The Valentine's Day Massacre: Horror at Alexandra Hospital By 1942MALAYA Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence against patients and medical personnel. 14 February 1942. 1:00 PM. Singapore. The British Military Hospital at Alexandra was never meant to be a battlefield. It was a sprawling colonial-era complex, designed to hold 550 patients. By mid-February 1942, it held  900  . Wounded men from the collapsing front lines lay in every corridor, every ward, every available space. The water supply had been rationed. Torches and lights were used only for surgery. Corpses wrapped in blankets lay unburied in the grounds because there was no one to bury them . The Japanese had been shelling the hospital since morning. The building shook with every near miss. Outside, the front line had dissolved. The hospital was now in  no man's land —caught between the advancing Japanese and the retreating British . At 1:00 PM, a lone Japanese soldier was seen ap...