force 136

In February 1942, Singapore fell to invading Japanese forces. Colonel Basil Goodfellow, a British officer, was evacuated just before the British surrender and in July that year, set up the Force 136. Two other British officers who managed to escape the island served as Goodfellow’s advisors. They were Captain Richard Broome, a civil servant, and Captain John Davis, a police officer who had trained local guerillas prior to the Japanese invasion.

Force 136 in Malaya was part of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret service organisation active during World War II. Tasked with recruiting and training local guerillas to assist the planned British invasion of Japanese-occupied Malaya, Force 136 members also gathered intelligence and created an underground spy network