Duke and Duchess of Cambridge remember war dead in Singapore Ten men survived - nine Australians and one British Royal Marine - but just weeks before the end of the war, when the Japanese knew they were losing, they were executed. The Duke and Duchess - who wore a bespoke duck egg blue Jenny Packham dress and, for the first time on the tour of the Far East, carried a parasol - inspected the graves of the ten, who were executed on 7 July 1945. The Duke was wearing a Guards (Household Division) regimental tie. Group Captain Clive Coombes, the British defence adviser in Singapore, said: "The Prince was aware of Z force and was very keen to visit [the graves] and recognise that this was a huge amount of heroic resistance towards the end of the war." The couple had earlier laid a wreath on behalf of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Singapore Memorial in the Kranji War Cemetery, situated on a tranquil hill high above the bustling city. They walked between some of the 4,461 white graves of Commonwealth casualties from the Second World War, and laid a wreath of red roses, white lilies and orchids with a message which read: "In Memory Of The Glorious Dead Elizabeth R and Philip." After placing the wreath on the Memorial, which commemorates the deaths of 24,000 Commonwealth soldiers, they moved back and bowed their heads in tribute. The couple then stood proudly as the Last Post was played by a lone bugler followed by a minute's silence. Before they left to fly to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia the couple signed a visitor's book. Before 1939, Kranji was a military camp and at the time of the Japanese invasion of Malaya it was the site of a large ammunition magazine. On February 8 1942 the Japanese crossed the Johore Straits, landing at the mouth of the Kranji River less than two miles away. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting ensued and the island of Singapore eventually fell. Kranji was then transformed into a prisoner of war camp. After reoccupation, the small cemetery started by the prisoners at Kranji was developed into a permanent memorial by the Army Graves Service. Many graves from other parts of the island were transferred and 4,461 Commonwealth casualties of the Second World War are now buried or commemorated there. Tragically, more than 850 burials are still unidentified. In addition there are 64 burials and commemorations to lives lost in the First World War as well as the Singapore Memorial bearing the names of more than 24,000 casualties of the Commonwealth land and air forces who died during the campaigns in Malaya and Indonesia or in captivity, many of them during construction of the Burma-Thailand railway, who have no known grave.