Chapter 29: The bustling Eastern Ocean (Part 1)
December 29, 1945, Singapore
Although Europe was already experiencing howling wind and snow and withered vegetation at this time, the Changyi Naval Base in Singapore was still sunny and lush.
Under the scorching equatorial sun, accompanied by a long whistle, the flagship of the Eastern Fleet of the British Empire's Royal Navy, nicknamed the "African God of War" battlecruiser Renown in a certain world, sailed with a large number of destroyers and transport ships. Entering Zhangyi Naval Base, the anchor chain was slowly lowered.
The military band on the shore, which had been prepared for a long time, also played the melody of "God Save the King" hard.
——Four years later, the Union Jack flag of the British Empire once again flew over Singapore after a long absence.
If you stand on the bridge of the battlecruiser HMS Renown and look from a distance, the magnificent European-style buildings in downtown Singapore and the wide streets neatly lined with palm trees and flower beds on both sides are still the same as they were four years ago. It does not reflect the elegant mood of the Victorian style. As for the unsightly Sun Flag and Rising Sun Flag, as well as those Japanese slogans and banners, they had all been torn down by the wise commander of the Nanyang Army, General Juichi Terauchi.
Under the nostalgic sunset twilight, everything seems to reappear as if it were yesterday, as if it has returned to the heyday of the British Empire when it dominated the world.
However, even the dullest person probably knows very well that today's empire on which the sun never sets has long since faded beyond recognition.
After attending the surrender ceremony held at the Government House in Singapore and watching the newly appointed Governor of the Straits Settlements, Lord Mountbatten, receive his command sword from the hands of Japanese Army General Juichi Terauchi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Fleet of the Royal Navy, Bruce Austin. Admiral Fraser did not attend the following dance. Instead, with everyone watching, he walked to the balcony with a bottle of whiskey and drank alone with a small plate of cheese.
——Although doing so would definitely come across as arrogant and vulgar, Admiral Fraser didn't care. Unlike some gentlemen, this general has always regarded himself as a rough man. He claims to have never read a novel. He lacks both cultural accomplishment and political wisdom. He has never been a man of officialdom. Admiral Fraser The position he has today is entirely due to his sacrifice of life and bloody fights on the battlefield.
Therefore, he never bothered to hide his emotions, nor did he like to put on a false smile and pretend to be a polite gentleman.
At this moment, Admiral Fraser was not in a happy mood, and could even be said to be very depressed - it had always been his dream to lead the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet back to its home port of Singapore, but a victory like this was purely chosen. , which really made him feel uninterested.
——Since the change of ownership of Malaya and the fall of Singapore, the British Royal Navy’s Eastern Fleet has been driven out of the Pacific. But then, before the British came to their senses, the Japanese combined fleet, which had marched straight in, fiercely entered the Indian Ocean and joined forces with the dissatisfied rebels in various colonies to continue to attack the British navy and army in the east. Another violent beating: the fall of Burma, the fall of Ceylon, The Great Indian Uprising, the Arab Rebellion, the Persian Army's capture of Basra... countless tragic defeats continued one after another, and important ports were lost one after another. The achievements of the British Empire's century-old operation in the East collapsed instantly, and finally forced the British Eastern Fleet to He fled the Asian continent in a hurry.
By the time Admiral Fraser came to take over in the autumn of 1944, the Eastern Fleet had been beaten down to only one battlecruiser HMS Reputation, six destroyers and two submarines, plus several "Jeeps" converted from cargo ships. "Aircraft carrier" can only hang around in places such as Mogadishu, Dar es Salaam and Cape Town in South Africa on the east coast of Africa. For this reason, the former fleet commander General Somerville was ridiculed as the "Admiral of Africa" by public opinion. ……
The only way this poor fleet can cause harm to the Japanese monkeys is to set off from the east coast of Africa, travel thousands of sea miles to the other side of the Indian Ocean, drop a bunch of bombs on a Japanese naval base in Southeast Asia or Australia, and then turn around. run. But such a harassment mission is actually quite dangerous. If you are unlucky, you will be bitten by the Japanese planes and bombed indiscriminately, or the Japanese fleet will chase and intercept you... The few remaining battleships of the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet after withdrawing from India, The aircraft carriers and cruisers were all wiped out one after another in this harassing battle that was not worth the gain.
Therefore, no matter how brave and ruthless Admiral Fraser is, he cannot create any miracles with such a pitiful fleet. He can only secretly organize the "Africa Express" ship from time to time when the main force of the Japanese combined fleet is not around. team and smuggled several supplies to the British and Indian troops trapped in Bombay Port. Once the Japanese combined fleet returns to the Indian Ocean in a large scale, Admiral Fraser can only return to Africa honestly, pick up a shotgun and go hunting antelopes on the savannah.
After the fall of Bombay this fall, Admiral Fraser lost even this mission and could only stay on the African coast to bask in the sun all day. At the same time, they are thinking about when the country will transfer the Reputation back to fill the huge gap created after the local fleet was hit by the Soviet atomic bomb.
Who would have thought that after just a few days of basking in the African sun, General Fraser would be knocked unconscious by a sudden gift package from the sky: the Yankees intensified their efforts to learn from the Soviet Union's example and directly bombed Tokyo with atomic bombs and poison gas bombs. In an instant, the mind and heart of the Japanese Empire were crushed!
Then, the Japanese Empire fell into chaos, and a new Japanese Provisional Government emerged, calling on Japanese troops to surrender to the Allies.
After a while, although many Japanese troops scattered overseas were still fighting, General Juichi Terauchi, the commander of the Japanese Nanyang Army in Singapore, announced that he would obey the orders of the provisional government and respectfully welcomed the Allied forces to come and take over Singapore... In this way, he almost fell The British Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet, which became the "African Fleet", jumped out of the bottom of failure and jumped to the pinnacle of victory.
The officers and soldiers of the Eastern Fleet, who had long been tired of the long war, were naturally celebrating and ecstatic about this. However, as a professional soldier who has spent half his life fighting against the wind and waves, Admiral Fraser hopes to have a good showdown with the Japanese Navy and win a real victory with artillery shells and torpedoes.
Of course, Admiral Fraser also knew very well that this could only be a delusion in his mind.
——All current intelligence shows that although most of the Japanese naval fleet has no intention of surrendering, they also have no intention of staying in Southeast Asia and fighting with the Royal Navy of the British Empire. Instead, they are making strides to retreat to the east. Not to mention the Dutch East Indies and British Malayan colonies to the north and south of the Singapore Fortress, as well as the French Indochina Federation a little further away, and even the Philippine Islands across the South China Sea were all abandoned by the Japanese navy, seemingly single-mindedly. China wants to concentrate its forces in the Western Pacific and start a deadly fight with the Americans.
As for those Japanese troops who did not follow the withdrawal, they stayed in their strongholds for three days and sent out telegrams, urging the Allied forces to surrender and take over power as soon as possible.
But this does not mean that the British Empire can successfully restore everything to the old way. Because after the hurricane of Japanese invasion, the colonial order in Southeast Asia has fallen apart, and indigenous people from all walks of life have taken advantage of the chaos to rise and emerge as countless thorns. For example, General Aung San’s Myanmar “Independence Army”, Ho Chi Minh who was based in the Red River Delta, Sukarno who was entrenched in Java Island, and a bunch of Sudanese monarchs who established their own countries on Sumatra Island. To the north of Singapore, on the other side of the Strait of Johor, there are currently numerous MCP guerrillas active, and they have no favorable impressions of the colonial rule of the British Empire.
In the past few years, they had been a nuisance to the invading Japanese forces, but now they were a nuisance to the Allies, and not long ago, they had received a large sum of money from the shabby Japanese - those who persisted in fighting Before withdrawing from various parts of Southeast Asia, the Japanese navy and some Japanese army forces that refused to surrender almost deliberately left large amounts of ordnance supplies to these guerrillas and indigenous political forces, seemingly deliberately to create obstacles for the returning Allied forces.
Especially in the Philippines, various guerrilla groups supported by the Communist Party of the Philippines, religious organizations, and US intelligence agencies have fought in Luzon and Mindanao in order to seize cities and ports abandoned by the Japanese army. The situation in Vietnam was similar. Before abandoning Indochina, the Japanese army released all the French and Vietnamese guerrillas in the prison camps and left them with a lot of weapons and ammunition. As a result, before all the retreating Japanese troops and overseas Chinese had time to board the ship, the Viet Minh guerrillas commanded by Ho Chi Minh were already fighting with the French and the Overseas Chinese Self-Police Force in Saigon...
In short, in order to prevent the Western colonists from making a comeback smoothly, the Japanese navy laid countless mines in advance before withdrawing from Southeast Asia. The part of the Japanese army that was waiting to surrender was extremely despondent. As long as the bullet didn't hit their chest, they didn't bother to care about anything.
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However, all these disturbances on land have nothing to do with Admiral Fraser, the commander of the naval fleet.
As an old sailor, his mission was to sink enemy warships and shoot down enemy aircraft on the sea, but the Japanese Navy had no intention of fighting him. The British Empire, which is currently suffering from internal and external troubles and is riddled with holes, can no longer support him in launching an expedition deep into the Pacific.
After the breakdown of the Anglo-Soviet peace talks, Churchill's wartime cabinet once again came to power. Although they were ecstatic about the exciting news of the "peaceful recovery of Singapore", they regarded it as "finally appearing in the darkest era." A ray of light." They also boasted in domestic newspapers to try to boost the remaining fighting spirit of the people. However, if they really want to invest their few battleships and continue to launch the Eastern Expedition against the Japanese Imperial Combined Fleet, whose main force is still intact, Let's start a fateful battle of revenge... Let's just forget about this!
In fact, the journey of the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet has come to an end the moment it arrives in Singapore - just in case, the current No. 10 Downing Street does not even plan to send a fleet to Hong Kong to take over. Watch the two big sharks of the United States and Japan continue to fight in the eastern ocean.
No matter how depressed and melancholy General Fraser, who had not yet won a single victory in the East, felt, this was an unchangeable reality.
With the raising of the Union Jack flag in Singapore, his mission on the eastern ocean has ended. Singapore is the end point where the glory of the empire can shine again. As for the more distant east, the vastest Pacific Ocean on earth, it is no longer a battlefield belonging to the British Empire. Now that Whitehall in London is lucky enough to pick up the slack and take it back to Singapore, it is already very lucky. If we continue to be greedy, we will only lose the last bit of capital.
Just as General Fraser raised his neck and drank another glass of whiskey in one gulp, another army general also came over with a wine glass.
"...General Fraser, why are you drinking alone here? Why don't you go over and dance a few dances with those ladies?"
Admiral Fraser looked up and found that it was Army General Oded Wingate who had come to Singapore with the fleet to accept the surrender.
This is a maverick and alternative celebrity in the British Army. He is also a controversial figure who has caused great headaches to the bureaucracy. His name is a legend in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He is said to be the same as the "Arab" during the First World War. "Lawrence".
General Wingate was a pioneer of long-range special operations, a gifted commander of irregular warfare and an avid lover of personal adventure. He has participated in counter-insurgency battles in many colonies, and bucked the trend during a series of major defeats in the Pacific War. He recruited a large number of indigenous soldiers and formed the famous "Chindit" special forces, which fought in the tropical jungles of Myanmar. He fought many battles with the Japanese army and achieved impressive results.
However, the hard work of a mere special forces unit could not change the strategic defeat of the entire front. With the outbreak of the Indian Rebellion, the "Chindit" special forces had to retreat repeatedly on the battlefield, and were eventually exhausted in the quagmire of the Ganges River Basin. Admiral Wingate, who only escaped with his life, was sent to East Africa to accompany Admiral Fraser, an African admiral, to train a group of black indigenous special forces for the British Empire. Now, because he has been fighting in Southeast Asia for many years and is familiar with the environment, he has relocated Admiral Wingate to Asia to be responsible for the reception of Singapore.
At the same time, General Fraser glanced sideways at the brightly lit and melodious hall, and found that it was indeed a scene of skirts and hairpins flying, singing and singing: Obviously, the civil and military officials of the British colonies who had just taken office had not yet They had time to bring their families, so the women attending the ball, They are mainly the wives and daughters of local wealthy overseas Chinese businessmen and Malay wealthy families, as well as some white women who were social butterflies just released from Japanese comfort stations... although they were probably still there for four years before they were forced to sell meat to survive. The wives or ladies of the British colonial officials who surrendered before.
In response to this, General Fraser could only shrug and express his helplessness. After all, in this war-torn era, there were too many unlucky people whose families had been destroyed. There were many family members of soldiers in the country who were forced to sell themselves. Although he himself was not in the mood to find a job. He enjoys having fun, but he has no intention of letting others become ascetic ascetics.
"...Sorry, my mind is still very confused and I feel very confused. I really am not in the mood to dance with a girl..."
Admiral Fraser raised his glass to Admiral Wingate, "... Speaking of which, how did things come to this point? Until now, I feel as if I am dreaming. As if suddenly, we are here He flew out of the abyss of defeat and sat on the throne of the winner, looking at The ferocious enemy who had never been defeated by him had his bones removed inexplicably, and he knelt at his feet and fawned over him... To be honest, this feeling was not comfortable, let alone pleasant. On the contrary, it made people feel empty in their hearts. , seems very unreliable..."
"...Who knows? Maybe fate is such a wonderful thing?" Admiral Wingate shrugged indifferently, "...General Fraser, at least in the east, your war is over and you can have a good rest. , but my war has just begun!
As you probably know, London has given me another impossible task: to recapture all of Burma and Malaya from the rebels! They also need to wait for an opportunity to invade the Dutch East Indies and give Queen Wilhelmina a foothold in exile in London! Damn it! The War Department only gave me three brigades, one of which was a black African brigade, but asked me to fight a war that I couldn't win even if I invested three armies! It's crazy! ”
"...As far as I know, London seems to have given you a suggestion, allowing you to use the firearms and ammunition handed over by the surrendering Japanese army to recruit soldiers from our prisoners of war who surrendered four years ago, and arm them again. It’s used to make up for the gap in military strength!”
General Fraser frowned and asked, "...Although they were tortured in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps for four years, some people are probably in poor health. But as long as they are given adequate rest and proper nutrition, I think It should be possible to select thousands of available soldiers, right?”
——Nearly four years ago, in February 1942, the stupid and weak General Percival raised the white flag in Singapore and led 80,000 British colonial troops to surrender to the Japanese army. Churchill sadly announced at the time: "The most painful catastrophe in British history, the largest surrender, took place in Singapore." Among these 80,000 prisoners of war, half were British and Australians, and the rest were Indians and Malays. people, and a few Chinese.
In view of the current embarrassment of the limited available troops on various fronts and the embarrassment of young and middle-aged men in the country who have been recruited to the limit, the War Department in London actually had an idea and decided to target these prisoners of war who had suffered so much, let Wingai The general will recruit troops from among them, and the necessary ordnance and ammunition Then collect them from the surrendering Japanese troops, which can save transportation capacity... However, not to mention how evil this idea is, the most critical point is that the 80,000 British prisoners of war did surrender in Singapore four years ago. Wrong, but who stipulated that they are still here?
"...Unfortunately, according to the old monkey Juichi Terauchi, after the battle, only three hundred Australian prisoners of war were left in Singapore to sweep the streets. The others were transported to prisoner of war camps elsewhere and were not in Singapore at all. , at least I can’t get them here now.”
Admiral Wingate complained, "...unless your fleet is willing to do this and transport them from the POW camp back to Singapore..."
"...Need help from the navy? Could it be that the prisoner of war camp is in Bangkok or Yangon?"
Admiral Fraser raised his head and drank the last bit of whiskey at the bottom of the bottle down his throat, smacking his lips and saying with a bit of contentment.
"...No, it's a little further, but it's also on the seaside...just on China's Hainan Island, south of Hong Kong!"
General Wingate replied with eager eyes, "...Your Excellency, you must be willing to help the Army with this, right?"
Admiral Fraser was stunned when he heard this. I saw him rolling his eyes first, seeming to be thinking about the location of the place name, then sighing helplessly, turning around to call the waiter carrying the big tray, taking down two glasses of brandy, and stuffing one of the tall glasses into the In the hands of General Wingate, who was confused, "...Well...well, let's not mention these troublesome things for now, let's continue drinking!" General Wingate: "..."