“It came on as the top story: the Fall of Singapore,” Len, recalls, adding grave emphasis to what happened on the 15 February in 1942. “My mother instantly dropped the iron to the floor ­– bang! We just sat there in silence, shaken rigid. We all knew what it meant for Tom.”

Four months before, Len’s brother, Tom – nine years his elder and the third of his brothers to see action in World War Two – set off for India as a bombardier with the Lanarkshire Yeomanry, the British Army regiment he’d joined upon starting national service the January before. Merging into the 11th Indian Division, Tom and his colleagues initially thought they’d be sent to fight in the Middle East. By December, though, they were hastily posted to the Malay peninsula ­– chiefly to defend the vital British fortress of Singapore ('the Gibraltar of the East’) against a Japanese army galvanised by Pearl Harbour and already advancing.