Name
Stanley Richards
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
26/01/1942
27
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
5777848
Royal Norfolk Regiment
6th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
SINGAPORE MEMORIAL
Column 52.
Singapore
Headstone Inscription
NA
UK & Other Memorials
Not on the Hitchin memorials
Biography
He was born in county Durham but at the time he enlisted was resident in Hertfordshire. His Service Number was 5777848 and he was in the 6th Battalion of the Regiment. This was a fine and enthusiastic Territorial Army Battalion which was part of the 53rd Infantry Brigade of the 18th Division captured in Singapore when the British surrendered to the Japanese on the l 5th February 1942. The Battalion arrived at Singapore after an eleven week journey, having been diverted from the Middle East, on the 13th January 1942. They were immediately thrown into a savage battle in Johore and his death almost certainly occurred in the vicinity of Bata Pahat and the coast road. The British generals’ management of the campaign was appalling and led directly to the most humiliating defeat of a British Army known to history followed by four years of the most dreadful suffering and death for many thousands of the men under their command.
He has no known grave and is remembered on Column 52 of the Singapore Memorial to the Missing.
He was the adopted son of Mr and Mrs J. Ward of Hitchin.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, ‘The Bitter End’ by R. Holmes & A. Kemp
