"Got a Light Mate? - 'Changi Canteen'", 1943

Watercolour over pencil by Gunner Leo Rawlings (1918-1984), 137th Field Regiment Royal Artillery.

An emaciated prisoner-of-war asks another for a light for his cigarette outside a hut displaying a list of items for sale in the canteen. The typed caption accompanying this sketch reads, 'Exterior view of huts, Changi Jail area, showing canteen and its 'vast' menus. Australian POW's who had survived the railway had mastered the art of living rough, of living off the land to the fullest extent (snails, snakes, large beetles, rodents and various varieties) and had become highly proficient in cooking the same and turning ordinary rice into, what was to us, a thousand attractive dishes which still added up to rice'. In his book 'And the Dawn Came Up Like Thunder', about his experiences as a Far Eastern Prisoner of War, Rawlings writes about the humiliation of lack of privacy from fellow prisoners when ill, especially with dysentery. This painting depicts the suffering and death of prisoners in makeshift surroundings.