Name
Kenneth Owen Darlow
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
03/10/1943
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Lieutenant
134198
Cambridgeshire Regiment
1st Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
CHUNGKAI WAR CEMETERY
6. L. 3.
Thailand
Headstone Inscription
None
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Boys’ Grammar School Memorial (WW2)
Biography
He was born in North London, but his home was in Royston when he joined the Hitchin Grammar School in the preparatory form. He attended the school from 1928- 1936, passed the School Certificate examination and went into the sixth form. He had a natural charm and a wide circle of friends. He was appointed a prefect and was Assistant Editor of the school magazine. Pierson House elected him as their Captain and only by a narrow margin did he lose the school mock Parliamentary Election of 1935.
He left school to take a position with the Westminster Bank in Ware. He joined the army about three years later.
He obtained a commission into the Suffolk Regiment and was later posted to the 1st Battalion of the Cambridgeshire Regiment with the Service Number 134198. When the Japanese invaded Southeast Asia in December 1941 his unit was being transported to the Middle East as part of the 18th (Eastern) Division but was diverted to Singapore.
On Friday 13th February 1942 he was fighting in patrols on Singapore Island and trying to recover the wounded. Two days later he was wounded in action. The British, whose resources and leadership were totally inadequate to cope with the crisis, surrendered on the same day, the worst defeat of the British Army in modern times. Kenneth was taken prisoner and had to endure the horrors of Japanese ill-treatment, malnutrition and overwork.
By the Autumn of 1943 he was reported safe in a Japanese prison camp, but he died of pneumonia in Chungkai in Thailand.
He was buried in Plot 6, Row L, Grave 3 in the Chungkai War Cemetery, Thailand.
He was an only son.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Hitchin Grammar School Chronicle, ‘When you go Home’ by A Lane, ‘Battalion at War’ by M. Moore
