"A supposed World War Two hero admits he is a liar and a fraud, reports Linton Besser. Life was hell inside Outram Road Jail, a Singaporean punishment compound during the Second World War. It was ''the worst jail there ever was'', a survivor of the Burma-Thai railway, Cyril Gilbert, told the Herald.

And it is where Gilbert's close friend, Rex Crane, claims to have been incarcerated after he was captured by the Japanese in May 1942. At just 15 years of age, Gilbert and many others believed Crane had been one of Australia's youngest POWs. Crane, who is now 83 and has been on the highest-level service pension since 1988, is the federal president of the Ex-Prisoners of War Association of Australia.

And Arthur Rex Crane is a fraud.

''It looks like the past has caught up, doesn't it?'' he said when the Herald confronted him this week."

full article