Repaired guitar: Captain E M Dahl, 84th Light Aid Detachment, POW, Changi and Thailand

Rebuilt guitar, using a commercial neck, machine heads and tailpiece. All the other items are improvised.

The machine heads are commercially manufactured nickel-plated steel, with brass winder cogs, steel string winder shafts and celluloid pegs. The decorated plates are nickel plated. There is a hole drilled into the apex of the guitar head. The nut is a replacement made from a celluloid rod, with grooves filed to accept five strings. The neck is of commercial manufacture, with steel frets and inlaid celluloid position markers - some of these may be improvised replacements. The neck is screwed into the body of the guitar through its reinforcing heel. There is evidence of glue also being used at this join as well as a flat square of steel used as a washer on the inside of the guitar. Remnants of commercial varnish appear along the length of the neck and head.

The body is made from three-ply sheets taken from packing crates or tea chests; there is black stencilled lettering still visible through the soundhole. The sheets have been glued and nailed to a wooden internal frame, and to the curved, carved solid wood corners, which were made from firewood gathered at Kanburi Camp in Thailand; these have had steps cut into them to allow the sheets to be attached flush. The corner sections add a degree of weight to the guitar. There is some longitudinal cracking to the rear three-ply sheet. The soundhole has been hand cut, while the adjacent floating bridge has been hand carved, with a celluloid rod guide bar loosely inserted, and string grooves filed along its length. The tailpiece is from nickel-plated steel of circular profile, its ends screwed to the lower end panel of the soundbox. An extra hole has been drilled into its stringcase, to allow the guitar to be strung with five, rather than six strings. A Bakelite strap holder is also secured to the lower end panel. The name "E.M.DAHL" has been neatly carved into the offside side panel. There is some evidence of a finish being applied to the guitar body - the donor states that this was made from a mixture of Condy's Crystals, brown boot polish and petrol.

There are two commercial strings still remaining on the guitar. However, the bottom E string is an original created in the Kanburi Camp by wrapping thin copper wire around signal wire cores.

This guitar was repaired and used in the Kanburi Camp on the Burma/Thailand Railway by NX70548 Captain Edward Marstrand Luja Dahl, 84th Light Aid Detachment (attached to 2/15 Field Artillery). Dahl, born at Palmerston North, New Zealand, enlisted Eon 17 December 1940 and was made a prisoner of the Japanese at Singapore in February 1942. He was initially incarcerated at Changi Camp, before being transferred to work on the Burma-Thai Railway. Captain Dahl was a guitarist and ran camp concert parties throughout his imprisonment.
Of this guitar, Dahl notes that it was a commercial instrument purchased by an unidentified private in the Australian Army Service Corps in Malaya in 1941 who, once a prisoner, carried it with him "on his back" to Changi and, in May 1942, to Burma. He fell sick at the Thetkaw Camp in the Burma-Thai border and tried to sell it for food. As the guitar had been the only musical instrument available to Captain Dahl’s concert party, he enlisted the support of Major Green (2/4 Machine Gun Battalion and commander of 'Green Force', of which Dahl was a member) who made the purchase (presumably with food). The guitar continued in service, being carried from camp to camp but the effects of the climate meant that by January 1944, upon arriving at Tamarkam Camp in Thailand, the body of the guitar started falling apart. Dahl notes "it was tied together with wire" and survived another 12 months, "during most of which I played it in the Camp Concert Party".
In February 1945, when both Tamakam Camp and Green Force were broken up and the men moved to Kanburi Camp, Major Green gave the guitar to Captain Dahl, eliciting a promise that he would make it available for any concerts. The march to Kanburi, however, saw the guitar completely disintegrate in Dahl’s arms. "The only parts still whole were the fingerboard and the machine heads."
When his attempts to rebuilt it failed, Dahl enlisted the assistance of Sergeant Crowther of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers "who had access to Japanese stores and could scrounge a few brads and nails. We decided to try and build an entirely new guitar, and after a couple of weeks our new instrument was finished. The top and back are made of old tea chests and the remaining solid wood was picked up on the camp firewood heap. The delightful brown finish was concocted by Sergeant Crowther from a mixture of Condy’s crystals, brown boot polish and petrol. … The cover I hand-stitched from an old valise that had made its way into Siam, the thread being pulled from a piece of canvas, and the needles made from thin, twisted wire." Dahl noted that "two bridges were made, so that the guitar could be played strung with either the usual six strings or with five only." This was due to the difficulty of maintaining and making the metal strings. Replacement strings were made from a signal wire core with thin copper (taken from old radio transformers) wound tightly around it.
Dahl and his comrades tried three different rigs to attempt to tightly wrap the signal wires in copper. The first merely used two bamboo poles pushed into the ground with the signal wire core tied between them and the copper hand-spooled onto the wire. This produced a loose wrapping requiring some 7,000 hand-turned revolutions. The second rig ("made by Dutch guitarist Johnny Ockerse") used a wooden frame and a winding handle, but "required three men for the operation, one to hold it steady, one to turn the handle and one to feed the copper wire into the core wire. This was slow, and the string turned from one end to the other, twisted badly and broke readily." The final, successful version, employed a larger frame and utilised a pair of wind-up gramophone gears with a 10:1 ratio, and a guide bar for the spool of copper wire. To avoid detection by the Japanese, this last winder was "planted in the Japanese workshop".
One of these hand-wound strings remains on the guitar – the lower E string. The five string bridge also survives.
Dahl brought this guitar back with him after release, and continued to play it. He was discharged from the AIF on 7 December 1945.