Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Lyon, DSO, MBE (17 August 1915 – 16 October 1944) was a British soldier and military intelligence agent during the Second World War.

[4] After Japan invaded Malaya on 8 December 1941, Lyon's wife and son found themselves behind enemy lines and they spent the war in Japanese internment after the ship they were travelling on was intercepted by a German raider and they were taken prisoner.

[9] Operation Rimau—an attempt to repeat the success of Jaywick—was launched in October 1944, with Lyon commanding a 23-man Z Special Unit raiding team again on a mission to sink Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour.

[10] Ordering his men to retreat back to Merapas island and await submarine rescue, Lyon and five others attempted a reduced-capacity raid on Singapore Harbour, destroying three ships.

[11] After a four-month series of island hops and often ferocious battles with large numbers of Japanese forces, the entire 'Rimau' party were either killed during combat (Lyon was the first of these), drowned or captured.

[13] Lyon died on the tiny island of Soreh on 16 October 1944, whilst fighting a rearguard action to assist the getaway of two injured members of the 'Rimau' party.

The danger of accidentally involving the occupants of the shack in the forthcoming battle led Lyon to switch the position of his defenses away from this location, a formidable task given that the tiny island was bereft of significant cover, and almost entirely indefensible in the daylight.

For almost four hours, the Japanese suffered tremendous losses, unaware that their enemy was in fact firing from high above them, as well as being caught repeatedly by the grenades thrown by the unseen Stewart.