Handmade cover for repaired guitar: Captain E M Dahl, 84th Light Aid Detachment, POW, Changi and Thailand

Handmade guitar cover or carrying bag made from lengths of brown cotton (taken from a British military valise) and sewn with thick cream cotton thread (salvaged from canvas). A carrying strap has been made from a salvaged webbing shoulder strap and two additional lengths of webbing strap (one marked 1941) sewn together and buckled to the shoulder strap. These straps pass through four loops sewn to the sides and base of the bag. The bag is open at its lower, wide end, and can be closed using a pair of steel lever clamps pinned to the lower part of the bag (the pins each pass through a thick white leather washer on the reverse and are bent over to secure the clamps). Each clamp engages with a 'U' shaped bent wire eye which is sewn into the hemming of the bag's closing flap.

This cotton guitar case was hand made 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 Palmerston North, New Zealand, enlisted on 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.
For the history of the guitar that Dahl repaired and played and for which this case was made, see RELAWM24605.001.
Dahl notes the after he had rebuilt the guitar with the assistance of Sergeant Crowther of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers at Kanburi Camp, he turned his attention to the making of a protective cover or case. He writes: "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."
The material used for the cover is dyed in a mid brown typically used by the British armed forces of the period. It also employs, as a carrying strap, some lengths of cotton webbing normally seen as carrying or equipment straps for gasmask bags and haversacks. One of this still retains its date of manufacture (1941).

Dahl brought the guitar and cover back with him after release, and continued to play it. He was discharged from the AIF on 7 December 1945.