Nearly all the Japanese infantry were armed with tommy-guns or other light automatic weapons. They were ideal for this close-range jungle fighting. Our men were armed chiefly with rifles and the percentage of automatic weapons wal small. There were several bayonet engagements, a form of warfare for which the enemy seemed to have a marked distaste. Many of our officers continued to swear by the rifle right up to the end of the campaign, and there are sound arguments on both sides in the rifie-versus-tommy-gun controversy. But it always seemed to me that the rifle's chief use is as an accurate long-range weapon, and in Malaya there! was rarely an extended field of fire. The advanced Japanese 1 units would carry perhaps six or eight drums of ammunition with them and further supplies would be brought up in boxes on the carriers of push-bikes.
After the tommy-gun the next most popular weapon of the enemy was a light 2-inch mortar. Again, it was a weapon ideally suited to jungle warfare. It was very mobile and was I easily transported and operated by two men. It was very accurate. The shell burst with a very loud report. There was ,| also a 4-inch mortar which was seen mounted on armoured carriers. Except for the 2-inch mortar, Japanese artillery, until the siege of Singapore, played a comparatively small part in the fighting.
Hand-grenades were another weapon, extremely practic-able in close fighting, of which the enemy made extensive use Cases were reported in which Japanese climbed up trees and then tried to lob them down on to our vehicles.

They were fond of arboreal tactics and snipers would often climb up trees to shoot at our outposts. One of our casualties was shot in the foot while standing in a trench three feet deep. A British officer who went after a Japanese sniper reported to be concealed in a tree told me that he felt as if he was walking up to game at home.
One of the most conspicuous features of the campaign was ihe great use which the Japanese made of bicycles. They may have brought some with them from Japan, but most were simply commandeered from natives in the villages, possibly being paid for in the notes which the Japanese Army brought with them. (These notes were the same size, colour, and design as the British notes but said, 'The Japanese Government promises to pay the bearer on demand' the sum of ten dollars, fifty cents, or whatever the denomination was. These notes must have been printed long in advance of the outbreak of war, still further evidence of the care and thoroughness with which the Japanese planned their campaign in the Pacific. In the Philippines, in the Netherlands East Indies, in Burma, the Japanese Army brought their own specially printed notes with them.) Bicycles still further increased the mobility of the Japanese and enabled their forward troops to progress at great speed.

It will be seen that the highest degree of mobility was the keynote of the enemy's equipment. The British forces were nothing like so mobile. One only had to see the British soldier on his way to the front, seemingly borne down with heavy boots, tin helmet, gas-mask, heavy pack, canvas webbing, rifle and bayonet, to sense that he lacked a certain freedom of movement. He had also been trained to be very dependent on his vehicular transport and this complicated, if it did not impede, movement. One used to see British troops seemingly immobilized by their own transport.
In their tactics the Japanese practised an extreme devolution of command. Small groups of men, even single individuals, would be told to make their way as best they could to a point on the map a number of miles ahead. It would be up to them to get there. They would set off through the jungle, quietly picking their way, sometimes lying concealed for hours. Arrived at the given point behind our lines they would reform. Contact with their forces in the rear would be maintained by portable wireless apparatus. If they came up against one of our outposts they would attack it from the front, but, if the opposition were severe, would make no attempt to press home the front attack. Instead, they would creep round and attack it either from the flank or from the rear. Similarly, if our troops advanced, the enemy would simply melt into the jungle on each side and again attack from the flank. Such were the tactics employed by the Japanese not only against sections but against whole brigades and divisions. The landings on the west coast which later caused us so much trouble, when sometimes one or two thousand men would slip ashore under cover of darkness, were simply attempts to outflank our positions on a much larger scale.
These tactics were made possible by several things - by the Japanese superiority in numbers; by the fact that the terrain in Malaya favoured the attacker at every turn and hindered the defender; by the remarkable cross-country capacity of the Japanese infantryman who was the spearhead of the attack; by the enemy's superior local knowledge.

Ian Morrison