In 1941, he was transferred to the Far East and was serving in Singapore when the Japanese began their assault of the Malayan peninsula. He avoided being captured at the Battle of Singapore by taking to a rowing boat with seven other men. The men rowed to Sumatra but upon reaching their destination they found that it too had fallen to the Japanese and laid a new course for Ceylon, which they eventually reached safely. Beamish next worked as an intelligence officer in India before transferred to the Eighth Army in North Africa in 1943, taking part in the invasion of Italy later that year. He left the army in 1945 with the rank of captain.