The Japanese had beaten us in Malaya, because they were better in all. At first they were good prepared on the warfare under those climatic circumstances as we found on the Malayan peninsula.

They had lighter uniformes with shorts and boots with rubber soles. In colour and cut those uniformes sometimes differed, but all were in a good camouflage style crediting to the jungle green. They wear the most differing types of headgear, cotton caps, steelhelmets or hats which they collected from the captured and dead. The even wore Malayan sarongs, two prisoners which we captured at Batu Pahat were fully dressed as Chinese kulis. This all has made irritations amongst our soldiers, especially because this was a land in which they simply couldn't differ between enemies and allies. Those which observed the battlefields the first time listened to rumours about "fifth columns". So more and more British were convinced that the whole domestic population was fighting against them, because they couldn't differ Japanese from Chinese and Malayians.

In terms of food the Japanese were better too. Because their main food was rice, they easily lived from that, which was enough to them. The British units have to transport their various goods on long and winding paths. The Japanese soldier had with him a can of water, cooked rice and some salted dry fish, which lasts for three or four days.

Almost all Japanese were armed with machine pistols or other automatic weapons, which were very suitable for hand-to-hand fighting in the jungle. Ours were usually armed with to heavy rifles and only few of them had automatic weapons. Most of our officers were convinced until the end of the fighting, that the exact firing rifle is superior to the inaccurate machine pistols, but to me this is not valid in jungle fightings, because shooting on long distances as not possible here. The Japanese had with them 6-8 ammunition magazines for every automatic weapon, all other ammunition was carried behind them by ordinary bicycles through the narrow jungle paths.

Beside their machine-guns their favourite weapon was the 50 mm mortar, which could be carried easy by two men. Artillery almost wasn't used until the siege of Singapore. For fighting in the thickness, hand grenades were also used in greater numbers. Sometimes they climbed on trees and threwed the grenades down on our vehicles. Very dangerous too, were their sharpshooters, good hidden in the woods.

Perhaps the greatest surprise was the intense use of bicycles which they brought with them or had confiscated or bought from the domestic inhabitants, which were paid occasionally with banknotes, which were special issued for the Malayan campaign. In colour and size they were similar to the pound notes of that time which certainly secured a lot of irritations among the population. Also this indicates how well the Japanese were prepared for this war. With bicycles they raised their fastness and agility in a way which provide their troops to advance much faster.

The British were far from being so moveable. This is commented by a look on our soldier on the way to the battlefield, who had to carry his knapsack, steelhelmet, gasmask, large boots, tent, rifle, bayonet, not to speak about ammunition. Food and other stuff were transported by vehicles, but what that means under jungle conditions you can easy imagine. Even credited to the fact, that they were good motorized, our units were condemned to stand still.