King Rat

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— exist. Obviously the rest of this story is fiction, and no similarity to anyone living or dead exists or is intended.

Changi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies. It stood on a slight rise and around it was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to the blue-green seas and the seas to infinity of horizon.

Closer, Changi lost its beauty and became what it was — an obscene forbidding prison. Cellblocks surrounded by sunbaked courtyards surrounded by towering walls.

Inside the walls, inside the cellblocks, story on story, were cells for two thousand prisoners at capacity. Now, in the cells and in the passageways and in every nook and cranny lived some eight thousand men. English and Australian mostly — a few New Zealanders and Canadians — the remnants of the armed forces of the Far East campaign.

These men too were criminals. Their crime was vast. They had lost a war.

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