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Meanwhile his younger brother Peter left school and followed a different path as an apprentice at Rolls Royce, where his father was now the deputy works manager. The war was to change all this, and he joined the RAF. Promoted to Pilot Officer in 73 squadron he was sent to the Middle East and on 23rd April 1941, was shot down over Tobruk and buried at Tobruk War Cemetery. This grim news must have weighed on Alan's mind in the months to come, but for the present, he had his own problems. Furthermore, it was extremely unlikely that he would have received news of Peter’s death until much later.
The Mount Vernon docked at Singapore on the 13th January 1942 in the middle of a Japanese air raid. Unfortunately for Alan and his regiment, its guns and equipment were in other ships of the convoy and bound for Bombay, so it had to be equipped with whatever guns were available from the Singapore Ordnance Depot. The 336th battery (Major Banham) got issued with eight old 4.4” howitzers, and the 344th (with eight 25 pounder guns, all towed by Chevrolet 4 X 4 trucks, but the 499th (Major Daltry) remained without guns until the 20th of January. The rest of the 18th Division then landed at Singapore on the 29th January and its various component units were split up and dispersed piecemeal and never fought as a division in the way that it had been trained to do. Although theirs was only a brief walk-on part in this, the biggest military disaster in British history, it should be remembered that they had been continuously at sea for 11 weeks, had no time to acclimatize to the Tropical weather, and had no knowledge of the Japanese, or training in how to take them on. It was a sad misuse of the men involved and a third of its soldiers were to die in captivity as a consequence, many without even having fired a shot.
What followed can be briefly told and is based on a more detailed history of the 135th Regiment available online. Suffice it to say that Alan’s regiment under Col Toosey, was rushed across the Straits of Johore from Singapore, and attached to the 11th Indian Division in a vain attempt to hold back the advancing Japanese. Five days later the retreat from the mainland to Singapore Island began, during which Col. Toosey withdrew his guns in leapfrog bounds in order to provide continuous fire support for the infantry.
On 5th February the IJA – Imperial Japanese Army – moved its guns to the causeway and the 135th engaged in counter-battery fire missions against them, but ammunition was restricted to an average of 20 rounds per day to conserve stocks for what was expected to be a prolonged siege, and even this was halved two days later.
By now, the General Officer Commanding Malaya since May 1941, Sir Arthur Percival, was pulling his troops back to the Singapore City perimeter defences and the 135th was re-deployed haphazard fashion in gardens, garages and camouflaged bungalows. The whole city and its perimeter were now under shellfire and air attack, and it was clear that any effective defence was now at an end. At this point, Toosey was ordered to join the evacuation of key personnel, but he refused, so that he could remain with his men during their impending captivity.
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