The greatest defeat
HUMILIATION: British senior commanders march off under escort to negotiate the surrender of Singapore
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The four British officers made for an incongruous sight as they walked to the temporary headquarters that the Japanese had set up in the new Ford factory in central Singapore. Escorted by diminutive Japanese soldiers and clad in long baggy shorts, they carried a Union flag and a white flag of surrender. It was 15 February 1942, and their commander, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, was about to sign the document confirming what Prime Minister Winston Churchill would later call the worst disaster and the largest capitulation in British military history.