Montgomery had wasted no time taking command from General Sitwell and assembling his senior officers. He had commandeered a car in Batavia and drove immediately to Bandung, entering the city past the long rows of squat houses, their roofs looking like truncated pyramids, the streets lined with small rickshaws left idle in the disconsolate rain. One lone man was walking a main street, seeming a lost soul in the gloom. Everyone else was hidden away, huddled in shelters, fearful that the war was at last coming to their island. The rain seemed an outlier of worse things to come, and now here was this scrawny, determined man emerging from the weathered 1938 De Soto Sedan, a red beret cap and British Army jacket his only protection from the weather.
Behind him came Brigadiers Bennett, Clifton, and Blackburn, commanders of the ANZAC troops, the last to arrive. They would find Brigadiers Backhouse, Massy-Beresford and Duke of the 18th Division waiting for them in the bungalow that had been chosen on the southwest edge of the town near a once thriving banana plantation. Monty was all business from the very first.
“Well met, gentlemen, the last of the transports have unloaded and the disposition of the troops is well underway. Now it comes down to our plan for the defense. As I see things, we have two options. We know what the enemy will want here, and we can stand in such a way to deny it to him. That will mean we deploy to defend the key ports at Batavia and Surabaya, and the nearby airfields. Without them the enemy will have difficulty keeping themselves supplied. Unfortunately, these ports are all on the north coast of the island, and it does not seem likely that we will command the Java Sea.”
“There’s one good port on the south coast,” said Blackhouse, “Tjilatjap. We’ll have to hold that to the last. It’s the only way we can get our own reinforcements and supplies in.”
“Right,” said Montgomery. “Your battalion is here in Bandung. Why don’t you take it south by rail today and position yourself to control that port. Most of the Dutch garrison here has moved to the eastern portion of the island. They’ll hold Surabaya.”
“Not for long,” said Bennett. “They’ve very little in the way of good equipment, and frankly, they’re completely untested. If the Japanese hit us there, we can count on losing that port in short order.”
“Then they’ll need support.”
“My 2/20 Battalion is at Malang,” said Bennett. “The rest of the brigade is still at Semarang , another port we have to keep an eye on, and Clifton’s New Zealand Brigade has reached Surjakarta. Do you want us to push on to Surabaya?”
“That’s the dilemma,” said Montgomery. “At Singapore we were able to concentrate our entire force and face down the Japanese along a very narrow front. Here we’re sitting on an island that’s 600 miles from one end to the other. If we try to hold everything, we could find ourselves outmaneuvered. The enemy will be able to choose their landing sites, and we can’t simply sit in a central position and wait for them to come with any hope we can move reinforcements where they’re needed in time. The rail lines here are useful, but they’ll likely be hit very hard by the Japanese air power when this game tees off. So I propose that we select one sector of the island or another, and concentrate there , defeat the enemy landings in at least one instance. The question is where will that be?”
“Surabaya is closer to Darwin,” said Bennett. That’s where supplies will originate.”
“We can also expect regular convoys from Colombo,” said Montgomery. “I understand your point, but we’d have to move the 18th Division east rather smartly, and we don’t have sufficient rolling stock, road transport, or perhaps even time. At present, things got rather muddled on the lift over from Singapore. The men are doing a bang up job getting sorted out, but I’ve had to rebuild the brigades as they arrived. Now we’re strung out all along the roads and rail line from here to Batavia, and I propose we stay right where we are.”
“Hold Batavia?”
“Precisely.” Montgomery folded his arms. “The airfields here can cover the Sunda Strait, and Batavia is the nearest hop to Singapore. We mustn’t forget Percival, and all those civilians in the city. If we can hold the Sunda Strait, the run in to Batavia under our air cover might allow us to receive supply convoys out of Colombo. If the Japanese take it, then Singapore is as good as lost. The Japanese have already taken Denpasar airfield on Bali, and they’re on Timor as well. So we can’t count on anything coming by air from Darwin, and frankly, I don’t think we can expect much support from there in any case. No. Our line of communications will have to be the sea lanes to Colombo, or down to Perth. That will be Somerville’s watch.”
“Then you’ll pretty much abandon all the barrier islands from Java to Timor.” Bennett shook his head. “They won’t like that back home.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Montgomery. “We don’t have the forces to even consider garrisoning those islands. I’ve a mind to see about using the Gurkhas to raid Bali. Word is the Japanese didn’t put much more than a battalion there. If we can take that back, then we at least have a line through the Badung Strait to Surabaya, for what it will be worth.”
There was silence for a while, then Brigadier Duke of the 53rd Brigade came out with the one obvious element in this plan that had gone unspoken. “You realize that if we concentrate here, then we’re basically leaving the Dutch to wither on the vine out east. You know damn well that if we do hold Batavia, the Japanese will go all out for Surabaya. They’ll have little other choice.”
“General Duke, the Dutch expected to have to hold this entire island without us. They might be grateful if we at least keep half of it safe. We won’t be abandoning them. If hard pressed, they can fall back on our positions here.”
The others nodded, and there seemed to be no other dissenting voice. So Montgomery doled out his orders, and the die was cast. Japanese troop transports were already loaded and “on the water,” but the determination of Dutch Admiral Doorman was about to force a brief delay in the invasion.
Regrouping back at Surabaya after the fracas at Badung Strait, Doorman had received intelligence that the Japanese were coming. Another man might have looked at his weary sailors, battered ships, all needing maintenance and repair, and given up the ghost, but not Doorman. Even if he had no business doing what he now set out to do, credit must be given for his sheer audacity. He was going to take out anything he had at hand, and give challenge.
So it was that Doorman steamed out into the Java Sea, his ships battered and bruised, many old four stack destroyers dating to the last war. His crews had little rest in the last 18 hours, but they stood to their posts, in spite of a general pall of misgiving that had fallen over the little fleet. They had just faced their enemy, outgunning them by a wide margin, with nine ships against four in the Badung Strait, and they suffered a convincing defeat. So nerves were raw as they set out, eyes swollen and tired, some men even falling asleep at their battle stations.
To make matters worse, it was a much weaker force in this last sortie than the one made by Doorman in Fedorov’s history books. The entire British squadron, cruiser Exeter, and destroyers Electra, Encounter and Jupiter, had steamed off with the Australian cruiser Perth to rendezvous and support the arrival of Mountbatten and the two British carriers. If that weren’t enough, the US cruiser Houston was no longer afloat. Captain Rooks had made his fateful decision to screen the Antietam and Shiloh in the battle of the New Hebrides, and his valuable piece was no longer on the board. So instead of fourteen ships, Doorman had only eight, mostly destroyers.