'First amput case. Chungkai '43 (Capt Markowitz - with tenon saw)', 1943

Pencil drawing signed by Gunner Jack Bridger Chalker (1918-2014), Royal Artillery, 1943.

A prisoner of war of the Japanese from 1942 to 1945, Jack Chalker made a series of visual records of his experiences of the deprivation, disease and torture suffered by the soldiers working on the notorious Thai-Burma Railway. In early 1944, he was invited by an Australian surgeon at Chungkai Base Hospital Camp, Lieutenant Colonel Edward 'Weary' Dunlop, to make sketches of the medical treatment of prisoners. Since the Japanese guards forbade the prisoners from making a record of their incarceration, these sketches were drawn at great personal risk to Chalker. If they were discovered, he would have been beaten or even killed.

This study shows the first amputation case conducted by the Canadian surgeon, Captain Markowitz, at Chungkai Base Hospital and includes medical notes on the patient. Captain Markowitz was later invested with the MBE, (Military Division). His citation acknowledged his services in the camp, "As joint originator and supervisor of a fully successful transfusion service in prisoner-of-war camps in Siam, using the most primitive and improvised apparatus, this officer has shown skill and ability of an outstanding degree. His training of transfusion teams, his development of simple techniques for jungle surgery anti his ingenious methods of improvisation saved many hundreds of lives. He has shown great disregard for personal danger and risk of brutality in order to serve his patients".