Colonel Ronnie McCrum MVO, the charity’s Executive Director, ran the everyday affairs of the Animals in War Memorial Fund for over eight years. He successfully secured the prestigious site on which the monument now sits and supervised the erection of the memorial.

As a British army colonel, he served in Malaya and Singapore, and was Defence Attaché in Israel at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada. 

He is author of The Men Who Lost Singapore, describing the  failures of the British civil authorities in addition to the military failures leading up to and following the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1942.