Not everyone was prepared to surrender: John Crawley gathered 60 Non-Commissioned Officers and men, found a junk and sailed to Sumatra. Later they sailed for Ceylon, but were captured before they reached safety. Crawley spent the rest of the war as a resourceful adjutant of a Prisoner-of-war camp in Siam, and was severely beaten by the Japanese guards for his defiance. After the war, he stayed in Bangkok to assist the repatriation of PoWs. Lieutenant-Colonel C.E. Mackellar, the regiment's commanding officer, was previously a prisoner following the Siege of Kut in the First World War. He, and his second-in-command Major Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 10th Baronet, survived the notorious PoW camps on the Burma Railway. Mackellar insisted on keeping up standards in the camps, and spent many months in solitary confinement. 182 men of the regiment died, forced to work on the Burma railway. A further 72 were died during captivty after work was completed, including 43 when a Japanese convoy carrying prisoners to Japan was attacked by US Navy submarines.