusk, indicating Japanese attempts to pinpoint positions. At 3:30 a.m., Japanese mortars and artillery shells opened fire. Fifteen minutes later, Japanese infantry within 300 yards attempted to breach barbed wire obstacles. At 4 a.m., tanks arrived, their yellow tracer rounds causing widespread panic. The forward anti-tank gun remained silent, its crew possibly dead or fled. Defenders retreated in chaos. At 4:30 a.m., one of Shimada's tanks detonated an anti-tank mine. The tank behind was disabled by a Boys anti-tank rifle. Punjabi defenders on high ground began launching Molotov cocktails against the vehicles. Shimada's plan backfired. His immobilized armored column became vulnerable to artillery fire, illuminated by the burning Molotov cocktails. The tanks lacked radios; commanders opened hatches to shout orders, exposing themselves to grenades. Ironically, the Molotov fires revealed escape routes, and Shimada's force managed to break through. The opportunity to destroy the entire column was lost, possibly due to the newly arrived reinforcements failing to establish telephone lines for directing artillery fire. By 6 a.m., most Japanese tanks had advanced, mopping up infantry. The leading tanks were halted again by another anti-tank mine. Molotov cocktails were deployed, and two anti-tank guns engaged, destroying one tank. But the crews soon fell silent, possibly unnerved by advancing Japanese infantry. By 7 a.m., organized resistance collapsed, and defenders fled the Trolak area. In the central sector, Captain Kenneth McLeod watched turbaned soldiers stream past: "I stood there like a traffic officer to whom no one pays any attention." Roadblocks were hastily established as commanders attempted to prepare bridge demolition charges. The first four tanks appeared in the remaining darkness, easily overcoming initial roadblocks. The second defensive line included armored cars and Boys rifles. One tank was set ablaze by Molotov cocktail and immobilized by a Boys shot. The armored cars were hit and disabled. Defenders heroically pushed the damaged vehicles to the southern end of the Trolak bridge to delay the Japanese before destroying it around 6:30 p.m. Many Japanese forces bypassed this sector, attempting to encircle fleeing defenders before they reached the Slim River. Tank ambushes along roadways forced many into the jungle. Second Lieutenant Ian Primrose was knocked unconscious during an ambush. Upon regaining consciousness, he discovered Japanese soldiers taking prisoners and segregating the wounded. Primrose recalled: "Everybody had heard the stories about Japanese atrocities in China, but that was Asians dealing with Asians. We never expected this sort of thing to happen to us." Afterwards, surviving prisoners were forced to dig graves for the murdered and carry wounded Japanese soldiers. En route south of Trolak, Paris's reinforcements approached with ammunition and heavy weapons. Shimada's vanguard, led by 2nd Lieutenant Sadanobu Watanabe, ambushed the approaching vehicles. The first two companies—approximately 250 men—were decimated. Watanabe pushed on. Near the Slim River, his tanks attacked the Gurkha brigade's headquarters. Captain Tom Mooney, rather than seeking cover, "drew his .455 revolver, stood his ground and fired upon the tanks until he was shot dead." Watanabe's objective was seizing the Slim road bridge. He encountered Gurkha forces, many young recruits. Major Winkfield recalled: "The next thing I knew a machine-gun blazed in my ear; a bullet grazed my leg and I dived into the ditch as a tank bore down on me. It had passed through half my battalion without my realizing that anything was amiss." The casualties were severe. Colonel Fulton was wounded and later died in captivity. At his headquarters in Tanjong Malim, Archibald Paris remained unaware of the rapid collapse. Two hours after the Japanese attack, intelligence ceased. Reports of enemy breakthroughs surfaced. Paris dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Harrison to investigate. Harrison recalled: "The next thing I knew was a deafening volley as machine gun bullets shattered my windscreen. I wrenched the wheel hard to starboard, crashed into the ditch, opened the door, leapt out and ran like hell over 50 yards of open ground to flimsy security of some scattered rubber." Behind him, his driver Ghulam, holding a wounded shoulder, asked in bewilderment: "Are those our armored cars, Sahib?" Watanabe continued his advance, killing Lieutenant Colonel Charles Holme, and reached the bridge, defended by Bofors gunners and Hong Kong Artillery men. Their anti-tank guns, using air-burst ammunition, proved ineffective against the Type 95's armor. The gunners fled. Watanabe, injured, remained on the bridge, cutting the wires to the demolition charges. Ensign Toichero Sato led three tanks south of the river toward Tanjong Malim, killing Colonel Augustus Murdoch. A Japanese soldier later remarked of Sato: "He died in an officer-like manner, with his hand on the hilt of his service sword." Tsuji, visiting the wreck, observed: "Sato had collapsed beside his gun like a dish of ame." Harrison, reflecting on the experience in his unpublished history of the 11th Division, could not conceal his admiration for the Japanese: "Heedless of danger and of their isolation they had shattered the division; they had captured the Slim bridge by their reckless and gallant determination." The Battle of Slim River represented a catastrophic collapse of British defenses. In a single night of audacious tank assault, Yamashita's forces had shattered the 11th Indian Division, secured a critical crossing, and opened the road to Singapore. The campaign's southern phase had begun.   As British formations collapsed at Slim River and scattered across northern Malaya, Dalforce—the Chinese volunteer army officially formed on December 25th—was already seeing combat. This 4,000-strong unit, hastily organized under Lieutenant Colonel John Dalley and comprised predominantly of ethnic Chinese recruits, had begun operations despite severe handicaps. Many fighters carried sporting rifles rather than military-grade weapons; critical supply shipments had been lost when the SS Empress of Asia sank. Yet they fought. Dalforce members, drawn from Chinese communities throughout Malaya and Singapore, were motivated by more than military duty. Japanese forces had invaded China in 1937, and the brutality of that occupation—massacres, forced labor, cultural suppression—was well known to these volunteers. Many had family connections to China and viewed the Japanese invasion of Malaya as an extension of the same imperial aggression. Unlike British forces, which operated under colonial orders, Chinese volunteers fought for their own survival and that of their communities. Their involvement during this phase remained largely in supporting roles and guerrilla actions, as Dalforce units engaged Japanese forces in skirmishes and ambushes across the peninsula. Though initially integrated with British command structures, their effectiveness and commitment stood in sharp contrast to the demoralization gripping the official military hierarchy. While British brigades were fragmenting and retreating in confusion, Chinese resistance fighters demonstrated the kind of stubborn determination that would characterize their struggle throughout the coming Japanese occupation. General Sir Archibald Wavell arrived in Singapore on January 7th as Percival's forces were collapsing at Slim River. Wavell carried considerable prestige. Despite his mixed record against Rommel in North Africa, even the Desert Fox himself rated Wavell highly. Auchinleck, Wavell's replacement in the Middle East, later wrote of him: "In no sense do I wish to infer that I found an unsatisfactory situation on my arrival—far from it. Not only was I greatly impressed by the solid foundations laid by my predecessor, but I was also able the better to appreciate the vastness of the problems with which he had been confronted and the greatness of his achievements, in a command in which some 40 different languages are spoken by the British and allied forces." Churchill had relieved Wavell in June following failed operations, and he was subsequently appointed commander in chief of ABDACOM (American, British, Dutch, Australian Command) for the Far East. Upon landing, Wavell assumed control of the British Far East Command and immediately traveled to Rasa to assess the situation. He encountered Brigadiers Stewart and Selby—the men responsible for defending Trolak and Slim River. Wavell recalled: "I have never seen two men look so tired." The scale of the catastrophe became apparent. Stewart's 12th Brigade, once formidable, could muster only 430 officers and men—roughly one-sixth its original strength, with barely 200 armed troops fit for combat. Selby's 28th Brigade fared slightly better at 750 men. The sight shocked Wavell, and he immediately suspected serious command failures under Percival. What Wavell did not know was that Percival had already decided to abandon central Malaya forty-eight hours before the Japanese reached Slim Bridge. This strategic decision, however, was proving catastrophic in execution. Wavell quickly grasped that Johor—the last state before Singapore—would be decisive. He needed to buy time for reinforcements and reorganize the scattered forces into defensible positions. Wavell appointed the 8th Australian Division under Major General Gordon Bennett to defend northwestern Johor, while Indian forces took responsibility for southern and northeastern Johor. Bennett, however, was frustrated by the defensive posture. The plan involved retreating 140 miles and abandoning key terrain to establish a new line in northern Johor, bolstered by incoming East Anglian Territorials. Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Harrison, who had narrowly escaped Japanese tanks at Tanjong Malim, later wrote that he "could not conceal his admiration for the men who almost killed him." Japanese officer Mustaph Ghulam observed their "heedless of danger and of their isolation they had shattered the division; they had captured the Slim bridge by their reckless and gallant determination." Even Stewart acknowledged mistakes: "I am rightly criticised for the location of Brigade Headquarters, and for not using the Field Artillery in an anti-tank role...It is no excuse, but I had never taken part in an exercise embodying a coordinated anti-tank defence or this type of attack. The use of tanks on a road at night was a surprise." Wavell intervened decisively in the dispute between Percival and Bennett. Accepting the withdrawal to Johor, he overruled Percival's reluctance to commit the Australians to the threatened western coast. As Bennett put it, they were "going into bat, we must take certain risks on the east coast temporarily in order to organize a good defense on the western side which is immediately threatened." Wavell reorganized Bennett's forces into Westforce, positioning them to counter Yamashita's inevitable coastal advance. Westforce dug in along the Muar River to buy time for Indian forces to reorganize. As the British retreated, they employed scorched earth tactics—burning rubber factories, mines, and fuel stocks. Percival acknowledged the cost to British prestige: "Pillars of smoke and flame rose into the sky as rubber factories, mine machinery, petrol and oil stocks were denied. Small wonder that British prestige sank to a very low ebb among the population." Booby traps inflicted additional casualties on the pursuing Japanese. The 5th Army advanced toward Gemas, where Captain Jack Duffy's engineers prepared a devastating surprise. When the bridge over the Gemensah River exploded, Duffy recalled the chaos: "Japanese bodies, bicycles, timber, rocks and earth flew far and wide in a huge red flash leaving a gaping space where the bridge had been." The 8th Australian Division's ambush mauled the Japanese column. Lieutenant Colonel Frederick "Black Jack" Galleghan held the position, his anti-tank gunners methodically dismantling enemy armor. Sergeant Kenneth Harrison, commanding a 2-pounder, described the grim ballet of tank warfare: "These burst on contact and the flash enabled me to see where we were hitting, and to adjust the sights accordingly. Eventually our infantry sent a message, 'Tank destroyed. Save ammunition.' It lay there with men crawling out like wood bugs from a burning log." After inflicting heavy losses, Harrison and his partner reflected on the moment: "we wave back rather lamely, but that was without doubt the proudest moment either of us will ever know." After 24 brutal hours, Galleghan withdrew. Tsuji, observing the Australians' ferocity, wrote they "fought with a bravery we had not previously seen." Fresh reinforcements—including the 53rd Infantry Brigade—arrived in Singapore, kindling hope that momentum might shift. Yet south of Gemas at Muar, Brigadier Horatio Duncan's 45th Brigade faced Japan's elite: Nishimura's Konoye Imperial Guards Division. The disparity was stark. By January 16th, Muar fell. Lieutenant Colonel John Williams, leading a Jat battalion of teenage recruits, was caught in a Japanese encirclement after being bypassed upstream. He was beheaded by a Japanese officer wielding a katana. On January 17th, Australian reinforcements under Lieutenant Colonel Charles Anderson arrived to stiffen the line at Bakri, but the situation remained precarious. As Duncan's brigade retreated, Percival grasped the threat: the Imperial Guards had become the spearhead. He committed Anderson's 19th Battalion to hold the door open while the 53rd Brigade deployed immediately into combat. One Australian officer, watching newly arrived British soldiers take up positions, noted their shock: "they were a fine body of men but almost dazed by the position in which they found themselves." The contrast was stark—while Australians fought for their lives, a British officer was reportedly heard discussing getting "the officers mess going." At Bakri, the air attacks became horrifying. Lieutenant Ben Hackney witnessed devastation that defied quick description: "just beside the road a naked waist with two twisted legs lay about two yards from a scarred bleeding head with a neck, half a chest and one arm." Gunner Russell Brandon saw their best soldier fall: "the black bastard was dead, our best soldier had not survived and we were now surrounded." The Imperial Guards attacked from multiple directions, tightening their encirclement. Malaya's situation had become critical. The defenders faced a dire situation. Muar had fallen with heavy losses to the 45th Indian Brigade, forcing a disheartening retreat. The Australians were driven from Gemas, and remnants of both forces regrouped at Bakri, establishing a defensive perimeter as Japanese forces converged. Nearly all of Duncan's officer staff had been killed in an aerial attack. The newly arrived 53rd Brigade—the 5th & 6th Norfolks and 2nd Cambridgeshires, fresh from three months at sea—were thrown into the frontlines without adequate acclimation or training for jungle warfare. Percival ordered a counterattack to recapture Muar, mobilizing the Garhwalis reserves for a three-pronged advance. But Lt. Colonel James Woolridge, the Garhwalis' commander, was killed during a dawn reconnaissance patrol. The counterattack collapsed into disaster. Most remaining British officers were killed or wounded; survivors seized Bren guns and attempted to hold a rubber estate before retreating to Bakri amid artillery and aerial bombardment. Australian gunners, watching the fleeing sepoys, dubbed them the "Galloping Garhwalis." On January 18th, General Nishimura of the Imperial Guards Division launched a three-pronged assault that turned into a siege. Captain Shiegeo Gotanda led a tank vanguard at 6:45 AM without infantry support, inspired by Shimada's success at Slim River. Waiting were 2-pounder guns commanded by Lance Sergeant Clarrie Thornton. As six tanks approached in single file through a narrow, heavily vegetated cutting, Thornton's crew hit the first, third, and fourth tanks. The armor-piercing rounds penetrated the T-95s with devastating internal damage. All six tanks were immobilized. A Japanese sniper shot Thornton in the thigh before he was evacuated; he received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his bravery. Encouraged by this victory, Percival decided to contain the Muar front but misjudged Japanese strength, believing it to be small when it was the entire Imperial Guards Division. Some Japanese forces had landed further down the coast, preparing to cut off the Muar-Bakri line from the south. Colonel Robertson was shot in the leg while riding a dispatch rider's motorbike and did not survive. Duncan, still recovering from an aerial bombardment that killed his officer staff, relinquished command to Lt. Colonel Charles Anderson. Anderson found himself commanding about 1,000 teenage Indian boys—just over a battalion—many only 17 years old. Though he held Indian soldiers in high regard from his East Africa experience, he expressed concern about their immaturity and lack of training. Some of Anderson's Australians launched a counterattack west of Bakri and trapped 200 Japanese soldiers. Platoon commander Patrick Reynolds described the chaos of Japanese soldiers "running in circles." When a seemingly dead enemy soldier suddenly rose with a grenade, Reynolds shot him just as it exploded, injuring himself. Another Japanese attempted to push his rifle toward Reynolds; when his pistol jammed, his batman shot the enemy soldier. The Australians increasingly believed rumors that the Japanese were "fanatics." Sergeant Desmond Mulcahy was searching a fallen Japanese sergeant's body when the man suddenly sprang up with a grenade. Mulcahy grabbed it to prevent detonation, but the Japanese sergeant struck him with it and punched him until another soldier bayoneted the attacker. Private Bluey Watkins set down his rifle to inspect Japanese bodies; one seized it and nearly shot him. The lesson was harsh: capturing Japanese alive was too risky. Private Charles Warden of B Company, just five months shy of 17, remarked, "from the first engagement we learned not to trust their wounded." The Australians killed approximately 140 of the 200 trapped Japanese, suffering only 10 casualties and 15 wounded—their high point in the campaign. By dawn on January 20th, Anderson received orders to withdraw toward Yong Peng. The Imperial Guards Division had established so many roadblocks that encirclement seemed imminent. A single company from the 19th Indians held off the Japanese while the rest retreated toward Parit Sulong, then found themselves nearly surrounded as the Japanese set up additional roadblocks. At the first roadblock, Anderson instructed his Australians to charge with bayonets while singing "Waltzing Matilda." Leading personally, he fired as he directed movements; the men likened him to a comic book hero come to life. As they neared Parit Sulong, Duncan—still recovering from concussion—commanded the rearguard and led a bayonet charge of Jats to recover lost vehicles. Anderson described him as "a very able and gallant officer," but Duncan was killed during the charge. By January 21st, they approached the Parit Sulong bridge, held securely by the Japanese. Two RAF Fairey Albacores and three Brewster Buffalo escorts arrived from Singapore to drop supplies, but when Australians rushed to collect them, they found only canned beetroot instead of bully beef. By January 22nd, Anderson knew holding the triangular perimeter was impossible. He attempted one final assault on the bridge. The Japanese had set up three barricades using sandbags, oil drums, and timber, covered by heavy machine guns on high ground. Approximately 30 Australians stormed while 100 provided cover fire. They breached the first barricade, reached the third, but machine gun fire blew apart the sandbags. With only five Australians left alive, they crawled back. Anderson ended the sacrifice, deeming it futile. He faced an impossible choice: abandon 150 severely wounded and break through the jungle to Yong Peng, about 12 miles away. They believed wounded would receive decent treatment; the Japanese had allowed Australian ambulances to pass at Gemas without interference. They did not yet know the truth. Initially, the Japanese were slow to close in, contenting themselves with sniping and probing. By 2:30 PM, wounded Lieutenants Hackney and Tibbitts lay beneath a wrecked utility truck supporting the rearguard with a Bren gun until ammunition ran out. The first Imperial Guards approached from the west, bayoneting and shooting anyone unable to escape. Those who made it across a drainage ditch were assembled in front of Public Works Department buildings and garages, sitting naked except for boots while Japanese searched them for weapons or maps. Requests for medical attention and water were denied. Many passing troops stopped "to have fun at the expense of the wounded defenders." Hackney noted, "the wound in my back attracted the attention of many who, whenever possible, took delight in kicking and belting the place." The Japanese did not reserve their hatred for whites alone. An Indian soldier with half his hand blown off and bleeding profusely from a thigh wound was beaten into unconsciousness, then when he rose groaning, subjected to frenzied kicks before a bayonet repeatedly thrust into him pushed him into the drainage ditch. When his head surfaced gasping for air, he was shot. Wounded prisoners were crammed into sheds. Hackney described it as "a stinking, scrambling hellhole, full of tortured, groaning, delirious soldiers." Lt. General Takuma Nishimura arrived and ordered disposal of the wounded. Guards appeared with water canteens and cigarettes as war correspondents photographed prisoners reaching for them. Once the correspondents left, the water was poured out, cigarettes pocketed, and prisoners forced back inside. Most Australians were tied together and shot. Japanese officers drew samurai swords to execute Indians. Many were doused with petrol and set alight. In Russell Braddon's words, "after their incineration, they were systematically run over, back and forth, by Japanese-driven trucks." Lance Havildar Benedict knocked the rifle from his executioner's hands and dove into the water, swimming away while Japanese fired wildly. Hackney, stabbed by a bayonet, pretended dead, hearing men burned alive nearby. He eventually found two survivors, Sergeant Ron Croft and another private, both reeking of petrol, who had escaped into the jungle. This became known as the Parit Sulong Massacre. Yamashita later claimed that had he commanded instead of Nishimura, such a massacre would not have occurred. Nishimura later oversaw occupational forces in Singapore and allegedly presided over the Sook Ching Massacre. He received a life sentence after the war but served only four years before returning to Japan. The Australian government apprehended him, subjected him to military court, convicted him, and executed him on June 11, 1951. The Muar battle signaled the end of serious Johore defense. Percival's last chance was a lateral line from Batu Pahat to Mersing, but Yamashita struck with a three-pronged offensive across both coasts and the central trunk road. On January 26th, a Hudson patrol spotted Japanese transports heading toward Endau. Air Vice Marshal Conway Pulford's squadrons—21 Vildebeest and Albacore torpedo bombers, 9 Hudsons, 15 Buffalos, and 8 Hawker Hurricanes—launched a mass daylight attack. The Hurricanes, equipped with air-intake filters and 12 machine guns instead of the usual 8, were less maneuverable than the Zero below 20,000 feet. Among the 24 pilots were 5 Australians, 1 Texan, and 4 Canadians, including future Australian Prime Minister John Gorton, who survived a crash that injured his face against his gunsight. Leading the first wave, Tim Rowland's Vildebeests were outfitted with 250-500 pound bombs due to shallow waters. The wave broke through clouds at 2,000 feet, heavily laden and slow—"an anti-aircraft gunners dream." Rowland's aircraft exploded mid-air before starting his bomb run. RAF Flight Lt Tom Lamb dived toward the beaches, later recalling: "It's a wonder the old crate didn't fall apart. Within seconds the sky was thick with aircraft… it was disconcerting to see rows of holes appearing all over the place in the fabric and hear the twang of parting wires. I could hear Sharp [his Australian gunner] blazing away and I heard him shout that he had got a Zero. At one time I could see five parachutes in the sky and two aircraft going down in flames… I dropped my bombs at little more than tree-top height… doing some vicious skids whenever attacked. Suddenly Gil Sharp gave a shout… A shell had got him right through the knee and the lower half of his leg was hanging off. Wills [sergeant observer] took over the gun." The initial wave faced not only anti-aircraft fire from IJN warships but 19 Nates and a single Nakajima Ki-44 "Tojo." It lost 5 Vildebeests but successfully bombed 2 transports and shot down 1 Nate. The second wave—9 Vildebeests, 3 Albacores, 4 Buffalos, and 7 Hurricanes—encountered problems as escorts arrived late. Before support could assist, 10 Nates and 2 Tojos intercepted them, resulting in the loss of 5 Vildebeests, 2 Albacores, and 1 Hurricane. Over 38 aircrew went missing, with 27 confirmed dead, including both squadron leaders. Air Vice Marshal Paul Maltby assured returning pilots there would be no more daylight attacks like that. Subsequent unescorted waves had little impact. That night, HMS Thanet and HMAS Vampire attempted a hit-and-run torpedo attack. Most torpedoes missed; both destroyers came under searchlight fire. Thanet was hit in the engine room, and her crew abandoned ship. Vampire could not safely rescue them and retreated to Singapore. Of Thanet's crew, 50 men, including Captain Lt. Commander Davis, struggled to reach shore on a grueling march back to Singapore. Some 30 sailors were rescued by the IJN destroyer Shirayuki, including Sub Lt. Danger, Thanet's torpedo officer. The Shirayuki later landed at Endau, where all sailors except Danger were murdered. Danger became significant as the first Royal Navy officer captured by the IJN. Endau fell to the Japanese 18th Division. Japanese forces bypassed Mersing, defended by the Australian 18th Battalion, who were ordered to withdraw as part of a general retreat to Singapore. At dawn, the 18th Battalion reached the Nithsdale rubber estate north of Jemaluang, where they ambushed a Japanese vanguard. Using Bren guns, 16 25-pounders, and mortars firing simultaneously, they trapped Yamashita's 18th Division troops between two companies. However, orders came to disengage and retreat to Jemaluang. By January 27th, Percival instructed all commanders to gather on Singapore; the causeway would be destroyed on February 1st. On January 28th, the 26th Australian Battalion covered Westforce's rearguard south of Simpang Rengam. After a frontal assault, the Japanese launched an outflanking maneuver through rubber plantations to cut the Trunk Road. Anticipating this, Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick "Black Jack" Galleghan launched a decisive counterattack using armored cars, inflicting heavy casualties and forcing retreat in disorder. However, Japanese toxic smoke bombs forced the Australians to withdraw hours later. By January 30th, Galleghan's 26th Battalion reached Singapore safely. Meanwhile, the 15th Brigade garrison at Batu Pahat, including survivors from Slim River and the 5th & 6th Norfolks and 2nd Cambridgeshires, was tasked with holding the defense to facilitate withdrawal. However, they lacked sufficient manpower for multiple choke points. During the Muar operation, the Japanese had inserted a battalion by boat into the area that now reinforced by Nishimura's Imperial Guards, penetrated British defenses on bicycles and established roadblocks similar to those used against Anderson's men. Brigadier Bernard Challen, recently taking over after Moorhead's death, had requested permission to retreat to Senggarang, 10 miles down the coast. Percival insisted on holding the large airfield, only 60 miles from Singapore, awaiting two additional brigades from the 18th East Anglian Division. As time passed, Percival ordered Challen to withdraw, but the message came too late; Challen's approximately 3,000 men were already retreating when they encountered a roadblock just 500 yards beyond a bridge. His force probed the defenses and discovered another block being established behind them. Challen's troops were becoming encircled, and his wireless communications with divisional HQ were down. A relief effort was initiated, sending men with two armored cars to advance 5 miles north of Rengit. They were immediately fired upon from all sides, with another roadblock established behind them. Vehicles and heavy guns were abandoned as they retreated to an outpost at Rengit, soon under siege. A small relief force reached Challen, informing him that Singapore's evacuation was imminent and they needed to hurry. Thus, Challen faced a situation similar to Anderson's at Parit Sulong—forced to leave the wounded behind. One night, as the force tried to cross a river, "a burst of machine gun fire and a salvo of mortar bombs scattered the leading company. The panic spread; many men were drowned in a swamp." Challen attempted to restore order but became hopelessly lost. He encountered Japanese soldiers who shot his Indian orderly. After crawling along the roadside and climbing over barricades (which the Japanese mistook him for one of their own), he stole a bicycle and rode away. At dawn on January 29th, after being separated for over 24 hours, he was captured by an Imperial Guards patrol as he exited a hut. He was the highest-ranking British prisoner captured to that point. Colonel Morrison took command and worked to restore order. Realizing they were cut off, he decided to lead 1,500 men back to the coast and attempt to arrange a naval pickup after dark. Morrison established a defensive perimeter in a coastal village about three miles south of Rengit, less than a mile from the coastal road. The navy responded by dispatching the Yangtze River gunboats Scorpion and Dragonfly, which towed numerous small boats, sampans, and dinghies. As troops navigated through mangroves, the situation drew comparisons to Dunkirk. Men were transported partially submerged in water at night, anxiously wondering about venomous snakes or crocodiles. The force successfully reached Singapore on February 1st after Indian sappers used naval depth charges to create a 70-foot-wide gap in the Causeway. The withdrawal went remarkably smoothly, with the Japanese not pressing hard. Defenders left to the sound of Argyll pipers playing "Blue Bonnets O'er the Border." Despite their good fortune, the cost was significant—several hundred men missing, all artillery abandoned, and about 80% of their Bren guns left behind. The situation on the central front was far worse. Brigadier George Painter's 22nd Indian Brigade, already weakened during fighting in Kuantan and numbering around 2,000 men, was cut off and disappeared while trying to escape into the jungle. The problem occurred because General Arthur Barstow's 9th Indian Division kept Painter's 22nd and Lay's 8th brigades farther inland to prevent outflanking of the Eastern Australians. A railway bridge between the two brigades was blown up prematurely, possibly by accident, severing the telephone line that facilitated communication. Painter had already sent back most wheeled transport, Bren gun carriers, and notably, his headquarters' wireless truck. Without the telephone line, Lay's 8th Brigade could not inform Painter's 22nd of their movement. The Japanese from the 5th Division quickly exploited the gap, inserting themselves between the brigades and effectively cutting off Painter's 22nd. When Barstow realized what happened, he exploded at Lay: "You've sold the show...hel take you, man, get a battalion on that high ground." Barstow made his way to the railway line, intent on warning Painter. Accompanied by two Australian officers and a Sikh, they boarded a push-pull flatbed trolley. They arrived at the blown-up bridge and continued on foot, with Barstow leading the way, distinguished by the red band around his major-general's service cap—a prime target for Japanese snipers, who ultimately shot him dead. After Admiral Phillips, Barstow became the second highest-ranking officer killed in the war to that point. The 22nd was at risk of complete encirclement, prompting their retreat into the jungle. They had not received rations or supplies in some time and had several wounded soldiers whom they refused to abandon. Captain Denis Russell-Roberts noted the stretcher bearers' struggle through jungle swamps at night: "Shortly all four men were floundering in the bog. The man on the off fore position suddenly staggered, his knees were shaking wildly. He sank to one knee with a shout of terror in his hoarse voice and the stretcher lurched over on its side… This was an awful moment and it happened over and over again in one form or another. I think it was the groans and at times the shrieks of the wounded which struck the deepest note of horror… On the other side of the crossing the same difficulties were encountered. There the wounded man would almost inevitably find himself tilted backwards at the same steep angle with his head close to the level of the mud and his body uncomfortably positioned in a semi-vertical position. And through this hell passed twelve stretchers, twelve wounded men who were by now gangrenous, delirious and half-mad, forty-eight gallant men who carried the stretchers… a slow-moving picture of unforgettable misery." Despite their efforts, they ultimately had to leave the wounded behind, entrusting them to Tamil rubber workers at a large estate. The remainder of the brigade continued southward. They encountered approximately 300-400 Japanese soldiers but chose to bypass them; their own men were starving and lacked strength for combat. Just as they prepared a rearguard, they were ambushed. Commander Parkin raised his Thompson submachine gun and urged his men to fire at every visible Japanese soldier, even though most were low on ammunition. Many Indians mistakenly believed Parkin intended to surrender and were stunned when he opted to fight instead. Painter's personal battalion soon encountered more Japanese forces and was forced to surrender. The day after the causeway was destroyed, Brigadier Parkin arrived in Singapore with 24 of his soldiers, having commandeered a Chinese truck, driven to the northern side of the straits, and signaled sampans for rescue. In following days, a few stragglers from Painter's 22nd also reached Singapore, bringing the total to 63 men. Painter's 22nd brigade suffered catastrophic loss, all due to a severed telephone line. Many men did not make it to Singapore, but those who did found only brief respite. Yamashita was now preparing to lay siege to the "Gibraltar of the East," the Fortress of Singapore. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Trapped at Parit Sulong, Anderson's Australians fought through Japanese roadblocks before being forced to abandon 150 wounded—who faced massacre at enemy hands. Meanwhile, Endau fell after a costly RAF raid. Challen's brigade at Batu Pahat retreated through chaos, while Painter's 22nd Indian Brigade vanished in the jungle after a severed telephone line cut them off. Singapore's fortress awaited.

Send us Fan MailAl Nofi joins us to discuss the adventures of the young Grant at Vicksburg!Get your copy here: https://www.savasbeatie.com/copy-of-fred-grant-at-vicksburg-a-boy-s-memoir-at-his-father-s-side-during-the-american-civil-war/Music is graciously provided by Craig Duncan.Our website: https://www.untoldcivilwar.com/Our Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMMWxSupport the show:One time donation of any amount here: https://www.paypal.me/supportuntoldCWMonthly payment through Patreon and unlock unique perks!https://www.patreon.com/user?u=51151470&fan_landing=truThis show is made possible by the support of our sponsors:The Badge MakerProudly carrying affordable, USA made products for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.Civil War TrailsThe world's largest 'Open Air Museum' offering over 1,350 sites across six states. Paddle to Frederick Douglass's birthplace, follow the Gettysburg Campaign turn-by-turn in your car, or hike to mountain tops where long forgotten earthworks and artillery positions await you.Military Images MagazineAmerica's only magazine dedicated solely to the study of portrait photographs of Civil War soldiers.The Excelsior BrigadeDealers in FINE CIVIL WAR MEMORABILIA.The goal of the "Brigade" is to offer high quality, original items while ensuring the best in service and customer satisfaction.HistoryFixCome enjoy history! Explore stories from the Middle Ages to the early 21st century. Enjoy historical video content always ad free and get a 7-day free trial as you explore our site.1863 DesignsAre you looking for Civil War themed graphic design, logo design, historical art and or hand drawn art? Look no further than 1863 Designs. Use the code, “UNTOLD” for 15% off your purchase! Iron Horse Military AntiquesIron Horse Military Antiques is an Illinois-based buyer and seller of nineteenth-century documents, letters, images, and militaria, specializing in the American Civil War.Support the showSupport the show

Cette année la BSPP, Brigade de sapeurs-pompiers de Paris fête ses 215 ans de création. Femmes et hommes y servent sous la devise « Sauver ou périr », et le 17 et 18 Septembre ils commémorent cet anniversaire. Vous pouvez les accompagner le 18 Septembre à 8h pour leur cérémonie ouverte à tous devant le parvis de l'hôtel de ville de Paris !

+++ Alle Rabattcodes und Infos zu unseren Werbepartnern finden Sie hier: https://linktr.ee/augsteinundblome +++ Die Spritpreise steigen weiter. Was kann der Staat tun, um die Bürger zu entlasten, und welche politischen Folgen könnten die hohen Preise haben?Außerdem geht es um die Bundeswehr und ihre Probleme, genügend Freiwillige für eine Brigade in Litauen zu finden … Dieser Podcast wird vermarktet von Julep Media: sales@julep.de Wir verarbeiten im Zusammenhang mit dem Angebot unserer Podcasts Daten. Wenn Sie der automatischen Übermittlung der Daten widersprechen wollen, melden Sie sich hier: datenschutz@julep.de

For review:1. The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland called Monday for the British government to "prepare for, plan and facilitate" constitutional change that could lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom, with the remarks coming days after President Trump said he would "love to see" Irish reunification.2. Apparent Houthi attacks early Tuesday morning triggered warnings in six Saudi cities, including Yanbu, the kingdom's main Red Sea oil port, and Riyadh warned it would react “firmly” to the Iran-backed rebels' ongoing missile and drone attacks.3. The military chiefs of Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt held a meeting in Germany last week about the war with Iran and regional tensions, two Israeli officials told the Axios news site.The private meeting at a secluded ski resort, organized by US CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper and confirmed by CENTCOM to Axios, was the first such gathering since the US and Israel launched their joint campaign against Iran in February, according to the report.4. US President Donald Trump's administration is planning to sell to Israel a munitions package worth $2.8 billion, which will include tens of thousands of highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, according to a US official familiar with the sale.5. The IDF and Shin Bet confirm killing the commander of Hamas's Rafah Brigade in an airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip this evening.6. Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced today that for the first time it is “integrating its SPICE 1000 air-to-surface munition on the F-35 fighter aircraft,” a move it sees as a “significant step” in allowing other F-35 users to use the munition.SPICE stands for Smart, Precise Impact and Cost-Effective and refers to a line of munitions meant to provide a stand-off strike capability of more than 75 miles (120km). 7. According to a CBO report, combat operations in Iran have cost the Defense Department around $38 billion as of August 1. 

Von Freiwilligkeit zum Zwang – es war abzusehen. Noch immer fehlt der deutschen Brigade in Litauen Personal. Nun ist die Katze aus dem Sack. Am Montag hat Verteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius grünes Licht dafür gegeben, dass etwa 500 Soldaten verpflichtend nach Litauen versetzt werden. Mit anderen Worten: Zwangsversetzung an die – wie Politiker es seitWeiterlesen

Last time we spoke about the fall of Hong Kong. As dawn broke on December 20, 1941, Japanese battalions tightened their grip on Hong Kong Island. While the defenders fought desperately at Repulse Bay Hotel, Wongneichong Gap, and the heights around Mount Nicholson and Mount Cameron, piecemeal counter-attacks by exhausted Canadians, Royal Scots, Rajputs, and Hong Kong Volunteers were shattered by rain, darkness, and poor coordination.Resistance stiffened at Stanley Peninsula, but ammunition ran low and hope faded. On Christmas Eve, the Japanese stormed St Stephen's College hospital. They bayoneted wounded soldiers in their beds, murdered doctors, and raped nurses in an orgy of horror that became known as the St Stephen's Massacre.On Christmas morning—forever "Black Christmas"—Governor Young surrendered the colony after seventeen days of fighting. As white flags rose, Rear-Admiral Chan Chak and a small party made a daring escape by sea under fire, eventually rescued by Chinese Communist guerrillas of the East River Column who would save hundreds more lives in the months ahead.   #219 The Malayan Campaign Part 1: Bicycle Blitzkrieg   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Now in the last episode we spoke about the battle of Hong Kong, which of course was fought on Chinese territory and did involve Chinese participation. I took some time to think about what aspects of the early Pacific War should be covered in depth here, ie: what pertains the most to the Chinese experience. We are not going to talk about the Philippines or Dutch East Indies, but the Malayan campaign and fall of Singapore I would argue need to be dived into. There was a lot of ethnic Chinese participation in this campaign. No worries after this brief series on the Malayan Campaign we will be jumping back to China. Following World War One, Britain sought to counter growing Japanese ambitions by establishing a major naval base in Singapore during the 1920s. The location offered strategic advantages, particularly its exemption from the Washington Naval Treaty's non-fortification clause, making it ideal for housing a powerful deterrent fleet. The plan was straightforward: maintain overwhelming naval superiority to discourage Japanese expansion. Yet this calculation proved dangerously optimistic. Japanese aggression accelerated throughout the 1930s, while the European war's outbreak in 1939 drained Britain's resources, leaving its Far Eastern colonies—Malaya, Burma, and Hong Kong—dangerously exposed. Churchill remained convinced that Japan would not strike in 1941, prompting him to channel reinforcements toward the Mediterranean theater. The defensive strategy hinged on buying time; should Japan attack, British forces would delay the enemy while holding Singapore as a fortress until relief arrived. This plan contained a fatal flaw: Britain lacked the capacity to actually send reinforcements to the region. Commander-in-Chief Robert Brooke-Popham led Britain's Far Eastern Command from Malaysia, acutely aware of the challenge ahead. Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival commanded ground forces comprising 31 poorly trained infantry battalions—approximately 88,600 personnel total—largely untrained for jungle warfare. These troops were distributed across three divisions. Air defense proved equally problematic. With only fourteen squadrons flying outdated aircraft, the RAF faced a critical shortfall. Squadrons were scattered across multiple airfields: Vickers Vildebeest and PBY Catalina aircraft at Seletar; Bristol Blenheims at Tengah; Brewster Buffalos at Sembawang and Kallang; further Buffalos and Blenheims at Sungei Patani; Lockheed Hudsons at Kota Bharu; and additional Blenheims at Kuantan and Alor Setar. Allied units occupied three strategic zones. The Indian 11th Infantry Division under Major General David Murray-Lyon held northern Malaya, defending airfields and the Thai frontier from positions near Kota Bharu, Jitra, and Alor Setar. These installations remained lightly garrisoned and vulnerable. The Indian 9th Infantry Division occupied central Malaya, tasked with holding delaying positions at Jitra and Gurun—positions themselves poorly constructed and uncoordinated. Australia's 8th Division under Gordon Bennett anchored the south near Mersing and Johor, forming the last line before Singapore's fortress. Singapore itself bristled with coastal defenses and commanded a substantial naval garrison, expected to repel any Japanese approach. A week before Japan's offensive erupted, Churchill sent Force Z to Singapore—the battleship Prince of Wales, battlecruiser Repulse, and four destroyers. Despite vigorous objections from admirals, particularly Captain William Davis, who warned the Prince of Wales without air cover would be "a hostage to fortune," Churchill overruled them, seeking to project confidence and maintain American goodwill. Admiral Sir Tom Phillips commanded Force Z. Known as "Tom Thumb" for his diminutive stature, Phillips sparked controversy—critics labeled him a "desk admiral"—yet Field Marshal Smuts called him "an admirable choice" and American Admiral Thomas Hart praised his administrative acumen. Phillips' record was mixed. He advocated astutely for tank deployment in Malaya and correctly questioned the Brewster Buffalo's effectiveness, urging Hurricanes instead. Yet he fatally underestimated the threat aircraft posed to capital ships, believing the Prince of Wales' anti-aircraft batteries could defend a maneuvering vessel. An unnoticed handicap compounded this: tropical humidity had disabled the Prince of Wales' fire-control computer before she ever fired. Force Z reached Singapore on December 2, 1941, amid misplaced confidence. Nineteen-year-old Richard Smith recalled: "Everyone believed the Japanese fleet was made of rice paper and string. We assumed we would crush them effortlessly." Churchill's public declaration seemed to goad Japan into action. Admiral Yamamoto responded decisively, dispatching thirty-six Mitsubishi bombers to reinforce existing aircraft and ordering intensive training for "ship-killing"—specialized torpedo and bombing attacks. Three air groups, led by Miyauchi, Nakanishi, and Shoji, trained relentlessly in low-level runs and ocean navigation. Phillips, stripped of air cover, commanded only aging destroyers alongside his capital ships. The stage was set for disaster. In November 1940, the German raider Atlantis captured the British steamer Automedon in the Indian Ocean, seizing documents destined for Air Marshal Brooke-Popham that exposed Singapore's vulnerabilities. The Germans shared this intelligence with Japan in December. By January 1941, the Japanese had also broken British Army codes, revealing the weakness of Singapore's defenses and enabling them to plan an invasion accordingly. The invasion of Malaya followed an audacious strategy devised by Colonel Tsuji Masanobu. Japanese forces would conduct amphibious landings in southern Thailand and northern Malaya, then push 400 miles through jungle terrain toward Singapore. The 25th Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Yamashita Tomoyuki and initially comprising two divisions, led this operation, supported by Admiral Kondō Nobutake's 2nd Fleet, which provided convoy escort. Thailand's strategic position was crucial; the British could not defend it, offering Japan a favorable staging ground. Marshal Plaek Phibun, Thailand's leader, had informally agreed to allow Japanese passage but simultaneously negotiated with British and American diplomats, creating uncertainty. A second force, the 15th Army under Lieutenant-General Iida Shōjirō, was preparing to invade Burma through Thailand. If the Thai withheld passage by December 7, these forces would advance directly from Indochina. Brooke-Popham devised Operation Matador to counter the Japanese threat. This ambitious plan called for the 11th Indian Division to preemptively seize Singora and Patani—critical Thai ports essential to Japanese invasion plans. The operation's centerpiece was capturing the Ledge, a key terrain feature south of Patani. Control of the Ledge would allow British forces to block roads from Patani, securing retreat routes for the 11th Division and denying the Japanese access to rear areas. Failure would expose the British to encirclement and force withdrawal from Perak and Kedah. However, Matador faced insurmountable obstacles. Britain was uncertain whether Thailand would resist or accommodate Japan, and invading neutral Thai territory risked driving the Thai government into Japanese arms. Command hesitation, combined with poor intelligence, created fatal delays. Matador was never approved. Instead, authorities authorized Operation Krohcol, a scaled-down alternative named after the town of Kroh. This operation tasked a small British-Indian force with advancing into southern Thailand to capture the Ledge, destroy bridges and roads, and delay Japanese movements. Though far less ambitious than Matador, Krohcol represented Britain's final attempt at preemptive action. It would be activated only after Japan opened hostilities, but by then, opportunity had already slipped away.   On December 4, Japanese transport ships escorted by Admiral Kondō's fleet departed Hainan Island toward their objectives. Two days later, British reconnaissance spotted the fleet, but Brooke-Popham lacked authorization to intervene—he could only alert his forces. At 23:00 on December 7, Japan issued an ultimatum to Thailand, demanding passage and giving a two-hour response window. Unable to locate Prime Minister Phibun until late morning, Thailand was invaded hours later. From Indochina, Japanese Imperial Guards and the 55th Division landed at Phra Tabong and pushed northwest toward Aranyaprathet. The 5th Division's regiment landed at Patani while the division's main force seized Singora, quickly overwhelming Thai defenders. From Saigon, elements of the 15th Army conducted additional naval landings across Thailand but encountered unexpectedly fierce Thai resistance that stalled their progress. Just before Pearl Harbor came under attack, the Japanese 18th Division landed at Kota Bharu. The defenders—the 8th Indian Infantry Brigade under Brigadier B.W. Key, supported by artillery from the 21st Mountain Battery and the 73rd Field Battery—faced a daunting task. The 3/17th Dogra Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel G.A. Preston, held a 10-mile coastal stretch fortified with mines, barbed wire, and pillboxes overlooking the narrow beaches of Badang and Sabak, separated by estuaries and surrounded by creeks, lagoons, and swamp islands. The Dogras unleashed devastating fire as Japanese landing craft approached at midnight. Colonel Masanobu Tsuji observed that enemy pillboxes "responded with such overwhelming force that our men lying on the beach, partially submerged in water, could not lift their heads." The first waves were pinned down, with casualties mounting from artillery, machine gun fire, and Allied aircraft from nearby airfields. British Hudsons bombed the invasion fleet and stranded soldiers, sinking one Japanese transport and destroying seven of their own aircraft in the process. The defenders inflicted heavy casualties, but intense hand-to-hand combat eventually breached the line's center by 03:45, threatening the nearby airfield. Simultaneously, 17 Japanese bombers attacked Singapore with minimal damage and 61 casualties, surprising the British with evidence of enemy long-range aircraft. Japanese fighters and bombers dominated the skies over Kota Bharu and northern Malaysian airfields, demonstrating clear air superiority. Amid the chaos, counterattacks by Malayan battalions failed, forcing the British to destroy northern airfields to prevent capture. The defenders retreated from the beaches to Kota Bharu itself that night. As confusion engulfed British headquarters, Operation Krohcol commenced at 15:00. This scaled-down preemptive operation aimed to delay the Japanese invasion by securing and destroying the Ledge—a six-mile road carved through steep hillside with a sheer drop into a river. Blowing this section would severely impede enemy advance. The force consisted primarily of the 3/16th Punjab Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Henry Moorhead, supplemented by engineers, traveling in Marmon-Herrington trucks provided by the Australian Motor Transport Company. Krohcol was undermanned from the start; the 5/14th Punjab Regiment and artillery battery failed to arrive on schedule, forcing the column to proceed without them. Crossing the border at Kroh, Indian troops encountered determined resistance from Thai police under Major Prayoon Rattanakit in Betong. These roadblocks delayed the Indian advance for two full days while Prayoon's officers simultaneously engaged Japanese forces at Patani. After several hours of combat, Japan and Thailand reached an armistice by midday, with Phibun granting Japan passage, though Thai forces remained neutral. Japanese forces at Patani, navigating poor roads but facing no opposition, began their advance toward the Ledge—approximately 60 miles distant—initiating a critical race against Krohcol to determine who would occupy this vital position first. Meanwhile, renewed fighting erupted at Kota Bharu as Japanese forces infiltrated around British strongpoints, causing alarm among commanders. By December 10, with the situation deteriorating, defenders received authorization to abandon Kota Bharu and withdraw south to Machang.   Just hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, Admiral Phillips ordered Force Z to intercept Japanese invasion forces in the South China Sea without air support. Phillips believed he could "finish quickly and escape to the east before the Japanese could organize a significant attack." Ten Brewster Buffaloes were assigned to support the fleet, but he departed without requesting their cover. Force Z failed to locate the Japanese fleet, which had moved northwest into the Gulf of Siam. By afternoon on December 9, Japanese submarine I-65 detected Force Z, followed by reconnaissance aircraft. When Phillips altered course toward Kuantan, crews grew complacent. Bert Wynn recalled shipboard conversation centered on sinking Japanese warships. A flag officer remarked to CBS correspondent Cecil Brown, "Oh, but they are Japanese. There's nothing to worry about." That evening, Brown questioned whether the British were overconfident given Pearl Harbor. Officers conceded theoretically but remained dismissive. One replied, "We just don't think the enemy is much good. They could not beat China for five years." At 11:00 AM on December 10, Japanese aircraft struck. Three waves of Nell and Betty bombers from Indochina, after more than five hours aloft, approached from the horizon. With no air support—Phillips had maintained radio silence—defense rested entirely on anti-aircraft batteries. Nells attacked at 12,000 feet, dropping 250 kg bombs. Repulse twisted violently, evading most, but one struck her seaplane deck, killing two dozen men instantly. At 11:30, seventeen Nells attacked at wave-top level, focusing on Prince of Wales. Nine aircraft divided their approach, flying below 100 feet from both bows. The ship's inexperienced anti-aircraft crews, hampered by inoperable radar from tropical humidity, struggled to track targets. Once torpedoes were released, the planes sped away, losing only one aircraft.   A single torpedo struck Prince of Wales near the outer propeller shaft. When restarted, water flooded engine room B. Auxiliary power failed, halting drainage and causing an 11.5-degree list to port. Her 5-inch guns became powerless; she slowed to 15 knots, severely crippled. At 12:20, twenty-six Bettys attacked in coordinated "anvil" assaults with simultaneous torpedo drops on both bows. Repulse evaded initially but two or three torpedoes found their mark. One crew member recalled, "Suddenly there was a massive explosion. I immediately knew we'd lost Repulse, for within seconds she took on a frightening list to port, so rapid no amount of counter flooding would save her." Captain's last order: "You've put up a good show, now save yourselves." At 12:23 PM, Repulse rolled over and sank stern-first, her enormous hull protruding vertically from the water. Men jumped into oil-blackened water; many drowned during hours of waiting while destroyer escorts frantically retrieved survivors. Cecil Brown described it as "a confusing, macabre game"—orange flames, white tracers, and gray aircraft "astonishingly close, like butterflies pinned on blue cardboard." With Repulse gone, bombers concentrated on the damaged Prince of Wales. At 12:44, a 500 kg bomb struck between her stacks where wounded crew sheltered, causing devastating casualties. Men ordered to abandon ship faced drowning if trapped below deck. Destroyers rushed in to save swimmers, though HMS Express nearly capsized in rescue efforts. Ten Buffaloes arrived as Prince of Wales sank—too late. One pilot recalled, "After an hour, lack of petrol forced me to leave, but during that hour I had seen many men in dire danger waving, cheering and joking, as if they were holiday-makers waving at a low-flying aircraft. It shook me, for here was something above human nature." In just over an hour, the battleship era ended: 47 British officers and 793 men perished, including Admiral Phillips. Repulse's captain later acknowledged, "The enemy's attacks were undoubtedly carried out magnificently and pressed home effectively. The high-level bombers maintained tight formation and did not veer off course." By December 10, Krohcol reached Betong, just 26 miles from the Ledge. However, a Japanese ambush caught them off-guard near the target, forcing retreat when they were only a mile away. The 5th Division's regiment reached the Ledge by midday, dealing the Indians significant casualties. By December 13, Krohcol was pushed back to Kroh, the operation failed. Meanwhile, the 5th Division advanced south from Singora toward Jitra. Major-General David Murray-Lyon commanded the 11th Indian Division's weak defensive positions at Jitra's road junction, unaware that the critical Alor Setar airfield had already been abandoned. His forces—6th Indian Brigade holding a 10-mile coastal sector, 15th Brigade covering the road, and 28th Brigade in reserve—had sent two delaying detachments on December 9. On December 11, Japanese tanks overwhelmed these covering battalions, inflicting heavy casualties. Murray-Lyon committed his reserves prematurely, leaving Alor Setar lightly defended. That night, Japanese tanks reached the main position north of Jitra, with the 5th Division following. Heavy fighting ensued between Japanese armor and demoralized Indian troops. British defenses penetrated around 06:00, forcing successive Indian units to be overrun. Murray-Lyon repeatedly requested withdrawal permission. At 19:30 on December 12, General Percival finally approved. Due to poor communication and confusion, the 11th Indian Division suffered heavy casualties but disengaged by December 13, withdrawing to Gurun. The primary British defenses in northern Malaya had been breached, the 11th Division severely weakened, and the Japanese advance down the peninsula had begun unstoppably. Percival's first significant defense occurred at Jitra on December 11th, intended to push the Japanese as far north as possible and protect remaining Allied airfields. The Japanese quickly overwhelmed the Indian defenders, and Colonel Tsuji observed the engagement firsthand: "Our tanks were ready on the road, and the twenty or so enemy armored cars ahead were literally trampled underfoot. The enemy armored cars could not escape by running away, and were sandwiched between our medium tanks. It was speed and weight of armor that decided the issue." Major General Murray-Lyon commanded the 11th Indian Division. A World War I veteran, he had served with distinction in the Highland Light Infantry, earning the Military Cross for bravery in Flanders and the Distinguished Service Order for his actions at Moeuvres. The citation stated: "For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. When the enemy attacked and penetrated the line after intense fighting and continual bombing attacks, by his courage and personal example he succeeded in driving them out and held his position against further heavy attacks with splendid coolness and determination." This was no desk officer, but a frontline commander faced with an impossible task. Murray-Lyon's division appeared formidable on paper but was severely compromised. It contained only two regular British battalions—the Leicestershire and East Surrey Regiments—with the remainder consisting of four newly raised Indian Army battalions and three inexperienced Gurkha battalions. The Gurkhas, though renowned as elite soldiers, were primarily composed of 18-year-old recruits fresh from deployment. Like all Allied forces in Malaya, the division lacked tanks while facing an enemy flush with armor. After only days of intense combat, Murray-Lyon sought permission to withdraw, convinced the Japanese forces greatly outnumbered him. Ironically, Yamashita's army was outnumbered two to one. The Japanese commander employed Blitzkrieg tactics inspired by his time as a military attaché in Berlin, coordinating air and ground forces with remarkable precision. His approach involved fast-moving tanks, bomber aircraft deployed as mobile artillery, and—most unusually—bicycle-mounted infantry. Prior to the invasion, Japanese planners decided bicycles were ideal for the tropical jungle terrain. Rather than shipping thousands, they seized bicycles from the local population. The offensive typically began with bombing raids on Allied defensive positions, followed by tanks smashing through. As defenders retreated, bicycle infantry continuously harassed and attacked, while coastal amphibious assaults flanked positions along the shore. Colonel Alfred Harrison of the 11th Indian Division reflected on the psychological toll: "Fatigue had stretched the men's mind to the limit and the moral ascendancy which the Japanese achieved in these few weeks included a psychic side. The troops were beginning to attribute almost supernatural powers to the Japanese." Yamashita had rehearsed these tactics extensively on Hainan Island, conducting exercises in amphibious landings, bridge destruction and repair, and jungle operations. The bicycle innovation proved revolutionary—troops covered greater distances more quickly with less fatigue, repeatedly outflanking British forces who found themselves pushed off roads and encircled. The rapid movements created a psychological multiplier effect; British commanders, mistaken about enemy numbers, believed they faced far larger forces than actually present. This "Bicycle Blitzkrieg," as it became known, echoed Mongol tactics—a single swift force striking multiple targets so quickly that enemies believed they faced several armies. Tanks were crucial to this success. The British had deployed no tanks to Malaya before the war, a fatal omission. Combined with bicycle infantry, Japanese armor allowed them to engage British forces before defensive positions could be established. Percival authorized withdrawal from Jitra, directing troops south to Gurun, but those defenses remained unfinished and the Japanese advance was too rapid. Percival later reflected in his memoir, War in Malaya: "This withdrawal would have been difficult under the most favorable conditions. With the troops tired, units mixed as the result of the fighting, communications broken and the night dark, it was inevitable that orders should be delayed and that in some cases they should never reach the addressees. This is what in fact occurred. The withdrawal, necessary as it may have been, was too fast and too complicated for disorganized and exhausted troops, whose disorganization and exhaustion it only increased." From the start, British forces stretched too thinly across a 14-mile front in challenging terrain—dense jungle on the right flank, monsoon-soaked rice fields and rubber plantations in the center, mangrove swamps to the left. Yamashita's concentrated attacks breached the line. Repeated retreats cost both personnel and equipment, as overrun positions offered no opportunity for evacuation and bicycle infantry prevented orderly withdrawal. The Jitra defeat exposed a fundamental strategic error: deploying under-resourced troops across Malaya's entire breadth rather than establishing a shorter, more defensible line further south, which could have shortened British supply lines while lengthening Japan's—a disadvantage the Japanese could not exploit. The Allied retreat continued southward to the Gurun area, though the chaotic withdrawal from Jitra itself inflicted more casualties than the fighting had—many frontline units never received withdrawal orders, while others became lost crossing the Bata River. Murray eventually fell back to the Muda River, establishing defensive positions along the Krian River some thirty miles south. Percival, increasingly desperate, realized his entire strategy had depended on holding the Japanese as far north as possible to minimize air threats to Singapore. The rapid Japanese advance made this impossible. Reluctantly, he ordered a general withdrawal south of the Perak River, while his field commanders pleaded for reinforcements they would never receive. Though Percival had an Australian division in Johor, he refused to commit them north, fearing a Japanese naval invasion further south could threaten Singapore itself.   As Yamashita's 25th Army advanced westward toward Penang, Japanese bombers subjected the island to daily raids. British command, recognizing the island as indefensible, evacuated European residents on December 17th—leaving the local Malay population to face the Japanese. Mrs Muriel Reilly's recollection captures the moment's bitter legacy: "it still hurts to think how the white race 'let down hundreds of similarly faithful servants who trusted in us, and looked to us for protection from the hated Japanese." The abandonment had strategic consequences. In their haste, the British left massive stockpiles of arms and supplies in Penang that fell directly into Yamashita's hands. More profoundly, local Malays turned against their former colonial rulers. Some historians now argue "the moral collapse of British rule in Southeast Asia occurred not at Singapore, but at Penang." Under subsequent Japanese occupation, Penang endured three years and eight months of hardship—food shortages, rampant hyperinflation from the "banana dollar," and systematic repression including comfort women camps and the Sook Ching massacres targeting Chinese communities the Japanese feared might become guerrillas.  The Japanese occupiers' fears about Chinese resistance were prescient. Among the Chinese communities of Malaya and Singapore, anti-Japanese sentiment had been building for over a decade. Since Japan's 1937 invasion of China, ethnic Chinese populations had viewed Tokyo with deep hostility. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, followed by the escalating horrors of the Second Sino-Japanese War, had created a reservoir of determination to resist Japanese expansion wherever it might emerge. As British colonial authority crumbled, this sentiment transformed from passive resentment into active organization. The Battle of Jitra exposed a fundamental miscalculation: attempting to defend all of Malaya with an undersized army. A more strategic withdrawal to Johore would have shortened British supply lines while extending Japan's. As December ended, Murray-Lyon was dismissed from command—a casualty of circumstance. He had spent weeks preparing for the cancelled Operation Matador while neglecting proper defenses at Jitra and Gurun. At fifty-one, this decorated soldier, who had earned the Military Cross and Distinguished Service Order in the Great War, became a civilian during Britain's darkest hour. He was replaced by Brigadier Archibald Paris, equally inexperienced in jungle warfare, who paradoxically proved more effective by facilitating the retreat of Murray's division while inflicting unexpected casualties on overconfident Japanese units. By December 26th, the Japanese 5th Division and 4th Guards Regiment crossed the Perak River, preparing an assault on Kampar. This position was crucial—located halfway between Penang and Kuala Lumpur, its terrain was unsuitable for tanks and difficult to outflank, offering a rare opportunity to make a stand. Paris gathered infantry battalions, many composed of Jitra and Gurun survivors: British battalions from the Leicesters and East Surreys, along with Jat and Punjabi units including Sikhs. The 12th Brigade hastily dug trenches, strung wire, and cleared fields around Kampar's ridges to improve visibility. After three weeks of continuous fighting and retreat, the defenders' morale had collapsed. Colonel Alfred Harrison observed on Christmas Day: "fatigue had stretched the men's mind to the limit and the moral ascendancy which the Japanese had achieved in these few weeks included a 'psychic' side. The troops were beginning to attribute almost supernatural powers to the Japanese." The Japanese, by contrast, had grown accustomed to victory and approached each engagement with unshakeable confidence. Yamashita employed German-inspired tactics using aircraft as mobile artillery—vital in terrain where conventional gun placement was impossible. Engagements began with bombing raids on Allied positions, followed by frontal assaults to establish a line, then flanking maneuvers through jungle to encircle defenders. When the assault came from the western coastal roads, Japanese tanks struck the 12th Brigade along a three-mile rural stretch near Gopeng. Small arms and heavy machine gun fire erupted as infantry dismounted from trucks and spread into the brush. Some tanks advanced alone onto a bridge near Dipang, where they encountered defenders with Lanchester submachine guns and Bren gun carriers equipped with anti-tank rifles. Lt Colonel Ian Stewart noted the grim reality: "the anti-tank rifle made no impression against the Jap mediums, while their 37 mm guns went through our armour like paper." The Japanese tankers, closing their hatches in the oppressive subtropical heat—what they described as a "Turkish bath"—approached cautiously, aware of potential counterattacks. British defenders fired desperately at vision slits, their bullets ricocheting uselessly. A 2-pounder anti-tank gun destroyed a single tank, prompting Japanese armor to withdraw and wait for infantry support. Meanwhile, two hundred defenders on the opposite side prepared to destroy the bridge. Fortunately, Kampar's shallow water allowed most to wade across a mile downstream. Stewart's 12th Brigade had purchased time. The British established a strong perimeter around Kampar Hill, resembling a "goose egg" on the map. Their artillery, better supplied than the Japanese equivalent, was concealed in the jungle with two hundred rounds stacked beside each gun. The 15th/6th Brigades occupied the low ground where the road and railway ran through town. Unlike earlier battles where Japanese forces kept defenders pinned with close contact, Kampar's expansive fields of fire and terrain offered space to maneuver—a rare advantage the British would finally exploit. Major General Saburo Kawamura led the attack on Kampar with his 9th Brigade. On December 31st, he probed the 28th Gurkha Brigade entrenched on the hill. Japanese howitzer fire drew return artillery that effectively repelled their advances. At midnight on New Year's Eve, Lt. Colonel Augustus Murdoch ordered a 12-gun salute fired at the Japanese—perhaps a cheeky gesture. Seven hours later, Kawamura launched his main assault on the western side targeting the trunk road. The brunt fell on a newly formed British battalion, the Leicesters and East Surreys, under Lt. Colonel Esmond Morrison. The 48-year-old, though some dismissed him as a "polo-playing playboy," proved a serious soldier despite his peacetime reputation, frequently sharing front-line dangers with his men. Japanese infantry emerged from the mist carrying mortars. Mortar fire became intense—one casualty was a company commander whose jaw was shattered by a splinter. However, observation officers from the 88th Field Regiment pinpointed Japanese advances, unleashing devastating artillery fire. Colonel Masanobu Tsuji observed "a continuous stream of casualties coming back down the hill to safety, either carried on stretchers or supported on the shoulders of comrades who were themselves wounded." Japanese artillery pieces were covertly moved through secondary jungle to hide their positions. During the fighting, one of Morrison's lieutenants encountered Japanese soldiers in a trench, fired his revolver, and retreated. A gunnery driver named Walker, noticing a nearby Bren position overrun, exited his vehicle armed with a Thompson submachine gun and launched a surprise attack, forcing the Japanese to retreat—earning him a medal. Troop Sergeant Major Hugill, commanding an outlying observation post connected by field telephone, received a distinguished conduct medal for calmly calling in protective artillery fire while cut off. When the attack subsided, he encountered isolated Japanese soldiers who had captured a Vickers-Berthier machine gun. Hugill gathered five infantrymen and led a bayonet charge to reclaim it. Emergency commissioned officer Lt. Edgar Newland commanded a platoon of 30 men in one of the most forward positions. His platoon was surrounded for much of the battle yet successfully repelled numerous assaults over two consecutive days. General Percival specifically praised Newland and his men. Newland received a Military Cross; his platoon sergeant, Euan McDonald, received a distinguished conduct medal. After two days, Japanese forces captured part of Thompson's Ridge. Morrison ordered two platoons of Sikhs and Gujars to bayonet charge under mortar fire. Tragically, 34 soldiers died, including their 21-year-old commander, Charles Lamb, killed in the initial charge. Captain John Graham lost both legs to a grenade but continued encouraging his men, throwing grenades at Japanese trenches before bleeding to death—but they had retaken the position. Courage, artillery, and terrain proved insufficient. Yamashita decided to outflank Percival with seaborne landings on the Malayan west coast. He transported 40 small craft by rail to Alor Star and ordered landings near Telok Anson, 30 miles southeast of Kampar. If successful, he would cut off Percival's 11th Indian Division defending Kampar. Yamashita devised a three-pronged attack: the Imperial Guards Division would paddle down the Perak River into town; another force would approach from the west on landing craft entering from the opposite direction; a third would move up the Bernam River and march north toward Telok Anson. Lt. General Takuro Matsui commanded the landings. While Kampar held, 1,500 of Matsui's men crowded onto landing craft. One steamer towing ten craft went too far south, attempting the Selangor River defended by a Jat battalion with artillery. The Japanese were repelled, losing one to three craft before moving north. In Perak, four landing rafts ran aground on a sandbar and required rescue. A British patrol boat spotted them but left to report—no action followed. Percival later remarked: "unfortunately neither the navy nor the air force were able to take advantage of this unique opportunity." Despite setbacks, Japanese forces landed and advanced on Telok Anson. On January 2nd, they encountered the 3rd Indian Cavalry and 1st Independent Company under Stewart, equipped with armored cars and Thompson and Bren guns. They inflicted significant casualties but with only 250 men couldn't hold. Stewart ordered delaying actions instead. Telok Anson fell, leaving Kampar defenders at risk of encirclement. Although Kawamura's forces showed no signs of breaking after four days of fighting, Paris feared his main supply route had been cut. He requested permission from Percival to withdraw to the Slim River defensive line. Paris prioritized preserving troops over territory: "With no reserves in hand, we were still in a position of being unable to accept major losses." The 12th Brigade held while Paris organized the division's withdrawal. An unusual discovery emerged during delaying actions: Brigadier Stewart found the body of a dead European cyclist in British uniform. Earlier, a Punjabi sentry had shot a man on a bridge attempting to grab his Thompson. Both were likely German deserters from Vichy Indo-China's Foreign Legion, in contact with the Nazi embassy. The British Legation in Bangkok had warned of such infiltrators offering sabotage and espionage assistance. Percival was particularly struck by the German who tried single-handedly to disarm a sentry and seize a bridge. The 12th Brigade discovered another European body—a German political refugee and former mining engineer who had disappeared weeks earlier. Exhausted after three weeks of near-constant combat, the 12th Brigade continued delaying actions. Japanese air forces wreaked havoc on vehicles; Stewart estimated half his casualties—around 90 killed and wounded from 4,000 troops—resulted from aerial attacks. Stewart expressed satisfaction: "It had been an eminently successful battle," though it was more a series of brief skirmishes than traditional battle. Kampar fell when Telok Anson was captured. Percival might have committed Australian brigades from Johore or garrison battalions from Singapore, but concentrating forces at Kampar risked prompting Yamashita to attack elsewhere. The Kampar defenders retreated 30 miles to the Slim River. Tsuji reluctantly acknowledged Yamashita's breakthrough was impressive, if risky. On the east coast, defenders faced more resistance at Kuantan. Percival clung to the airfield, determined to deny the Japanese RAF facilities and limit their ability to strike at reinforcement convoys approaching Singapore. The first convoy from Bombay, carrying the half-trained 45th Brigade under Brigadier Horatio Duncan, was 24 hours away. The 22nd Indian Brigade, led by Brigadier George Painter, defended Kuantan against the Takumi detachment of the 18th Division. One battalion, commanded by a veteran of Kota Bharu, fortified the airfield with barbed wire and trenches. When Takumi's forces approached, the Japanese encountered 4.5-inch howitzer fire inflicting significant casualties. The defenders fought fiercely, each equipped with six grenades instead of two, creating deadly chaos. Tsuji noted the airfield "was obstinately defended," particularly at night when grenades rolled into confined trenches with devastating effect. Word reached the defenders that General Barstow's entire 9th Indian Division was retreating through Kuala Lipis-Jerantut-Raub. The 22nd Brigade demolished installations and prepared to withdraw, though their rearguard risked encirclement. One night, investigating his southern flank with Captain Ian Grimwood, battalion commander Cumming spotted Japanese soldiers climbing barbed wire meters away. Armed with a .455 Webley revolver, Cumming and Grimwood faced seven Japanese soldiers charging with bayonets. They fired as they were knocked down, killing all attackers, but Cumming suffered two bayonet wounds to his stomach. Grimwood dragged him to battalion HQ for first aid. As the airfield was overrun, Cumming ordered withdrawal. A grenade or mortar round knocked him unconscious. He regained consciousness in a vehicle where Private Albel Singh reported a Japanese roadblock ahead. Spotting a fallen tree creating passage, Cumming ordered Singh to charge through. Machine gun fire rained down; Cumming was hit again with a shattered arm, possibly from an anti-personnel mine, while Singh endured a .256 armor-piercing bullet through both thighs yet maintained control, driving 30 miles per hour. The vehicle arrived at brigade HQ covered in blood from six occupants. Cumming would receive the Victoria Cross for his heroism. Painter held the airfield long enough for reinforcements to approach, though it cost much of one of the best Indian battalions. Painter, fixated on flanking fears, believed it "better to lose half a battalion than an entire brigade." The 22nd Indian Brigade lost a third of its strength but retreated by January 3rd. While this unfolded eastward, Yamashita's forces advanced south. Defenders prepared a new defensive line at Trolak, five miles north of Slim River. Reinforcements had arrived; the 45th Brigade was immediately dispatched to repel the enemy's advance on Kuala Selangor, which held another crucial airfield. Whether defenders could withstand Yamashita's onslaught remained to be seen.   While British forces retreated in disarray toward Singapore, another chapter was quietly beginning in the shadows of the collapsing colonial order. On December 25, 1941—Christmas morning, even as Governor Young raised the white flag over Hong Kong—Chinese volunteers in Singapore formalized their resistance. That day, the Singapore Overseas Chinese Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army, officially known as Dalforce, was established under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Dalley. Dalforce emerged from urgent necessity. As the Japanese invasion accelerated and British defenses crumbled, recruitment of local Chinese volunteers escalated dramatically. What had begun as an informal volunteer effort in 1939 now crystallized into organized military structure. The initial cadre of 200 volunteers swelled to 4,000 members as the invasion reached Singapore's doorstep. These were not professional soldiers—Dalforce members came from the Chinese civilian population, motivated by the knowledge that Japanese occupation would target them specifically. Many lacked military training; some were armed only with sporting firearms due to critical shortages of military weapons. Supply ships intended for Dalforce, such as the SS Empress of Asia, were sunk before their cargo could reach Singapore. Yet the volunteers pressed forward, organizing themselves despite severe handicaps: makeshift uniforms, inadequate equipment, and internal divisions between Communist and Kuomintang factions, each trained separately by British officers. Dalforce would soon earn the nickname "Dalley's Desperadoes" from British forces—a name reflecting both affection for their fierce combat effectiveness and incredulity that such a hastily assembled, poorly equipped force could fight with such determination. Unlike the demoralized British and Indian troops retreating southward, these Chinese volunteers were not defending a colonial order they had experienced as oppressive. They were fighting for their homes, their families, and their survival against an enemy they had every reason to fear and oppose. As the Malayan Campaign entered its final phase and the focus shifted to Singapore itself, Dalforce would play a role that British military historians had largely overlooked but that Chinese participants would never forget. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.   In December 1941, Japan invaded Malaya. British commanders placed their faith in "impregnable" Singapore, but disaster struck immediately. On December 10, Japanese bombers sank Force Z—battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse—in a stunning air attack.Using tanks and bicycles in a lightning "Bicycle Blitzkrieg," Japanese troops shattered Allied lines at Kota Bharu and Jitra, sending exhausted British, Indian, and Australian forces reeling southward in chaos.  

In this special standalone edition, host Roger Moorhouse and co-host Patrick Bishop speak with intrepid war reporter Boldizsár "Boldi" Győri following his latest trip to Ukraine. Boldi provides a vivid look into the current atmosphere in Kyiv, where residents face modified S-300 and S-400 Russian missile strikes with minimal warning and a shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles. Despite the air campaign, he highlights that civilian morale remains intact, supported by local preparations for the coming winter and a deep connection to those serving at the front. Boldi recounts his experiences on the front line in the east, detailing the extreme isolation of infantrymen supplied by expendable, Mars-rover-like ground drones in the grey zone. He describes travelling with the 24th Brigade near Kramatorsk, following middle-aged green recruits—former miners, taxi drivers, and salesmen—as veteran "reconnaissance infantrymen" give them crash courses before navigating heavily targeted, drone-saturated terrain. The episode also covers the gradual evacuation of Kramatorsk under the threat of Russian FPV drones and glide bombs, the harsh economic realities for internally displaced families and pensioners, and the inspiring story of former Mariupol POWs who survived captivity and returned to Kyiv to build their own veteran-run clothing brand.Join the Conversation: If you have a question about the war in Ukraine or any of the conflicts we cover, email us at podbattleground@gmail.comFollow us on:X - @PodBattlegroundInstagram - podbattlegroundProducer: James HodgsonA Goalhanger Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before ground forces can advance, the battlefield has to be shaped. Air defenses have to come down. Enemy weapons have to be destroyed. And the adversaries' will to combat America has to be lessened. This is the job of field artillery; a branch of the US Army where speed, distance, precision, and results determine who controls the battlefield before ground forces ever make contact.From Fort Bragg, NC, the 18th Field Artillery Brigade leads the Army's rapidly deployable artillery units. As the largest HIMARS brigade, its soldiers must be prepared to deploy anywhere in the world within 10 days of notification and deliver long-range precision fires in support of the XVIII Airborne Corps, its divisions, and Special Operations Forces.Fran Racioppi sat down with the command team of Colonel Andy Hercik and Command Sergeant Major George Cabrera, to talk about what it takes to maintain readiness as the battlefield rapidly changes. After two decades of counterinsurgency, field artillery is now leading in large-scale combat operations where kilometers matter, ammunition and logistics can determine operational reach, and the ability to shoot, move, communicate, and survive has become unforgiving.Drones have made the battlefield increasingly transparent. A cell phone can expose a position. A lingering electromagnetic signature can make a HIMARS crew a target. The answer isn't abandoning the fundamentals. It's executing them better, while using lessons from today's conflicts to change how soldiers train and how the Army develops the capabilities required for tomorrow.We also discuss what true integration between conventional forces and Special Operations looks like, why the targeting process has to bring every capability together from the beginning, and the responsibility of NCOs and officers to build a formation that doesn't simply comply with standards, but understands why those standards keep soldiers alive and make them lethal.When the call comes, there won't be time to prepare. 18th Field Artillery Brigade has to be ready.Highlights00:00 Introduction01:12 Mission of the 18th Field Artillery Brigade04:16 NCO Leadership and Force Readiness05:38 Subordinate Units and Capabilities09:55 Refocusing on Core Field Artillery Basics13:49 Passing Down Lessons Learned14:40 Interoperability and Special Operations Forces Integration22:31 What Separates the 18th FA Brigade24:58 Joint Force Integration26:15 Modernization, Innovation, and Ammunition Investment30:15 Drone Warfare and Signature Management36:02 Culture of Commitment and the Warrior Mindset41:15 Driving Decision-Making and Warfighting ReadinessQuotes“We have to be ready to deploy, fight, and win within 10 days of notification.”“We are the Army's largest HIMARS brigade with 54 HIMARS launchers.”“We're going to first look to strip away adversary air defense and then kill what's killing us.”“It's much more effective to destroy a launcher than to try to intercept an incoming missile.”“Divisions are maneuvering in order to fire.”“We now have to be prepared to operate in a completely transparent battlefield.”“What we're trying to do is avoid being at this point on the Earth where the enemy missile hits when it hits.”“Shoot, move, communicate, clean up our electromagnetic spectrum.”“Making sure soldiers understand the visibility of their signature.”“Be more survivable, which then lets us be more lethal, because we're able to retain more combat power.”Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by OneBrief; enabling military leaders to make innovative, informed and deliberate decisions faster than ever before. Superhuman command wins wars.

Youtube Version HereThis week the buds discuss old pets, sleeper cells, 'Pig Louie', Hell People and The Odyssey.This week's sketch: 'Secret Ingredient'.Email or Dm us your correspondence to thebudpod@gmail.com or @budpodofficial on Instagram. KOJI!BudPod Live is back!Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival - October 10, 2026 - Tickets available https://www.tickettailor.com/events/cheerfulearful/2230576Brighton Komedia - October 14th, 2026 - Tickets available - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/cheerfulearful/2378930Bath Komedia - November 3rd, 2026 - Tickets available https://komediabath.co.uk/events/128649554-budpod-live-2026-11-03-19-00-00/Stream Glenn's tour show 'Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, Glenn I'm Sixty Moore' on Sky Comedy and NowTVVote here for BudPod for this year's Golden Lobes, Listeners' Lobe award! Thank you guys! KOJI Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Supercup-Sieger, Tabellenzweiter in der Liga und Europa-League-Teilnehmer – Union ist in der neuen Saison angekommen! Gemeinsam mit Justus von bEUnion sprechen wir über den furiosen Saisonstart: den gewonnenen Supercup, fünf ungeschlagene Ligaspiele, das bittere Champions-League-Aus gegen Bodø/Glimt und die kommenden Europapokal-Abenteuer. Dazu: neue Spieler, schmerzhafte Abgänge und die aktuellen Entwicklungen der Fanszene. Tribune Est – mitten drin statt nur dabei. Links Mehr Podcastepisoden mit Schwerpunk RUSGhttps://podcast.brennpunkt-orange.de/category/belgien/ Orange Fever in Saint-Gilles (Episode zum Start der Saison 2026/27)https://podcast.brennpunkt-orange.de/orange-fever-in-saint-gilles/ bEUnion vorgestellt (2024)https://podcast.brennpunkt-orange.de/246-ein-fanclub-im-herzen-von-europa-beunion/ Ein belgisches Fußball-Märchen? (2022)https://podcast.brennpunkt-orange.de/166-royale-union-saint-gilloise/ Format: Tribune Est Der Podcast „Tribune Est“ ist ebenfalls über den Feed von BRENNPUNKT-ORANGE.DE verfügbar. Es handelt sich um einen deutschsprachigen Podcast rund um den ... Dieser Podcast wird vermarktet von der Podcastbude.www.podcastbu.de - Full-Service-Podcast-Agentur - Konzeption, Produktion, Vermarktung, Distribution und Hosting.Du möchtest deinen Podcast auch kostenlos hosten und damit Geld verdienen?Dann schaue auf www.kostenlos-hosten.de und informiere dich.Dort erhältst du alle Informationen zu unseren kostenlosen Podcast-Hosting-Angeboten. kostenlos-hosten.de ist ein Produkt der Podcastbude.

20 mai 2010, Paris. Alors qu'il dirige le groupe de répression des vols d'objets d'art, le commandant de police Erhardy se retrouve confronté à une affaire incroyable : le vol de cinq toiles de maîtres au Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris. Au total, c'est plus de 50 millions d'euros qui disparaissent dans la nature. Pour la Brigade de Répression du Banditisme , le mystère demeure : quel sort a-t-on réservé aux tableaux ? Récit de ce vol insolite par le commandant Thomas Erhardy.Une enquête dans la peau est un podcast coproduit par Initial Studio et Caméra Subjective, adapté de la série documentaire audiovisuelle “L'enquête de ma vie” produite par Caméra Subjective, avec la participation de Planète+ Crime Investigation.Cet épisode a été écrit par Marjolaine Dorne, et réalisé par Marjolaine Dorne et Thomas Jacquet.Pour découvrir nos autres podcasts, suivez Initial Studio sur Instagram et Facebook. Production exécutive du podcast : Initial StudioProduction éditoriale : Sarah Koskievic et Astrid Verdun, assistées de Marine BoudalierMontage : Johanna LalondeAvec la voix de Vincent CouesmeHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

20 mai 2010, Paris. Alors qu'il dirige le groupe de répression des vols d'objets d'art, le commandant de police Erhardy se retrouve confronté à une affaire incroyable : le vol de cinq toiles de maîtres au Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris. Au total, c'est plus de 50 millions d'euros qui disparaissent dans la nature. Pour la Brigade de Répression du Banditisme , le mystère demeure : quel sort a-t-on réservé aux tableaux ? Récit de ce vol insolite par le commandant Thomas Erhardy.Une enquête dans la peau est un podcast coproduit par Initial Studio et Caméra Subjective, adapté de la série documentaire audiovisuelle “L'enquête de ma vie” produite par Caméra Subjective, avec la participation de Planète+ Crime Investigation.Cet épisode a été écrit par Marjolaine Dorne, et réalisé par Marjolaine Dorne et Thomas Jacquet.Pour découvrir nos autres podcasts, suivez Initial Studio sur Instagram et Facebook. Production exécutive du podcast : Initial StudioProduction éditoriale : Sarah Koskievic et Astrid Verdun, assistées de Marine BoudalierMontage : Johanna LalondeAvec la voix de Vincent CouesmeHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

An ump being a stupid racist redass, Angels get sold, a Royal pukes and Royals fans assemble a huge hotdog (these are unrelated), Boston Heated Rivalry Night, Ketel Marte's struggles, the Philly/DMV Reacher season, the Clippers punishment, some mailbag. BTW Jane looked it up and she knows she's wrong about the NFL ownership rules, that was abolished almost a decade ago. You don't have to correct her. Go to Patreon.com/BattingAround to support the show and get some bonus episodes.

Gordon Parks has highlighted groups of supporters who, unless checked and punished, will continue to create chaos, intimidation and destruction within our game. Will the SFA summit prompt change and deliver ideas to improve our players and the product in Scottish football? Which teams are playing the game the right way in the Scottish Premiership? Tam McManus has suggested the best footballing team in the country will cause an upset in the weekend fixtures.

Last time we spoke about the beginning of the Battle of Hong kong. Japan's rise as a threat to British interests accelerated through the 1920s and intensified after invading China. Britain's response remained contradictory—diplomatically conciliatory yet militarily apprehensive. While Singapore and Malaya received substantial reinforcements, Hong Kong was acknowledged indefensible, yet the 1936 Defence Scheme attempted to fortify it as an island fortress. Governor Northcote urgently advocated evacuation, recognizing the futility of defense. London rejected this, fearing it would demoralize China and forfeit sovereignty claims. Reinforcement requests from commanders like Grasett fell on deaf ears until Grasett independently lobbied Canadian leaders. This persistence finally convinced Churchill to dispatch two additional battalions. On December 8, 1941, Japanese forces attacked across three fronts with overwhelming force. Within hours, the RAF was destroyed on the ground, demolitions proved ineffective, and British units rapidly retreated toward the Gin Drinkers Line, facing an enemy that outnumbered and outmaneuvered them from the opening moments.   #217 The Battle of Hong Kong Part 2: the Island Aflame Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Around 1500 hours on 9 December, Colonel Doi of the 228th Regiment arrived at Needle Hill, just north of the Gin Drinkers Line, ahead of his main force. For two hours he studied the British defensive positions through binoculars, noting trenches and bunkers—and to his surprise, washing lines fluttering with white clothes. The sight spoke volumes about the 2 Royal Scots' lax discipline. Then fog descended, reducing visibility to barely twenty meters, and heavy rain obscured the landscape. Doi sensed a fleeting advantage but lost radio contact with his battalions. Worse still, the Shing Mun Redoubt lay outside his regimental boundary, making an unauthorized attack a serious breach of protocol. When his units finally arrived, supporting artillery remained unavailable, held up by demolished roads. Doi chose to attack anyway. Doi ordered the 2nd Battalion to scout the eastern approach while the 3rd Battalion spearheaded the main assault. Major Nishiyana commanded the 3rd, sending Lieutenant Wakabayashi and Kasugai with 150 volunteers to lead. The Shing Mun Redoubt itself comprised five concrete pillboxes and an artillery observation post, connected by underground tunnels named after London landmarks—Piccadilly, Haymarket, and others. The whole complex sat on small rises above Jubilee Dam, then the British Empire's tallest. Defending the redoubt was A Company, 2 Royal Scots, under Captain Jones—just three officers and 39 men. One platoon of 25 soldiers under 2nd Lieutenant Thompson held the forward positions. Against this stood 150 Japanese attackers, with another 1,500 troops in reserve. Battalion orders forbade using the concrete works as fighting positions; they were meant for the Vickers machine-gun team and artillery protection. No mines could spare the redoubt's perimeter. On the night of the 9th, roughly half the defenders sheltered in the observation post while the remainder manned pillboxes 401b and 402. At 2000 hours, Thompson led a nine-man patrol northward to check Needle Hill and Shing Mun Valley. Despite two and a half hours in the field, the patrol returned at 2220 hours without detecting the Japanese force massing just 500 meters away. By that time, Lieutenant Kasugai's assault group had crossed Jubilee Dam undetected, bypassed unmanned Post X, and assembled below Pillbox 401b. At 2200 hours, Japanese sappers cut through two lines of wire. At 2300—H-Hour—Lance Corporal Laird heard movement in the bushes and opened fire. The Japanese answered with grenades and rushed the pillbox lines. One team entered the tunnel system; another hurled grenades through the air vents. Corporal Campbell swung his Vickers toward Pillbox 401, catching Japanese headquarters personnel in the open. Sergeant Robb mustered a counter-attack force of thirteen men. Five fell as casualties—Laird, Basnett, Coyle, Casey, and Jardine. Casey was killed; only Jardine escaped. The alert triggered gunfire from the observation post's defenders, and Forward Observer Wilcox called down 4.5-inch and 6-inch artillery fire. Without strong reinforcement and leadership, four Royal Scots and an Indian sentry abandoned the northern positions and withdrew to the observation post. Captain Jones received orders from Brigade to counter-attack, but delegated the task to Thompson. As Thompson attempted to leave the observation post, he found the gate locked from outside. This calamity had a backstory: just before the attack, Thompson had admitted a civilian at the request of Force 163 (SOE's sabotage unit in Singapore). Private Wylie had taken the observation post key from Lance Naik Kishan Singh and, upon exit, locked the gate behind him. The three officers were now literally locked out of the battle. Second Lieutenant Mochizuki and his platoon infiltrated through open trenches and began attacking the observation post from above, attempting to breach the hatches. The defenders held for three hours before Japanese sappers forced explosives down the air vents. At 0230 hours, the blast killed two Indian signallers inside. Thompson sustained a severe eye wound from grenade shrapnel; Jones and Warrant Officer Mead were both wounded. The remaining fifteen defenders surrendered; eleven became casualties. Meanwhile, a Rajput patrol engaging Japanese forces in the river valley managed to drive them back toward the redoubt. One final pillbox endured for another eleven hours before suffering the same sapper treatment. By 0400 hours on 10 December, the entire redoubt was lost. For just two killed, the Japanese had achieved a decisive victory—the breakthrough that would shift the entire campaign's trajectory. By dawn, a Japanese flag flew triumphantly from Point 255.   Major-General Maltby's assessment was stark: "This was calamitous, for Shing Mun was the key to the whole of the left position." Yet the Japanese perspective differed sharply. Having achieved a breakthrough, Colonel Doi received astonishing orders to withdraw—his success had transgressed into the 230th Regiment's sector and violated the meticulously prepared war plan. Doi refused. After heated confrontation with Major-General Ito and Lieutenant-General Sakai, his insubordination was later censured, though a divisional staff officer, Oyadomani, bore the scapegoat's burden of rebuke for failing to restrain Doi's initiative. With Shing Mun secured, Doi methodically fed reinforcements into the position. Throughout December 10th, the Japanese remained uncertain of their advantage and adopted a cautious strategy, probing British lines to exploit the evident disorder. Brigadier Wallis ordered the Royal Scots to mount an immediate dawn counterattack supported by the Rajputs and artillery. Lieutenant-Colonel White demurred; his battalion lacked any reasonable prospect of success. The resulting counterattack proved half-hearted at best. At first light on December 11th, the Japanese pressed Golden Hill forcefully, only to be repulsed by Captain Newton's Rajputs and gunfire from HMS Cicala. White positioned D Company in shallow shell scrapes and rusted wire—inadequate defenses against Japanese assault. Captain Pinkerton led a desperate bayonet charge that morning, temporarily clearing the Japanese and enabling the evacuation of wounded. Yet B, C, and D Companies absorbed devastating losses; Captains Rose and Richardson fell commanding their positions. With the Royal Scots collapsing, X Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers and armored support rushed westward to seal the widening gap along Castle Peak Road. Meanwhile, Maltby grappled with alarming reports: Japanese landings on Lantau Island southwest of Hong Kong. Heavy artillery drove them back. A second probe at Aberdeen, where Special Naval Landing Forces approached within 300 yards of the naval base, was repelled by Canadian machine-gun fire. In hindsight, these were mere feints—never intended as the primary thrust. The stratagem succeeded. Maltby retained his island reserves—the Middlesex and two Canadian battalions—precisely where they would be needed. Had Wallis executed a forceful counterattack on December 10th with the Royal Scots and brigade reserves, the Rajputs might have retaken Shing Mun while the Japanese remained disorganized. Instead, Colonel Doi faced a furious Sakai, who had flown down from 38th Division headquarters at Taipo for what amounted to a pre-court-martial examination. The moment passed. After only 48 hours of combat, Maltby concluded the mainland was indefensible. The three battalions would withdraw intact to Hong Kong Island to assume their fortress defense roles. The naval commodore objected—demolitions, supply transfers, and troop ferrying required more time. The evacuation order was deferred 24 hours until noon on December 11th. At that hour, the decision was finalized: the mainland would be abandoned under cover of darkness. Further demolitions followed—the China Light and Power Station, the cement works on Tsing Yi Island, the docks. Yet Brigadier Wallis believed this merely a precautionary measure; he anticipated holding the mainland for at least another week. The withdrawal avoided Kowloon's congested streets, where street fighting and fifth columnists might have entrapped the British—a calculation that proved prescient, as an IJA advance column of 350 men from the 3/230th infiltrated Kowloon on the morning of December 12th to cut off the retreating garrison. The Royal Scots and Canadians retired south to Shamshuipo Barracks and Jordan Road Pier in western Kowloon; the Rajputs and supporting gunners withdrew eastward to Ma Lau Tong, which anchored the fortified Devil's Peak Peninsula. Maltby intended to hold this commanding position permanently—it was easily supplied across the narrow Lyemun Strait. The evacuation proceeded largely as planned. The Canadians and Royal Scots embarked on the afternoon and evening of December 11th under Punjabi covering fire. The Punjabis faced a harder journey—a moonlit scramble along steep Kowloon hills laden with supplies but critically short of mules. One group lost its way at a crucial junction, splitting into two columns. One proceeded toward Devil's Peak as planned; Battalion Headquarters descended into Kai Tak Airport, threaded through Kowloon City, and was evacuated by Star Ferry at Tsim Sha Tsui, fighting until the final moment as the last man boarded. The Rajputs' commander, unable to reach his Punjabi counterpart, abandoned Ma Lau Tong for the closer Hai Wan line near Devil's Peak. By 0400 hours on December 12th, the Punjabis and one Rajput company, accompanied by the gunners of the 25th Medium Battery, crossed Lyemun Strait to Hong Kong Island. Morning evacuations continued with minimal Japanese interference—a surprising restraint. Naval support proved crucial. The withdrawal completed by the morning of December 13th, though 170 mules were lost to the desertion of Chinese laborers—a deprivation that would haunt the subsequent campaign. During this passage, the IJN attempted shore bombardment. The Japanese cruiser and supporting vessels found themselves outranged by the defenders' 9.2-inch guns. The damage inflicted proved sufficient to discourage future naval adventures; for the remainder of the battle, the IJN maintained a cautious distance and played only a peripheral role. The speed and execution of the withdrawal apparently caught the Japanese unprepared. Their most probable expectation had been a full-scale assault on Devil's Peak accompanied by heavy bombardment—a day earlier, an assault without artillery preparation had been driven back with severe losses. The British appeared stronger than anticipated. The defense of the mainland had lasted only five days. With the mainland secured, the Japanese pivoted toward Hong Kong Island. The first move was diplomatic rather than military. At 0900 hours on December 13th, a small boat bearing a white flag crossed the harbor. It carried Colonel Toda, Lieutenant Mizuno, Mr. Othsu Dak, and two European women—the prominent and heavily pregnant Mrs. Macdonald and Mrs. C. R. Lee, wife of the Governor's secretary, accompanied by her two dachshunds. The surrender terms were flatly rejected. Major Boxer delivered the written refusal personally. Mrs. Macdonald remained in Hong Kong to give birth; Mrs. Lee and her dogs returned to Kowloon. The Japanese commenced systematic shelling of selected targets. On December 13th, a 9.2-inch gun on Mt. Davis was silenced; Belcher's Fort sustained damage. The following day, a 3-inch mount on Mt. Davis was hit, killing Chinese gunners and triggering morale collapse; some deserted. On December 15th, the barrage shifted to the northern shoreline, deliberately targeting pillboxes. At 2100 hours that night, approximately three Japanese companies attempted crossing the harbor in rubber rafts toward Pakshawan but were driven off by machine-gun fire. Fifth columnists intensified their operations—signaling with mirrors, sniping from concealed positions, spreading propaganda to encourage Chinese desertion. Their impact might have been catastrophic had not Rear-Admiral Chan and Colonel Yee, armed with tommy guns and grenades, systematically eliminated many of these saboteurs. By December 16th, half the pillboxes between the racecourse and Lyemun Strait lay destroyed. The intended crossing site was unmistakable. On December 17th, the Japanese dispatched a second peace mission—Colonel Toda's team now accompanied by Mrs. Lee with her dachshunds and a pregnant Russian woman. Again, the overtures were rebuffed. On December 18th, the bombardment reached new intensity. Oil storage tanks ignited, sending dense black smoke cascading across the northeast corner of the island—perfect concealment for what was to come. All signs pointed to imminent assault.  I want to note something here, you sometimes hear about how race played a role in the Pacific War and indeed it did. Racist attitudes were found on both the western and Japanese side of the war. There is a fantastic book dedicated to this by the way called, War without Mercy by John Dower, highly recommend it. What is interesting is how these racial attitudes actually affected decision making during the war. Take General Sakai's night amphibious assault for example. Western soldiers such as the Canadians in Hong Kong reported they were told by their commanders that quote "Don't worry about the Japanese, they can't see at night, they all wear glasses" another Canadian soldier wrote in a diary "They don't see well, especially at night we knew this as a matter of fact." Indeed the week before the outbreak of the battle of Hong Kong, Canadian officers attending a briefing by a British officer were informed that "Japan's aircraft were mostly obsolete, its air force had little practice in night flying, and its pilots were myopic and thus unable to carry out dive-bombing attacks". You might be asking yourself, why did they think the Japanese were myopic? The scientific explanation of the day was this "That the Japanese suffered widespread inner-ear damage. What caused this? Japanese motherhood, the practice of strapping babies to their mothers backs, it was explained caused their heads to bounce about, like when they harvested rice and permanently impaired their sense of balance". I particularly love this quote, one of my professors dedicated an entire class to the bizarre racial attitudes before and after the pacific war. There was a belief the Japanese could not see well at night, many western air force commanders actually believed there were times of day like at dawn or dusk where Japanese pilots would not operate because of this hindrance. American military commentator Fletcher Pratt in 1939 analyzed Japan's military strengths and explained it had four major weaknesses. The first was scarcity of resources such as iron, and steel. The second was that the Japanese "can neither make good airplanes nor fly them well" as a result of " the Japanese as a race have defects of the tubes of the inner ear, just as they are generally myopic. This gives them a defective sense of balance, the one physical sense in which an aviator is not permitted to be deficient.". The third was that the Japanese were short-tempered and were inclined to waste men unnecessarily when operations did not go well. The fourth was that the Japanese would simply never date to provoke a war with the US. Again Mr Pratt was an American military commentator whose information came from multiple accounts given by high ranking military officials! The British military maintained that the Japanese avoided night operations on land because they were simply incapable of caring them out well, while they avoided nighttime aerial attacks, as well as dive-bombing for the same reasons Pratt said quote "their pilots were poor and their aircraft inferior.". So take this all to mind when I talk about how certain ranking officers go about making their decisions. By the evening of 14 December, evacuated mainland units had regrouped on Hong Kong Island. The defensive structure was restructured into two brigades: Brigadier Wallis commanded the East Brigade from Taitam Gap, while Brigadier Lawson headed the West Brigade from Wongneichong Gap. This reorganization placed the 5/7 Rajputs across the north-east perimeter, defending over 3,500 metres of coastline with B Company positioned on the hills behind Taikoo Docks. The Royal Rifles of Canada held the north-east corner from Stanley to points south, with reserve positions at Lyemun. Two HKVDC companies supported from Taitam Valley and Pottinger Gap, while the veteran Hughsiliers manned the North Point power station. British and Canadian artillery provided fire support across the northern approaches. The West Brigade held the north-western and south-western shores. The 2/14 Punjab stretched from Causeway Bay to Belcher's Point, protecting Government House and General Maltby's headquarters, with battalion headquarters at Mid-Level. The Winnipeg Grenadiers covered the south-west from Wanchai Gap, with one company detached to the brigade headquarters at Wongneichong Gap. The 2 Royal Scots, severely mauled at Shing Mun, were held in reserve with fresh replacements from the HKVDC. The Middlesex Regiment's companies were dispersed along 72 pillboxes encircling the entire shoreline, while an improvised Z Company of clerks, musicians and cooks defended battalion headquarters at Leighton Hill. Supporting artillery included 9.2-inch and 6-inch guns on Mt Davis and 4.7-inch guns at Belcher's Point. As darkness fell on 17 December, Japanese reconnaissance swimmers reached Taikoo, confirming the crossing site despite detection. Reinforcements arrived: 18 additional heavy bombers from Guangzhou and 26 fighters from Taiwan joined the aerial assault. The crescendo of artillery fire on the 18th, combined with masses of small craft gathering across the harbour, signalled the imminent invasion. Japanese divisional headquarters shifted to Ma Tau Wei near Kai Tak Airport; the 23rd Army moved to Taipo. The invasion force disposed itself with the right flank embarking from east and west of Kai Tak, the left from Devil's Hill area. At 1800 hours, the invasion order was issued; by 1930 hours Sakai himself arrived in Kowloon to oversee the crossing. At precisely 2000 hours, the 2/228th Regiment silently paddled their collapsible craft toward Taikoo Docks and the nearby sugar factory as artillery support commenced. Colonel Doi embarked with 80 headquarters personnel aboard a large barge, leading the second wave. The conditions favoured the invaders—a moonless night, sporadic showers, and thick black smoke from burning oil tanks obscured their movement. They reached the midpoint undetected before searchlights and machine-gun fire scattered the small boats, separating commanders from their units. Despite this chaos, the assault pressed forward. At 2140 hours the artillery shifted to deeper targets; at 2145 hours the first wave of 3/230th landed at North Point, followed minutes later by 2/228th and then 2/229th. Three red flares signalled a successful landing. All six Japanese battalions were ashore by midnight, though wire fencing delayed their advance and Bren carriers added to the confusion on the beach. General Sano arrived at Taikoo one hour later. The 5/7 Rajputs bore the initial brunt of the assault. Despite days of preliminary shelling, the Rajputs mounted a stubborn defence; Japanese casualties mounted rapidly. The anti-tank company suffered so grievously that only a single gun remained operational. The Japanese plan was tactical rather than frontal—bypass isolated positions for later elimination and push rapidly toward high ground. Overwhelmed by numerical superiority and losing most of their officers, Rajput resistance gradually crumbled. Contradicting all evidence, Maltby remained convinced the main Japanese assault would strike directly at Victoria from Kowloon. He therefore withheld the counter-attack, instead dispatching a platoon of Middlesex troops, Royal Marines, naval personnel, and the Rajputs' reserve company—supported by artillery—to establish a defensive line blocking the Japanese advance toward Central District. Three HKVDC armoured cars were sent to protect East Brigade headquarters; two more reinforced the Middlesex battalion headquarters. It was manifestly inadequate against six Japanese battalions. In post-war dispatches, Maltby conceded his grave miscalculation: he believed he faced at most two battalions, not a full division. As the 3/230th broke through D Company of the 5/7 Rajputs, the 2/230th came ashore nearby and wheeled westward toward Victoria. Their advance halted abruptly at the North Point power station, held by an extraordinary force: four officers and 36 men of the HKVDC Hughsiliers Platoon—alongside 39 civilian volunteers from China Light & Power and Hong Kong Electric, including the station manager Vincent Sorby—plus eight Free French soldiers commanded by Captain Jacques Egal, a Shanghai businessman turned soldier. Without exception, these men were World War I veterans, many aged 55 or older. Some had fought in the Boer War. Major J. J. Patterson, the Hughsiliers' commander, had served with Allenby's Camel Corps and been mentioned in dispatches six times; he was chairman of Jardine Matheson and a legislative councillor. Private Sir Edward Des Voeux, 8th Baronet, a millionaire bullion trader and secretary of the Hong Kong Club, had enlisted as a private when deemed too old for mobilization. Private T. A. Pearce, 67 years old, was chairman of J. D. Hutchison & Company and secretary of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Captain Bruch, the second-in-command, aged 60, chaired a major trading house. The list extended through Hong Kong's business elite, each choosing to fight rather than flee. These old men held an entire regiment at bay. When Patterson called for aid, Maltby dispatched an HKVDC armoured car with a platoon from Z Company, 1 Middlesex, but the reinforcement was ambushed before reaching the station; only nine soldiers, including 2nd Lieutenant Caruthers, broke through. Unable to dislodge the defenders by assault, the Japanese resorted to bombardment. By 0145 hours on 19 December, surrounded and ammunition exhausted, the defenders withdrew to King's Road behind a disabled bus. The Japanese deployed three machine guns, killing or mortally wounding all but Private Geoghan. A Japanese officer, believing all dead, cautiously approached—only to have Geoghan, despite his wounds, surge from cover and charge. He killed the officer and four soldiers before collapsing from wounds. Somehow Geoghan survived. Those old men—civilians and reservists, businessmen and veterans—held the entire western Japanese advance for 18 hours, buying Maltby precious time to withdraw forces and establish a new defensive line. Their stand at North Point became one of the campaign's most improbable acts of defiance. As the 2/229th Regiment advanced southward toward Mt Parker, the 3/229th landed at Aldrich Bay and turned eastward toward Lyemun, where they seized an HKVDC 6-inch gun. Major Bishop of the Royal Rifles of Canada, unaware of the landings, dispatched 15 Platoon under Lieutenant Scott to check on A Company of the Rajputs. Unexpectedly, they encountered armed men in civilian clothes at Lyemun's gate—the first indication of the Japanese presence on the island. Yet senior officers dismissed initial reports of landings and lost positions as exaggerated, a critical miscalculation that proved catastrophic. At Lyemun Fort, the 5th Anti-aircraft Battery of the HKVDC was caught completely unaware and surrendered after minimal resistance. The Japanese then committed one of many atrocities that would characterize the battle, bayoneting 29 survivors. Alerted by 15 Platoon's report, Bishop attempted a counter-attack with two platoons to retake the fort, but the defenders could not scale the six-meter wall and withdrew with nine men killed. As the 2/229th pressed southward toward Mt Parker, they overran the Salesian Mission, which had been converted into an Advance Dressing Station. No. 8 Company of the 2/229th systematized a massacre of medical personnel and the wounded—an atrocity that would later become pivotal evidence at Colonel Tanaka's war crimes trial. Yet amid the chaos, several medical staff and wounded survived to testify: Gunners Y. K. Chan and Martin H. C. Tso of the 5th Battery, Captain Osler Thomas of the HKVDC, Captain Martin Banfill of the Royal Canadian Medical Corps, and Corporal Norman Leath of the Royal Army Medical Corps. C Company of the Royal Rifles, reinforced with captured Japanese machine guns abandoned by fleeing Rajputs, inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers, with one Japanese company suffering over 65 percent losses. Yet overwhelmed by superior numbers and suffering nearly two platoons worth of casualties themselves, the Canadians were forced to withdraw, leaving only a reinforcement platoon under Lieutenant Blaver on Mt Parker. When Captain Clerke arrived at dawn with 16 Platoon to reinforce the position, he found over 100 Japanese already entrenched. With no artillery support and only two platoons available, Clerke had no choice but to withdraw, abandoning Mt Parker to the enemy. By dawn on the 19th, the East Brigade faced catastrophe. Infantry strength had been halved, and losses of artillery were equally devastating. A series of misunderstandings and misinterpreted orders led coastal gun crews at Capes D'Aguilar and Collinson to destroy their own guns in confusion or lose them to the advancing Japanese. Of the entire artillery complement, only one 18-pounder and two 3.7-inch field guns remained operational. Wongneichong—literally "yellow muddy creek" in Chinese—occupies the center of Hong Kong Island, a valley separating the eastern hills (Mt Parker, Mt Butler, Jardine's Lookout) from the western massif (Mt Nicholson, Mt Cameron, Victoria Peak). This narrow gap formed the critical artery linking northern and southern Hong Kong, making Brigadier Lawson's decision to place West Brigade Headquarters there strategically sound yet tactically vulnerable. Recognizing the exposed position after the landings, Major Lyndon had located an alternative site south of Mt Nicholson, scheduled to open the following day. In response to the Japanese landings, Lawson dispatched three platoons of Winnipeg Grenadiers to block the advance. Lieutenant C. D. French took 18 Platoon to Mt Butler, Lieutenant G. A. Birkett's 17 Platoon moved to Jardine's Lookout, and Lieutenant L. B. Corrigan's platoon took the north-west approach to the Gap. As on Mt Parker, both French and Birkett were killed almost immediately, their small forces overwhelmed by battalion-strength enemy forces with artillery support. By morning on the 19th, two battalions each of the 230th and 228th Regiments were pushing for the high ground. The 2/230th rapidly occupied Jardine's Lookout while the 3/230th moved to Mt Nicholson and the 2/228th advanced toward the Gap itself. No. 3 Company of the HKVDC under Major E. Stewart held pillboxes around Jardine's Lookout, while No. 1 Company under Captain Penn defended Taitam Valley with forward positions at Quarry Gap. The pillboxes, despite heavy bombardment, held longer than anticipated—some for as long as 24 hours. Stewart maintained his company headquarters until the 22nd, four days of continuous fighting without adequate ammunition, food, or water. No. 3 Company suffered 80 percent casualties and ceased to exist as a cohesive unit. Realizing that the enemy had penetrated to Mt Butler, Brigadier Lawson decided counter-attack was essential. Major A. B. Gresham of A Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers, was ordered to retake Mt Butler and clear Jardine's Lookout. The Canadians initially succeeded, with Warrant Officer 2 J. R. Osborne leading a bayonet charge, but a strong counter-attack by three Japanese companies drove them back by 2200 hours. The Canadians held firm until 1500 hours, when Gresham attempted surrender despite waving a white flag—the Japanese shot him regardless. In the chaos that followed, a Canadian killed a Japanese officer in response, triggering a grenade barrage. Warrant Officer Osborne caught the grenades and hurled them back as fast as they came, but one landed in an impossible position. Without hesitation, Osborne threw himself on the grenade to save his comrades. This act of supreme self-sacrifice earned him a Victoria Cross—the first Canadian VC of World War II. At dawn on the 19th, Maltby dispatched A Company of the 2 Royal Scots under Captain K. J. Campbell to reinforce the Gap, but they lost all their officers with only 15 men reaching Lawson's headquarters. A group of sailors under Commander A. L. Pears came from the south, but were ambushed en route; only a few reached the Postbridge—a house just south of the Gap—which became an isolated strongpoint. The 3/230th captured the police station perched on a mound at the southern point of the Gap, then swept eastward to seize the anti-aircraft guns of 7th Battery (barely 250 meters from brigade headquarters) and continued uphill toward Taitam Hill to capture additional 6-inch and 3.7-inch guns. Maltby's response was to call down final protective fire from the HKSRA in Happy Valley, inflicting massive casualties on the 3/230th. At 1000 hours on the 19th, Lawson reported that his headquarters was surrounded and he was about to "go outside and shoot it out." Captain H. A. Bush provided covering fire as Lawson and his entire staff, including Middlesex signallers, were cut down by machine-gun fire across the Gap. Lawson's body was discovered two days later halfway up the hill behind his headquarters, dead from a gunshot wound to the thigh. Lieutenant Kerfoot of the 2/14 Punjab with his three Bren carriers arrived minutes too late to save him. IJA who saw the fight made a note stating "he died heroically". At 1330 hours on the 19th, Maltby issued "Operation Order No. 6" calling for a massive counter-attack to commence 90 minutes later. The plan was ambitious: A and D Companies of the 2/14 Punjab were to attack east from Victoria to North Point to relieve the Hughsiliers, while HQ Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the 2 Royal Scots were to attack the Gap and Jardine's Lookout. Eight field guns were promised but never materialized. There was no reconnaissance, no proper orders, and minimal coordination. The Canadians were to rendezvous with the 2 Royal Scots at Middle Gap at 1530 hours, but the Scots were late; the Canadians advanced without them. Captain Pinkerton of D Company, 2 Royal Scots, was ordered at the last minute to attack up Wongneichong Gap Road—the same route A Company had taken only seven hours earlier and been decimated—because it was reported as "lightly held." Captain A. M. S. Slater-Brown led the advance with three Bren carriers and attached engineers, followed by D Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. Just as the carriers reached the burnt-out trucks of A Company, they too were ambushed. Mortars and machine-gun fire rained down from Jardine's Lookout, where the Japanese occupied captured HKVDC pillboxes. Slater-Brown and 2nd Lieutenant Bell, the battalion intelligence officer, were killed instantly. The Royal Scots waited in the roadside ditches until 0200 hours before launching an attack on the police station, reaching the steps before Pinkerton was severely wounded. Captain Ford's composite company attack at 0300 hours also failed. Simultaneously, C Company under Lieutenant F. L. Stanier attacked Jardine's Lookout—also unsuccessfully. This series of piecemeal assaults cost the Royal Scots eight officers and 68 soldiers. Growing increasingly desperate, Maltby ordered Major Hodkinson, Officer Commanding HQ Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, to attack the Gap and proceed to Mt Parker. Requesting reinforcements from A Company and the Royal Scots, Hodkinson launched his assault with covering fire from Lieutenant Corrigan on Mt Nicholson. The Grenadiers managed to reach Mt Nicholson with only five unwounded men, though Corrigan's group advanced to within 300 meters of the Gap road. Then came an unexpected stroke of fortune: while skirting Mt Nicholson, Hodkinson's group stumbled upon approximately 500 Japanese—probably from the 3/230th—eating lunch without posting sentries. The Winnipeg Grenadiers unleashed devastating fire, inflicting heavy casualties. By 1745 hours, Hodkinson's force was only 100 meters from Repulse Bay Road. With four men and a 2-inch mortar, Hodkinson worked his way to the abandoned brigade headquarters, bringing 20 walking wounded with him. He established a foothold at the Gap, receiving orders to attack the police station at 2200 hours. Two HKVDC armoured cars with Vickers machine guns came in support, but accurate enemy fire disabled both. Like Pinkerton before him, Hodkinson reached near his objective before being severely wounded. For this action of determination and courage, Hodkinson was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. By the morning of the 20th, the Japanese had consolidated control of the Gap, but elements of D Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers, still held various pillboxes north of the position. Initially, 17 and 18 Platoons occupied forward positions with Company Headquarters and 16 Platoon in reserve, positioned across Wongneichong Road almost directly opposite brigade headquarters. Forward positions were rapidly overrun and cut off from the company. They fought without officers until withdrawal to battalion headquarters became necessary. With Captain A. S. Bowman killed and Captain R. W. Philips wounded, command fell to Lieutenant T. A. Blackwood. An attempt by B Company to relieve D Company on the evening of the 20th failed catastrophically, killing all officers and 29 men. With fewer than 50 men remaining—all wounded—Lieutenant Blackwood continued inflicting heavy casualties on the Japanese until 22 December, when exhaustion and the complete absence of ammunition, food, and water forced surrender. D Company killed over 200 Japanese soldiers. Post-war Japanese reports refused to believe that a single company had held the Gap for so long. For their stubborn defense, Philips and Blackwood were awarded the Military Cross, and three enlisted men received the Military Medal. The battle of Wongneichong Gap was characterized by fragmented planning and poor coordination. On the night of the 19th-20th, no fewer than three separate companies attacked the police station, with another company assaulting Jardine's Lookout—all within five hours, all independently organized by local commanders. Had these disparate actions been coordinated into a single simultaneous assault, fortress headquarters' objectives might well have been achieved. By the end of the 20th, the British had lost the vital ground of Wongneichong, though Postbridge House remained as an isolated holdout. For the Japanese, Wongneichong became the single costliest engagement since the invasion began, with over 800 casualties and the regimental commander of the 3/230th seriously wounded. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.   Japanese landings on 18-19 December overwhelmed the East Brigade. Brigadier Lawson died defending the vital Gap. Desperate, uncoordinated counter-attacks by British and Canadian troops failed to dislodge the enemy. D Company Winnipeg Grenadiers held the position for four days against overwhelming odds before surrendering. The Japanese suffered 800 casualties but secured this critical strategic ground.

The Meow Meow joins the Memory Wall. Enzo Palumbo revisits both of his runs to the final three — the Brigade season that made him a Big Brother name, and the All-Star season that ended with him sitting next to Cody Calafiore and a 9-0 vote. He walks through how he built the final two seat he knew Cody would honor, what he'd say to that jury now, and why he still thinks about the night the Brigade cut Britney. Plus: the BB28 premiere cameo he had to keep quiet about, where "the Meow Meow" actually came from, his Challenge USA final, and the Amazing Race alliance he wishes he'd made.

The Iron Brigade's journey to Madripoor gets off to a turbulent start when the villain Crossbones hijacks their flight, forcing the team into a high-altitude battle to save everyone on board. After stopping the takeover, they meet a fellow mercenary team that shares valuable information about the growing number of hired guns who have mysteriously vanished. Upon arriving in Madripoor, the Brigade barely has time to catch their breath before stepping in to rescue a woman from an attack by the Blob and Toad. With the villains defeated and more pieces of the mystery falling into place, the team's path is finally clear. Their investigation now leads them to the infamous Bloodbath tournament, where they hope to uncover the truth behind the missing mercenaries.   Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1628612284256101/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lmgpodnetwork?igsh=YTBtMm1kd3k3a3N3   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheLMGPodcast   Hosts: Jordan Mitchell,    

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was a group of about 3000 young, idealistic Americans who volunteered to fight in Spain against the fascists. When they returned in the late 1930s they maintained their social activism with support for the great causes of the 1950s, 60s and beyond. A memorial to their memory is under threat in San Francisco as a park is re-configured.

America spends enormous amounts of money on healthcare. So why are patients frustrated, healthcare workers facing increasing hostility, chronic disease widespread, and the financial pressures on the system continuing to grow?On this episode of Sugar Crush: The Rest of the Story, Dr. Rick Jacoby asks whether the problem begins with something fundamental:Have we confused healthcare with sick care?The conversation starts with an observation at a hospital in Scottsdale, where signs warning against aggressive behavior seem to be everywhere. For Dr. Rick, they're more than security notices—they're a symbol of a healthcare system in which patients, providers, institutions and taxpayers are all feeling the pressure. From there, he travels back to Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Thomas Bond and the founding of Pennsylvania Hospital in 1751, using America's early spirit of community involvement as inspiration for what he believes needs to happen today.His metaphor is Franklin's Bucket Brigade: when there was a fire, ordinary citizens didn't wait for someone else to solve the problem. They grabbed a bucket, passed it to the next person and worked together to put it out.Dr. Rick argues that it's time to do the same thing with health.Rather than waiting until disease requires drugs, hospitalization or surgery, he makes the case for placing far greater emphasis on prevention, nutrition, metabolic health, personal responsibility and regenerative approaches. He also revisits his long-running argument about sugar and glycation and explains how those ideas fit into his Global Compression Theory. The conversation expands into some of Dr. Rick's more controversial views surrounding glyphosate, glycine and the microbiome before returning to cancer metabolism, Otto Warburg, Thomas Seyfried and his own “estuary” theory of disease. He presents these concepts as part of a larger challenge to the conventional medical model and a call for additional research into metabolic and regenerative approaches. Ultimately, this episode isn't simply about what's wrong with American healthcare.It's about who is responsible for changing it.

Der Hauptsitz der neuen Brigade Norwegens liegt etwa 177 Kilometer von der Grenze zu Russland entfernt. Dort befinden sich wichtige militärische Einrichtungen Moskaus.

On this day, 21 August 1971, number 359 Amhurst Road, London, was raided by police investigating the Angry Brigade urban guerrilla group. Jim Greenfield, Anna Mendelson, John Barker and Hilary Creek were arrested. The four were taken to the 'Bomb Squad' HQ in Albany Street, London, where the two men were subjected to a brutal beating to extract a confession from them. Learn more about the group in episodes 83-84 of our podcast, in conversation with John Barker: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e83-4-angry-brigade/Our work is only possible because of support from you, our listeners on patreon. If you appreciate our work, please join us and access exclusive content and benefits at patreon.com/workingclasshistory.See all of our anniversaries each day, alongside sources and maps on the On This Day section of our Stories app: stories.workingclasshistory.com/date/todayBrowse all Stories by Date here on the Date index: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/dateCheck out our Map of historical Stories: https://map.workingclasshistory.comCheck out books, posters, clothing and more in our online store, here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.comIf you enjoy this podcast, make sure to check out our flagship longform podcast, Working Class History

Pete and Gary continue their new series as they follow the story of heroic WWI officer Hubert Rees.This week Rees takes command of 11th Brigade, possibly his biggest challenge yet.Presenters: Peter Hart and Gary BainPublisher: Mat McLachlanProducer: Jess StebnickiPete and Gary's latest book, Beggar Me! I'm a Prisoner!: British POWS in Germany, 1914-18, is available now.Visit Gallipoli with Pete and Gary! Go to https://phbt.uk/ for more information!Join a river cruise to the battlefields of Waterloo, WW1, WW2 and Vietnam: https://historycruises.com/Become a member to listen ad-free and receive special bonus content for only £2 per month: https://plus.acast.com/s/pete-and-garys-military-historySupport the show with a one-off contribution: https://buymeacoffee.com/pgmhFind out everything Pete and Gary are doing at https://linktr.ee/pgmhFor more great history content, visit www.LivingHistoryTV.com, or subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/LivingHistoryTV Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

learn all about the hop brigade

A Head 2 Headlines Hall of Famer. Chicago’s best morning radio show now has a podcast! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and remember that the conversation always lives on the Q101 Facebook page. Brian & Kenzie are live every morning from 6a-10a on Q101. Subscribe to our channel HERE: https://www.youtube.com/@Q101 Like Q101 on Facebook HERE: https://www.facebook.com/q101chicago Follow Q101 on Twitter HERE: https://twitter.com/Q101Chicago Follow Q101 on Instagram HERE: https://www.instagram.com/q101chicago/?hl=en Follow Q101 on TikTok HERE: https://www.tiktok.com/@q101chicago?lang=enSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 8, 1987, the British Army's Special Air Service laid a deadly ambush for an IRA active service unit attacking Loughgall RUC station in County Armagh, resulting in the single greatest loss of life the Provisional IRA suffered in one incident during the Troubles. This episode breaks down the intelligence operation, the assault itself, and the enduring controversy over whether the SAS operated under a shoot-to-kill policy. We examine the tactical, political, and human dimensions of one of the most consequential counter-terrorism operations in modern British history.

--{ "The New Freedom"}-- Thanks to all who write letters and emails and stay in touch - Be careful of all information that is put out - Kayfabe, wrestling theatre in politics and in what is presented to the public - Musk announces Terafab - Reports of bad conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln - The brain-computer interface (BCI) - Redesigning humanity - New norms embedded in drama, entertainment - Club of Rome, climate change, blaming humans - Energy, Technocracy - Public-Private Partnerships - Politicians, intelligence assets - Power, gaining control over people - Hostile takeovers - Experts should run the world - CEOs, TED Talks, jingles - Behavioural Insights Teams - Slow internet speed, shadow-banned - In 1960s, CIA set up patriot radio; CIA doesn't let go, even in so-called peacetime - Interconnection of intelligence agencies, big business, assets and front companies - Stratfor - British mini-series, The Last Enemy - Blackwater bought one of the big genealogical research sites - Trilateral Commission, Public-Private - Milner, taking over resources and establishing tax bases - Power of manipulation through Artificial Intelligence - 77 Brigade, Britain - Millie Weaver - Trump's speeches, Big Pharma - Epstein, Maxwell, much bigger intelligence operation behind them - ARPA, DARPA, computer, internet.

Send us Fan MailOn the show is the cast behind "The Legend of Van Dorn. Get an inside look at the movie's production and the events that inspired it.Learn more here: https: https://legendofvandorn.com/email-me-about-van-dorn-film/Music is graciously provided by Craig Duncan.Our website: https://www.untoldcivilwar.com/Our Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMMWxSupport the show:One time donation of any amount here: https://www.paypal.me/supportuntoldCWMonthly payment through Patreon and unlock unique perks!https://www.patreon.com/user?u=51151470&fan_landing=truThis show is made possible by the support of our sponsors:The Badge MakerProudly carrying affordable, USA made products for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.Civil War TrailsThe world's largest 'Open Air Museum' offering over 1,350 sites across six states. Paddle to Frederick Douglass's birthplace, follow the Gettysburg Campaign turn-by-turn in your car, or hike to mountain tops where long forgotten earthworks and artillery positions await you.Military Images MagazineAmerica's only magazine dedicated solely to the study of portrait photographs of Civil War soldiers.The Excelsior BrigadeDealers in FINE CIVIL WAR MEMORABILIA.The goal of the "Brigade" is to offer high quality, original items while ensuring the best in service and customer satisfaction.HistoryFixCome enjoy history! Explore stories from the Middle Ages to the early 21st century. Enjoy historical video content always ad free and get a 7-day free trial as you explore our site.1863 DesignsAre you looking for Civil War themed graphic design, logo design, historical art and or hand drawn art? Look no further than 1863 Designs. Use the code, “UNTOLD” for 15% off your purchase! Iron Horse Military AntiquesIron Horse Military Antiques is an Illinois-based buyer and seller of nineteenth-century documents, letters, images, and militaria, specializing in the American Civil War.Support the show

Be sure and join us with our special guest, 20 year veteran of the Dublin Fire Brigade, Firefighter Gerard Devine. Tune in as we jump across the pond and see what it's like with the DFB. Firefighter Devine is also an award-winning Irish poet who has a deep passion for writing. His poetry has been picked up by an Irish Whiskey company who are sharing his work on their bottles, and has a poem titled " The Firefighters call" which we will hear all about. We have no doubt that this show will be a doozy. You don't want to miss this one. You can also Listen to our podcast ...we are on all the players #itunespodcast #spotifypodcast #iheartradio #googlepodcast #FDNY #dublinfirebrigadeBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gettin-salty-experience-firefighter-podcast--4218265/support.

Carlin is all aboard the #CadeBrigade! Do you believe there's a possibility that Cade Klubnik winds up as the starting QB for the Jets this season? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The RUNDOWN S6 E122: Ukrainian drones wipe out entire US tank brigade in live war gamePlease Support Our Sponsors:HITMAN INDUSTRIES - Visit them at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hitmanindustries.net/⁠⁠⁠⁠THE CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN ASSEMBLY - Visit them at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cragop.org/⁠USCOMBATGEAR.COM⁠⁠⁠ - Visit them at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.uscombatgear.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HAWG HOLSTERS - Visit them at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hawgholsters.com/

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2026) tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate. Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice. Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe. Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2026) tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate. Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice. Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe. Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2026) tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate. Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice. Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe. Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2026) tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate. Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice. Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe. Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

My guest on the show today is Len Gutkin, editor of The Chronicle Review, which is the ideas and analysis section of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Len, in his freelance life, is a critic whose essays have appeared in Liberties, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.He got his PhD in English from Yale in 2014, spent some time as a postdoc at Harvard, and has spent the years since largely at Chronicle, writing about the intellectual and institutional life of the American university with, from my perspective, an admirable sense of skin in the game; is somebody who cares about this stuff, and you can sense it in his writing.This episode with Len is something of a throwback for the show. A lot of my early episodes were pretty squarely focused on the culture wars — wokeness, anti-wokeness, what was going on in the academy, in journalism, in politics that kind of thing — and I have definitely drifted away from that territory, I think for good reason, in large part because I, like so many other people, kind of ran out of interesting new things to say about it.But I am coming back to it here because Len's recent [paywalled - email Len for access] essay in Liberties, which he titles “Reading for Sins,” is the kind of piece that can probably only be written in retrospect, with a bit of distance from the hullabaloo. Len takes on what he calls at one point, maybe with a hint of apology, “snowflake hermeneutics”: the tendency, particularly acute in the literary humanities over the last decade or so, to read works of art primarily, or at least substantially, for the sins they contain; to fixate on the morally or politically objectionable aspects of books at the expense of everything else about them.He approaches that less to condemn it, though there's no secret as you're reading it that he's not a fan of this approach to literature, than to give it what I think of as a genuine institutional and intellectual history — to understand it as something other than the thing that gives Chris Rufo too many owie feelings.To do that, Len ranges pretty widely. He gets into the sociology of taboo, the history of literary education, and, among other examples, a 2023 controversy over Merve Emre's New Yorker review of John Guillory's book Professing Criticism. Guillory's book argued that literary scholars as a profession had made a rather grievous conceptual error at some point along the way: they came to think that their work as scholars was justified, at least in part, on the basis of its beneficial political impact on society. In some extreme cases, scholars saw themselves explicitly as activists, but in many cases it was somewhat more indirect. They had constructed a paradigm in which the critical, inquisitive, deconstructive work they did served clear political ends.Guillory was critical of that. Emre, reviewing his book for The New Yorker, lexplored his argument and then added some of her own, drawing on her own experience in academia. In doing so, and this is key to how Len gets into it in his essay, she repeatedly used a phrase that Guillory himself had used to characterize what had happened to his field: “professional deformation.” It is the English translation of what was a originally a French expression used to describe actual physical deformations, like the way coal miners might develop a distinctive slump or hunch.That phrase then provided the spark for an explosion of outrage from members of a public Facebook group called Remaking the University, administered by a former president of the Modern Language Association and populated by tenured and tenure-track faculty at high-prestige institutions. They did not like Emre's use of “professional deformation.” Here is how Len, in his Liberties essay, characterizes what he observed in that Facebook group:I paid more than usual attention to the reception of Professing Criticism, because I had written about it several times myself. I was interested to see what the folks at a popular public Facebook page devoted to “Remaking the University,” hosted by a recent president ofthe Modern Language Association, would make of Emre's review. They didn't like it. And several of them — tenured professors of English, not naïve or overeager freshmen — were appalled by Guillory's use of the phrase “deformation,” as well as by Emre's approving use of it throughout her review. The subject is introduced thus, by a distinguished Victorianist: “I just read this and I'm feeling dismayed” by the “flippant, careless, and damaging work, including the unspeakable use of ‘deformation' here, not to mention the Anglocentrism, elitism, etc.” This professor goes on: “It is horrifying that a person can use ‘deformed'/‘deformation' in 2023 in an article in a major magazine and nobody flagged it.” Then another professor — like the first, a well-known scholar in her field — weighs in: “the ableism was stunning.” And the first professor returns to the charge: “I just did a search for ‘deformed' and felt physically ill. She uses it nine times in the article, starting with ‘hideously deformed.' What the hell? How are disabled scholars supposed to feel when they read that? How is it possible that she could think it was cute to use such a derogatory term and that the editors didn't flag it? I don't even see how one can debate the merits of the idea with slurs like that sitting in the prose.”In a less interesting essay than Len's, we would simply be presented with this as blatant evidence of snowflakes doing their snowflake hermeneutics. Len's approach is more interesting. He is somewhat taking for granted that it's absurd, but he's asking: what is actually going on here? What does it mean to say that one feels physically ill from reading the word “deformation” in this context? What feelings or reactions are being submerged, evaded, or sublimated in this kind of discussion? For what ulterior purpose was the accusation of ableism serving as a stalking horse? And why were people so pissed off in the first place?One answer Len gives has to do with the idea of words themselves as magic, as sacred, as having the power to heal or harm or alter the fabric of the universe. He points out that this is not a novel relationship to words — it is in fact ancient, and it connects in a pretty clear way, once he lays it out, to a much longer and then much more modern history of how literature, and the study of literature and other humanities, has functioned in the modern West as a kind of substitute for religion in the aftermath of the collapse of organized Christianity as a taken-for-granted source of meaning, vessel for sacred energies. The close reading of difficult texts was, within that period, understood as a serious spiritual practice.What Len argues — and what I find genuinely compelling and pretty persuasive — is that snowflake hermeneutics is in part a rearguard response to the loss of that function. The prestige that attached to literary study in that earlier period has drained away, and nobody quite knows how to recover from it. Snowflake hermeneutics is, in this reading, an unconscious attempt to restore some of literature's old sacred charge by treating certain words and representations as sacred but in a negative register, because the positive ones can no longer serve. They've been vanquished from the inside by the contemporary academy, and then more thoroughly vanquished by the macro forces we're all buffeted by — neoliberalism, postmodernity, capital, techno-futurism, whatever you want to call them.That is a much more interesting conversation to have than simply “snowflakes bad,” which isn't really a conversation at all. Also interesting is where Len and I end up when we try to take seriously the role of taboo, the idea that certain words are genuinely destabilizing and that we need protection from them. We talk about whether taboos of some kind are necessary to the functioning of any society, whether any culture can really do entirely without taboos, whether everything should truly be on the table in a scholarly or intellectual context.We go deep on those things and others, and I had a lot of fun.One small production note: Len's dog makes a brief but notable appearance early in the conversation. His barking, though loud, does not last long. He is not a bad dog. He is a good dog. But if you hear him and it feels disruptive, it will pass soon.Eminent Americans is produced in collaboration with the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, and is distributed through its publication, Arc Magazine. You can find all of Arc's podcasts, including this one, and much more online at arcmag.org.It was a real pleasure to have Len on for this semi-throwback episode. Peace.0:00 Intro – Dan introduces guest Len Gutkin, editor of The Chronicle Review0:55 Framing the episode as a “throwback” to earlier culture-war coverage1:19 Len's Liberties essay “Reading for Sins” and “snowflake hermeneutics”2:21 Sociology of taboo, literary education, and the Guillory/Emre controversy4:46 The “professional deformation” Facebook group outrage6:39 Len's real question: why do people feel “physically ill” from a word?7:34 Words as sacred/magical — literature as substitute for religion9:19 Snowflake hermeneutics as grief response to lost prestige of humanities10:24 Preview: taboo, necessity of taboos in any culture10:56 Note on a barking dog early in the interview10:56 Danforth Center/Arc Magazine credits10:14 Interview begins — Len's background and title at The Chronicle11:16 Len summarizes “Reading for Sins”13:20 Len's academic background, PhD at Yale (2014)14:23 State of campus politics circa 2003–2014 (”interregnum”)16:02 2014 Yale grad student “atmospheric concerns” moment17:02 Postdoc years at Harvard, sensing the shift building19:20 The complicated student/faculty dynamic behind the culture wars22:46 Case study #1: the “N-word” podcast and classroom taboo rules26:52 The Michael Warner “faggotry” anecdote28:09 Slurs as concentrated sites of language's power29:22 Workplace-norm slippage into classroom/literary norms32:14 The Odyssey, disturbing content, and professional hypocrisy36:14 Dave Hickey/Mapplethorpe/Jesse Helms tangent on art's power to disturb39:17 Double-edged strategy: aggrandizing vs. vitiating one's subject41:15 Right-wing “manosphere” vs. left-wing academic parallels (Barbara Kruger)46:44 Case study #2: Guillory's “professional deformation,” Emre's New Yorker review, and the Facebook backlash50:53 Is public Facebook commentary fair game as evidence?54:24 Faculty fear of students posting to social media57:00 Christian right's historical claim to being the “OG” trigger-warning enforcers60:34 Hypocrisy on both sides of the free-speech/academic-freedom debate64:29 Buckley's “God and Man at Yale” and academic freedom skepticism65:04 Psychoanalyzing the Facebook group's outrage — displacement theory68:57 What was the actual “betrayal” in Guillory's book and Emre's review?70:42 Timing: 2023, the fraying of “woke consensus,” and October 7th73:15 Case study #3: Paul Moses and the 1960s Huckleberry Finn controversy at U Chicago80:29 Should there be any taboos in arts education? Céline as test case88:19 Circling back: blasphemy, sacralization, and STEM's rising prestige93:52 AI as an accelerant of the loss of literary culture95:53 What a “mature” response to loss/grief might look like97:22 Closing thoughts and outro/credits This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

Original Air Date: January 08, 1943Host: Andrew RhynesShow: The Lone RangerPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Stars:• Brace Beemer (Lone Ranger)• John Todd (Tonto) Writer:• Fran Striker Producer:• George W. Trendle Music:• Ben Bonnell For more great shows check out our site: https://www.otrwesterns.comExit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK

Send us Fan MailOn this episode former professional hot air balloon pilot and U.S. Army Green Beret, Kevin Knapp, will discuss the role of hot air balloons during the Civil War!Learn more here: https: https://www.facebook.com/civilwarballoonsMusic is graciously provided by Craig Duncan.Our website: https://www.untoldcivilwar.com/Our Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMMWxSupport the show:One time donation of any amount here: https://www.paypal.me/supportuntoldCWMonthly payment through Patreon and unlock unique perks!https://www.patreon.com/user?u=51151470&fan_landing=truThis show is made possible by the support of our sponsors:The Badge MakerProudly carrying affordable, USA made products for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.Civil War TrailsThe world's largest 'Open Air Museum' offering over 1,350 sites across six states. Paddle to Frederick Douglass's birthplace, follow the Gettysburg Campaign turn-by-turn in your car, or hike to mountain tops where long forgotten earthworks and artillery positions await you.Military Images MagazineAmerica's only magazine dedicated solely to the study of portrait photographs of Civil War soldiers.The Excelsior BrigadeDealers in FINE CIVIL WAR MEMORABILIA.The goal of the "Brigade" is to offer high quality, original items while ensuring the best in service and customer satisfaction.HistoryFixCome enjoy history! Explore stories from the Middle Ages to the early 21st century. Enjoy historical video content always ad free and get a 7-day free trial as you explore our site.1863 DesignsAre you looking for Civil War themed graphic design, logo design, historical art and or hand drawn art? Look no further than 1863 Designs. Use the code, “UNTOLD” for 15% off your purchase! Iron Horse Military AntiquesIron Horse Military Antiques is an Illinois-based buyer and seller of nineteenth-century documents, letters, images, and militaria, specializing in the American Civil War.History AnalyzedHistory Analyzed is a podcast which investigates both history's biggest moments and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show

Thinking Inside the Box – The Gauntlet, part of the NTC Warrior Chronicles, brings you interviews with the United States Army's experts in combined arms maneuver, the Observer Coach Trainers (OC/Ts) of Operations Group, at the National Training Center (NTC), Fort Irwin, California. In this episode, host Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Deleon, Outlaw 40 sits down with CSM Corey Willis, of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, CSM James Smith of the 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, CSM Melcher, Senior Enlisted Trainer for the Cavalry Squadron, Brigade, the CSM of Operations Group during Rotation 26-08, and CSM Dave Shipman of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Black Horse 7. They discuss lessons learned, differences about transformation in contact rotations, the changes employed on how a brigade fights, how it's tasked organized, the integration of new capabilities, and how it helps to shape decisions for the future. References ADP 5-0 The Operations Process, Army Publication Directorate, https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN18126-ADP_5-0-000-WEB-3.pdf ADP 6-0 The Mission Command, Army Publication Directorate, https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN47032-ADP_6-0-000-WEB-1.pdf The Command Sergeant Major's Place on the Battlefield, Command Sgt. Maj. Lavares Jackson, https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2019/04/02/the-command-sergeant-majors-place-on-the-battlefield/ The NCOs Crosswalk Guide, Center of Army Lessons Learned, https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2021/06/15/569dec48/21-12.pdf To stay updated with the latest video from Operations Group, NTC Observer, Coach / Trainers, be sure to like, subscribe, and review us wherever you listen or watch. Stay tuned for more episodes in the future. Thinking Inside the Box Podcast at Thinking Inside the Box on Apple Podcasts Thinking Inside the Box | Podcast on Spotify Thinking Inside the Box | Podcasts on Audible | Audible.com We encourage you to watch our TAC Talk series on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@tactalks-operationsgroupntc. Visit us at our Official Unit Webpage: https://home.army.mil/irwin/units-tenants/ntc-operations-group “Thinking Inside the Box and TAC Talks” are a product of the Operations Group, National Training Center as part of the NTC Warrior Chronicles. Episode hosted by Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Deleon and edited by Annette Pritt

Don Lemon and Jennifer Welch are back, and absolutely nothing is off limits. From Hunter Biden's headline-making interview and MAGA hypocrisy to Andrew Tate, AI, addiction, and the state of American politics, the two dive into the week's biggest stories with their signature mix of sharp analysis, outrageous humor, and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. If you like your political commentary unfiltered, spicy, and unpredictable, this conversation is one you won't want to miss. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp dot com slash DONLEMON. This episode is brought to you by Byron Publishing. Get your copy of "Bullies, Parasites and Slaves" at https://www.BPS.online or text the word, "BULLY" to 511511 and receive an immediate link to get the book – paperback, E-book or audio. Text Fees may apply.  

John Larn had all the appearances of a respectable man. He owned a ranch, married into one of the most powerful families in Shackleford County, and was even elected as Sheriff. But behind the badge, Larn was a cold-blooded killer and cattle rustler who robbed his neighbors blind and murdered anyone who got too close to the truth. Join me today as we examine the life of John Larn. From his mysterious beginnings in Alabama and alleged murders in Colorado and New Mexico, to the infamous Bush Knob Massacre of 1873. We'll also take a look at his rise through the vigilante group known as the Tin Hat Brigade, and his bloody partnership with John Selman, the gunman who would later kill John Wesley Hardin.   Wild West Quiz - https://wildwestquiz.com/   Check out the website! https://www.wildwestextra.com/   Email me! https://www.wildwestextra.com/contact/   Free Newsletter! https://wildwestjosh.substack.com/   Buy Me A Coffee!  https://buymeacoffee.com/wildwest   Join Patreon for ad-free bonus content! https://www.patreon.com/wildwestextra   Merch! https://wildwestextramerch.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the Second Lebanon War, we spoke to Colonel R, the Chief of Staff of the 769 Brigade. He looks back on 30 years of service, IDF operations against Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime's influence on terrorism as a whole. Colonel R talks about operations he was a part of and what he has seen in the field. He includes a few words of wisdom for soldiers and for our listeners as a whole.

After Venezuela's deadly earthquakes, many international rescue teams have left as the window for finding survivors narrows. But Los Topos Aztecas — a legendary Mexican volunteer rescue brigade — says it is staying until no longer needed. Also, health workers on the frontline of the Ebola outbreak are on strike. And, Māori New Year has been an official holiday in New Zealand for the past four years, but some may be uncomfortable embracing the culture. Plus, in Uganda, scientists have found a new use for catnip: mosquito repellent. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices