Mallaby's death explained

Mallaby's death explained

The city profile of Surabaya (The Jakarta Post, May 31) raises
once again the question of the death of Brigadier A. Mallaby,
British commanding officer there on Oct. 30, 1945. This is a
perennial controversy.

A British researcher, J. G. A. Parrott, whose material I have
looked at in the Imperial War Museum, London, has what seems to
me the most convincing case on the matter. Parrott corresponded
with important survivors of the incident in which Mallaby was
killed, notably his two adjutants, Captain Smith and Captain Shaw
as well as Major K. Venu Gopal, officer commanding D. Coy 6
Mahrattas, the British Indian army unit at the center of events
on Oct. 30. D Company was holed up in a city center building and
facing off against a large crowd of Indonesians, many of them
armed.

Parrott also considered the writings of Roeslan Abdulgani, a
key Indonesian player, and later a senior diplomat and
politician.

The controversy centers on whether or not Mallaby gave orders
for 6 Mahrattas to fire on the crowd besieging the building they
were in. Roeslan believed he did, but both Smith and Gopal
thought otherwise. Gopal told Parrott with refreshing candour
that the order to fire was his and his alone. D Company, the
Indian asserted, was hopelessly outnumbered and, moreover, could
not accept that if they laid down their arms they would be
guaranteed safe conduct in what was a city in tumult.

Smith, for his part, insisted that Mallaby did not give any
order to open fire, and that had Mallaby done so, he would have
remembered it when, shortly afterwards, he wrote his report.

Captain Smith also insisted -- and he was by Brigadier
Mallaby's side -- that the commanding officer was killed by an
Indonesian teenager who approached their staff car in the
confusion. Smith and Shaw escaped by swimming across the Kali Mas
river.

After considering the evidence, Parrott concluded that
Mallaby's handling of the situation in Surabaya was incompetent,
his "men being deployed in penny packets". This may be correct
from the military point of view, but it must be remembered that
British forces had arrived in Java in September with absolutely
no forward intelligence, a fact bemoaned by Lord Louis
Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia on whose
orders the troops were here in the first place.

What is not in doubt, in my mind at least, is that the British
response to the unfortunate Mallaby's death was disastrous, as
indeed much of it was elsewhere in Java and Sumatra in 1945-1946.

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta