German in Malaya?

Discussions on WW2 in the Pacific and the Sino-Japanese War.
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Peter H
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German in Malaya?

#1

Post by Peter H » 14 Dec 2008, 01:43

According to Moon over Malaya,Jonathan Moffatt & Audrey Holmes McCormick, at Titia Karangan in December 1941,one of the enemy dead in an ambush,"who was shot through a rubber tree by an Argyll with a Boys anti-tank rifle was a European in a peaked cap".

"Although the man was never positively identified,he was suspected of being a German member of the French Foreign Legion in Indochina who had thrown in his lot with the Japanese".

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Peter H
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Re: German in Malaya?

#2

Post by Peter H » 05 Jul 2011, 11:04

From Colin Smith's Singapore Burning page 313:
Among their victims...was a European who,according to Brigadier Stewart was wearing 'khaki shorts and a grey uniform shirt and foliage cap'.Early in the campaign a Punjabi sentry on a front-line river bridge already half demolished had shot dead a man whose clothes and manner suggested he might be a British planter until he got close enough to try and snatch the Indian's Thompson.By the beginning of 1942 there had been several such incidents.Hendry's Argylls had no doubt that their dead cyclist in his grey shirt and forage cap was a German.Nor did percival's headquarters.Shortly before hostilities started they had been warned by the British Legation in Bangkok that deserters from the French Foreign Legion's 5th Regiment in Vichy Indo-China were in town and in touch with the Nazi embassy.Presumably this windfall was offered to their Japanese allies who instantly grasped the awful surprises a friendly northern European face might help them spring.

It is mostly their failures,and their considerable displays of nerve that seem to be remembered.Certainly Percival was impressed by the 'pluck' demonstrated by the anonymous German who single-handedly tried to disarm a sentry and seize a bridge.There was some indication of more long-term planning.During the opening rounds of the conflict the Argylls shot and recovered the body of another European accompanying Jaapnese troops.Local police identified the corpse as that of a German political refugee,presumed to be Jewish,who had been working as a mining engineer in the district but had disappeared two weeks before the Asian war began.


Edward L. Hsiao
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Re: German in Malaya?

#3

Post by Edward L. Hsiao » 15 Dec 2019, 07:56

Now that's really odd.

Edward L. Hsiao

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