Dalforce
Both sections comprised a total strength not exceeding 1,500 men, and the Overseas Chinese Guard Force was also trained by British officers.
This became impossible when the liner SS Empress of Asia, which carried the supplies, was sunk by Japanese aircraft en route to Singapore from Bombay.
1, stationed at the end of Jurong Road was involved in action even before the invasion, repulsing two waves of Japanese patrol boats.
The company's first and second platoons were able to repulse an approaching group of Japanese rubber boats (each carrying one soldier), sinking three out of five of the rafts.
Madam Cheng Seang Ho, nicknamed the legendary Passionaria of Malaya (after La Pasionaria of the Spanish Civil War), fought the Japanese at Bukit Timah together with her husband.
Both were over 60 years of age when they volunteered, making their last stand at Bukit Timah heights exchanging fire with the Japanese from behind trees.
Madam Cheng and her husband's heroics at Bukit Timah earned them a certificate of recognition in 1948, signed by Lieutenant-Colonel Dalley himself.
The Japanese despised Dalforce bitterly, deciding to use them as an excuse for their treatment of the Chinese population, although this behaviour was instigated by the Kempeitai rather than by Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita.
He later changed his opinion in his book, The War in Malaya, after his dispatches circulated in Singapore, causing an outcry among the local Chinese.
[4] He boarded a forty-foot Royal Navy motor launch known as the Mary Rose at Keppel Harbour, where it would sail to Palembang, Sumatra, part of the Dutch East Indies.
[4] The Mary Rose, commanded by veteran naval officer Captain George Mulock left Singapore a little before midnight on 14 February.
[1] Dalforce has appeared in the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) 1984 television series The Awakening, Television Corporation Of Singapore (TCS) The Price Of Peace 1997, MediaCorp Channel 8 2001 drama In Pursuit of Peace, MediaCorp Channel 5 2001 drama A War Diary and in Canopy a 2013 film.
