2nd Lieutenant, Royal Garhwal Rifles
Born: June 16th 1919
Died: February 10th 1942
Age at Death: 22
Killed in action, February 10th 1942
John Myles, known as Billy, was born in Singapore on 16 June 1919 to Daisy and Jack Myles. He enlisted in the Indian Army, and was assigned to the 18th Royal Garhwal Rifles. When the Japanese invaded Malaya in 1941, his regiment became involved in the dispiriting rout of the Allied forces.
It was a strange time. Billy encountered a ‘suicide squad’ of Japanese soldiers who pedalled furiously on bicycles towards his position, to be killed to a man when his unit opened fire. A huge Japanese force then swarmed down, having discovered the exact position of the enemy troops and guns. At another point, after the Allied forces had been forced to retreat to the island of Singapore, Billy and three comrades went to the famous Raffles Hotel for a drink, to find a band playing but only two other occupied tables, around which sat, according to one of his comrades, ‘a few dirty, unshaven, tired army officers’. The party then broke up when two military policemen told the four of them to return to units immediately, in line with orders that had just come in that evening.
By 10 February 1942 the Japanese had begun to fight their way through the plantations on the island. The following day the same comrade recounted the tale of Billy’s death in a rubber plantation, saying:
Billy had gone forward with the Colonel, the Signals Officer and several others to reconnoitre a Japanese position in a wood. They were spotted by the Japs and in his haste to withdraw, the driver stalled the jeep. The Japs opened fire and they were all killed instantly. For good measure, the Japs flung a few hand grenades into the jeep. Billy was buried near the junction of Thomson Rd and Mandai Road.