This telegraph was sent by Mrs. Henry C. Clarke (Dawn) to her husband Henry C. Clarke, who served in the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force (FMSVF) between 1 December 1941 and 27 February 1946. The telegram was sent from Australia to Malaya, where Clarke was being held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war.The FMSVF was fully formed in 1936 following a series of reorganisation exercises, starting in 1931, that eventually saw the Malayan Volunteer Infantry and Malay States Volunteer Regiment brought under joint command. During the Second World War, the FMSVF was one of the locally-raised volunteer forces that fought against the Japanese in the Malayan Campaign. Following the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, most of the White and Eurasian volunteers were imprisoned in the Changi prisoner-of-war (POW) camp. Many of these POWs were later sent to work on Japanese construction projects such as the Burma-Thailand railway. The harsh and brutal conditions found at these work sites resulted in the deaths of many of these POWs.
