mmg.com.au

February 15, 1942 will forever be remembered as one of the darkest days in Australia’s Second World War campaign.

Surrounded by the advancing Japanese army in Singapore, more than 15000 Australian soliders became prisoners of war when the Allies surrendered.

The surrender of Singapore demonstrated to the world that the Japanese Army was a force to be reckoned with, though the defeat also ushered in three years of appalling treatment for Australian soliders captured in Singapore.

Dick Campbell was part of the 2nd 29th Battalion when Singapore fell.

‘‘We’d been sent over before the Japanese got there as part of our jungle training,’’ Mr Campbell said.

‘‘I was 21 and I wanted to defend my country — that was my reason for going off to war. I was actually taken prisoner on February 2, 1942.

‘‘The Allies surrendered on February 15 and four days later, the Japanese bombed Darwin.’’

Mr Campbell spent six months in Changi, enduring daily torment and torture.

For much of its existence Changi was not one camp but rather a collection of up to seven prisoner-of-war and internee camps, occupying an area of about 25sqkm.

Its name came from the peninsula on which it stood, at the east end of Singapore Island. Prior to the war the Changi Peninsula had been the British Army’s principal base area in Singapore.

Most of the Australians captured in Singapore occupied Selarang Barracks, which remained the AIF Camp at Changi until June 1944.

For many, Selarang was just a transit stop as working parties were soon being dispatched to other camps in Singapore and Malaya.

Initially prisoners at Changi were free to roam the area but, in March 1942 fences were constructed around the individual camps and movement between them was restricted. In May 1942, prisoners began to be sent to the Thai-Burma railway.

Mr Campbell would become one of them.

‘‘They originally took me to Burma to work on an aerodrome. That didn’t last too long, and then I got moved to work on the rail line. It was pretty awful,’’ Mr Campbell said with a wry laugh.

‘‘The conditions were horrendous ... the Japanese treated us badly.

‘‘I wouldn’t want to go through it again.’’

After months of harrowing work on the infamous railway, Mr Campbell and the remaining survivors were sent to work in a Japanese coal mine until the Japanese surrendered in 1945.

Following the war, Mr Campbell, originally from Kyabram, moved to a soldier settlement near Yarroweyah in 1947. In 1949 he married his wife Hazel, with the couple welcoming the birth of two children.

‘‘We never miss an Anzac Day service, even though I’m getting on a bit these days,’’ Mr Campbell said.

Some veterans of those years chose to return to Singapore last week to mark the 70th anniversary, but Mr Campbell said he would never go back.

‘‘I never will, and I’ve never wanted to,’’ he said.

‘‘There are too many bad memories ... too many friends who never came home.’’