Edwards was an army sergeant in the Royal Corps of Signals when Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942. He was interned for some time by the Japanese in the notorious Changi jail before transported to Taiwan, then the Japanese colony of Formosa. Edwards was put into the Kinkaseki POW camp, a mountainous region near Jiufen, where he and 525 other inmates were forced to work the copper mine daily in tropical heat. To get to the mine, parties had to walk up 250 steps to top of a ridge, then down 831 more to sea, and then descend a further 800 steps inside the mine to the working face on the lowest levels. So ever day before, and then again after work, the men had to walk up and down 1,881 crudely cut steps (by way of comparison there are 1,665 steps to the small platform on the top of the Eiffel Tower). His team was required to bring out 24 bogeys of copper every single day, if not, they were then beaten. As men died, or were transferred to other camps because they were too weak and ill to continue working, replacement contingents were drafted in to make up the numbers.