Lieutenant Royal Navy
Born: December 5th 1917
Died: January 26th 1942
Age at Death: 24
Died on active service, January 26th 1942
Born on 5 December 1917 to Commander William Darwall, a retired Royal Navy officer decorated with the DSO, and his wife Eda, known as Elaine, John trained as a naval cadet after leaving the College, becoming a midshipman in 1935 and serving with the naval branch of the Royal Engineers.
By the outbreak of war he was on HMS Repulse, a battlecruiser. The Repulse and the battleship she was accompanying, HMS Prince of Wales, were sunk in the South China Sea by Japanese bombers on 10 December 1941, a mere three days after Japan had entered the war. Darwall, picked up by the destroyer Electra, was among the survivors. He was despatched forthwith to Malaya to take command of a party of men patrolling the coast, running trains and carrying out demolitions to impede the Japanese advance. While engaged in these duties – much of the time, probably, in the disease-ridden jungle – he became ill and soon after died of meningoencephalitis. Darwall is buried at the Kranji War Cemetery in Singapore.
To mark Remembrance in 2023, two Brighton College families visited Kranji War Cemetery, and placed flowers and poppies on John’s grave.