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Title: Odd man out: The story of the Singapore traitor by Peter Elphick ISBN: 0-340-58762-8 Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Pub. Date: 1993 Format: Unknown Binding

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: With officers like this who needs enemies?
Comment: The English educated and trained Captain Patrick Heenan provided the Japanese with the kind of collaborator they could have only dreamed of. A meticulously planned onslaught down through Malaya was the essential preliminary to kicking in the unfortified backdoor of Singapore. Captain Patrick Heenan provided the Japanese with much of the intelligence they needed to ensure their operation proceeded successfully.

Heenan is one of history's lesser known traitors, but in terms of the consequences of his actions, one of its most hideous.

In this book, 'Odd Man Out,' Heenan provides the authors with a repellent central subject whilst they get on with their real motive for writing this book.

Elphick and Smith are merely the latest in a thankfully short line of writers who still surface trying to shift the blame for the fall of Singapore away from where history has already ascertained it belongs.

The British Command in Singapore failed to fortify its defences in Malaya in general, and the northern shore of the island of Singapore, in particular, despite repeated recommendations from their own staff. The British Generals inabilty to grasp the importance of this advice led directly to defeat and the loss of Singapore.

Churchill summed up the inadequate fortifications of Singapore with his famous statement "It's like launching a battleship without a bottom"

The depths to which the authors are willing to descend in their attempt to salvage the credibility of that battleship only highlights the fact that it has no bottom.

Works by Elphick in particular feature selective information and context, poor research, assumption, and ommission. Elphick's overt attempts to besmirch the efforts of the allied companions-in-arms, the Australians, reminds the reader of one of the bickering, petty-minded and counter-productive British Officers of colonial Singapore, 1942. A time when our archaic British class system was still commissioning officers based on social standing rather than ability and character.

Captain Patrick Heenan being a prime example.

This books inglorious subtext makes it an affront to the truth.

It's an affront to the comrades-in-arms who died defending Singapore, and each other.

But more than anything else, it is so dull and uninspired, it's an affront to the tradition of writing.