page_title: Battle of Muar
section_title: Gemensah Bridge positions
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Muar / Prelude / Gemensah Bridge positions
caption_attribution_description: English: Allied dispositions and Japanese routes of attack during the Battle of Muar, 1942
context_page_description: The Battle of Muar was the last major battle of the Malayan Campaign during the Second World War. It took place from 14–22 January 1942 around Gemensah Bridge and on the Muar River. After the British defeat at Slim River, General Archibald Wavell, commander of ABDA, decided that Lieutenant General Lewis Heath's III Indian Corps should withdraw 240 kilometres south into the State of Johore to rest and regroup, whilst the 8th Australian Division would attempt to stop the Japanese advance.
  Allied soldiers, under the command of Major General Gordon Bennett, inflicted severe losses on Japanese forces at the Gemensah Bridge ambush and in a second battle a few kilometres north of the town of Gemas. Members of the Australian 8th Division killed an estimated 700 personnel from the Japanese Imperial Guards Division, in the ambush at the bridge itself, whilst Australian anti-tank guns destroyed several Japanese tanks in the battle north of Gemas.
context_section_description: B Company of the 2/30th Australian Battalion, under Captain Desmond J. Duffy, entrenched and concealed themselves on one side of the Gemensah Bridge, spanning a stream, as part of the ambush. The bridge itself had been mined with explosives, and a battery of field artillery sited on higher ground behind the infantry whence it could command the Japanese approach to the bridge. The 2/30th Australian Battalion was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Galleghan, nicknamed "Black Jack".
  For the Japanese side, the Mukaide Force (commanded by Colonel Mukaida) was created to take the lead from the tired Japanese 5th Division and  was approaching Gemas and the Australian ambush at Gemensah Bridge. Mukaide Force consisted initially of the 1st Tank Regiment with an infantry battalion and artillery for support under the command of the 9th Brigade. It was reinforced by the 11th Infantry Regiment on 15 January. Colonel Mukaida was the commander of the 1st Tank Regiment, which at the beginning of the Malayan Campaign, consisted of 31 Type 97 Chi-Ha and 17 Type 95 Ha-Gō tanks.
caption: Allied dispositions and Japanese routes of attack during the battle
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