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This is the story of the events and last few months leading up to the untimely death of Lance Corporal 5950586 Ronald Charles Swan of the 5th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment at Chungkai Camp on the Burma - Siam Railway. It is not known exactly when Ron's regiment first arrived in Singapore, some units had been in the garrison for some time, while other units were arriving right up to the time of surrender.
January 1942. The allied air defenses by this time were non-existent. Bombing was almost continuous and the Japanese forces were advancing all the time. On the 1st of February, the Argyll and Southerland Highlanders marched across the Causeway with pipes playing and colours flying in a defiant gesture before the Causeway was blown up. As it happened, it didn't take the Japanese long to repair it. By the 14th of February, the allied troops had been pushed back by the Japanese forces into a very small area. The enemy had already captured the reservoir, but did not cut off the water supply. The skies were full of Japanese planes, bombing and straffing with machine guns. The damage and casualties among the civilian population, was immense, everywhere the emergency service were trying to cope with the dead and dying on the streets. The bombing and shelling were now unrelenting.
On Sunday the 15th of February at 7pm, General Percival surrendered to Lieut. General Yamashita. It was almost unconditional, as the only concession General Percival was able to negotiate was that the Japanese front line fighting troops would be kept out of Singapore. General Percival commanded some 139,000 personnel, and the troops defending Singapore amounted to 85,000, the total taken prisoner were127,000 men. General Yamashita, on the other hand employed 35,000 men in the attack on Singapore, 3,507 were killed and 6,050 were injured, only a handful were captured alive but injured. On the morning of the 17th of February, orders were given that everyone had to march to Changi Camp on the eastern extremity of the island. Changi is a relatively small area and not really large enough to hold all of the troops which were ordered there. By the end of the first month Changi had been surrounded by barbed wire. In the static and reasonably well-equipped base camp in Singapore the early evidence of undernourishment and vitamin deficiency had been combated at least in part by the establishment of unit and group gardens, a practice which the Japanese encouraged and for which they supplied seeds. As early as March 1942 an area of 120 acres outside the camp perimeter at Changi was allocated for this purpose and was soon productive, contributing a valuable addition to the diet. However, similar enterprises were seldom possible on the railway itself during the period of construction; the labour gangs moved location too frequently and the basic business of keeping the camps habitable, hygienic and with facilities for cooking for the workforce took all the energy of the non-labouring camp staff. Edible tropical vegetation was added to the diet when circumstances permitted and the know-how was available, and the troops were urged to eat the normally discarded rice polishings, which were rich in food value. Malnutrition was a never-ending concern and the risk of disease and its spread among the prisoners a constant worry. Enforcing necessary hygiene measures on a dispirited and weary workforce was an endless problem. The attitude of the troops to malaria discipline was often, as one medical officer on the Thai section of the line noted, 'deplorably careless'.
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