Qualla: Battle of Jitra https://qualla.com/battle-of-jitra en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:36 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/w/1/p/7/battle-of-jitra-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Jitra https://qualla.com/battle-of-jitra Battle of Jitra: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-jitra/ Photo credit United States Army, Public domain. The field telephone cables would not work. Strung across waterlogged ground in the rice paddies of northern Kedah, they had shorted out in the monsoon rains, leaving battalions deaf to each other across a fourteen-mile front. It was December 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the defences at Jitra were nowhere near complete. Barbed wire had been strung, a few anti-tank mines scattered, but the shallow trenches and gun pits were flooded. Major General David Murray-Lyon's 11th Indian Division held a line stretching from jungle-clad hills through rubber estates to tidal mangrove swamps, and when the Japanese came down the trunk road with their headlights blazing, the men holding that line could barely talk to one another.

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Image: United States Army | Public domain

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/1/p/7/battle-of-jitra-wp/w1p7-battle-of-jitra-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Jitra: Headlights on the Trunk Road https://qualla.com/battle-of-jitra/ Photo credit The original uploader was Jpatokal at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 1.0. The defenders had been promised time. Operation Matador, a preemptive strike into Thailand, was supposed to keep the Japanese far from Jitra. When it was cancelled, three smaller delaying forces were improvised instead. The most exposed was Laycol, a column of two hundred soldier...

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Image: The original uploader was Jpatokal at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 1.0

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/1/p/7/battle-of-jitra-wp/w1p7-battle-of-jitra-headlights-on-the-trunk-road.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Jitra: A Line That Could Not Hold https://qualla.com/battle-of-jitra/ Photo credit National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain. Murray-Lyon threw what he could into the path of the Japanese advance. Brigadier Garrett took the 1/14th Punjabs forward to Changlun, six miles from the Thai border, while the 2/1st Gurkha Rifles dug in at the village of Asun, just north of Jitra. The Punjabs were flanked in dayl...

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Image: National Museum of the U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/1/p/7/battle-of-jitra-wp/w1p7-battle-of-jitra-a-line-that-could-not-hold.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Jitra: Fifteen Hours of Bitter Combat https://qualla.com/battle-of-jitra/ Photo credit National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain. The main line at Jitra was held by the 1st Leicestershire Regiment and the 2/9th Jat Regiment, with Gurkha battalions covering the rear. When Saeki's advance guard overran a Leicester patrol at 8:30 p.m. on December 11, an improvised roadblock held them until dawn. Saeki, still b...

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Image: National Museum of the U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/1/p/7/battle-of-jitra-wp/w1p7-battle-of-jitra-fifteen-hours-of-bitter-combat.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Jitra: The Cost of Unreadiness https://qualla.com/battle-of-jitra/ Photo credit National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain. After fifteen hours of fighting, the Japanese 5th Division held Jitra and a large stockpile of captured Allied supplies. The 11th Indian Division had lost a brigade commander wounded, a battalion commander killed, another captured, and the equivalent of nearly three full battalio...

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Image: National Museum of the U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/1/p/7/battle-of-jitra-wp/w1p7-battle-of-jitra-the-cost-of-unreadiness.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of Jitra: Rice Paddies and Memory https://qualla.com/battle-of-jitra/ Photo credit Public domain. Today the Jitra area is the administrative heart of the Kubang Pasu district in Kedah state, a landscape of rice paddies and rubber plantations that gives little outward sign of the violence that swept through in December 1941. The trunk road that carried Saeki's tanks still runs...

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Image: Public domain

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/1/p/7/battle-of-jitra-wp/w1p7-battle-of-jitra-rice-paddies-and-memory.mp3 0:06 6 full