‘Next Relief’ Towner Road POW Camp (1942)

'Next relief'Towner Road Camp 1942

‘A tropical rainstorm has to be seen to be believed. The rain has been falling down in a sort of superior English cloud burst and has lasted for more than an hour. This has been accompanied by ha heavy barrage of thunder and lightning. It is easy to understand how Singapore has ninety inches of rain in a year or seven or eight inches a month. We have had many of these storms during the past weeks. We find them useful as they provide an excellent means of bathing.’

Source: Down To Bedrock (the diary & secret notes of a Far East prisoner of war Chaplain) by Eric Cordingly, Pg 37; permission by Louis Reynolds, daughter.

‘The humidity was overwhelming, the heat equally so; our uniforms damp upon our backs with sweat. And then there was the rain: arriving every afternoon, out of the blue it seemed, belting down for about half an hour and then stopping as suddenly as it had started. Singapore was a strange place to those of us who had never before left home.’

Source: A Doctors War, by Dr Rowley Richards, pg 49, Harper Collins Publishers, 2006.