Plans for the escape were made on a Thursday: the grim little group of officers had agreed that Singapore could not hold. On the Sunday of Singapore's collapse, an aide-de-camp swam out to a Chinese sampan and sculled it back to shore. Aboard went the officers, headed by Major General Henry Gordon Bennett, Commander of the Australian Imperial Forces in Malaya. After nightfall the sampan slipped out of the harbor.
There had been friction between General Gordon Bennett and the British High Command. The Australian's dislike for Air Chief Marshal Sir General Robert Brooke-Popham was embarrassingly obvious. But Henry Gordon...
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