The General and the White Flag

                                                           
At 6.40 p.m on the evening.of 15th February 1941, Lt-Gen Arthur Percival, the General-Officer-Commanding, Malaya Command climbed the slope of the 348-meter hill north of the Bukit Timah junction. With the white flag is Captain Wilde, with Brigadier-General Torrance, who carried the British flag.slowly fluttering in the wind. On the right is the sullen-faced Lt-Gen Percival, with Major-General Newbiggins. The defeated Percival and his equally dejected staff officers were being led by Colonel Sugita and a few Japanese soldiers to the Ford Motor Factory to surrender to the Japanese army's commander, Lt-Gen Yamashita.

Nobody had expected this 'Impregnable Fortress' would collapse so easily, let alone Percival. After 70 days since the Japanese army invaded northern Malaya on 8th December 1941 and mere 7 days since they crossed the Johore Straits, Singapore, the mighty British stronghold, had collapsed easily. A new chapter started in World History, when the setting sun of the British Empire bathed by the red Rising Sun of the rapidly expanding Japanese Empire.