Roberts Barracks Changi – Singapore
The 2/4th Machine Gun battalion arrived at Roberts Artillery Barracks at 0300 hours on the 18th February 1942. Later that day they were billeted out in three bungalows attached to Selarang. There were approximately 192 men from HQ’s Coy 2/4th in house No.38 under command of Capt. “Bob” Phelps, 255 men from ‘A’ and ‘B’ Coy’s in house No.35 under Capt. Tom Bunning and 235 men from ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies in house No. 34 under the command of the newly appointed Major Colin Cameron.
Below: Roberts Barracks would soon become the main POW hospital
Roberts Barracks, which was built in the late 1930s to accommodate units of the Royal Artillery, over the years.
Of the barrack blocks, which were used to accommodate the POW hospital in Changi during the Japanese Occupation up until Sep 1943 (the POWs remaining in Changi, including patients of the hospital, were them moved to Selarang and later to Changi Gaol), only one remains.
The last block standing, which was used for a while by SAF Boys School, is where the former St Luke’s Chapel is found. The chapel, housed in a room on the ground floor if the block, is where a certain Stanley Warren summoned what little strength he had left whilst down with a deliberating illness, and a lack of material, to paint the five murals that we know today as the Changi Murals.
From Long & Winding Road.
