Alma Kent was a Sergeant with the Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps in 1939, and later served in the 14th Army Nursing Corps in Burma. She was a Lieutenant when Singapore was overrun by the Japanese in 1942. She was a Prisoner of War at the infamous Changi Prison, where she witnessed and suffered many brutalities, including a soldier who had his legs severed from the knees down because he was too tall, the officially documented Singapore Massacre when a group of Australian soldiers, nurses and patients were forced to swim back to their sinking ship after making it ashore and were machine-gunned for target practice. Perhaps most horrifically she witnessed one of the nurses in her charge being beheaded for refusing to bow to the Japanese commandant. She told the commandant that if they remained unmolested, she and her nurses would treat not only the inmates, but also the commandant and his troops.