August 1943. In August 1943 he was given command of a battalion of the Hyderabad Regiment but after only 6 weeks in command he was appointed Director of Military Operations at G. H. Q. India with the acting rank of Major General. He was promoted from acting to temporary Major-General and war substantive Colonel on 1 March 1944. In order to obtain operational experience he dropped in rank to temporary Brigadier in July 1944 and was given command of the 49th Indian Infantry Brigade, then serving with the 23rd Indian Division. His substantive (permanent) rank was advanced to lieutenant-colonel in October 1944. Mallaby was appointed a Companion of The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire in the London Gazette of 1 January 1945 as a temporary Brigadier. He led the 49th Indian Infantry Brigade (part of the 5th Indian Division) to Indonesia in the middle of the national revolution, to find and repatriate former Japanese prisoners of war. He arrived in Surabaya on 25 October 1945. Upon landing, he sent Captain Douglas MacDonald to contact the leader of the revolutionaries, Moestopo; Moestopo stated that they would not oppose the British forces. Mallaby and his brigade worked under constant supervision by the Indonesians, whom he later told that he was focused on finding the POWs. However, the situation became more heated on 27 October after Mallaby interpreted pamphlets demanding the immediate surrender of the Indonesians' weapons, signed by General Douglas Hawthorn, as an order. Communications were broken between Mallaby's forces and the Indonesians, and the following day the Indonesians began launching attacks on the 49th Brigade. To quench the fighting, Mallaby was able to contact General Hawthorn through an intermediary and arrange a meeting between himself and President Sukarno, where they negotiated a ceasefire. Death Mallaby was killed on 30 October 1945. At the time, he was travelling about Surabaya under a white flag to spread the news about the cease fire agreement and rescue some stranded Mahratta troops, despite being warned of the danger by Force 136 troops. When his car approached the British troops' post in the International building near the Jembatan Merah ("Red Bridge"), his car was surrounded by Indonesian Republican militia. Fearing that their commander was about to be attacked, the British troops in the International building, led by Major Venu K. Gopal, fired into the air to disperse the Indonesian militia. The militia, thinking that