Word: malaya
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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British patience was strained. The London Daily Express called the civilian and military defenders of Malaya "a pack of whiskey-swilling planters and military birds of passage." The only answer: The Aussies had not yet begun to fight...
...Australian troops in Malaya were like Australian troops anywhere. They had little understanding of the strictly English meaning of the word discipline; but neither were they familiar with the meaning of fear. When they arrived at Singapore, they pitched pennies to the dignitaries waiting on the dock. Ashore they shouted, drank, swore, rousted Singapore's residents out of their sleep. When they went into the jungle to train, they groused-but they trained hard and hungered to fight...
They numbered about a division. Some of the men arrived just before Malaya was attacked and these green men, many of whom were used to Australia's dry brushland, had to be accustomed to Malaya's dripping tangle; this may have been a factor in the decision to hold them back...
...Where his line rested in the jungle was a secret. But the Japanese announced that they had already cracked it, forced the British to admit that they had driven across the Muar River only 100 miles north of Singapore. Furthermore the Japanese, by cutting across the narrow gooseneck above Malaya into Burma, dampened the Aussies' hopes that the Jap rear might be harassed...
Even though the University of California, the State Department of Public Health, and the Rockefeller Foundation are working on the disease, no one yet knows what it is. It has been seen in Austria, India, Britain, Germany, Australia, Malaya, is probably carried by a virus. It usually infects only one eye, which becomes bloodshot, swollen, drips tears like a leaking faucet. At first the inner eyelid is speckled red, like trout, later looks like crimson velvet. During the second week there is occasional stabbing pain in the eyeball; after that there is little discomfort except the continual dripping...