Secrets of the Battlebox: The History and Role of Britain's Command HQ in the Malayan Campaign

Beneath Singapore’s Fort Canning lies the Battlebox, Britain’s Command HQ in the Malayan Campaign during the Second World War. However, little is known about the Battlebox; it was sealed off and forgotten until the late 1990s.

This book is the result of 17 years of research into an area of Singapore’s war-time history that has still not been investigated fully. With so few survivors and most documents on the subject highly-classified and only recently open to research, there has been no opportunity to put forward the story of the Battlebox until now.

Secrets of the Battlebox provides an understanding of the Battlebox; its history, uses and final role in the Malayan Campaign. It attempts to address the gap in knowledge in one of the most crucial aspects of the Second World War in Malaya and Singapore, i.e. the role of the command headquarters in the campaign.

This book is aimed at those who want to know what actually happened there during the Malayan Campaign. On another level, it provides references and sources of information for those who want to research further into the subject and will hopefully provide a good starting point for more work on this topic.

A former Indochina Bureau Chief and correspondent for Channel NewsAsia, Romen Bose has written extensively on the Second World War in Singapore and has been involved in researching Singapore and the region’s military history for close to two decades. His books include, Fortress Singapore: A Battlefield Guide and A Will for Freedom: The Indian Independence Movement in Southeast Asia. He has also worked with the United Nations and more recently, the Singapore Tourism Board. He is presently a British Council Chevening Scholar pursuing a Masters in Transnational Communications and the Global Media at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He and his wife Brigid, have two daughters, Lara and Olive.