Henry Gordon Bennett, (1887–1963) CB CMG DSO VD MiD(6) was born at Balwyn, Melbourne, where his South African-born father was a schoolmaster. He attended Balwyn State School and Hawthorn College, then became an actuarial clerk at the Australian Mutual Provident Society (AMP). At age 21, he was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in the Citizen Military Forces (CMF) and posted to the 5th Battalion, Victorian Militia. In 1912, a massive reorganization moved his battalion into the new 67th (Hodson’s Bay) regiment. He convinced his new superiors to appoint him as the regimental adjutant, which carried a temporary promotion to major. Shortly after the First World War began, Bennett transferred from the militia into the new 6th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force (AIF), a part of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, AIF. Bennett had wangled a furlough from the AMP and managed to keep his temporary rank, even though he was no longer an adjutant.
Due to a shortage of training camps in the UK, the entire 1st Div AIF was held in Egypt in October 1914, and Bennett got to be the second-in-command of the 6th. The battalion was sent to Gallipoli, where early on the morning of 25 April they were dropped off on the southern flank of the beachhead at ANZAC Cove. Bennett was detailed to lead 300 men up to establish an advanced position on Pine Ridge, south of Lone Pine. After only four hours on shore, Bennett was wounded on the shoulder and sent back to the beach for treatment. Subsequently, the enemy counter-attacked and the isolated position on Pine Ridge was overwhelmed. The men lost included Bennett’s brother Godfrey. Refusing evacuation to a hospital ship, with only the field dressings on his wounds, Bennett then returned to the fight, thus acquiring a reputation amongst his Diggers for guts and steadfast responsibility. This was the only time he would be wounded in the war.
In early May, the entire 2nd Brigade was transferred to Cape Helles for the Second Battle of Krithia. Bennett’s battalion advanced against impossible odds and took heavy losses. Bennett had actually been struck by a bullet that hit his ammunition pouch, detonating stored cartridges. He was knocked off his feet but otherwise unwounded. By the end of the day, he was the only officer in the 6th left standing. With a handful of men, he had achieved the farthest advance of the attack. The next day he took over the battalion and was promoted to temporary lieutenant colonel.
On 7 August, the 6th was involved in one of the diversions in support of the Suvla Bay landings. They were tasked with capturing a Turkish position known as the German Officers' Trench, which enfiladed neighboring ANZAC positions, including the Nek. Two attempts at capture failed; the battalion’s losses were 80 killed and 66 wounded. Bennett had survived unwounded again, which enhanced his aura of immunity.
Following the debacle at the German Officers' Trench, the 2nd Brigade, including the remnants of Bennett's 6th, relieved the 1st Brigade at Lone Pine. Later in August, as reinforcements from the 2nd Division AIF arrived at Anzac, the original Australian units were rotated off to Lemnos to rest and refit. While there, Bennett contracted paratyphoid fever and was evacuated to the UK. He wouldn’t rejoin the AIF until January 1916.
In March 1916, the 1st Division AIF moved from Egypt to France. Bennett subsequently led his 6th Battalion through the Battle of Pozières. After the 1st and 3rd Brigades had captured the town on 24 July 1916, the 6th and 8th Battalions of the 2nd Brigade moved in to occupy the ruins, where they had to endure a prolonged artillery bombardment. On 26 July he reported to divisional HQ: "My men are being unmercifully shelled. They cannot hold out if an attack is launched. The firing line and my headquarters are being plastered with heavy guns and the town is being swept by shrapnel. I myself am O.K. but the front line is being buried." Nevertheless, at Pozières, the 6th lost just 190 men, the smallest toll among the 12 battalions of the 1st Division, which overall suffered 7,700 casualties.
Bennett continued to serve as the CO of the 6th, as well as doing stints as the acting 3rd Brigade commander, covering for Brig. Gen. Ewen George Sinclair-Maclagan (1868–1948) CB CMG DSO, a British regular soldier who suffered frequent attacks of “exhaustion.” In mid-November, Bennett took a brief leave in London, where he married his fiancée, Bess Buchanen, whose gold-framed picture he had faithfully carried in his blouse pocket. He later claimed that, while somewhere in France, the photo had stopped a bullet from hitting him in the heart. If true, it seems incredible that a man could have been so miraculously saved twice.
On 3 December 1916, he was finally given the command of the 3rd Brigade and became a temporary brigadier general. He was embittered by the delay which he found unconscionable. Notwithstanding, at age 29, he was at the time the youngest general officer in the Australian Army. He would lead the 3rd Brigade for the remainder of the war.
Further actions on the Western Front included repulsing a counter-attack at Lagnicourt in April 1917, staging a successful assault on the Gheluvelt plateau in September 1917, in which the brigade captured the German third line and held onto it for five days, suffering heavy losses at Poelcapelle and Passchendaele during October 1917, achieving great success at Chuignes during Ludendorff’s “Black Day,” and attacking in several smaller actions against the Hindenburg Line in 1918.
The high command considered him an able front-line commander, sometimes heroic dependable and level-headed. He was generally well regarded by his men as well, who considered him lucky, a sort of human talisman. But his peers found him jealous, prickly, conniving and whinging. The official AIF historian Charles E. W. Bean mentions Bennett's jealousy and criticism of superiors and petty quarrels with other officers. Bennett’s chief of staff in Malaya, Col. James Thyer, put it this way: Between the wars he was a civilian and did not study military tactics, but rested on his World War I laurels. He was moved by hunches and believed in the stars. He was tremendously ambitious and had his head in the clouds, which is the last place a good battle commander’s head should be. Although he was never in Bennett’s chain of command, a famous peer and fellow CMF officer, the lighthorseman Maj. Gen. William Glasgow (1876–1955) KCB CMG DSO VD, commander of the 13th Brigade, put it most succinctly: Bennett is a pest!
After the war Bennett lived in Sydney, where he sat on the New South Wales State Repatriation Board and in 1928 became one of the City Commissioners. He became involved in rightwing politics, too. He continued in the CMF, commanding the 9th Infantry Brigade and in 1926 the 2nd Division. He wasn’t promoted to major general until 1930, another delay that he resented, especially since Glasgow had been made a major general in 1921. Along with some other citizen-officers in Australia's essentially part-time army, he detested the handful of regular (Staff Corps) officers. His distaste of permanent officers, especially British (like Sinclair-Maclagan) increased during the two decades of peace. In late 1937 he published a series of newspaper articles on defense policy which criticized regular officers and which resulted censure by the Military Board.
On the outbreak of World War II, Bennett was junior in rank only to the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), Gen. Brudnell White (1876-1940) KCB KCMG KCVO DSO, and Glasgow, who had been made the Australian High Commissioner for Canada in 1939. Bennett was certain that he would be the leader of a new AIF and was infuriated when White instead appointed the commander of the 6th Division, Maj. Gen. Thomas Blamey (1884–1951) GBE KCB CMG DSO MiD(8) VD, a regular officer with whom Bennett had clashed many times. Worse still, White then gave the vacated 6th Division command to Maj. Gen. Iven Giffard Mackay (1882–1966) KBE CMG DSO (2) VD, known familiarly as “Mr. Chips.” Bennett and his cronies saw these moves as revenge exacted by the politicians and Staff Corps. His military qualities weren’t the issue; it was his temperament—he was considered unsuitable for a semi-diplomatic command, especially one that would involve subordination to British generals ( let alone American ones, as it would develop).
Bennett’s bad news didn’t stop there: as the AIF formed the new 7th, 8th and 9th Divisions, each command went to others. Bennett languished unassigned until August 1940, when White's death in a plane crash led to the appointment of the commander of the 8th Division, the engineer Maj. Gen. Vernon Sturdee (1890–1966) KBE, CB, DSO as the new CGS, once again skipping over Bennett. However, as CGS, Sturdee appointed Bennett to succeed him as commander of the 8th Division. This series of slights spurred Bennett’s ambition to make up lost ground, particularly against Blamey.
When the British asked Australia to contribute a force to help the Indian Army in the defense of Malaya, Bennett and his 8th got the job. In February 1941 he flew to Malaya and joined his division, which then consisted of just the 22nd Brigade (likely Blarney’s doing). In fact, Bennett never had all of his brigades in the theater, let alone all together. His relations with his own senior officers were unhappy and some of them tried to have him replaced on medical grounds. His dislike of regular officers continued and was felt within his command, but actually his most antagonistic relationship was with Brig. Gen. H. B. Taylor (1890–1966), a civilian chemist and fellow CMF officer, who was the CO of the 22nd AIF Brigade until sacked by Bennett. Bennett’s dealings with British senior officers in Singapore weren’t harmonious, especially with the chief, Lieut. Gen. Arthur Ernest Percival (1887–1966) CB DSO(2) OBE MC DL.
Japanese troops landed in Malaya on 8 December 1941 and advanced steadily southward. On 9 January 1942, although he had no experience whatsoever in working with the Indian Army, by dint of seniority Bennett was given command of an ad hoc division-size formation called “Westforce,” which consisted of the recently arrived 27th AIF Brigade, plus the remnants of the battle-shocked 8th and 22nd Indian Brigades and the green 45th Indian Brigade. Bennett was charged with defending northwest Johore state. His troop dispositions were fundamentally unsound. Save for a successful ambush by Australians at Gemensah Bridge on 14 January and the dogged defense of Parit Sulong Bridge by the Indians of the 45th Brigade, which delayed the enemy for several days (at the cost of about 80 percent casualties), overall he fared no better than his British counterparts. By the end of the month the defenders had to withdraw to Singapore. A command center was set up in a space in the Ford factory which was called “The Box.” Considered the most disciplined troops available, Bennett’s two AIF brigades bore the brunt of the 8 February Japanese assault but were overwhelmed.
Bennett's conduct of operations had been questionable and Percival later noted that Bennett became more troublesome as the end approached. There were 15 top-ranking officers and civil leaders that met daily in the Box, all British except for Bennett. They decided to ask for surrender on 15 February. On the night of the 14th, after having issued an order stating that all officers in command of troops would stay with their men, he handed over command of the 8th Division to a fellow CMF officer, his chief of artillery Brig. Gen. C. A. Callaghan (1890–1967), who was hospitalized and hors de combat. Bennett then proceeded, in the American lingo, to “bug out.”
There were several published accounts of his adventure, none of which were provided by Bennett himself. Broadly stated, the story goes like this. Along with a few junior officers and some local Europeans, Bennett commandeered a series of watercraft by threatening, bullying, and pulling rank. They successfully crossed the Straits of Malacca to Sumatra, although it took them seven days—they had planned for two. Nevertheless, they met up with a river launch, which took them up the Batang Hari River to where it crossed the main highway, at which point they were met and driven to Padang, on the west coast. From there, Bennett flew to Java and on to Australia in PBYs, arriving in Melbourne on 2 March 1942 (ten days before Gen. Douglas MacArthur bailed out of Corregidor).
The Australian response to Bennett's escape saga was mixed. Some actually bought his premise that he had valuable experience on Japanese tactics. Most, however, including senior officers, denounced him for deserting his troops. At first the cover story seemed to work: Bennett was promoted to temporary lieutenant general on 7 April, but then he was made the head of III Corps, based in Perth, which was a training job. Blamey refused to allowed Bennett to have another AIF command, not even in the New Guinea jungles where Bennett’s supposed experience might possibly have been useful. Bennett tried petitioning politicians for help, but none would touch his situation. Bitterly disappointed, he quit active duty, transferring back to the CMF on 9 May 1944. He then proceeded to write his analysis of the Malayan debacle, entitled Why Singapore Fell, in which he mostly blamed people who couldn’t object because they were either POWs or dead. Although Blamey sought to block the book's publication on the grounds that the war wasn’t over, it came out later that year anyway.
After the release of the surviving POWs in 1945, Blarney received a letter from Percival that accused Bennett of unlawfully vacating his command. A military investigation was called which found that Bennett had relinquished his command without permission but didn’t cover his subsequent run for it. Bennett still commanded support from his Diggers who had served with him in World War I. Responding to their pressure, the politicians commissioned Supreme Court Justice George Ligertwood (1888–1967) KCB to hold another inquiry, the findings of which, while they didn’t charge Bennett with cowardice, they did find his actions unjustified.
Bennett's stated case for leaving Singapore evolved to this: since he had learned how to defeat the Japanese but had been let down by incompetent British leadership and poor quality Indian troops, he was obligated to report his knowledge to his superiors. This was poppycock. In fact, his greatest tactical achievement was made by those maligned Indian soldiers. He had proven no more proficient than any other commander in Malaya, where no one did a good job.
Recall the complex and closely timed series of movements that plucked him from Singapore and got him to Melbourne in just 17 days, which certainly required forethought, planning, resources, payments, and outside help. It’s absolutely incredible that he could have arranged all of this at the last minute while he was hunkered down in Singapore. The escape scheme must have been hatched way before 14 February.
To Bennett, the most important reason for his actions was likely his desire for higher command, especially to lead the AIF, which meant that he had to get back to Australia somehow, some way. As a POW, he wouldn’t ever get promoted again.
His prejudice toward regular officers, particularly British, plus his persistent ambition for advancement, overcame his soldierly bearing at the most critical point in his career. When his most sought-after goal was permanently denied to him, he consistently blamed others, especially Blarney.
After the war Bennett left the CMF but kept his oar in, writing articles on the benefits of a citizen army over a regular one. He died on 1 August 1962.
add book links here
Jim Patton
Sources include Australian War Memorial and The Australian Dictionary of Biography
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